days' keeping; I lose the three pounds at which I valued him above what he cost me, and I lose the advantage I might have made of my money in six months, either by the interest or by joining it to my stock in trade in my voyage to Barbadoes. agree But throbs with hope, and heaves with sighs And still-the slave of amorous care- TO THE SAME. Shade! O shade those looks of light; 6. Lastly, whenever a horse is put to keep, the ment naturally runs thus: The keeper says I will feed your horse six months on good hay and oats, if at the end of that time you will pay me three pounds. The owner says, if you will feed my horse six months on good hay and oats, I will pay you three pounds at the| end of that time. Now we may plainly see, the keep-That dimpled cheek, whose spotless white, er's performance of his part of the agreement must be antecedent to that of the owner; and the agreement being wholly conditional, the owner's part is not in force till the keeper has performed his. You then not having fed my horse six months, as you agreed to do, there lies no obligation on me to pay for so much feeding. Thus we have heard what can be said on both sides. Upon the whole, I am of opinion that no deduction should be allowed for the keeping of the horse after the time of his straying. I am yours, &c. THE CASUIST. TO A COQUETTE. The Lady was playing the Penserosa, and the Bard rallied her. She suddenly assumed the Allegra, and rallied him in turn. Whereupon he sung as follows: Heave no more that breast of snow, Thy heart shall thrill with bliss unknown before. But smile not so divinely bright; That "prodigality of charms," About my neck thy snowy arms; My hopes to raise, my heart to gain, Then laugh my love to scorn, and triumph in my pain. I love thee, Julia! Though the flush Of sprightly youth is flown- And Time's gray wing its frost has shed Yet warm within my bosom glows, The rays of Love's first dawning light, Even on thy breast of snow, That shade thy polished brow But like the wretch, who, doomed to endless pain, To Heaven uplifts his longing arms in vain One gleam of treacherous Hope display; The dreadful truth returns: "Thou never wilt be mine." Then shade! O shade those looks of light; The thrilling sense can bear no more! Which to see is to adore. But stay! O yet awhile refrain! Such charms 'twere more than Heaven to possess: LIONEL GRANBY. CHAPTER X. He scanned with curious and prophetic eye You judge the English character with too much favor Lionel, said Col. R. The Englishman is not free! Though vain, arrogant, and imperious, there is not a more abject slave on earth. His boasting spirit, his fullmouthed independence and his lordly step quail to rank, and he is ever crawling amid the purlieus or over the [ his tranquil evenings, in the dalliance of literature. He threshold of that fantastic temple of fashion called "So- was an author belonging to his own exclusive school-a ciety." It is an endless contest between those who are school of simplicity, grace and beauty. He neither initiated into its mysteries and those who crowd its skewered his pen into precise paragraphs, nor rioted in avenues. Wealth batters down the door-assumes a the verbose rotundity of the day. He picked up the proud niche in the chilling fane, and uniting itself to that | rare and unpolished jewels which spangled the courts of silent yet powerful aristocracy which wields the oracles of the god, its breath can create you an exclusive, or its frown can degrade you to the vulgar herd. Rank, which is the idol of an Englishman's sleepless devotion, wealth because it is curiously akin to the former, and some indistinct conception of the difference between a people and the mob, render him, in his own conceit, a gentleman and a politician. His first thought if cast on a desert island would be his rank, and if he had companions in misfortune, he would ere night arrange the dignity and etiquette of intercourse. Literature seeks the same degrading arena, and alas! how few are there who do not deck the golden calf with the laurels won in the conflicts of genius, and who, stimulated solely by lucre, shed their momentary light athwart the horizon, even as the meteor whose radiance is exhaled from the corruption of a fœtid marsh. But there is a class who, ennobled by letters, are always independent; and though they be of the race of authors whom Sir Horace Walpole calls "a troublesome, conceited set of fellows," you will find them too proud and too honest to palter away the pre-racterised his brief writings declared the generosity of rogatives of their station. Elizabeth and Charles, and they lost beneath his polishing hand neither their lustre nor value. He was a passionate and single hearted antiquary, ever laboring to prop up with a puny arm, the column on which was inscribed the literary glory of his country. He was familiar with the grace of Heywood, the harmony of Fletcher, the ease of Sir Philip Sydney, the delicacy and fire of Spenser, the sweetness of Carew, the power and depth of Marlow, the mighty verse of Shakspeare, the affected fustian of Euphues (Lilly) "which ran into a vast excess of allusion," and with the deep and sparkling philosophy of Burton. With all of them he held a "dulcified" converse, while his memory preserved from utter forgetfulness, many of those authors who to the eye of the world, had glittered like the flying fish a moment above the surface, only to sink deeper in the sea of oblivion. Lamb possessed in an eminent degree, what Dryden called a beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, and the easy swell of cadence and harmony which cha his heart, and the fertility of his genius. He could sympathise with childhood's frolic, and his heart was full of boyish dreams, when he gazed on the play-ground of Eton, and exclaimed "what a pity to think that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will be changed into frivolous members of parliament!" He had the rough magnanimity of the old English vein, mellowed into tenderness and dashed with a flexible and spinous humor. He was contented to worship poesy in its classic and antique drapery. With him the fountain of Hypocrene still gushed up its inspiring wave; and Apollo, attended by the Muses, the daughters of Memory, and escorted by the Graces, still haunted the mountains of Helicon, lingered among the hills of Phocis, or, mounted upon Pegasus, winged his radiant flight to the abode itself of heaven-born Poesy. These were the fixed principles of his taste, and he credulously smiled (for contempt found no place in his bosom) upon the sickly illustrations and naked imagery of modern song. His learning retained a hue of softness from the gentle But we are now at the door of Elia; come, let me introduce you to one of his simple and unaffected suppers! I cheerfully assented to this invitation, and following my conductor up a flight of crooked and dark steps, we entered into a room, over a brazier's shop. A dull light trembled through the small and narrow apartment where, shrouded in a close volume of tobacco smoke, sat in pensive gentility-the kind-the generous-the infant-hearted Charles Lamb; the man whose elastic genius dwelled among the mouldering ruins of by-gone days, until it became steeped in beauty and expanded with philosophy-the wit-the poet-the lingering halo of the sunshine of antiquity-the phoenix of the mighty past. He was of delicate and attenuated stature, and as fragilely moulded as a winter's flower, with a quick and volatile eye, a mind-worn forehead and a countenance eloquent with thought. Around a small table well covered with glasses and a capacious bowl, were gathered a laughing group, eyeing the battalia of the coming supper. Godwin's heavy form and intellectual face, withness of his character, for he had gathered the blossoms the swimming eye of (es Tε as S. T. C. How quaint was his fancy!) Coleridge, flanked the margin of the mirthinspiring bowl. Col. R's introduction made me at home, and ere my hand had dropped from the friendly grasp of our host, he exclaimed-And you are truly from the land of the great plant? You have seen the sole cosmopolite spring from the earth. It is the denizen of the whole world, the tireless friend of the wretched, the bliss of the happy. You need no record of the empire of the red man. He has written his fadeless history on a tobacco leaf. At this time Lamb was a clerk in the "India House," a melancholy and gloomy mansion, with grave courts, heavy pillars, dim cloisters, stately porticocs, imposing staircases and all the solemn pomp of elder days. Here for many years he drove the busy quill, and whiled away untouched by the bitterness of the sciential apple. He extracted like the bee his honied stores from the wild and neglected flowers which bloomed among forgotten ruins, yet he was no plagiarist, no imitator, for he had invaded and lingered amid the dim sepulchres of the shadowy past, until he became its friend and cotemporary! How has he obtained those curiously bound books, I whispered to Coleridge, as my eye fell on a column of shelves groaning under a mass of tattered volumes which would have fairly crazed my poor uncle? Tell him Lamb! said Coleridge repeating my inquiry, give him the rank and file of your ragged regiment. Slowly, and painfully as a neophyte, did I build the pile, replied Lamb. Its corner stone was that fine old folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, which, for a long year had peeped out from a bookseller's stall directly in my daily path to the India House. It bore the great price | formed execration was exchanged, when she, tigress-like of sixteen shillings, and to me, who had no unsunned turned round and gave the terrible bl— for a gentler heap of silver, I gazed on it until I had almost violated meaning, bless thy handsome face! And do you not rethe decalogue. Poetry made me an economist, and at member when you used to tug over Homer, discourse the end of two months my garnered mites amounted to Metaphysics, chaunt Anacreon, and play at foils with the requisite sum. Vain as a girl with her first lover, the sharp-edged wit of Sir Thomas Browne, how your I bore it home in triumph, and that night my sister eye glistened when you doffed the grotesque blue coat, Bridget read "The Laws of Candy" while I listened and the inspired charity boy (this was uttered in an with rapture to that deep and gurgling torrent of old under tone) walked forth humanized by a christian garEnglish, which dashed its music from this broken cis-ment. Spenser knew the nobility of heart which a new tern. To her is the honor due, her taste has called all coat gives when he dressed his butterfly. these obsolete wits to my library, for she keenly relished their fantasies, and smiled at their gauderies. In early life she had been tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it, but I can answer for it that (if the worst comes to the worst) it makes most incomparable old maids. But there are some fearful gaps in my shelves, Mr. Granby! See! there a stately and reverend folio, like a huge eye-tooth, was rudely knocked out by a bold borrower of books, one of your smiling pirates, mutilator of collections, a spoiler of the symmetry of shelves, and a creator of odd volumes. The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie The silken down with which his back is dight His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes. Col. R. now motioned to me to retire, and I bid a reluctant goodnight to the joyous scene, the exclamation "do you not remember!" from Coleridge, and the cheerful laugh ringing through the whole house and its dying echo following us to the street. Gentle reader! the critics have called Lamb a trifler, the scholars have called him a twaddler! Read Elia, and let your heart answer for him. THE PRAIRIE. This word is pronounced by the common people paThe conversation now became general, and many ara-re. I was in the peninsula of Michigan, and had little skiff was launched on the great ocean of commonplace. Lamb most cordially hated politics which he called "a splutter of hot rhetoric ;" and he only remembered its battles and revolutions when connected with letters. He had heard of Pharsalia, but it was Lucan's and not Cæsar's; the battle of Lepanto was cornered in his memory because Cervantes had there lost an arm. The glorious days of the "Commonwealth" were hallowed by Milton and Waller, and he always turned with much address from the angry debates about the execution of Charles I. to the simple inquiry whether been for a day or two traversing the most dreary country imaginable, when I saw for the first time a salt or wet prairie, which is only a swampy meadow, grown up in a rank, coarse, sedgy grass. he or Doctor Ganden wrote the "Icon Basilike." Godwin in vain essayed to introduce the "conduct of the ministry," and being repeatedly baffled, he said pettishly to Lamb, And what benefit is your freehold, if you do not feel interested in government? Not long after we began to catch glimpses of the upland prairies. These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear prairie-a broad unvaried expanse—presents rather a monotonous appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on more lovely landscapes than these ook openings present. They answered my conceptions of lawns, parks and pleasure grounds in England; they are the lawns, parks and pleasure grounds of nature, laid out and planted with an inimitable grace, fresh as creation. In these charming woodlands are a number of small Ah! I had a freehold it is true, the gift of my generous lakes, the most picturesque and delightful sheets of and solemn god-father, the oil-man in Holborn; I went water imaginable. The prairies in the summer are down and took possession of my testamentary allot-covered with flowers. I am an indifferent botanist, but ment of three quarters of an acre, and strode over it with the feeling of an English freeholder, that all betwixt sky and earth was my own. Alas! it has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an Agrarian can restore it! in a short walk I gathered twenty four species which I had not seen before. These flowers and woods and glittering lakes surpass all former conception of beauty. Each flower, leaf, and blade of grass, and green twig glistens with pendulous diamonds of dew. The sun The bowl now danced from hand to hand, and I did pours his light upon the water and streams through the not observe its operation until Lamb and Coleridge com- sloping glades. To a traveller unaccustomed to such menced an affectionate talk about Christ's Hospital, the scenes, they are pictures of a mimic paradise. Someblue coat boys, and all the treasured anecdotes of school- times they stretch away far as the eye can reach, soft day friendship. This is the first and happiest stage of as Elysian meadows, then they swell and undulate, voincipient intoxication, and the "willie-draughts" which | luptuous as the warm billows of a southern sea. are pledged to the memory of boyhood, ever inspire brighter and nobler sympathies, than are found in the raciest toasts to beauty, or the deepest libations to our country. Do you not remember, said Lamb, poor Allan! whose beautiful countenance disarmed the wrath of a towndamsel whom he had secretly pinched, and whose half In these beautiful scenes we saw numerous flocks of wild turkies, and now and then a prairie hen, or a deer bounding away through flowers. Here too is found the prairie wolf which some take to be the Asiatic jackall. It is so small as not to be dangerous alone. It is said however, that they hunt in packs like hounds, headed by a grey wolf. Thus they pursue the deer with a cry RANDOM THOUGHTS. The Age.-Its leading fault, to which we of America are especially obnoxious, is this: in Poetry, in Legislation, in Eloquence, the best, the divinest even of all the arts, seems to be laid aside more and more, just in proportion as it every day grows of greater necessity. It is still, as in Swift's time, who complains as follows: "To say the truth, no part of knowledge seems to be in fewer hands, than that of discerning when to have The Greeks seem not to have practised a very rigo-. rous reserve, as to the concealment of the person. The Lacedemonians, indeed, studiously suppressed, by their institutions, whatever of sexual modesty was not absolutely necessary to virtue. Among the Romans, however, the national austerity of manners made every violation of delicacy in this matter a great offence. Their Satyrists (as Seneca, Juvenal, and others) abound in allusions to the license of dress, which grew up, along with the other corruptions of their original usages. The words of Seneca, indeed, might almost be taken for a picture of a modern belle, in her ball-room attire. He says, in his De Beneficiis, "Video Sericas vestes, si vestes vocandæ sint, in quibus nihil est, quo defendi aut corpus, aut denique pudor, possit : quibus sumtis, mulier parum liquido, nudam se non esse, jurabit. Hæc, ingenti summa, ab ignotis etiam ad commercium gentibus, accersuntur, ut matronæ nostræ ne adulteris quidem plus suis in cubiculo, quam in publico, ostendant.” "I see, too, silken clothing-if clothing that can be called, which does not protect, nor even conceal the body-apparelled in which, a woman cannot very truly swear, that she is not naked. Such tissues are brought to us at enormous cost, from nations so remote that not even their names can reach us; and by the help of this vast expense, our matrons are able to exhibit, to their lovers and in their couches, nothing at which the whole public has not equally gazed." The French translation of St. John (de Creve-cœur's) American Farmer's Letters-a book once very popular was adorned with engravings, to fit it to the European imagination of the Arcadian state of things in America. The frontispiece presents an allegorical picture, in which a goddess of those robuster proportions which designate Wisdom, or Philosophy, leads by the hand an urchinthe type, no doul t, of this country-with ne'er a shirt upon his back. More delightfully still, however, in the back ground, is seen, hand in hand, with knee-breeches and strait-collared coats, a band of Pennsylvania quaker men, dancing, by themselves, a true old fashioned six-upon the forlorn damsel, and presently made her his. handed Virginia reel. But of the Pyrrhic dance, more particularly the learned Scaliger-that terror and delight of the critical world—assures us, in his Poetica, (book i, ch. 9) that he himself, at the command of his uncle Boniface, was wont often and long to dance it, before the Emperor Maximilian, while all Germany looked on with amazement. "Hanc saltationem Pyrrhicam, nos sæpe et diu, jussu Bonifacii patrui, coram divo Maximiliano, non sine stupore totius Germaniæ, representavimus.” Ariosto. Has not the following curious testimony in regard to him escaped all his biographers? Montaigne, in his Essays, (vol. iii, p. 117, Johanneau's edition, in 8vo.) says, "J'eus plus de despit encores, que de compassion, de le veoir à Ferrare en si piteux estat, survivant à soy mesme, mecognoissant et soy et ses ouvrages; lesquels, sans son sçeu, et toutesfois en sa veue, on a mis en lumiere incorrigez et informes." "I was touched even more with vexation than with compassion, to see him, at Ferrara, in a state so piteous, outliving himself, and incapable of recognizing either himself or his works; which last, without his knowledge, though yet before his sight, were given to the world uncorrected and unfinished." Thin Clothing.-It would be difficult more skilfully to turn a reproach into a praise, than Byron has done, as to drapery too transparent, in his voluptuous description of a Venitian revel. "The thin robes, Floating like light clouds 'twixt our gaze and heaven," form the very climax of many intoxicating particulars. Mythology-Bryant and others have puzzled themselves not a little to give a rational explanation to the story of Ariadne; who, it will be remembered, was abandoned upon the isle of Naxos by her seducer, Theseus: but Bacchus chancing to come that way, fell bride. All this may well puzzle a commentator, for the single reason, that it is perfectly plain and simple. The whole tale is nothing but a delicate and poetic way of stating the fact, that Mrs. Ariadne, being deserted by her lover, sought and found a very common consolation-that is to say, she took to drink. Naples. Its population of Lazzaroni appears, after all, to be but the legitimate inheritors of ancestral laziness. They were equally idle in Ovid's time for he expressly calls that seat of indolence Parthenopen." "in otia natam Exhibition of Grief.-There is a curious instance of the unbending austerity of Roman manners, in the trait by which Tacitus endeavors to paint the disorder with which the high-souled Agrippina received the news of the death of Germanicus. She was, at the moment, sewing in the midst of her maids; and so totally (says Tacitus) did the intelligence overthrow her self-command, that she broke off her work. Snoring. The following story of a death caused by it is entirely authentic. Erythræus relates that when Cardinal Bentivoglio-a scholar equally elegant and laborious-was called to sit in the Conclave, for the election of a successor to Urban VIII, the summons found him much exhausted by the literary vigils to which he was addicted. Immured in the sacred palace, (such is the custom while the Pope is not yet chosen,) his lodging was assigned him along side of a Cardinal, whose snoring was so incessant and so terrible, that poor Bentivoglio ceased to be able to obtain even the little sleep which his studies and his cares usually permitted him. After eleven nights of insomnolence thus produced, he was thrown into a violent fever. They removed him, and he slept-but waked no more. Human Usefulness.-Wilkes has said, that of all the uses to which a man can be put, there is none so poor as hanging him. I hope that I may, without offence to any body's taste, add, that of all the purposes to which a soul can be put, I know of none less useful than damning it. Implicit Faith.-I am delighted with the following excellent contrast of ignorant Orthodoxy with cultivated Doubt. It is from the learned and pious Le Clerc's Preface to his Bibliothèque Choisie, vol. vii, pp. 5, 6. "Il n'y a, comme je crois, personne, qui ne préferât l'état d'une nation, où il y auroit beaucoup de lumières quoiqu'il y eût quelques libertins, à celui d'une nation ignorante et qui croiroit tout ce qu'on lui enseigneroit, ou qui au moins ne donneroit aucunes marques de douter des sentimens reçus. Les lumières produisent Sneezing. It is the Catholics (see father Feyjoo for infailliblement beaucoup de vertu dans l'esprit d'une the fact) who trace the practice of bidding God bless a bonne part de ceux qui les reçoivent; quoiqu'il y ait man when he sneezes, to a plague in the time of St. des gens qui en abusent. Mais l' Ignorance ne produit Gregory. He, they say, instituted the observance, inque de la barbarie et des vices dans tous ceux qui viorder to ward off the death of which this spasm had, vent tranquillement dans leurs ténèbres. Il faudroit till then, been the regular precursor, in the disease. If étre fou, par exemple, pour préferer ou pour égaler the story be true, such a plague had already happened, l'état auquel sont les Moscovites et d'autres nations, à long before the day of St. Gregory. In the Odyssey, | l'égard de la Religion et de la vertu, à celui auquel sont Penelope takes the sneezing of Telemachus for a good les Anglois et les Hollandois, sous prétexte qu'il y a omen; and the army of Xenophon drew a favorable quelques libertins parmi ces deux peuples, et que les presage, as to one of his propositions, from a like acci-Moscovites et ceux qui leur ressemblent ne doubtent dent: Aristotle speaks of the salutation of one sneezing de rien." as the common usage of his time. In Catullus's Acme and Sempronius, Cupid ratifies, by an approving sneeze, the mutual vows of the lovers. Pliny alludes to the practice, and Petronius in his Gyton. In Apuleius's Golden Ass, a husband hears the concealed gallant of his wife sneeze, and blesses her, taking the sternutation to be her own. "There is, I think, no one who would prefer the state of a nation, in which there was much intelligence, but some free thinkers, to that of a nation ignorant and ready to believe whatever might be taught it, or which, at least, would show no sign of doubting any of the received opinions. For knowledge never fails to produce much of virtue, in the minds of a large part of those who receive it, even though there be some who make an ill use of it. But Ignorance is never seen to give birth to any thing but barbarism and vice, in all such as dwell contentedly under her darkness. It would, for example, be nothing less than madness, to prefer or to compare the condition in which the Muscovites and some other nations are, as respects Religion and Virtue, text that there are, among the two latter nations, some free thinkers, and that the Muscovites and those who resemble them doubt of nothing." If there be a marvel or an absurdity, the Rabbins rarely fail to adorn the fiction or the folly with some trait of their own. Their account of the matter is, that in patriarchal days, men never died except by sneezing, which was then the only disease, and always mortal. Apparently then, the antiquity of the Scotch nation and of rappee cannot be carried back to the time of Jacob. Be this point of chronology as it may, how-to that of the English or Hollanders; under the preever, it is certain that the same sort of observance, as to sneezing, was found in America at the first discovery. Aristotle is politely of opinion that the salutation was meant as an acknowledgment to the wind, for choosing an inoffensive mode of escape. But a stronger consideration is necessary to account for the joy with which the people of Monopotama celebrate the fact, when their monarch sneezes. The salutation is spread by loud acclamations, over the whole city. So, too, when he of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers all turn their backs, and slap loudly their right thighs. Honor. The source of the following passage in Garth's Dispensary, is so obvious, that it is singular that no one has made the remark. The whole of this piece, indeed, is excellent, and full of candor, charity and sense, as to the temper and the principles of those who are forever striving to send into banishment, or shut up in prisons, or compel into eternal hypocrisy, all such opinions as have the misfortune to differ with their own. Friendships.-There are people whose friendship is very like the Santee Canal in South Carolina: that is to say, its repairs cost more than the fee simple is worth. Benefits. There are many which must ever be their In the debate among the Doctors, when war is pro- own reward, great or small. Others are positively posed, one of the Council speaks as follows. Thus he: "Tis true, when privilege and right It lives when in death's arms the hero lies; Rest, health and ease, for nothing but a name.** dangerous. That subtle courtier, Philip de Comines, declares, that it is exceedingly imprudent to do your prince services for which a fit recompense is not easily found:* and Tacitus avers that obligations too deep are sure to turn to hatred † Seneca pursues the matter yet further, and insists that he, whom your excessive services have thus driven to ingratitude, presently be gins to desire to escape the shame of such favors, by "Il se fault bien garder de faire tant de services à son maistre, qu'on l'empesche d'en trouver la juste recompense."-Memoires. "Beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse: ubi multum antivenere, pro gratiâ odium redditur." |