humours are set forth, as orderly and distinct as his butterflies' wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of fleas in glass-cases. We often successfully try in this way to give the finishing stroke to our pictures, hang up our weaknesses in perpetuity, and embalm our mistakes in the memories of others. "Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries, Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." I shall not speak here of unwarrantable commands imposed upon survivors, by which they were to carry into effect the sul Weakness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament bequeath my worldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following: Imprimis, To my dear Wife, One Box of Butterflies, One Drawer of Shells, A dried Cockatrice. Hem, To my Daughter Elizabeth, My Receipt for preserving dead Caterpillars. As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and Embryo Pickle. Hem, To my little Daughter Funny, Three Crocodile's Eggs. And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her Mother's Consent, The Nest of a Humming-Bird. Item, To my eldest Brother, as an Acknowledgment for the Lands he has vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath My last Year's Collection of Grasshoppers. Item, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath my With my large Folio of Indian Cabbage. Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to him, soma Years since, A Horned Scaraburus, The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and The mummy of an Egyptian King, I make no further Provision for him in this my Will. My eldest Son Join having spoken disrespectfully of his little Sister, whom I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other Instances behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut off from any Part of this my Personal Estate, by giving him a single Cockle Shell, To my Second Son Claries, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, Plants, Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Berties, Butterflies, Caterpillars, Ien and revengeful purposes of unprincipled men, after they had breathed their last but we meet with continual examples of the desire to keep up the farce (if not the tragedy) of life, after we, the performers in it, have quitted the stage, and to have our parts rehearsed by proxy. We thus make a caprice immortal, a peculiarity proverbial. Hence we see the number of legacies and fortunes left, on condition that the legatee shall take the name and style of the testator, by which device we provide for the continuance of the sounds that formed our names-and endow them with an estate, that they may be repeated with proper respect. In the Memoirs of an Heiress, all the difficulties of the plot turn on the necessity imposed by a clause in her uncle's will, that her future husband should take the family-name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia! What delicate perplexities she was thrown into by this improvident provision; and with what minute, endless, intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled to harrow up the reader on this account! There was a Sir Thomas Dyot in the reign of Charles II., who left the whole range of property which forms Dyot-street in St. Giles's and the neighbourhood, on the sole and express condition that it should be appropriated entirely to that sort of buildings, and to the reception of that sort of population, which still keep undisputed, undivided possession of it. The name was changed the other day to George-street, as a more genteel appellation, which, I should think, is an indirect forfeiture of the estate. This Sir Thomas Dyot I should be disposed to put upon the list of old English worthies as humane, liberal, and no flincher from what he took in his head. He was no common-place man in his line. He was the best commentator on that old-fashioned text-"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head."-We find some that are curious in the mode in which they shall be buried, and others Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified: As also all my Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and sole Executor of this my Last Will and Testament, he paying or causing to be paid the aforesaid Legacies within the Space of Six Months after my Decease. And I do hereby revoke all other Wills whatsoever by me formerly made."—TATLER, Vol. IV., No. 216. in the place. Lord Camelford had his remains buried under an ash-tree that grew on one of the mountains in Switzerland; and Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little mausoleum built for him in the College at Dulwich, where he once spent a pleasant, jovial day with the Masters and Wardens. It is, no doubt, proper to at tend, except for good reasons to the contrary, to these sort of requests; for by breaking faith with the dead, we loosen the confidence of the living. Besides, there is a stronger argument: we sympathise with the dead as well as with the living, and are bound to them by the most sacred of all ties, our own involuntary fellow-feeling with others! Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their friends, physicians a nostrum, authors a manuscript work, rakes a confes. sion of their faith in the virtue of the sex-all, the last drivellings of their egotism and impertinence. One might suppose that if any thing could, the approach and contemplation of death might bring men to a sense of reason and self-knowledge. On the contrary, it seems only to deprive them of the little wit they had, and to make them even more the sport of their wilfulness and shortsightedness. Some men think that because they are going to be hanged, they are fully authorized to declare a future state of rewards and punishments. All either indulge their caprices or cling to their prejudices. They make a desperate attempt to es cape from reflection by taking hold of any whim or fancy that crosses their minds, or by throwing themselves implicitly on old habits and attachments. An old man is twice a child: the dying man becomes the property of his family. He has no choice left, and his voluntary power is merged in old saws and prescriptive usages. The pro. perty we have derived from our kindred reverts tacitly to them: and not to let it take its course, is a sort of violence done to na. ture as well as custom. The idea of property, of something i common, does not mix cordially with friendship, but is insepara. • Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy, where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the Allies were repulsed. Oh' might that heart prove the root from which the tree of Liberty may spring up and flourish once more, as the basil-tree grew and grew from the cherished head of Izabella's lover! ble from near relationship. We owe a return in kind, where we feel no obligation for a favour; and consign our possessions to our next of kin as mechanically as we lean our heads on the pillow, and go out of the world in the same state of stupid amazement that we came into it! 4 ESSAY VII. On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin. "And blind Orion hungry for the morn.”—KEATS. ORION, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nimrod; and is called by Homer, "a hunter of shadows, himself a shade.” he was the son of Neptune; and having lost an eye in some affray between the Gods and men, was told that if he would go to meet the rising sun, he would recover his sight. He is repre. sented setting out on his journey, with men on his shoulders to guide him, a bow in his hand, and Diana in the clouds greeting him. He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and reels and falters in his gait, as if just awaked out of sleep, or uncertain of his way;-you see his blindness, though his back is turned. Mists rise around him, and veil the sides of the green forests; earth is dank and fresh with dews, the "grey dawn and the Pleiades before him dance," and in the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. Nothing was ever more finely conceived or done. The picture breathes the spirit of the morning; its moisture, its repose, its obscurity, wanting the miracle of light to kindle it into smiles: the whole is, like the principal figure in it, "a forerunner of the dawn." The same atmosphere tinges and imbues every object, the same dull light "shadowy sets off” the face of nature: one feeling of vastness, of strangeness, and of primeval forms, pervades the painter's canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first integrity of things. This great and learned man might be said to see nature through the glass of time; he alone has a right to be considered as the painter of classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done him Justice in this respect. He could give to the scenery of his he roic fables the unimpaired look of original nature, full, solid. large, luxuriant, teeming with life and power or deck it with |