sincerely respect his talents and attainments, and doubt not he has still higher claims to esteem. May he so employ the advantages with which Providence has blessed him, that he may "find mercy in that day."

(To be continued.)

THE WORLD AS IT IS.
NO. II.

(Continued from p. 288.)

Audire, atque togam jubeo componere quisquis

Ambitione mala, aut argenti pallet amore, Quisquis luxuriá

THE castle of Deloraine, bosomed among the oaks of an ancient forest, formed an august feature in the landscape seen from the windows of Mr. M's library. "I have frequently been surprised, Sir," I observed one day to my friend, "that in all your discourses on the nature of The World, you have never adduced Deloraine in illustration of your opinions.

There, even I con

fess, is the world indeed."-" It certainly is;" he replied, yet the world has no proper locality: it abides as frequently at a cottage as at a ducal residence." Without pausing at this rather mysterious assertion, I continued, "But were your ideas realized, the pile would soon crumble into ruins: for on the principles supported by you, the very possession of such a palace as this can never consist with pure religion."" Arthur, things are as we make them: there is no evil inherent in the rock and lime of which the shell of this castle is constructed; nor in the more splendid materials that compose its internal decorations. Far be it from me to plot the destruction of Deloraine;-remember the sublime observation of a devout nobleman of France to his patrician friends, I do not want you to dismantle your chateaus, and to devastate your gardens; let the ruins be in your own hearts. You attribute to me the sentiments of an anarchist. Were the Duke to di

lapidate his castle and renounce his hereditary honours, I should consider his conduct as deeply criminal; as by so doing, he would desert the responsible and highly important station in which the Governor of the universe has thought fit to place him. Religion does not require us to dissolve our civil establishments, but to preserve them from abuse and corruption. With regard to our superiors in rank, we are expressly commanded to render honour where honour is due; and even to SPEAK evil of dignities, characterizes, according to inspired authority, those who insult God by perverting his grace to purposes of lasciviousness. 2 Pet. ii. 10. Jude 8. It does not follow, that because a man is a nobleman, he cannot therefore be a Christian; his title is not the necessary cause of vanity, nor his estate of prodigality. It is indeed asserted, that few noble are called; but the very assertion itself intimates that some are: and at any rate, it does not confine salvation to plebeians. If few noble are called, few also of the bulk of mankind are called; for when our Saviour declared that few enter in at the straight gate, he spoke of the human race in general. Now we can refer to the most perfect examples of the vital efficacy of religion in the persons of nobility. What was the nobleman I just alluded to, the Marquis De Renti? What was Lady Russell? Nay, to go to the summit of distinc tion, royalty itself is compatible with the most unadulterated religion, of which I need only instance Jane of Navarre and the consort of our third William. I could never encourage a proposal to demolish either a Duke's palace or a Duke's privileges; nor to blend the regal, patrician, and plebeian proportions of society into an undistinguishable mass; convinced as I am, that schemes of this description evidence, on the part of their projectors, ignorance both of human nature, and of sound philosophy. If depraved princes and patricians desecrate their rank

this is not because they are kings and nobles, but because they spring from the same corrupt source as their inferiors, whose jealousy and hatred towards those about them evince a common origin without further proof. Let me see; we have about three hundred nobility: now take out at random three hundred artisans and husbandmen; and it will be found on examination, that the proportions of virtue and vice between the two parties are probably equal. You weigh three hundred men against two hundred and fifty; and there is an equipoise! Let the two parties make an interchange of rank and opulence; and you will find, in less than a month's trial, that the coronet and the palace have found in the persons of the strangers their former possessors, men; and perhaps that the coronet is tarnished, and the palace polluted precisely as before. I have not so much sickly and indolent charity for my species, as to believe, that any of your equalizing plans proceed from a disinterested and virtuous anxiety to reform and bless the world; but on the contrary, from an eagerness to enrich the speculator with the solid spoil of his projects. He foresees a scramble, and of course to none so profitable as to himself: though, as it generally happens,-look to France for instance-the scrambler is levelled in his turn; and so the game goes on. A political theorist is any thing but a patriot: he hates royalty on the ignoble principle of rivalry; and hence a jacobin, as I once heard an expert analyst of the human character define him, is a man who hates kings because he is not a king himself. If a man would benefit his country, he must learn to regulate and to restore; not to disorder and to destroy. We have heard of the amputation of diseased political members in order to effect a cure of the whole system; and certainly this remedy has one advantage, which is, that it is easy enough for any clumsy operator to hack and hew till the limb falls off.

But who is to heal the wound,—and what if the patient die in consequence of this untimely severity?— Dismantle this castle, and build hovels of the fragments; and what shall we do next? Why, throw down the hovels in their turn, and retire to caves and forests, and there banquet upon acorns and crabs, till all our silvan philosophy terminate in bloody frays about who shall have most; the athletic pillage and murder the feeble; the executioners themselves die of hunger and cold; and so the whole republic is annihilated. You see, Arthur, what must be the final result of every system not founded on a conviction that THE CREATURE WAS MADE SUBJECT TO VANITY! When the restless spirit of man busies itself in innovation, what can regulate and limit its agency? It is attempting with the Persian to fetter the billows.-I return to my original position:-things are as we make them. The world may be, and ought to be USED; use and abuse are by no means convertible phrases. The possession of Deloraine, with its appendages of title and wealth, may be no more detrimental to its owner in a moral view, than the mud cottage on the waste to the warrener. The Duke may contemplate his castle with as little vanity as the warrener his cottage." I now thought it expedient to assail my companion on another ground, with "Well, Sir, but you will allow that the world has a stronger hold on the Duke than on the warrener, because it affords him greater possibilities of happiness."

"I doubt that. Recollect what King Henry, when personating a common soldier, said to one of his men: I think,' said the supposed' plebeian, the king is but a man as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me: the element shews to him as it doth to me: all his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man: and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet when they

stoop, they stoop with like wing.' I believe that the Duke would authenticate this philosophy of Shakspeare. Do not imagine that ducal possessions exempt their possessor from the primeval curse; participation of that is the only natural equality of mankind. The Duke may be said to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow."

Arthur's respect for the speaker here prevented incredulity from venting itself in a laugh. He continued grave, and only replied with unwonted haste, "I was not born to comprehend paradox. If you mean that his Grace's forehead exhibits the effects of violent exertion after a fox-chase, I will allow that he literally earns his pleasures with the sweat of his brow; but in other matters it is not his own fault if he suffers by exertion. I fancy he may buy his bread with forty thousand a-year without the trouble of working for it!"

"The possessions of this world are inseparably connected with disquietude and labour. If the Duke had nothing to do but to receive the rental of his estates, put up the revenue, turn the key of the iron chest, and then hurry away to pleasure, your fancy might be pretty correct: but I perceive you have yet to know, that overseers are to be themselves overseen; his Grace must act with the vigilant prudence of a man who carries his little chronometer into a London crowd, who, as the epigram says, must

Pocket his watch, and watch his pocket too!

Landed property of forty thousand a-year is divided into distinct estates and then subdivided into farms, and each portion, whether estate or farm, has its leases, repairs, and so on: and now an unruly tenant must be managed; now a law suit must proceed; and a thousand other vexations arise in every variety of teazing importunity. Estates will never take care of themselves: so that were the Duke to entrust all to servants, his Grace would in due time change

places with the steward, and instead of residing at the Castle take up his quarters at the Lodge. Those noblemen who know nothing of their estates but from their agents, afford to servants opportunities of gradually supplanting their masters; which, while man is what he is, will not be neglected. As the Duke cannot prevent his demesne from producing thorns and thistles, so neither can he avoid that other consequence of the curse which condemns all mankind to some species of servitude. His Grace is, in one sense, no more independent than his tenantry: both are obliged to work: and they work for each other. As to his possessing greater possibilities of happiness, he possesses them as far as felicity is the natural production of the earth, and as a man; but no farther. If he be a Christian, he will indeed know, that felicity of a more sublime character is confined to no degree of distinction or affluence. He will know, also, that such happiness is conveyed to man through earthly channels; for a person's property may providentially become the second cause of good. Let a man act as the steward of his wealth, and not as its absolute possessor, and then, I believe, that he will gather figs of thistles. You suppose, that the Duke is happy, because he possesses a feudal palace and all the circumjacent country."

"And you imply that he is unhappy, because he has all that property."

"No. I am only asserting, that a gigantic fortune affords to its owner no immunity from the universal lot of mankind, from disquietude and labour. With regard to happiness, I incline to think that the capability of securing this undefinable entity is bestowed upon all equally. My wish is to convince you, that terrestrial things have a natural tendency to produce vexation and toil; that they are in themselves unsatisfactory: the more we have, the more we crave. But their effect is yet

more pernicious, in that they fetter our affections, and tempt us habitually to forget concerns more indispensable."

"Then, Sir," I replied, "it follows, that the more a man has, the farther off he is from religion. Alas for the Duke of L-!"

"You will misunderstand me. I allow no such consequence; because this might induce a farther consequence, namely, that a human being born to ducal honours and opulence has an unequal hope of future felicity. You would also make me argue, that a man's moral excellence must be exactly parallel with his wealth; but you should consider, that a person coming into life under the circumstances of his Grace, is familiarized from infancy to man hood with the appropriate splendors of his situation, and probably thinks no more of them than I do of the humble, and comparatively beggarly, conveniences of this house. Now the warrener yonder thinks me as much above him as I think the Duke above me; and the estimate may be correct. The warrener perhaps imagines that were he in my situation he should possess unmingled happiness; and twenty years ago I used to imagine the same of the Duke's situation. I be lieve the warrener's opinions and mine to be equally just, that is, superlatively silly;-for as far as I can philosophize from Scripture and experience, actual enjoyment is the result neither of rank or riches, but of a principle independent of both, and which reveals the true secret of happiness to persons in every situation under heaven. A person may think that the Duke is happy because he is the first man in the county;-but what is that to kim? A noble, as a noble, feels no elevation from superiority over commoners. He may all the while be pining with jealousy, because the Lord Lieutenant of the next county has a higher office in the state, or more superb palace. He cares not to vie but with his equals. Give

a

me KINGS for competitors, said Alexander, and I will enter the lists at Olympia."

On the morning after the above conversation passed, (of which I do not pretend to communicate a complete detail,) we visited Deloraine. As we approached, the pile opened upon us with all the stern and sullen majesty of a baronial fortress. But I shall not detain you by a minute description. We entered by the eastern portal, and were conducted through a long suite of rooms till we reached the armoury. There was something in the warlike air of this apartment which seemed to realize the gorgeous legends of feudal romance. "Who," I exclaimed, "does not lament that the age of chivalry is gone!”—My companion smiled at my enthusiasm. "The present race of warriors," he observed, "has restored the valour of that age; but its virtues appear to be whelmed in cold oblivion. Chastity and temperance were the characteristics of chivalry: but what would our soldiers and sailors think of a man who should seriously tell them, that the toils of war are not to be forgotten in intemperance and illicit indulgence! Our admiration of what I have heard described as the martial philosophy of the gothic age is, I believe, the admiration of the fancy, which takes special care to separate from the imposing splen dors of that system its perilous labours. We can peruse by a quiet fireside the adventures of steel-clad champions, their miserable privations, their bruises and gashes, nay even their struggles with the most terrific cnergies of death;—all these things, when dressed up with rock, wood, and water scenery, and the due quantum of a questionable passion, are the very fondlings of the fancy, and of the fancy only; for as to any practical imitation, we are all Sybarites."

I scarcely heard Mr. M.'s remarks, being absorbed in the examination of two complete suits of armour that once invested some