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leeches which infested Naples. Naudé positively denies that ralismans possessed any such occult virtues. Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naudé should have gone this length, giving the lie to so many authentic authors; and Naudé's paradox is, indeed, as strange as his denial; he suspects the thing is not true, because it is so generally told! "It leads one to suspect," says he, "as animals are said to have been driven away from so many places by these talismans, whether they were ever driven from any place." Gaffarel, suppressing by his good temper his indignant feelings at such reasoning, turns the paradox on its maker :-" As if, because of the great number of battles which Hannibal is reported to have fought with the Romans, we might not, by the same reason, doubt whether he fought any one with them." The reader must be aware that the strength of the argument lies with the firm believer in talismans. Gaffarel, indeed, who passed his days in collecting "Curiosites inouie," is a most authentic historian of unparalleled events, even his own times! Such as that heavy rain in Poiton, which showered down "petites bestioles," little creatures like bishops with their mitres, and monks with their capuchins over their heads; it is true, afterwards they all turned into butterflies.

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The museums, the cabinets, and the inventions of our early virtuosi were the baby-houses of philosophers. Baptista Porta, Bishop Wilkins, and old Ashmole, were they now living, had been enrolled among the quiet members of the " Society of Arts," instead of flying in the air, collecting "A wing of the phoenix, as tradition goes;" or catching the disjointed syllables of an old doting astrologer. But those early dilettanti had not derived the same pleasure from the useful inventions of the aforesaid "Society of Arts," as they received from what Cornelius Agrippa, in a fit of spleen, calls "things vain and superfluous. invented for no other end but for pomp and idle pleasure." Baptista Porta was skilful in the mysteries of art and nature than any man in his day. Having founded the Academy de gli Öziosi, he held an inferior association in his own house, called di Secreti, where none was admitted but those elect who had communicated some secret; for in the early period of modern art and science, the slightest novelty became a secret, not to be confided to the uninitiated. Porta was unquestionably a fine genius, as his works still shew; but it was a misfortune that he attributed his own penetrating sagacity to his skill in the art of divination. He considered himself a prognosticator; and what was more unfortunate, some eminent persons really thought he was.

Predictions and secrets are harmless, provided they are not believed; but his holiness finding Porta's were, warned him that magical sciences were great hindrances to the study of the bible, and paid him the compliment to forbid his prophesying. Porta's genius was now limited to astonish, and sometimes to terrify, the more ingenious part of I Secreti. On entering his cabinet, some phantom of an attendant was sure to be hovering in the air, moving as he who entered moved; or he observed in some mirror that his face was twisted and on the wrong side of his shoulders, and did not quite think that all was right when he clapped his hand on it; or passing through a darkened apartment, a magical landscape burst on him with human beings in motion, the boughs of trees bending, and the very clouds passing over the sun; or, sometimes banquets, battles, and hunting-parties in the same apartment. "All these spectacles my friends have witnessed!" exclaims the self-delighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he had used, they were mortified with wonder: for he drank wine, and they only water! or, on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would freeze his guests with cold air in the room; or, on a sudden, let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat tied on its back; shrill was the sound, and awful was the concussion; so that it required strong nerves in an age of apparitions and devils, to meet this great philosopher when in his best humour. Albertus Magnus entertained the Earl of Holland, as that earl passed through Cologne, in a severe winter, with a warm summer-scene, luxuriant in fruits and flowers. The fact is related by Trithemius-and this magical scene connected with his vocal head, and his books de Secretis Mulierum, and de Mirabilibus, confirmed the accusations they raised against the great Albert, for being a magician. His apologist, Theophilus Raynaud, is driven so hard to defend Albertus, that he at once asserts, that the winter changed to summer, and the speaking head to be two infamous flams! He will not believe these authenticated facts, although he credits a miracle which proves the sanctity of Albertus;-after three centuries, the body of Albert the Great remained as sweet as ever.

"Whether such enchauntments," as old Mandeville cautiously observeth, two centuries preceding the days of Porta, were "by craft or by nygromancye, I wot nere." But that they were not unknown to Chaucer appears in his "Franklein's Tale," where, minutely describing them, he communicates the same pleasure he must himself have received from the ocular illusions of "the Tregetoure," or "Jogelour." Chaucer ascribes the miracle to "a naturall magique ;" in which, however, it was as unsettled, whether the "Prince of Darkness" was a party concerned.

"For I am siker that there be sciences By which men maken divers apparences Swiche as thire subtil tregetoures play. For oft at festes have I well herd say

That tregetoures, within an halle large,
Have made come in a water and a barge,
And in the halle rowen up and doun.
Sometime hath seemed come a grim leoun,
And sometime flowies spring as in a mede,
Sometime a vine and grapes white and rede;
Sometime a castel al of lime and stone,
And whan hem liketh voideth it anon:
Thus seemeth it to every mannes sight."

Bishop Wilkins's Museum was visited by Evelyn, who describes the sort of curiosities which occupied and amused the children of Science. "Here, too, there was a hollow statue, which gave a voice, and uttered words by a long concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at a good distance :" a circumstance which, perhaps they were not then aware, revealed the whole mystery of the ancient oracles, which they attributed to demons, rather than to tubes, pulleys and wheels. The learned Charles Patin, in his scientific travels, records, among other valuable productions of art, a cherry-stone, on which were engraven about a dozen and a half of portraits! Even the greatest of human geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci, to attract the royal patronage, created a lion which ran before the French monarch, dropping fleurs de lis from its shaggy breast. And another philosopher who had a spinet which played and stopped at command, might have made a revolution in the arts and sciences, had the half-stifled child that was concealed in it not been forced, unluckily, to crawl into daylight, and thus it was proved that a philosopher might be an impostor!

The arts, as well as the sciences, at the first institution of the Royal Society, were of the most amusing class. The famous Sir Samuel Moreland had turned his house into an enchanted palace. Every thing was full of devices, which shewed art and mechanism in perfection; his coach carried a travelling kitchen; for it had a fireplace and grate, with which he could make a soup, broil cutlets, and roast an egg; and he dressed his meat by clockwork. Another of these virtuosi, who is described, as "a gentleman of superior order, and whose house was a knickknackatory," valued himself on his multifarious inventions, but most in "sowing salads in the morning, to be eat for dinner." The house of Winstanley, who afterwards raised the first Eddystone light-house, must have been the wonder of the age. If you kicked aside an old slipper, purposely lying in your way, up started a ghost before you; or if you sat down in a chair, a couple of gigantic arms would immediately clasp you in. There was an arbour in the garden by the side of a canal; you had scarcely seated yourself when you were sent out afloat to the middle of the canal-from whence you could not escape till this man of art and science wound you up to the harbour. What was passing at the Royal Society, was also occurring at the " Academie des Sciences" at Paris. A great and gouty member of that philosophical body, on the departure of a stranger would point to his legs, to shew the impossibility of conducting him to the door; yet the astonished visitor never failed to find the virtuoso waiting for him on the outside, to make his final bow! While the visitor was going down stairs this inventive genius was descending with great velocity in a machine from the window; so that he proved, that if a man of science, cannot force nature to walk down stairs, he may drive her out at the window!

If they travelled at home, they set off to note down prodigies. Dr. Plott, in a magnificent project of a journey through England for the advantage of "Learning and Trade," and thed iscovery of " Antiquities and other Curiosities," for which he solicited the royal aid which Leland enjoyed, among other notable designs, discriminates a class thus: "Next I shall enquire of animals; and first of strange people."-"Strange accidents that attended corporations and families, as that the deans of Rochester ever since the foundation by turns have died deans and bishops; the bird with a white breast that haunts the family of Oxenham near Exeter, just before the death of any of that family; the bodies of trees that are seen to swim in a pool near Brereton in Cheshire, a certain warning to the heir of that honourable family to prepare for the next world." And such remarkables as" Number of children, such as the Lady Temple, who before she died saw seven hundred descended from her." This fellow of the Royal Society, who lived nearly to 1700, was requested to give an addition of Pliny we have lost the benefit of a most copious commentary! Bishop Hall went to the "Spa." The wood about that place was haunted not only by "freebooters, but by wolves and witches; although these last are ofttimes but one." They were called loups garoux; and the Greeks, it seems, knew them by the name of λυκανθρωποι, men wolves, witches that have put on the shapes of those cruel beasts. "We sawe a boy there, whose half-face was devoured by one of them near the village; yet so, as that the eare was rather cut than bitten off." Rumour had spread that the boy had had half his face devoured; when it was examined, it turned out that his ear had only been scratched! However, there can be no doubt of the existence of witch-wolves; for Hall saw at Limburgh "one of those iniscreants executed, who confessed on the wheel to have devoured two and forty children in that form." They would probably have found it difficult to have summoned the mothers who had lost the children. But observe our philosopher's reasoning: "It would make a large volume to scan this problem of lycanthropy." He had laboriously collected

all the evidence, and had added his arguments: the result offers a curious instance of acute reasoning on a wrong principle.*

Men of science and art then passed their days in a bustle of the marvellous. I will finish with a specimen of philosophical correspondence in a letter to old John Aubrey. The writer betrays the versatility of his curiosity by very opposite discoveries. "My hands are so full of work that I have no time to transcribe for Dr. Henry More an account of the Barnstable apparitionLord Keeper North would take it kindly of you-give a sight of this letter from Barnstable to Dr. Witchcot." He had lately heard of a Scotchman who had been carried by fairies into France; but the purpose of his present letters is to communicate other sort of apparitions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to Gastonbury, "to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which flowered every Christmas-day." The original thorn had been cut down by a military saint in the civil wars but the trade of the place was not damaged, for they had contrived not to have a single holy thorn, but several "by grafting and inoculation." He promises to send these berries, but requests Aubrey to inform "that person of quality who had rather have a bush, that it was impossible to get one for him. I am told,” he adds, “that there is a person about Glastonbury who hath a nursery of them, which he sells for a crown a piece, but they are supposed not to be of the right kind."

sons.

The main object of this letter is the writer's" suspicion of gold in this country;" for which he offers three reaTacitus says there was gold in England, and that Agrippa came to a spot where he had a prospect of Ireland-froin which place he writes; secondly, that "an honest man had in this spot found stones from which he had extracted good gold; and that he himself had seen in the broken stones a clear appearance of gold;" and thirdly, "there is a story which goes by tradition in that part of the country, that in the hill alluded to there was a door into a hole, that when any wanted money they used to go and knock there, that a woman used to appear, and give to such as came. At a time one by greediness or otherwise gave her offence, she flung to the door, and delivered this old saying, still remembered in the country

'When all the Daws be gone and dead,
Then
Hill shall shine gold red.'

My fancy is that this relates to an ancient family of this
name, of which there is now but one left, and he not likely
to have any issue." These are his three reasons; and
some mines have been perhaps opened with no better
ones! But let us not imagine that this great naturalist
was credulous; for he tells Aubrey that " he thought it
was but a monkish tale, forged in the abbey, so famous
in former time; but as I have learned not to daspise our
forefathers, I question whether this may not refer to
some rich mine in the hill, formerly in use, and now lost.
I shall shortly request you to discourse with my lord
about it to have advice, &c. In the mean time, it will
be best to keep all private for his Majesty's service, his
lordship's, and perhaps some private person's benefit."
But he has also positive evidence: "A mason, not long
ago, coming to the renter of the abbey for a freestone,
and sawing it, out came divers pieces of gold, of 37. 10s.
value, of ancient coins. The stone belonged to some
chimney-work; the gold was hidden in it, perhaps,
when the Dissolution was near." This last incident of
finding coins in a chimney-piece, which he had accounted
for very rationally, serves only to confirm his dream,
that they were coined out of the gold of the mine of the
hill; and he becomes more urgent for a private search
into these mines, which "I have, I think, a way to." In
the Postscript he adds an account of a well, which, by
washing, wrought a cure on a person deep in the king's
evil. I hope you don't forget your promise to com-
municate whatever thing you have, relating to your

Idea."

This promised idea of Aubrey may be found in his MSS., under the title of "The Idea of Universal Education." However whimsical, one would like to see it. Aubrey's life might furnish a volume of these philosophical dreams; he was a person who, from his incessant bustle and insatiable curiosity, was called "The Carrier of Conceptions of the Royal Society." Many pleasant nights were "privately" enjoyed by Aubrey and his correspondent about the "Mine in the Hill;" Ashmole's MSS. at Oxford, contain a collection of many secrets of the Rosicrucians; one of the completest invention is "a Recipe how to walk invisible." Such were the fancies which rocked the children of science in their cradles! and so feeble were the steps of our curious infancy!But I start in my dreams! dreading the reader may also have fallen asleep!

Hall's postulate is, that God's work could not admit of any substantial change, which is above the reach of all infernal powers; but " Herein the divell plays the double sopis ter; the sorcerer with sorcerers. He both deludes the witch's conceit and the beholder's eyes." In a word, Hall believes in what he cannot understand. Yet Hall will not believe in one of the Catholic miracles of the Virgin of Louvain," though Lipsius had written a book to commemorate "the goddess," as Hall sarcastically calls her; Had was told with great in. dignation in the shop of the bookseller of Lipsius, that when James the First had looked over this work, he flung it down, vociferating Damnation to him that made it, and to him that believes it.

DAY AND NIGHT.
(For the London Journal.)

Lightness and veiled Darkness, sisters twain,

Hold momentary converse morn and eve :
Lightness attended by her gorgeous train
Of sunbeams, and that single star, whose reign
Lasts longest in the sky. The Pleiads grieve
Around the grace of Night; Orion mourns,
And dim Arcturus pours his flowing urns.
The comet's lurid homage decks her brow!

Upon the mountain heights the sisters meet,
When glistening pearl-dews cool their glowing feet.
They part-where venturous vessels never plough
Old Ocean's utmost waves.-'Tis very sweet
To conjure up their greetings, voiceless given-
Farewells, and welcomes, blush'd across the heaven!
J. H.

TIMELY INTERCESSION.

Two instances are recorded in which an effectual appeal was made, in one case to the fears, and in another to the religious prejudices of conquerors, who in no other passage of their lives, have shewn any propensity to tender feeling or common humanity. Yet on these occasions their extravagant fury was arrested, by the cool expostulation, admirable presence of mind, and well-timed dexterity of individuals, neither exalted by rank, nor eminent for intellectual abilities; individuals whom, in any other point of view, they would have crushed as worms beneath their feet. The first was soon after the conquest of China by Zingis, who, enraged by some real or imaginary opposition to his ferocious despotism, issued an order for exterminating, by an indiscriminate massacre, the whole of the miserable natives, men, women, and children. The murder of millions was already on the threshold of preparation, when Yelutchousay, an honest and intrepid Mandarin, who possessed what honest men frequently despise, and do not always exert, the valuable faculty of adapting himself to the expediency, the circumstances, and the necessities of the times in which he lived, without forfeiting his integrity, rushed into the presence of the haughty Khan.

Having acted as his interpreter, and being a favourite, in an erect attitude and elevated voice, he thus addressed the conqueror: "Is it thy intention to destroy the faithful Tartars, as well as the Chinese?" "Should the hair of the head of a single Tartar be injured," replied Zingis, "I will desolate the face of the earth." "Then recal the order thou hast given," said the Mandarin, "for the utter destruction of both nations will be the inevitable consequence of its being carried into execution." "Dost thou mean by the resistance the Chinese will make?" said the Khan, with a mixture of indignation and contempt. "Know, rash man, that I contemn thy menace, as much as I despise their power; they have fled, and will fly before my hardy hands as sheep from the tiger, or as dust is dissipated from the northern blast." "I entertained no such thought," said the Chinese; "And after hearing what I have to say, thou will be at liberty to follow thy own inclination; but of this thou mayest rest assured, that if thy commands be literally executed, pestilence and famine will soon destroy the troops. Who can, or who will inter, a hundred million of dead bodies, which if unburied, will affect the air you breathe. Another object is also worthy of thy consideration; the indiscriminate destruction proposed, will not leave a single artizan, or a single slave, to administer to the comforts, to sharpen the weapons, or to till the ground of their Tartar lords. "But should a few of the miserable slaves be spared from the general havoc, by policy or interest, who can protect and insure thee, and the companions of thy conquest, from the secret conspiracies, the midnight dagger, and the poisoned bowl of the survivors; I appeal to thy own sense and feelings, if it is possible for any human creature to serve with complacency or attachment the assassins of their parents, their brethren, or their children; it is contrary both to nature and reason; whatever may be their profession, blood for blood, the erosions of cruelty and revenge, the most fascinating and inextinguishable of all our passions, will lurk in the secret recesses of our hearts. I therefore pray," concluded the excellent Yelutchousay, conscious of the impression he had made, and the strong ground on which he stood, "1 humbly pray that the rebellious and the guilty may be severely punished, but that the industrious citizen, the inoffensive rustic, the hardy labourer, their wives and their children, may continue to serve thee unmolested; that Zingis and his faithful Tartars may live likewise." The conqueror listened with attention and obedience to his pacific, and instantly recalled the savage mandate he had issued.

66

The second example of influence happily exerted, was during the prædatory expedition of Nadir Shah into Hindoostan, in the middle of the Eighteenth century. As soon as the merciless tyrant entered Delhi, he ordered every gate in the city to be shut, and closely guarded, and it was proclaimed by sound of trumpet, that none should enter or go forth, on pain of death.

The provisions within the walls being inadequate to My consumption, famine was speedily the consethis severe decree; and the unfeeling monster ends perishing from hunger, or devouring sub

stances at which nature revolts, without one emotion of
pity or regret.

Surrounded by death in its most hideous and agoniz-
ing forms, and with the shrieks and groans of starving
wretches assailing his ears, he ordered martial music to
be constantly played, and with apparent unconcern in-
dulged himself to excess in the pleasures of the table,
aggravating injury by insult. He also ordered the thea-
tre to be magnificently illuminated, and an entertain-
ment to be performed for his amusement.

At this musical and dramatic exhibition, Tucki, an actor and a singer, pleased the barbarian so much, that he exclaimed in his transports, that he would grant the player any favour that he should ask; at the same time confirming his declaration with an oath.

The hero of the piece, who amidst all the assumed gaiety and splendour of an oriental drama, strongly felt for, and warmly sympathized with the sorrows of his countrymen, instantly prostrated himself before Nadir, and taking a fair advantage of his voluntary offer, said, Command, Oh King, that the gates of the city may be opened."

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The cruel invader thus surprised into an act of humanity, paused for a moment, but recollecting the solemn oath he had taken, and uniting superstition and enormity, granted the prayer of Tucki with considerable reluctance; and disconcerted in his hateful plans, retired, frowning to the palace.

TABLE-TALK.

A Picture.-Among all the interesting objects which Chandler has seen in his travels, there is none except the Parthenon which I so much wish to see as the stupendous ruins of the temple of Apollo at Ura, near Miletus, the description of which has perfectly transported me. Chandler saw them towards evening, when a herd of goats had spread themselves over the majestic reliques, climbing among blocks of marble and massy pillars, while the whole was illumined with the richest tints of the setting sun, and the still sea glittered in the offing.Matthison's Letters.

JAMES PRICE was an English chymist, who in the course of experiments exhibited in the presence of several men of science and reputation, produced a wonderful powder, which, if it did not actually turn all it touched to gold, like the fabulous philosopher's stone, made very near approaches to that miraculous transmutation. Half a grain of this wonder-working ingredient, which was of a deep red colour, and weighed by an indifferent person, prevented quicksilver from evaporating or boiling, though the crucible which contained it, was surrounded by an intense fire, and was itself become red hot. I will not puzzle my readers, nor incur the risque of exposing myself, by describing in technical terms every part of the progress. It is sufficient to observe, that Dr. Price directed, but touched nothing, and that at the conclusion of the operation, when the crucible was cooled, and broken, a globule, weighing ten grains, of a yellow metal, was found at the bottom, which a skilful artist, after trying it by the common tests, pronounced it to be pure gold, for which he would give the highest price that was generally asked for that metal. A variety of experiments which it is not necessary to particularize in this place, and of which the principal nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood of Guildford, the doctor's residence, were witnesses, established beyond a doubt the fact, that by means of his extraordinary powders, for he produced a white as well as a red one, silver and gold, in the proportion of 28 to 1, and in other instances of 40 to 1, and 60 to 1, was repeatedly produced. Notwithstanding such unexceptionable evidence, the world still incredulous and suspecting deception, demanded further experiments; but the sanguine expectations of the friends of Dr. Price were checked by the reply he made; "The whole of my materials have been expended in the experiments I made, and I cannot furnish myself with more but by a process tedious and operose, whose effects I find have already been injurious to my health, and of which I decline the repetition." Whether the operator had impaired his fortune, his intellect, or his spirits, I cannot tell; but I understand that he not long after died by his own hands, and his secret, to the experimental chymist, so highly interesting, perished with him. The philosopher and statesman who may lament the loss of an art, which would apparently have enabled us to pay off the national debt, and to set at defiance the exhausting circumstances of war, will, however, cease to repine, and estimate the doctor's secret at its proper value, when they are told, as he confessed to a friend, a few months before his death, that the materials necessary to produce an ounce of gold cost seventeen pounds. Lounger's Common Place Book.

A Guild of Poets!-Nürnberg also was the chief seat of the famous Meistersänger and their Sangerziinfte or Singer-guilds, in which poetry was taught and practised, like any other handicraft, and this by sober and well-meaning men, chiefly artisans, who could not understand why labour, which manufactured so many things, should not also manufacture another. Of these tuneful guild-brethren, Hans Sachs, by trade a shoemaker, is greatly the most noted and most notable. His father was a tailor; he himself learnt the mystery of song under one Nunnebeck, a weaver. He was an adherent of his great contemporary Luther, who has even deigned to acknowledge his services in the cause of the Reformation; how diligent a labourer Sachs must have been, will appear from the fact, that in his 74th year (1568,) on examining his stock for publication, he found

that he had written 6048 poetical pieces, among which were 208 tragedies and comedies, and this besides having all along kept house like an honest Nürnberg burgher, by assiduous and sufficient shoe-making! Hans is not without genius, and a shrewd irony; and above all, the most gay, child-like, yet devout and solid character; a man neither to be despised nor patronized, but left standing on his own basis, as a singular product, and a still legible symbol, and clear mirror of the time and country where he lived. His best piece known to us, and many are well worth perusing, is the Fastnachtsspiel (Shrovetide Farce) of the Narrenschneider, where a doctor cures a bloated and lethargic patient by cutting out half-a-dozen Fools from his interior! Thomas Carlyle on German Literature.

A French Wit.-Singular mode of accommodating a Debt.-Bois-Robert was the best companion of his time; his admirable invention of agreeable stories, with his inimitable manner of telling them, had made him a kind of favourite with Cardinal Richlieu. Upon any indisposition of this minister, his physician would say to him, My lord, no endeavours, you may be sure, will be wanting in us for your recovery; but all won't do, without some Bois-Robert." Bois-Robert, on some occasion, unfortunately got out of the Cardinal's favour. The Royal Academy of Science, who were indebted to him for Richlieu's patronage, proposed to intercede for him; but the Cardinal being informed of it, intimated that their application would be to no purpose; upon which, they consulted with his Eminence's physician, and he at the end of the first prescription for the minister, who frequently stood in need of his skill, writ Recipe BoisRobert ("a dose of Bois-Robert,") which succeeded.-This companionable person, more witty than wise, played so deep, that at one ill run he lost no less than ten thousand crowns with the Duke de Roquelaure. The duke loved money, and insisted upon being paid; but an accommodation was brought about by a friend. Bois-Robert sold off all he had, which made up four thousand crowns; this sum a gentleman carries to the Duke, telling him he must forgive the rest, and BoisRobert would compose a panegyrical ode on him, but of the very worst kind. "Now when it comes abroad that the Duke of Roquelaure has rewarded a paltry piece with six thousand crowns, your generosity will be extremely applauded, and, it will doubtless be said, what would he have given to a well-written poem !"

A Strange Prisoner.-In the inner court of the stateprison of Pierre-Gucise, at Lyons, I saw an old man with a venerable aspect, walking with slow yet firm steps, whose uncommon height struck me forcibly. He was neat, but old fashioned in his dress, and my conductor persuaded me to talk to him, for he loved conversation. I began therefore by observing on the weather, and the very remarkable situation of the castle, but I soon led him to the subject of his imprisonment. "It is now sixty years," he said with a resolute tone, "that I have seen nothing but these walls, and eighty-five that I have been in the world; I might have regained my freedom twenty years ago, but it was then too late, and I continue here above, where at present I am very well off;—I do not know that I should be so down below." Of the cause of his imprisonment I inquired in vain; only thus much I learned that he is of an illustrious family, and that he has never answered a single question upon the subject of his captivity.-Matthison's Letters.-[If this poor prisoner had not lost his wits, he furnishes one of the most remarkable instances, on record, of the force of habit. He had got so used, in fact, to his prison, that he could not have borne to be out of it. The novelty, and the being born, as it were, a second time to a world which had become different to him, would have frightened him. Such things have been. It is said of an old prisoner in the Bastile, when it was set open, that he reqnested to be taken back again to his cell. Such are the trials, but such also are the endurabilities, of human nature.]

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

IN our next number, we shall have the pleasure of paying our acknowledgments to various kind notices in Magazines and Newspapers. We also hope to say something on Mr. Coleridge.

We had always intended (and if we are not mistaken, have said so) to give a series of those criticisms from time to time, a sample of which (in the instance of Thomson's Castle of Indolence) has met the approbation of an OLD FRIEND AND WELL-WISHER.

The "Angler," from Goethe, is creditable to the translator; but it does not appear to us to afford any particular evidence of the genius of its great author.

We are sorry to say we have no recollection of the article mentioned by Mr. James.

The novel mentioned by Mr. M. has not come to hand. Nor the communication, to the best of our recollection, of G. B. W.

T. R. W. shall have attention.

Various articles from correspondents are under consideration; and promised insertions of others, or of extracts from them, shall now appear in weekly succession, till our stock be out.

LONDON: Published by H. HOOPER, 13, Pall Mall East.
Sparrow, Printer, 11, Crane Court.

LONDON JOURNAL.

TO ASSIST THE ENQUIRING, ANIMATE THE STRUGGLING, AND SYMPATHIZE WITH ALL.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1834.

WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM

INSIDE.

THE other day a butterfly came into our room, and began beating himself against the upper panes of a window half open, thinking to get back. It is a nice point-relieving your butterfly-he is a creature so delicate. If you handle him without ceremony, you bring away, on your fingers, something which you take to be down, but which is plumes of feathers; and as there are no fairies at hand, two atoms high, to make pens of the quills, and write "articles" on the invisible, there would be a loss. Mr. Bentham's ghost would visit us, shaking his venerable locks at such unnecessary-pain-producing and reasonable-pleasure-preventing heedlessness. Then, if you brush him downwards, you stand a chance of hurting his antennæ, or feelers, and of not knowing what mischief you may do to his eyes, or his sense of touch, or his instruments of dialogue; for some philosophers hold that insects talk with their feelers, as dumb people do with their fingers. However, some suffering must be hazarded in order to prevent worse, even to the least and most delicate of heaven's creatures, who would not know pleasure if they did not know pain; and perhaps the merrier and happier they are in general, the greater the lumps of pain they can bear. Besides, all must have their share, or how would the burthen of the great blockish necessity be equally distributed and finally, what business had little Papilio to come into a place unfit for him, and get bothering himself with glass? Oh, faith!your butterfly must learn experience, as well as your Bonaparte.

There was he, beating, fluttering, flouncing,-wondering that he could not get through so clear a matter (for so glass appears to be to insects, as well as to men) and tearing his silken little soul out with ineffectual energy. What plumage he must have left upon the pane! What feathers and colours, strewed about, as if some fine lady had gone mad against a ball-room door, for not being let in!

But we had a higher simile for him than that. "Truly," thought we, "little friend, thou art like some of the great German transcendentalists, who in thinking to reach at heaven by an impossible way (such at least it seemeth at present) run the hazard of cracking their brains, and spoiling their wings for ever; whereas if thou, and they, would but stoop a little lower, and begin with earth first, there, before thee, lieth open heaven as well as earth; and thou mayest mount high as thou wilt, after thy own happy fashion, thinking less, and enjoying all things."

And hereupon we contrived to get him downwards, and forth, out into the air, sprang he,-first against the lime-trees, and then over them into the blue æther—as if he had resolved to put our advice into practice.

We have before spoken of the fret and fury into which the common fly seems to put himself against a window. Bees appear to take it more patiently, out of a greater knowledge; and slip about with a strange air of hopelessness. They seem to "give it up." These things, as Mr. Pepys said of the humanities at court, "it is pretty to observe." Glass itself is a phenomenon that might alone serve a reflecting observer with meditation for a whole morning,—so substantial and yet so air-like, so close and compact to keep away the cold, yet so transparent and facile to let in light, the gentlest of all things, —so palpably something, and yet to the eye and the perceptions a kind of nothing! It seems absolutely to deceive insects in this respect, which is remarkable, considering how closely they handle it, and what microscopic eyes we suppose them to have. We should doubt (as

SPARROW, PRINTER, CRANE-COURT.

No. 22.

we used to do) whether we did not mistake their ideas on the subject, if we had not so often seen their repeated dashings of themselves against the panes, their stoppings (as if to take breath), and then their re-commencement of the same violence. It is difficult to suppose that they do this for mere pleasure, for it looks as if they must hurt themselves. Observe in particular the tremendous thumps given himself by that great hulking fellow of a fly, that Ajax of the Diptera, the blue-bottle. Yet in autumn, in their old age, flies congregate in windows as elsewhere, and will take the matter so quietly as sometimes to stand still for hours together. We suppose they love the warmth, or the light; and that either they have found out the secret as to the rest, or

"Years have brought the philosophic mind."

Why should Fly plague himself any longer with household matters which he cannot alter? He has tried hard in his time; and now he resigns himself like a wise insect, and will taste whatsoever tranquil pleasures remain for him, without beating his brains or losing his temper any longer. In natural livers, pleasure survives pain. Even the artificial, who keep up their troubles so long by pride, self-will, and the want of stimulants, contrive to get more pleasure than is supposed out of pain itself, especially by means of thinking themselves ill-used, and of grumbling. If the heart (for want of better training, does not much keep up its action with them, the spleen does; and so there is action of some sort and whenever there is action, there is life; and life is found to have something valuable in it for its own sake, apart from ordinary considerations either of pain or pleasure. But your fly and your philosopher are for pleasure too, to the last, if it be harmless. Give old Musca a grain of sugar, and see how he will put down his proboscis to it, and dot, and pound, and suck it in, and be as happy as an old West India gentleman pondering on his sugar cane, and extracting a pleasure out of some dulcet recollection.

Gamblers, for want of a sensation, have been known to start up from their wine, and lay a bet upon two rain drops coming down a pane of glass. How poor are those gentry, even when they win, compared with observers whose resources need never fail them! To the latter, if they please, the rain-drop itself is a world,—a world of beauty and mystery and aboriginal idea, bringing before them a thousand images of proportion, and reflection, and the elements, and light, and colour, and roundness, and delicacy, and fluency, and beneficence, and the refreshed flowers, and the growing corn, and dew drops on the bushes, and the tears that fall from gentle eyes, and the ocean, and the rainbow, and the origin of all things. In water, we behold one of the old primeval mysteries of which the world was made. Thus, the commonest rain-drop on a pane of glass becomes a visitor from the solitudes of time.

A window, to those who have read a little in Nature's school, thus becomes a book, or a picture, on which her genius may be studied, handicraft though the canvas be, and little as the glazier may have thought of it. Not that we are to predicate ignorance of your glazier now-adays, any more than of other classes that compose the various readers of penny and three-half-penny philosophy,-cheap visitor, like the sunbeams, of houses of all sorts. The glazier could probably give many a richer man information respecting his glass, and his diamond, and his putty, (no anti-climax in these analytical days,) and let him into a secret or two, besides, respecting the amusement to be derived from it. (We have just got up from our work to inform ourselves of the nature and properties of the said mystery, putty; and should blush

PRICE THREE HALFPENCE.

for the confession, if the blush would not imply that a similar ignorance were less common with us than it is.)

But a window is a frame for other pictures besides its own; sometimes for moving ones, as in the instance of a cloud going along, or a bird, or a flash of lightning; sometimes for the distant landscape, sometimes the nearer one, or the trees that are close to it, with their lights and shades; often for the passing multitude. A picture, a harmony, is observable, even in the drapery of the curtains that invest it; much more in the sunny vine-leaves or roses that may be visible on the borders, or that are trailed against it, and which render many a poor casement so pleasant. The other day, in a very humble cottage window in the suburbs, we saw that beautiful plant, the rasturtium, trained over it on several strings; which must have furnished the inmates with a screen as they sate at their work or at their tea inside, and at the same time, permitted them to see through into the road, thus constituting a far better blind than is to be found in many great houses. Sights like these give a favourable impression of the dispositions and habits of the people within,--show how superior they are to their sophistications, if rich, and how possessed of natural refinement, if among the poorer classes. Oh! the human mind is a fine graceful thing everywhere, if the music of nature does but seize its attention, and throw it into its natural attitude. But so little has the "school-master', yet got hold of this point, or made way with it, and so occupied are men with digging gold out of the ground, and neglecting the other treasures which they toss abou in profusion during the operation (as if the clay were better than the flowers which it produced,) that few make the most of the means and appliances for enjoyment that lie round about them, even in their very walls and rooms. Look at the windows down a street, and generally speaking, they are all barren. The inmates might see through roses and geraniums, if they would; but they do not think of it, or not with loving knowledge enough to take the trouble. Those who have the advantage of living in the country or the suburbs, are led in many instances to do better, though their necessity for agreeable sights is not so great. But the presence of nature tempts them to imitate her. There are few windows any where which might not be used to better advantage than they are, if we have a little money, or can procure even a few seeds. We have read an art of blowing the fire. There is an art even in the shutting and opening of windows. People might close them more against dull objects, and open them more to pleasant ones, and to the air. For a few pence, they might have beautiful colours and odours, and a pleasing task, emulous of the showers of April, beneficent as May; for they who cultivate flowers in their windows (as we have hinted before,) are led instinctively to cultivate them for others as well as themselves; nay, in one respect they do it more so; for you may observe, that wherever there is this "fenestral horticulture," (as Evelyn would have called your window-gardening,) the flowers are turned with their faces towards the street.

But "there is an art in the shutting and opening of windows."-Yes, for the sake of air (which ought to be had night as well as day, in reasonable measure, and with precautions) and for the sake of excluding, or admitting, what is to be seen out of doors. Suppose, for example, a house is partly opposite some pleasant, and partly some unpleasant object; the one, a tree or a garden; the other, a gin-shop or a squalid lane. The sight of the first should be admitted as constantly as possible, and with open window. That of the other, if you are rich enough, can be shut out with a painted blind, that shall substitute a beautiful landscape for the nuisance; or a blind of another sort will serve the purpose; or if even

a blind cannot be affor led, the shutters may be partly closed. Shutters should always be divided in two, horizontally as well as otherwise, for purposes of this kind. It is sometimes pleasant to close the lower portion, if only to preserve a greater sense of quiet and seclusion, and to read or write the more to yourself; light from above having both a softer and stronger effect, than when admitted from all quarters. We have seen shutters, by judicious management in this way, in the house of a poor man who had a taste for nature, contribute to the comfort and even elegance of a room in a surprising manner, and (by the opening of the lower portions and the closure of the upper) at once shut out all the sun that was not wanted, and convert a row of stunted trees into an appearance of interminable foliage, as thick as if it had been in a forest.

"But the fact was otherwise;" cries some fastidious personage, more nice than wise; "you knew there was no forest, and therefore could not have been deceived."

"Well, my dear Sir, but deception is not necessary to every one's pleasure; and fact is not merely what you take it for. The fact of there being no forest might have been the only fact with yourself, and so have prevented the enjoyment; but to a livelier fancy, there would have been the fact of the imagination of the forest (for every thing is a fact which does any thing for us) and there would also have been the fact of having cultivated the magination, and the fact of our willingness to be pleased, and the fact of the books we have read, and above all, the fact of the positive satisfaction. If a man be pleased, it is in vain you tell him he has no cause to be pleased. The cause is proved by the consequence. Whether the cause be rightly or wrongly cultivated, is another matter. The good of it is assumed in the present instance; and it would take more facts than are in the possession of a "mere matter of fact man" to disprove it. Matter of fact and spirit of fact must both be appreciated, in order to do justice to the riches of nature. We are made of mind as well as body,--of imagination as well as senses. The same mysterious faculty which sees what is before the eyes, sees also what it suggested to the memory. Matter of fact is only the more palpable world, around which a thousand spirits of fact are playing, like angels in a picture. Not to see both, is to be a poor unattended creature, who walks about in the world conscious of nothing but himself, or at best of what the horse-jockey and the coachmaker has done for him. If his banker fails, he is ruined! Not so those, who in addition to the resources of their industry, have stock in all the banks of nature and art, (pardon us this pun for the sake of what grows on it), and whose consolations cannot wholly fail them, as long as they have a flower to look upon, and a blood not entirely vitiated.

A window, high up in a building, and commanding a fine prospect, is a sort of looking out of the air, and gives a sense of power, and of superiority to earth. The higher also you go, the healthier. We speak of such windows as Milton fancied, when he wished that his lamp should be seen at midnight in "some high lonely tower;" a passage, justly admired for the goodnature as well as loftiness of the wish, thus desiring that wayfarers should be the better for his studies, and enjoy the evidence of their fellow-creature's vigils. But elevations of this kind are not readily to be had. As to health, we believe that a very little lift above the ground floor, and and so on as you ascend, grows healthier in proportion. Malaria (bad air) in the countries where a plague of that kind is prevalent, is understood to be confined to a certain distance from the earth; and we really believe, that even in the healthiest quarters, where no positive harm is done by nearness to it, the air is better as the houses ascend, and a seat in a window becomes valuable in proportion. By and bye, perhaps, studies and other favourite sitting rooms will be built accordingly; and more retrospective reverence be shewn to the "garrets" that were once so famous in the annals of authorship. The poor poet in Pope, who lay

* Facio, factum (Latin)—to do, done. What is done in imagination, makes a greater or less impression according to the power to receive it; but it is unquestionably done, if it impresses us at all; and thus becomes, after its kind, a fact.

A stupid fellow, utterly without imagination, requires tickling to make him laugh; a livelier one laughs at a comedy, or at the bare apprehension of a thing laughable. In both instances there is a real impression though from very different causes, one from "matter of fact," (if you please) the other from spirit of fact; but in either case the thing is done, the fact takes place. The moving cause exists somehow, or how could we be moved?

High in Drury lane,
Lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,
was better off there, than if he had occupied the ground

floor. For our parts, in order that we may save the
dignity of our three-halfpenny meditations, and at the
same give evidence of practising what we preach, we
shall finish by stating, that we have written this article
in a floor neither high enough to be so poetical nor low
enough for too earthly a prose,-in a little study made
healthy by an open window, and partly screened from

overlookers by a bit of the shutter, while our look-out

presents us with a world of green leaves, and a red cot-
tage top, a gothic tower of a church in the distance, and
a glorious apple-tree close at hand, laden with its yellow
balls.

"Studded with apples, a beautiful shew."

Some kindness of this sort Fortune has never failed to
preserve to us, as if in return for the love we bear to her
rolling globe; and now that the sincerity of our good-
will has become known, none seem inclined to grudge it
us, or to dispute the account to which we may turn it,
for others as well as ourselves.

We had something more to say of seats in windows,
and a good deal of windows at inns, and of sitting and
looking out of windows; but we have other articles to
write this week, of more length than usual, and must
reserve it for a future number.

THE WEEK.

From Wednesday the 27th of August, to Tuesday the
2d of September.

FIRST OF SEPTEMBER.-FOWLING.

THE second of September is terrible in the annals of the
French Revolution, for a massacre, the perpetrators of
which were called Septembrizers. Far are we from
intending to compare the sufferings of a thinking and
social creature like man with those of inferior animals;
but inasmuch as he is their superior in thought and
sympathy, he is bound to be consistent, for their sakes
as well as his own; and if the birds had the settlement
of almanacks, new and startling would be the list of
Septembrizers and their fusillades,―amazing the multi-
tude of good-humoured and respectable faces that would
have to look in the glass of a compulsory knowledge,
and recognize themselves for slaughterers by wholesale,
or worse distributors of broken bones and festering dis-
locations.

"And what" (a reader may ask) “ would be the good
of that, if these gentlemen are not aware of their enor-
mities? Would it be doing any thing but substituting
one pain for another, and setting men's minds upon
needless considerations of the pain which exists in the
universe ?"

Yes; for in the first place, these gentlemen are per-
haps not quite so innocent and unconsious, as in the
gratuitousness of our amazingly liberal philosophy we
are willing to suppose them. Secondly, should they
cease to give pain, they would cease to feel it in its re-
lation to themselves: and Lastly, as to the pain existing
in the universe, people in general are not likely to feel
it too much, especially the healthy; nor ought any body
to do so, in a feeble sense, as long as he does what he
can to diminish it, and trusts the rest to providence and
futurity. What we are incited by our own thoughts or
those of others, to amend, it becomes us to consider to
that end what we cannot contribute any amendment
to, we must think of as well as we can contrive.
greater number of sportsmen are not a very thoughtful
generation. No harm would be done them, by putting
a little more consideration into their heads. On the
other hand, all sportsmen are not so comfortable in their
reflections, as their gaiety gives out; and the moment a
man finds a contradiction in himself between his amuse-
ments and his humanity, it is a signal that he should give
them up. He will be hurting his nature in other respects,
as well as in this, if he does not take care: he will
be exasperating his ideas of his fellow-creatures, of the
world, of God himself; and thus he will be inflicting
pain on all sides, for the sake of tearing out of it a doubt-
ful pleasure.

The

"But it is effeminate to think too much of pain, under any circumstances." Yes, including that of leaving off a favourite pastime. Oh-we need not want noble

pains, if we are desirous of them, depend upon it,-pains of honourable endeavours, pains of generous sympathy, pains, most masculine pains, of self-denial. Are not these more manly, more anti-effeminate, than playing with life, and suffering like spoilt children, and cracking the legs of partridges?

Most excellent men have there been, and doubtless are, among sportsmen,-truly gallant natures, reflecting ones too,-men of fine wit and genius, and kind as mother's milk in all things but this,-in all things but

killing mothers, because they are no better than birds,
and leaving the young to starve in the nest, and strewing
the brakes with agonies of feathered wounds. If we
presume to think ourselves capable of teaching them
better, it is only upon points of this nature, and because
for want of early habit and example, our prejudices have
not been enlisted against our reflection. Most thank-
fully would we receive the wisdom they might be able
to give us on all other points. But see what habit can
do with the best natures, and how inferior ones may some-
times be put upon a superior ground of knowledge, from
the absence of it. Gilbert Wakefield we take to have been
a man of a crabbed nature, as well as confined under-
standing, compared with Fox; yet in the public argu-
ment he had with him on this subject, he undoubtedly
had the best of it, poorly as it was managed by him.
The good-natured statesman could only retreat into
vague generalities, and smiling admissions, and hope
that his correspondent would not think ill of him. And
who does? For our parts, inclined as we are for some
reasons to like both the men, we love Fox always,
almost when he is on the instant of pointing his gun,
and are equally inclined to quarrel with the tone and
manner of the other, even when in the act of abasing it.
But what does this prove, except the danger of a bad
habit to the self-reconciling instincts of a fine enjoying
nature, and to the example which flows from it into so
much reconcilement to others? When a common,
hard-minded sportsman takes up his fowling-piece, we
only think of him as a kind of wild beast on two legs,
pursuing innocently his natural propensities, and about
to seek his prey, as a ferret does, or a wild cat; but the
more of a man he is, the more bewildered and danger-
ous become our thoughts respecting the meeting of
extremes; and when Fox takes up the death-tube, we
sophisticate for his sake, and are in hazard of becoming
effeminate to the subject, purely to shut our eyes to the
cruelty in it, and let the pleasant gentleman have his

way.

As to the counter-arguments about providence and permission of evil, they are edge tools which it has hitherto turned out to be nothing but a presumption to play with. What the mind may discover in those quarters of speculation, it is impossible to assert; but as far as it has looked yet, nothing is ascertained, except that the circle of God's privileges is one thing, and that of man's another. If we knew all about pain and evil, and their necessities, and their consequences, we might have a right to inflict them, or to leave them untouched; but not being possessed of this knowledge, and on the other hand being gifted with doubts, and sympathies, and consciences, after our human fashion, we must give our fellow creatures the benefit of those doubts and consciences, and cease to assume the rights and of gods, upon pain of becoming less than men, losing all real pleasure.

But not to touch upon this question more solemnly than we can help, especially when the gravest reflections upon it may be suggested in a lighter manner, we will take the liberty of laying before the reader an article which we wrote upon it some years back, in the New Monthly Magazine. We will give the whole of it, because it begins with a country picture, the great refreshment in all matters of sporting. And as we have done justice to the finer understandings that are to be found in connection with these pastimes, the reader will here see that we have not failed to do as much to the inferior ones, notwithstanding what we have just said of their least favourable sample.

A COUNTRY LODGING.-Dialogue with a Sportsman.

Pouldon, September 20th.

On my way back to town the other evening from a visit, I had the misfortune, at the turning of a road, not to see a projecting gateway, till I came too near it. I leaped the ditch that ran by, but my horse went too close to the side-post; and my leg was so hurt, that I

was obliged to limp into a cottage, and have been laid' up ever since. The doctor tells me I am to have three or four weeks of it, perhaps more.

As soon as I found myself fixed, I looked about me to see what consolations I could get in my new abode. The place was quiet. That was one thing. It also was clean, and had a decent-looking hostess. Those were two more. Thirdly, I heard the wind in the trees. This was much. "You have trees opposite the window?” -"Yes, Sir, some fine elms. You will hear the birds of amorning." "And you have poultry, to take care of my fever with? and eggs and bacon when I get better? and a garden and a paddock, when I walk again, eh? and capital milk, and a milk-maid whom it's a sight to see carrying it over the field."-"Why, Sir," said my hostess, good-humouredly but gravely," as to the milk-maid, I can say nothing; but we have capital milk at Pouldon, and good eggs and bacon, and paddocks in plenty, and every thing else that horse or man can desire, in an honest way."—" Well, Madam," said I, "I shall desire nothing of you, you may depend on it, unbecoming the dignity of Pouldon or the pretty whiteness of these window-curtains."- "I dare say we shall agree very well, Sir," said my good woman with a gracious smile.

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The curtains were very neat and white, the rest of the furniture corresponding. There was a small couch, and a long-backed arm-chair, looking as if it was made for me. That settee," thought I, "I shall move into that other part of the room :-it will be snugger, and more away from the door. The arm-chair and the table shall go near the window, when I can sit up; so that I may have the trees at the corner of my eye, as I am writing. The table, a small mahogany one, was very good, and reflected the two candles very prettily, but it looked bald. There were no books on it.

"Pray, Mrs. Wilton, have you any books?"

"Oh, plenty of books. But won't you be afraid to study, Sir, with that leg?"

"I'll study without it, if you can undo it for me." "Dear me! Sir, but won't it make you feverish ?" "Yes, unless I can read all the while. I must study philosophy, Mrs. Wilton, in order to bear it so if you have any novels or comedies-"

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Why, for novels or comedies, Sir, I can't say. But I'll shew you what there is. When our lady was alive, rest her soul! eight months ago, the house was nothing but books. I dare say she had a matter of a hundred. But I've a good set too below; some of my poor dear husband's, and some of my own."

"I see," said I, as she left the room. "that I shall be obliged to send to the clergyman. Nay, I'll behave in the most impudent manner, and send all round. 'Necessitas non habit LEGS,' as Peter Pindar says. This is the worst of books. A habit of reading is like a habit of drinking. You cannot do without it. especially under misfortune. I wonder whether I could leave off reading, beginning with a paragraph less a day?"

Mrs. Wilton returned with an arm full. "This, Sir," said she, giving me the top one, "our lady left me for a keep-sake."

It was Mrs. Chapone's Essays. "Pray," said I, "Mrs. Wilton, who was the lady whom you designate as the Roman Catholics do the Virgin? Who was Our lady?"

Mrs. Wilton looked very grave, but I thought there was a smile lurking under her gravity in spite of her. "Mrs. V., Sir, was no Roman: and as to the Virgin, by which I suppose, Sir, you mean the--but however-oh, she was an excellent woman, Sir; her mother was a friend of the great Mr. Samuel Richardson."

"Oh ho!" thought I, looking over the books, "then we shall have Pamela."-There was the Farrier's Guide, some Treatises on Timber and the Cultivation of Wood (my hostess was a carpenter's widow), Jachin and Boaz (which she called a strange fantastic book), Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, Wesley's Receipts, an old Court Calendar, the Whole Duty of Man, an odd volume of the Newgate Calendar, the Life of Colonel Gardner, and, as sure as fate, at the bottom of the heap, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. "Virtue Rewarded!" thought 1: "I hate these eternal mercenary virtues; these bills brought to Heaven for payment; these clinkings of cash in the white pockets of conscience."

"You have one novel, at any rate, Mrs. Wilton." "Sure, Sir, it is better than a novel. Oh, it is a book full of good fortune."

"Of good fortune! What, to the maid-servant!" "To every body that has to do with it. Miss V. was -dubious like-which of the cottages to live in; and she fancied ours, because she found Pamela and Colonel Gardner in the corner cupboard."

"I dare say. Now here," said I, when left to myself, "here is vanity at second hand. The old lady must take a cottage because she found a book in it, written by an old gentleman, who knew the old lady her mother.

With all my admiration of Richardson, Pamela had ever been an object of my dislike. I hated her little canting ways, her egotism eternally protesting humility, and her readiness to make a prize of the man, who, finding his endeavours vain to ruin her, reconciled her virtue and vanity together by proposing to make her his wife. Pamela's is the only female face to which I think I could ever have wished to give a good box on the ear. "And this," said I, "was the old maid's taste. pity she was not a servant-maid.

It is a

While I was thus venting my spleen against a harmless old woman, in a condition of life which I had always treated with respect, and was beginning to regret that I had got into "methodistical" lodgings, my hostess, comes back again, with three more books, to wit, Paradise Lost, Thomson's Seasons, and a volume containing the whole of the Spectator in double columns. "Head of my ancestors!" cried I, uttering (but internally) a Chinese oath: "Here thou art at home again, Harry! This is sense. This is something like. The cottage is an excellent cottage; and, for aught I know, had the honour of being one of the many cottages in which my great grandfather's friend Sir Richard used to eschew the visits of the importunate."

There was a bed-room as neat as the sitting-room, and with more trees at the window. My leg was very painful, and I had feverish dreams. However, my horseback had made me nothing the worse for my dinner, and having taken no supper, my dreams, though disturbed, were not frightful. I dreamt of Pamela, and Dick Honeycombe, and my ancestor Nathaniel. I thought my landlady was Mrs. Harlowe, and that Dick being pressed to marry, said he would not have his cousin Pamela, but Nell Gwynn; which the serious Commonwealth officer approved, "because," said he, "of the other's immoral character." In one of my reveries, between sleep and awake, I hardly knew whether the rustling sounds I heard were those of the trees out-ofdoors, or of old Mrs. Harlowe's petticoat.

In the morning it was delightful to hear the sound of the birds. There is something exhilarating in the singing of birds, analogous to the brilliancy of sunshine. My leg was now worse, but not bad enough to hinder me from noticing the chaney shepherds and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece, or those others on the coloured bedcurtain; loving pairs with lambs, repeated in the same group at intervals all over the chintz, as if the beholder had a cut-glass eye. The window of the sitting-room

has a little white curtain on a rod. This, of the bedroom, is a proper casement with diamond panes; and you can see nothing outside but green leaves. However ill I may be, I am always the worse for lying in bed. I contrived to get up and remove to the settee in the other room; at which the doctor, when he came, shook his head. But I did very well with the settee. It was brought near the window, with the table; and I had a very pretty look-out. Opposite the window you can see nothing but trees, but sitting on the left side, you have a view over a fine meadow to the village church, which is embowered in elms. There is a path and a style to the meadow, and luxuriant hedge-row trees. I was as well pleased with my situation as a man well could be, who had a leg perpetually reminding him of its existence; but Pouldon is at a good distance from town, and I was thinking how long it would take a messenger to fetch me some books, when I heard a shot from a fowling-piece. I recollected the month, and thought how well its name as adapted to these Septembrizers of the birds. Looking under the trees, I saw a stout fellow, in a jacket and gaiters and the rest of the costume of avicide, picking his way along the palings, with his gun re-prepared. "Ay," said I, "he has shot as he is used to do,' and laid up some poor devil with a broken thigh. There he goes, sneaking along, to qualify some others for the hospital, and they have none.”

I threw up the window, to baffle his next shot with the noise. He turned round. It was Jack Tomkins. "Hallo! my boy," said he, "why where the devil have you got? D- -n me, if I don't blow. You deserve it, Harry, for keeping so close. I'll tell Tom Neville and the rest, d-mme, if I don't. Snug's the word, eh ? Is she pretty? Some delicate little devil, I warrant, fit for your verses and all that, eh?"

"Egad, Jack, it's neither my fetch nor my go, at present, I assure you. There is an old epigram

'I am unable,' yonder beggar cries,

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To stand or go.' If he says true, he lies:

which is not true; for he may sit, as I am obliged to do at this present.'

I had some difficulty in persuading my friend Tomkins that there was no other leg in the case than my own. "Well, Harry," says he, "I am heartily sorry for it, upon my soul; for now as you have caught me with my Joe Manton, suppose I'm to be had up for fetching down a few birds; whereas if I could have fairly found you out in your tricks with the cottagers, d--n me if I couldn't have read you a bit of a lecture myself, by way of a nuffler."

"Why, Jack, as you say, I have caught you in the fact, and I wonder at a fellow of your sense and spirit, that you're not above cutting up a parcel of tom-tits."

"Grouse, Harry, Grouse, and partridges and pheasants, and all that. Ton-tits! let the cockneys try to cut up tom-tits."

"Well, to be sure there's a good deal of difference between breaking the legs of partridges and tom-tits. The partridge, too, is a fierce bird, and can defend itself. It's a gallant thing, a fight with a partridge."

"Eh? Nonsense. Now you are at some of your banter. But it's no joke, I assure you, to me, having a fine morning's sport. You can read and all that; but every man to his taste. However, I can't stop at present. Here's Needle, poor fellow, wants to be off. Glorious moraing-never saw such a morning-but I'll come back to dinner, if you like, instead of going to the Greyhound. 1 gave a brace of partridges just now to the good woman; and I say, Harry, by G-d, if you get me some claret, I'll have it out with you-I will, upon my soul-I'll rub up my logic, and have a regular spar."

My friend Jack returned in good time, and had his birds well dressed. I was in despair about the claret, till the host of the Greyhound drew it out from a store which he kept against the month of September; and Jack being a good-humoured fellow, and 1 aving had a victorious morning, he did very well. Mrs. Wilton and the doctor had equally protested against my having company to dinner, being afraid of the noise and the temptation to eat; but I promised them to abstain, and that I would talk as much as possible to hinder Jack from being obstreperous; which they thought a dangerous remedy. I got off very well, by dint of talking while Jack ate; and such is vanity, that I was not displeased to see that I rose greatly in my hostess's opinion by my defence of the bird-creation. It was curious to observe how Jack shattered her, as she came in and out, with his oaths and great voice, and how gratefully she seemed to take breath and substance again under the Paradisaical shelter of my arguments. But I believe I startled her too, with the pictures I was obliged to draw. This is the worst of such points of discussion. You are obliged to put new ideas of pain and trouble into innocent heads, in the hope of saving pain and trouble itself. But we must not hesitate for this. The one is a mere notion compared with the other. It is soon got rid of or set aside by minds in health; and the unhealthy ones are liable to worse deductions, if the matter is not fairly laid open.

However, wishing to let Jack have his ease in perfecsion, as far as he could, I was for postponing the argument to another day, and seeing him relish his birds and claret in peace. But the more he drank, the less he would hear of it. "Besides," says he, "I've been talking about it to Bilson-you know Bilson, the Christ Church man-and he's been putting me up to some

"She's too delicate for you, Jack; you'd frighten prime good arguments, 'faith. I hope I sha'nt forget

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"My

Jack (who is a man of fortune, and was at Trinity, though the uninitiated would not suppose it), clapped a finger significantly on one side of his nose, and knocked very much like a gentleman. Presently he came into the room grinning and breathing like an ogre. dear Honeycomb, how are you?-an unexpected pleasure, eh? The good lady tells me you have hurt yourself: something about a horse-what Bayardo the spotless, eh? (Here Mrs. Wilson left the room, and Jack burst out.) Oh, you devil! Well, where's Lalage? Where's Miss Leg-Fanny or Betty, or what the devil's her name?"

"The poor thing has a very odd name, Jack. What think you of Bad Leg?" "Nonsense. Miss Bad Leg! impossible. I know of nobody of the name of Bad. Come, you're joking; and I can't stop long. I'll come back to dinner, if you like; but must be off now ;-so introduce me. Is that the way there?"

"No, this is the way, Jack. Little Bad Leg, my dear creature, allow me to introduce my friend John Tomkins, Esquire, of Galloping Hall. John Tomkins-Bad Leg."

"Eh? pooh, pooh, Harry. This is one of your fetches. Come, come, I know your goes."

'em. By the by, I'll tell you a good joke about Bilson
-But you don't eat any thing. What, is your leg so
bad as that comes to? You don't pretend, I hope, not
to eat partridge, because of your love of the birds?"
"No, Jack; but I'd rather know that you had killed
'em than Bilson, because you are a jollier hand; you
don't go to the sport with such reverend sophistry."

"That's famous. Bilson to be sure, --But stop, don't let me forget another thing, now I think of it. Bilson says you eat poultry. What do you say to that? You eat chicken."

"I am not sure that I can apologize for eating grouse, except, as I said before, when you kill 'em. Evil communications corrupt good platters. I can only say that no grouse should be killed for me, unless a perfect Tomkins-an unerring shot-had the bringing of them down. I could give up poultry too; but death is common to all; a fowl is soon despatched; and many a fowl would not exist, if death for the dinner-table were not part of his charter. I confess I should not like to keep poultry. There is a violation of fellowship and domesticity in killing the sharers of our homestead, and especially in keeping them to kill. It would make me seem like an ogre. But this is one sentiment: that violated by making a sport of cruelty is another. But I will not argue this matter with you now, Jack. tI would be a cruelty itself. It would be inhospitable, and a foppery. wish to put wine down your throat, and not to thrust my arguments. Besides, as you say, I never shall convince you; so drink your claret, and tell me where you were yesterday."

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Why at Bilson's, I tell you, and so I must talk while I think of it. We had a famous joke with Bilson. Since he went into orders, he is very anxious not to

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