People of a faturnine turn of mind,—and not only thefe, but good, ferious, right-thinking people alfo, have fometimes no ease and playfulness in their natures, and are led to condemn those who have, as not serious enough, and perhaps as thoughtless. But herein they constantly commit a great error,— for deep-feated thought is conftantly relaxed by cheerfulness and sprightliness of nature. It is a fort of fafety-valve to the o'erwrought mind. Anne Boleyn, as we all know, playfully alluded to the thinness of her neck when the axe was before her eyes; and Sir Thomas More, the most learned of all learned Chancellors, who refused to attend her Coronation, when he was unjustly brought to the scaffold, faid with characteristic pleasantry on ascending it, to the Lieutenant of the Tower, "I pray you, fee me fafe up; and, as for my coming down, you may let me fhift for myself;' and then, turning to the executioner, bade him wait till he had adjusted his beard, saying, "That had committed no treason." And who, read in claffical ftory, can ever forget how Theramenes, in Xenophon, poured out the remnant of the hemlock, and drank to the health of Critias? "I am not ignorant," says View of the the hiftorian, "that fuch apophthegms are hardly worth recounting,-but this I think to be a matter specially commanding our admiration, that when death ftared him in the face, neither his good fenfe, nor his pleasantry (rò Tayvides) failed him '." Such fayings as thefe do not neceffarily convey any levity, they are merely a relief thrown off like the fpray from the wave, and are registered to no man's condemnation. I recollect a remarkable instance of this pleasantry in an old man, fome years ago, whofe thick curled head of hair was for all the world like Spenfer's defcription of an Irish glibbe. The poor old man was very fond of his garden, and a great cultivator of the white carrot. Of these he had large beds,—and one day, after Church, he faid to those who were looking at them, "Poor old ragged head Will be found in his carrot-bed," meaning, that he was shiftlefs and helpless, and might be picked up there,—as he very nearly was. A precife neighbour recorded it as a 1 Xen. Hellen. ii. c. iii. § 56. "Minds of a certain power," fays Southey, fpeaking of Whitfield in his life of Wefley, "will fometimes exprefs their ftrongest feelings with a levity at which formalifts are fhocked, and which dull men are wholly unable to understand." profane fpeech,-but there was no profaneness in his nature. It was his cheerful spirit,—and I confidered that thoughtleffness might be corrected by the text, "A merry heart doeth Prov. xvii. 27. good like a medicine." "O rare Abraham Newland!" was an expreffion I used to hear in my childhood. He was, I believe, Cashier in the Bank of England, and is faid to have written this epitaph upon himself. "Beneath this ftone old Abraham lies; Nobody laughs, nobody cries; Where he is gone, and how he fares, any If he did, he did fo thoughtleffly,- but if 1 Wither's motto is of the fame caft. Old Abraham Newland was hardly likely to have known the lines, "Hic eft Durandus pofitus fub marmore duro An fit falvandus, ego nefcio nec ego curo." Some waggish waffailer most probably threw off the tranflation in his cups. Eric, or Little W. Whitehead, Poet Laureate. Sir T. Browne, v. 134. CHAPTER XXV. Gratitude and Ingratitude. "I hate ingratitude more in a man, Than lying, vainnefs, babbling, drunkenness, "Alas for gratitude! there was not a boy in that group to whom Mr. Rofe had not done many an act of kindness,-and to moft of them far more than they ever knew. Many a weary hour had he toiled for them in private, when his weak frame was haraffed by fuffering; many a fleepless night had he wrestled for them in prayer, when, for their fakes, his own many troubles were laid afide. Work on, Walter Rofe, and He who feeth in fecret will reward you openly! but expect no gratitude from thofe for whofe falvation you, like the great tender-hearted apoftle, would almoft be ready to wish yourself accurfed." "And the next virtue to beftowing good Thou know'ft is gratitude for good bestow'd." "The vices we fcoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves." « Φεῦ· ὡς μέγα δύνασθον πανταχοῦ τὰ δύ ̓ ὀβολώ.” nothing fo diftreffing, as the Thankleffness and Ingratitude of their fellow-creatures. It grates upon their best feelings, and they fay, "Affliction hath in ftore No torture like to this." Ford, The Day after day, and month after month, and year after year, you may go forth and spend till you are spent, miniftering to the neceffities of men's bodies, and of their fouls;—but if, perchance, you touch their fecret fins, warning them of their covetoufnefs, their shiftiness, their double-dealing, their knavery and difhonesty, and of that low grade of principle which, when connived at by thofe in a higher pofition, becomes within a very short while the ruin of our poor,-immediately the debt of paft kindneffes is wiped off as with the fponge of forgetfulness, and what Peter faid on the bafe denial of his Lord, they fay in their ingratitude, "I do not know the man!" Matt. xxvi. 72. Thofe, most bufied in going about doing good, will have met with many instances of this unhappy fort. "Often good turns Are fhuffled off with fuch uncurrent pay." But if fo, what ftronger inftance can be alleged of the finfulness of our fin,—of our original corruption,—of the innate depravity Twelfth Night, |