And mast, and firry cone This rugged trunk shall hold its share Of mortal flesh and bone! "A Miser hoarding heaps of gold, From sweets of former years "A Man within whose gloomy mind, Within this very trunk! "This massy trunk that lies along, And many more must fallFor the very knave Who digs the grave, The man who spreads the pall, "The tall abounding Elm that grows "And well th' abounding Elm may grow In field and hedge so rife, In forest, copse, and wooded park, And mid the city's strife, For, every hour that passes by, Shall end a human life!" The Thrush's mate beside her sits The Dove is in the evergreens ; To catch its tiny prey. The gentle Hind and dappled Fawn Is glad, and not afraid- A secret, vague, prophetic gloom, This warm and living frame shall find That mystic Tree which breathed to me. A sad and solemn sound, That sometimes murmur'd overhead And sometimes underground; Within that shady Avenue Where lofty Elms abound. SHORT RIDES IN AN AUTHOR'S OMNIBUS. SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE. MUCH do we hear, not without lugubrious reproaches of the frivolity of the existing public, of their propensity to fun and foolery, of the exclusive patronage bestowed upon the writers of lampoons or levities; but the laudatores temporis acti, may rest assured that "my pensive public" were not much more sage and reflective "in good King Charles's days." When Sir Roger L'Estrange became an old man he discovered that if an author wishes to make his readers wise, he must himself occasionally play the fool. Mark how he commences the preface to his collected" Observators," of which the first was published 13th of April, 1681. "The disproportion and the indecorum of the thing for an old fellow that now writes sixty-eight, to run about a masquerading and dialoguing of it in twenty fantastical shapes, only to furnish a popular entertainment and diversion! 'Tis not for a man in years to do so and so. Well! and here's a reputative circumstance on the one hand, against an indispensable duty on the other. The common people are poisoned, and will run stark mad if they be not cured. Offer them reason without fooling, and it will never down with them; and give them fooling without argument they're never the better for it. Let 'em alone, and all is lost. So that the mixture has become as necessary as the office, and it has been my part only to season the one with the other. I must set the conscience of the action against the reproach, and 'tis nothing to me what other people think, so long as I am conscious to myself that I do what I ought." 66 And yet this same author, in his " Observator" of the 22d of May, 1686, has the following passage: "You may say of the Devil himself that he has not much reason, neither, to be wanton and gamesome; but yet if a body look narrowly into his business in this world, and into his ways of doing it, it will appear that he does more by the popular arts of banter, farce, and pageantry, than by the dint of gravity and counsel; and that his kingdom is more advanced by witlings, mimers, and jack-puddings, than by all the stratagems of men of intrigue and state. For the latter, though they put the change upon ye, and impose vice upon the world for virtue, yet it is vice so covered and varnished, that it looks like and passes for what it pretends to be: so that the principle and the dignity of virtue is nevertheless supported under the reputation they give to the counterfeit; for the rate that is set upon it is not for the cheat, but the sterling. But it is mighty otherwise and worse with the jolly libertines of the other sort, for they do not so much palliate wickedness as authorize it; and as the former have the faculty of making knaves look like honest men, these blades have got the knack of putting honesty itself out of countenance, and of ridiculing the very opinion as well as the conscience of it, even to the last degree of nonsense and folly. The axe is here laid to the root, and virtue is not so much misrepresented as it is degraded. In a word, here's the establishment of a false standard of religion, honour, and duty, on the one hand, and of none at all on the other." At all events, the latter is the honester vice, being free from the gross hypocrisy of the former; but the two extracts are inconsistent with each other; and if fun and foolery be the Devil's favourite weapons, it was surely a hazardous experiment in Sir Roger to betake himself to the diabolical armory. If he has not overlooked, he has omitted to urge the material fact that any weapon may be warrantably wielded in a good cause, while none can successfully defend, and much less justify, a bad one. Banter, farce, and foolery, under the guidance of reason, can be employed in defending virtue itself as well as in assailing morality. In these cases, much depends upon the object, but more upon the modus operandi. When R- was reproached with the slashing character of a satire he had published, which was at once weak and scurrilous, he exclaimed, "Why Churchill and Pope have written abusive stanzas as well as I." "True," replied his friend; "but have you written abusive stanzas as well as they?" DEATH. LE MERCIER'S splenetic address to Death in the Tableau de Paris seems to have been suggested by the following passage in the conclusion of Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World:" "O eloquent, just, and mightie Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the farrestretched greatness, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words-Hic jacet." Sir Walter, perhaps, had not forgotten the complaint of the Roman emperor, "How mournful is the thought that the remains of the world's master may be thrust into the narrow compass of an urn !”— or, perchance, he had been pondering upon the levelling exploits of Horace's pallida mors. And thus we go on, age after age, expatiating upon the certainty of death, and the uncertainty of life, notwithstanding all which, many of us live as if we were never to die, while some there are who die, as if they were never to live. DYING IN THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY. THIS phrase is not always to be received in a figurative sense, if we are to give implicit credence to the following passage relative to the martyrdom of St. Polycarp, extracted from Cave's "Lives of the Primitive Fathers," p. 122. "The ministers of execution blew up the fire, which increasing to a mighty flame, behold a wonder (seen, say my authors, by us who were purposely reserved, that we might declare it to others)! the flames disposing themselves into the resemblance of an arch, like the sails of a ship swelled with the wind, gently encircled the body of the martyr, who stood all the while in the midst, not like roasted flesh, but like gold or silver purified in the furnace, his body sending forth a delightful fragrancy, which, like frankincense, or some other costly spices, presented itself to our senses." "How blind and incorrigibly obstinate is unbelief!" exclaims the worthy author of the "Apostolica." "The infidels were so far from being convinced, that they were rather exasperated by the miracle, commanding a spearman, one of those who were wont to despatch wild beasts when they became outrageous, to go near and run him through with a sword, which he had no sooner done, but such a vast quantity of blood flowed from the wound, as extinguished and put out the fire; together with which a dove was seen to fly from the wounds of his body, which some suppose to have been his soul; though true it is that this circumstance is not mentioned in Eusebius his account, and probably never was in the original." H. THE BARNABYS IN AMERICA. BY MRS. TROLLOPE. CHAP. XXI. BEFORE twelve o'clock next day, Mrs. Allen Barnaby had received fifteen notes of invitation for herself, her family, and friends. Some of these were for dinner and evening parties at New Orleans, and some for visits of longer duration, which the distinguished travellers were entreated to make at the hospitable dwellings of the writers, during the progress of their proposed tour. To copy all these documents is unnecessary, as the same hospitable and patriotic spirit appeared to pervade them all; but one or two ought to be given, in justice to the eloquence with which these feelings were expressed. The following are selected without the slightest partiality of any kind, except what arises from feeling that they are peculiarly well calculated to serve as specimens of the whole. "Madam, No. I. "Much has been said, a great deal too much, upon the deficiency of mutual good-liking between the great and glorious Union of America and the Islands of Great Britain. You, madam, shall prove in your own person, that as far as the noble-hearted citizens of the United States are concerned, the charge is altogether false and unfounded. Mrs. Major Wigs and myself desire the pleasure and satisfaction-You may observe as a national trait, if you please, madam, that in addressing the natives of Great Britain, the citizens of the United States never talk of "doing honour," and that sort of nonsense, and when you, madam, have seen a little more of them, you will become aware (for your capacity is already proved to be of the best) that they don't stand in a situation for any mortal creature on God's earth to do them an honour.-But to return to business; Major Wigs and his lady hereby request the pleasure of your company, together with your husband, in course, and all your travelling companions inclusive, to a ball and supper at their house and plantation, called the Levée Lodge, just two miles off New Orleans, this day week. I remain, madam, "With the utmost of respect, "For your individual elegance of mind, No. II. "Much esteemed Lady, "After what was read and heard in Mrs. Carmichael's keeping-room last night, I expect it is not very needful for me to say why it is that I and my lady, Mrs. Colonel Staggers, desire your further acquaintance -we being amongst those who, acting in conformity with all reasonable laws, human and divine, do the best that in us lies, as in duty bound, Sept.-VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXI. C |