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to sense like shade unto light, making, by strong contrast, what is beautiful, still more beautiful :—it is like an intended discord in a delicious melody, making the next concord the sweeter; or like silent sleep after sorrowful wakefulness; or like that calm which succeeds a storm; or like cheerfulness after care; or like condescension after hauteur; or like the freedom of a night-gown or slippers to the cramping of tight boots and bursting buttons; or like a night's dancing after a month's gout; or like that delicious giggle some schoolboy uncorks when the grim hush-compelling usher turns his back; or like the laugh politeness has suppressed till one has got rid of some troublesome puppy or pedantic blockhead; or like an olive to the palate of a winebibber, sickly in itself, but giving a gusto to the old port of the mind, or to the brisk, bubbling champaigne-wine of wit. I was companied with an exaggerator but yesterday, who was very seriously remonstrated with by a sage old maiden lady for a short indulgence in this lighter sort of nonsense. "Madam," he replied, "any man arrived at the door of discretion, who would talk sense and seriousness during the gloomy month of November, would shew his entire want of it; and I should either suspect him to be suicidally inclined, or as insane as my friend Phipps, who went into Drury-lane theatre last night, expecting to be rationally amused. Such a man would light home his mother with a dark lantern, or read metaphysics to a man-milliner, or sing Mozart's requiem to a milestone. Amateur nonsense-talkers are your only sensible men." There could be no serious replication to such diverting lightness as this; so my gentleman had his way, and on he went "like a falconer."

There are several other classes, which I shall notice in brief. There are the slow talkers, as tedious as the music of Te Deum; the quick talkers, as hasty as a postman's knock, and perhaps not so full of information; the loud talkers, to a nervous man as agreeable as the ding-dong din of a dustman's bell, or a death-knell in November; and the talkers of taste, whose language is of no country, but is a jargon of all countries, and consists of parrot-like repetitions of virtu, gusto, toutensemble, contour, chiaro oscuro, Titianesque bits of colour, Turnerian crispness and clearness, Claudean mellowness, Tintoretto touches, &c. &c. affecting term on term to the degrading of taste into a chaotic cant of words. W.

FROM ANACREON.

THEY say, fair Niobe of yore
Became a rock on Phrygia's shore;
And Pandion's hapless daughter flies,
In form a swallow, through the skies.
-Had I the power to change, like they,

Heaven knows I'd change without delay ;—

I

envy all that marks the place

Which Rosabella deigns to grace ;

The shawl, that keeps her shoulders warm;
The stream, that bathes her angel form;

The gems, that on her bosom blaze;
The mirror, where she's wont to gaze;
The perfumes, on her hair she sheds;
The very dust, on which she treads.

D.S.

PORTRAIT OF A SEPTUAGENARY.*

ABOUT the latter end of this period, I began to be gratified with the notion that I was rapidly advancing towards that epoch which may be termed the prime and flower of human life, when the animal and intellectual faculties attain their most perfect maturity and developement: an idea which was fortified by the recollection that the law itself had fixed twenty-one for man's arrival at years of discretion. I cannot help smiling when I look back and reflect how many times, as I came near it, I postponed this happy æra of compound perfection, complimenting myself at each new removal on my own more enlarged views, and speaking with some contempt of my own juvenile miscalculations. Nay, when I could no longer conceal, even from myself, that my corporeal powers were on the wane, I consoled myself with the belief that my mental ones were daily waxing more vigorous and manly, and once entertained thoughts of writing an Essay, to prove that the grand climacteric of the frame is the period of rational perfection. There is a pleasure even in recalling one's own inconsistencies, for they illustrate a beautiful and benignant provision of nature, a perpetual system of equivalents balancing the pleasures of every age by replacing the present with the future, and weaving around the mind a smiling horizon of hope, which, though it recedes as we advance, illuminates our path, and tempts and cheers us on until the sunset of life. But I am anticipating. I had made many more extracts from my early Journals, but I find I am ever encroaching too much on your columns; and that I may keep within some modesty of limit I shall proceed at once to the second division of my life.

From Twenty to Forty.

In the early portion of this period, I became sensible of a decided alteration in my literary taste; for I not only lost all admiration of the old romances of Gomberville, Calprenede, Mad. Scuderi, and even Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, which I had devoured ten years before with a keen relish, but I found myself incapable of taking the trouble to unravel the contrived intricacies and managed embarrassments of the more modern novels and romances: I no longer hung with breathless interest over the "Midnight Apparition," or "Mysterious Skeleton,” and my stubborn tears refused any more to blister the pages of the "Victim of Sentiment," or the "Agonies of an Orphan." I am losing all sensibility, said I to myself, and getting obdurate and stony; but I found that any magnanimous act of virtue, any description of generous feeling, any trait of simple heart-felt emotion, still struck upon a sympathizing chord in my bosom, and occasioned that suffusion of face and tingling of the blood which all probably have felt, though few have attempted to describe it. My heart was not so rocky but that when it was struck with a wand of inspiration like this, the waters would gush forth; my sensibility, methought, had only taken a loftier and more noble range, and I felicitated myself upon the decided improvement in my taste. So have I done ever since through a pretty numerous succession of similar changes; and I was, perhaps, right in pronouncing each a melioration, for in the exquisite system of adaptation to which I

* Continued from page 215.

have alluded, each was probably the best for the existing time, as it was the most conformable to the alternations of my physical and mental organization. At first it was somewhat startling to find such a mass of literature withdrawn from my enjoyment; but not only were new stores opened as the old ones were closed up, but I found a fresh source of gratification in attending to the style and composition as well as the matter: I began to relish the author as well as the book. A similar substitution is perceptible in the sensual appetite, which, when it loses the unfailing elasticity of youth, derives a new pleasure from selection and refinement; and thus it will invariably be found, that if new enjoyments be not provided for mind and body as we advance in life, the old ones are rendered more piquant and intense. Diminution of quantity is atoned by increase of quality, the maternal hand of Nature spreading her blessings over the surface of life, so that every age may have a pretty equal share of happiness.

My literary inclinations now turned decidedly to the useful and real rather than the ornamental and imaginary. My taste for poetry diminished. Shakspeare I have idolized at all ages, and I therefore still read him, but the historical plays rather than the poetical ones; Pope became a favourite, and Milton was occasionally taken down from my book-shelves, but I no longer troubled my head about the poetical publications of the day, unless they fell in my way in the reviews and magazines. History and biography were my principal studies; I could even look into scientific works and political economy, once my abomination; and in metaphysics and criticism I found much delight. I no longer read so much in bed, but I reflected more on what I had been perusing in the day. When I speak of my studies, the reader is not to imagine that I was at this time a scholar, or man of literature;-I refer only to the bias of my mind in the few hours dedicated to such pursuits, and alas! they were but few, for these years were the dark age of my life, blighted by the turmoil and anxieties of commercial pursuits, and agitated by their stormy vicissitudes. Alluding to events only so far as they may illustrate and influence mental impressions, I may state that I was now a merchant, and at a season of wide-spreading calamity in that class found myself suddenly thrown prostrate without present means of support, or the prospect of it in future. With all its sufferings, what a blessing was that calamity! Under certain limitations I am a confirmed Optimist; Parnell's Hermit, elegantly bound, is generally lying on my table; and it is not the farcical exaggeration of Candide, nor the sneering wit of Voltaire, that can stagger my belief in a great and consoling principle. It depends, to a certain extent, upon ourselves, whether or not every thing shall be for the best :-misfortunes improved are converted into blessings; advantages abused become our greatest curses, of which the reader will discover abundant confirmation if he will look round among his acquaintance. To believe in Optimism is to realize its truth: it is the summary of all religion and all philosophy, as it is the dispenser of all happiness. I wanted not Pliny's nor Cicero's eulogy to throw myself upon literature for consolation under the afflicting reverse which I had experienced: my mind welcomed it as a friend from whom it had too long been separated; and not only did it lose the sense of the blankness and desolation that surrounded it, by

plunging into composition: but the fortunate issue of my first effort, by none less respected than by myself, furnished me a handsome and most seasonable pecuniary supply. Education, however, and all the wise laws and modern instances of money-getting sages, had inspired me with such a horror of professional authorship, that I seized the first opportunity of again embarking upon the perilous sea of speculation and adventure. My cargo was necessarily of little worth, but past experience had made me cautious, the fear of loss was more powerful than the hope of gain; I extended, however, my operations with the increase of my profits, and fortune, constant in nothing but her inconstancy, made such rapid atonement for her former unkindness, that at the close of this second period I was enabled to perform three of the wisest, because they have been the happiest actions of my life. I married; I left off business; I retired into the country.

"Amarus est mundus et diligitur; puta, si dulcis esset, qualiter amaretur," is an observation of the golden-mouthed Saint; numerous other preachers and moralists have inveighed against too great a love of the world, and accounted for its bitterness by the fear of our too intense attachment, were the taste of life more sweet and palatable; but none of them seem to have warned us against a contrary danger ―too great a detachment from the earth, and indifference to existence in the ardent and insatiable curiosity for penetrating into the mysteries. beyond the grave, and developing the secrets of futurity. Had I, at this period, remained without tie or occupation, I verily believe that my restless spirit, ever hungering after hidden things, would have spurned at this, and sickened for the invisible world. The narrow house of death would have been the very forbidden blue chamber whose unknown wonders I should have been most anxious to explore. I should have been in a balloon of high fancies, only held fluttering to the earth by a few flimsy strings, and anxious for the moment of cutting them, that I might soar upon my voyage of discovery. But I: was blessed with children, and like that sacred Indian tree whose pendent branches strike fresh roots into the ground, I found myself tied with new ligatures to the world at every increase of my family. In my library there is a drawing by Cipriani, of Cupid's entwining wreaths around a vase, upon which I have often gazed till the tears suffused my eyes, for I have imagined that vase to be my heart, and the loves and affections around it my children; so rosy, so grateful to every sense, so redolent of balm and all deliciousness were the domestic garlands with which I was wreathed and bound anew to the earth. We no longer live in those turbulent and lawless times when children were valued as a defence; when it could be said, "Happy is he that hath his quiver full of them, for he shall not be afraid to meet his enemy in the gate;" but even now they are our best defences against our own lawlessness and instability; they are the anchors which prevent our being blown about by the gales of vice or folly. Nature, meaning us to have them, made them correctives as well as blessings, and certain it is, that those who are without them, whether men or women, wanting the proper vent for their affections, are apt to worship Egyptian idols. Dogs, horses, cats, parrots, and monkeys, become substitutes for Heaven's own image. Men may suffer their hearts to become absorbed by worldly occupations; but I have seldom known the married woman

who had strength of mind enough to walk straight forward in the path of good sense unless she had a child to shew her the way. All my female readers in this predicament will please to consider themselves the exceptions.

Methinks I still hear the astonished outcries and denunciations of the great Babel, when I announced my intention of retiring from business. At my time of life, and known not to be wealthy, it was deemed little less than leze-majesté against the throne of Mammon, and flagrant contumacy towards all civic authorities. Like my betters, I should not have presumed to enjoy life till I was past all powers of enjoyment; I should have grubbed on till I was worn out, and then have retired to the rich man's poor-house at Clapham Common, or Hackney, with a debilitated frame and an empty mind, annoyed with idleness, yet incapable of employment; hungering for excitement and yet able to feed upon nothing but itself. Had they possessed the power, I believe some of the Nebuchadnezzars would have thrown me into the fiery furnace for refusing any longer to worship the golden image; for when they found that I " scorned their smiles and viewed with smiles their scorning," they discovered that I was an unfeeling ostrich, and ought to have remained in business for the sake of my children. Of all the disguises assumed by avarice and selfishness, this is the most flimsy and hypocritical. I have known many men continue their gambling speculations under this pretext, scatter a fine fortune, and leave their offspring beggars; but I never knew one, however conscious of the hazardous nature of his operations, who had affection enough for his children to make a settlement upon them and render them independent of his desperate adventures. No, no; this is miserable cant. Though not insensible to the value of money as a means, I despise it as an end of life. God knows that in these times, when, by the ingenuity of the Funding System, we are daily paying for the wars of our pugnacious ancestors, and have imposed fresh taxes on ourselves by our luxuries, a modicum will not suffice; but I had enough to support that great object of modern pride, the appearances of a gentleman in my establishment; and a great deal more than enough for the higher character to which I now began humbly to aspire-that of a philosopher. I have never desired to be richer: it would not hurt me to be poorer. As to my children, they will receive a much larger patrimony than their father did; and I am by no means sure that they will possess any advantage over him from commencing life with better prospects. I will leave off while I am winner, said I to the gold-worshippers: "Hic cestus artemque repono." Pursue your perilous voyage to the Eldorado of your imaginations, and Plutus prosper you! May you have the touch of Midas, without his ears;-may the sands of Pactolus be your ballast, the Gold Coast your place of lading, and your sails be woven of the Colchian fleece! I shall rejoice at, not envy, your success; deeming myself still more successful that from my loop-holes of retreat I can gaze upon you, and exclaim

Inveni portum; spes et fortuna valete;

Sat me lusistis; ludite nunc alios.

The reader is not to imagine because I retired into the country, that I was addicted to field sports. I never killed a bird in my life; but I

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