the antelope, the jackal, the eagle, the mule. He knew them all. He told of the fish that make glad the waters as the seasons dance the frolic round about their heads. He sang, in liquid softness, of the daughters of air who melt the heaven into song. He rose to the stars; spoke of old chaos; of the world, the offspring of love. He spoke of the stars; the crown; Mazzaroth, and the tall ladder Jacob saw. He sang again the star of creation.

"He is wiser than Solomon," said the king. "To him belongs the prize."

smith is said to have gone and repeated the pun at another
table in this fashion:-" John should take those peas, I think,
to Hammersmith." "Why so,
doctor?" "Because that
is the way to make 'em green."

Now our friend would give the blunder with this sort of additional dressing: "At sight of the dishes of vegetables, Goldsmith, who was at his own house, took off the covers, one after another, with great anxiety, till he found that peas were among them; upon which he rubbed his hands with an air of infinite and prospective satisfaction. You are fond of peas, sir?' said one of the company. Yes, sir,' said Goldsmith, particularly so:-I eat them all the year round; I mean, sir, every day in the season. I do not think there is anybody so fond of peas as I am.' Is there any particulike peas so much, beyond the usual one of their agreeable taste? No, sir, none whatsoever:-none, I assure you,' (here Goldsmith showed a great wish to impress this fact on his guests:) I never heard any particular encomium or speech about them from any one else: but they carry their own eloquence with them: they are things, sir, of infinite "I have nothing to say," exclaimed the hoary man. taste.' (Here a laugh, which put Goldsmith in additional know only how unwise and frail I am. I am no sage." spirits.) But, bless me!' he exclaimed, looking narrowly And Solomon's countenance rose. "By the sceptre of into the peas:- I fear they are very ill-done: they are El-Shaddan, I charge thee to speak, thou ancient man." absolutely yellow instead of green,' (here he put a strong Then he began: "My study is myself; my acts, my sen- emphasis on green;) and you know, peas should be emtiment. I learn how frail I am. But I revere the fire that phatically green:-greenness in a pea is a quality as essendivinely burns in me. I, of myself, can know nothing. I tial, as whiteness in a lily. The cook has quite spoilt them: listen to that voice within; and I know all; I can do all." |--but I'll give the rogue a lecture, gentlemen, with your Then he spoke of his glees and his glooms; his hopes; his permission.' Goldsmith then rose and rang the bell violent. aspirations; his faith. He spoke of nature; the modestly for the cook, who came in ready booted and spurred. trees; the pure garden stars. When he came to him who is ALL IN ALL, he bowed his face, and was dumb. "Give him the ring," said Solomon. "He knows himself -he is the wisest. The spirit of the holy is in him."

But at that moment some men, in humble garb, brought a stranger, unwillingly along. His raiment was poor, but comely, and snow white. The seal of labor was on his hand; the dust of travel covered his sandals. His beard, long and silvery, went down to his girdle; a sweet smile, like a sleep-lar reason, doctor,' asked a gentleman present, why you ing infant's, sat, unconscious, on his lip. His eye was the angel's lamp, that burns, in still devotion, before the court of Paradise, making the day. As he leaned on his shepherd. staff, in the gay court, a blush, like a girl's, stole over his cheek.

66

Speak," said the king.

"I

"Take back the gift," said the sage, "I need it not. He that knows himself needs no reward. He knows God. He sees the All of things. Alas! I do but feebly know myself. I deserve no ring. Let me return to my home and my duty."

LUDICROUS EXAGGERATION.

MEN of wit sometimes like to pamper a joke into exaggeration; into a certain corpulence of facetiousness. Their relish of the thing makes them wish it as large as possible; and the enjoyment of it is doubled by its becoming more visible to the eyes of others. It is for this reason that jests in company are sometimes built up by one hand after another," three-piled hyperboles,"-till the overdone Babel topples and tumbles down amidst a merry confusion of tongues.

Ha! exclaimed Goldsmith, those boots and spurs are your salvation, you knave. Do you know, sir, what you have done?—No, sir.'-' Why, you have made the peas yellow, sir. Go instantly, and take 'em to Hammersmith.' To Hammersmith, sir?' cried the man, all in astonishment, the guests being no less so:- please sir, why am I to take 'em to Hammersmith? Because, sir,' (and here Goldsmith looked round with triumphant anticipation,)' that is the way to render those peas green.'"

There is a very humorous piece of exaggeration in Butler's Remains, a collection, by the bye, well worthy of Hudibras, and indeed of more interest to the general reader. Butler is defrauded of his fame with readers of taste, who happen to be no politicians, when Hudibras is printed without this appendage. The piece we allude to is a short description of Holland :

A country that draws fifty foot of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature;
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak.

That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes, And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes. A land that rides at anchor, and is moored, In which they do not live, but go aboard. We do not know, and perhaps it would be impossible to discover, whether Butler wrote his minor pieces before those of the great patriot Andrew Marvell, who rivalled him in wit and excelled him in poetry. Marvell, though born later, seems to have been known earlier as an author. He was

Falstaff was a great master of this art: he loved a joke as large as himself; witness his famous account of the men in buckram. Thus he tells the lord chief justice, that he had lost his voice "with singing of anthems ;" and he calls Bardolph's red nose "a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire light;" and says it has saved him "a thousand marks in links and torches," walking with it "in the night, betwixt tavern and tavern." See how he goes heightening the account of his recruits at every step:-"You would think I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately certainly known publicly before him. But in the political come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks.-A poems of Marvell there is a ludicrous character of Holland, mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unwhich might be pronounced to be either the copy or the oriloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. No eye ginal of Butler's, if in those anti-Batavian times the Holhath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coven-lander had not been baited by all the wits; and were it not try with them, that's flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and half in all my company;-and the half shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat

without sleeves."

An old schoolfellow of ours (who, by the way, was more fond of quoting Falstaff than any other of Shakspeare's characters) used to be called upon for a story, with a view to a joke of this sort; it being an understood thing, that he had a privilege of exaggeration, without committing his abstract love of truth. The reader knows the old blunder attributed to Goldsmith about a dish of green peas. Somebody had been applauded in company for advising his cook to take some ill-dressed peas to Hammersmith, "because that was the way to Turn'em Green;" upon which Gold

probable, that the unwieldy monotony of his character gave
rise to much the same ludicrous imagery in many of their
fancies. Marvell's wit has the advantage of Butler's, not in
learning or multiplicity of contrasts, (for nobody ever beat
him there,) but in a greater variety of them, and in being
able, from the more poetical turn of his mind, to bring graver
and more imaginative things to wait upon his levity.
He thus opens the battery upon our amphibious neigh-
bour:-

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell.

*

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour,* fished the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth as if it had been of ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyperbole :—
How did they rivet with gigantic piles
Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To shew them what's their-Mare Liberum ;†
A dayly deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coyl;
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as at meat, but as a guest:

And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau.
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herrings, pickled Heeren changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake:
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings:
For as with Pigmys, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands;
But who could first discern the rising lands;"
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord and country's father speak;
To make a bank was a great plot of state;-
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

We can never read these and some other ludicrous verses of Marvell, even when by ourselves, without laughter.

SOCIAL GENEALOGY.

Ir is a curious and pleasant thing to consider, that a link of personal acquaintances can be traced up from the authors of our own times to those of Shakspeare, and to Shakspeare himself. Ovid, in recording his intimacy with Propertius and Horace, regrets that he had only seen Virgil. But still he thinks the sight of him worth remembering. And Pope, when a child, prevailed on some friends to take him to a coffee-house which Dryden frequented, merely to look at him; which he did, with great satisfaction. Now such of us as have shaken hands with a living poet, might be able to reckon up a series of connecting shakes, to the very hand that wrote of Hamlet, and of Falstaff, and of Desdemona.

In this friendly genealogy we have omitted the numerous side-branches or common friendships. It may be mentioned, however, in order not to omit Spenser, that Davenant resided some time in the family of Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney. Spencer's intimacy with Sidney is mentioned by himself in a letter, still extant, to Gabriel Harvey.

We will now give the authorities for our intellectual pedigree. Sheridan is mentioned in Boswell as being admitted to the celebrated club of which Johnson, Goldsmith, and others were members. He had just written the School for Scandal, which made him the more welcome. Of Johnson's friendship with Savage (we cannot help beginning the sentence with his favourite leading preposition,) the well-known Life is an interesting record. It is said that in the commencement of their friendship, they sometimes wandered together about London for want of a lodging-more likely for Savage's want of it, and Johnson's fear of offending him by offering a share of his own. But we do not remember how this circumstance is related by Boswell.

Savage's intimacy with Steele is recorded in a pleasant anecdote, which he told Johnson. Sir Richard once desired him," with an air of the utmost importance," says his biographer, "to come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he had promised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard waiting for him and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not conjecture, and was not willing to inquire, but immediately seated himself with Sir Richard. The coachman was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde-park Corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private room. Sir Richard then informed him that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprised at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesitation, ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then finished their dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the afternoon.

"Mr. Savage then imagined that his task was over, and expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning, and return home; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told him that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for, and Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production for sale for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning."

Steele's acquaintance with Pope, who wrote some papers for his Guardian, appears in the letters and other works of the wits of that time. Johnson supposes that it was his friendly interference, which attempted to bring Pope and Addison together after a jealous separation. Pope's friendship with Congreve appears also in his letters. He also dedi

trons. The dramatist, whose conversation most likely partook of the elegance and wit of his writings, and whose manners appear to have rendered him a universal favourite, had the honour, in his youth, of attracting the respect and regard of Dryden. He was publicly hailed by him as his successor, and affectionately bequeathed the care of his laurels. Dryden did not know who had been looking at him in the coffee-house.

With some living poets, it is certain. There is Thomas Moore, for instance, who knew Sheridan. Sheridan knew Johnson, who was the friend of Savage, who knew Steele,cated the Iliad to Congreve, over the heads of peers and pa who knew Pope. Pope was intimate with Congreve, and Congreve with Dryden. Dryden is said to have visited Milton. Milton is said to have known Davenant; and to have been saved by him from the revenge of the restored court, in return for having saved Davenant from the revenge of the commonwealth. But if the link between Dryden and Milton, and Milton and Davenant, is somewhat apocryphal, or rather dependent on tradition (for Richardson the painter tells us the story from Pope, who had it from Betterton the actor, one of Davenant's company,) it may be carried at once from Dryden to Davenant, with whom he was unquestion. ably intimate. Davenant then knew Hobbes, who knew Bacon, who knew Ben Jonson, who was intimate with Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Donne, Drayton, Camden, Selden, Clarendon, Sydney, Raleigh, and perhaps all the great men of Elizabeth's and James's time, the greatest of them all undoubtedly. Thus have we a link of "beamy hands" from our own times up to Shakspeare.

* Dryden afterwards, of fighting for gain, in his song of Come, if you dare—

"The gods from above the mad labour behold." † A Free Ocean.

Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense,

I live a rent-charge on his providence.
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and O defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!
Let not th' insulting foe my fame pursue,

But shade those laurels which descend to you.

Congreve did so, with great tenderness.

Dryden is reported to have asked Milton's permission to turn his Paradise Lost into a rhyming tragedy, which he called the State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man; a work, such as might be expected from such a mode of alteration. The venerable poet is said to have answered, “Ay, young

ourselves. It has innate evidence enough for us, to give full weight to that of the old annalist. Imagination can invent a good deal; affection more: but affection can sometimes do things, such as the tenderest imagination is not in the habit of inventing; and this piece of noble-heartedness we believe to have been one of them.

man, you may tag my verses, if you will." Be the connection, however, of Dryden with Milton, or of Milton with Davenant, as it may, Dryden wrote the alteration of Shakspeare's Tempest, as it is now perpetrated, in conjunction with Davenant. They were great hands, but they should not have touched the pure grandeur of Shakspeare. The intimacy of Davenant with Hobbes is to be seen by their Leofric, Earl of Leicester, was the lord of a large feudal correspondence prefixed to Gondibert. Hobbes was at one territory in the middle of England, of which Coventry formtime secretary to Lord Bacon, a singularly illustrious instance || ed a part. He lived in the time of Edward the Confessor; of servant and master. Bacon also had Ben Jonson for a and was so eminently a feudal lord, that the hereditary greatretainer in a similar capacity; and Jonson's link with the ness of his dominion appears to have been singular even at preceding writers could be easily supplied through the me- that time, and to have lasted with an uninterrupted succesdium of Greville and Sidney, and indeed of many others of sion from Ethelbald to the Conquest,-a period of more than his contemporaries. Here then we arrive at Shakspeare, three hundred years. He was a great and useful opponent and feel the electric virtue of his hand. Their intimacy, of the famous Earl Godwin. dashed a little, perhaps, with jealousy on the part of Jonson, but maintained to the last by dint of the nobler part of him, and of Shakspeare's irresistible fineness of nature, is a thing as notorious as their fame. Fuller says: "Many were the wit-combates betwixt (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning: solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." This is a happy simile, with the exception of what is insinuated about Jonson's greater solidity. But let Jonson show for himself the affection with which he regarded one, who did not irritate or trample down rivalry, but rose above it like the sun, and turned emulation to wor ship.

Whether it was owing to Leofric or not, does not appear, but Coventry was subject to a very oppressive tollage, by which it would seem that the feudal despot enjoyed the greater part of the profit of all marketable commodities. The progress of knowledge has shown us how abominable, and even how unhappy for all parties, is an injustice of this description; yet it gives one an extraordinary idea of the mind in those times, to see it capable of piercing through the clouds of custom, of ignorance, and even of self-interest, and petitioning the petty tyrant to forego such a privilege. This mind was Godiva's. The other sex, always more slow to admit reason through the medium of feeling, were then occupied to the full in their warlike habits. It was reserved for a woman to anticipate ages of liberal opinion, and to surpass them in the daring virtue of setting a principle above

a custom.

Godiva entreated her lord to give up his fancied right; but in vain. At last, wishing to put an end to her importunities, he told her, either in a spirit of bitter jesting, or with a playful raillery that could not be bitter with so sweet an earnestness, that he would give up his tax, provided she rode through the city of Coventry, naked. She took him at his word. One may imagine the astonishment of a fierce unlettered chieftain, not untinged with chivalry, at hearing a woman, and that too of the greatest delicacy and rank, maintaining seriously her intention of acting in a manner contrary to all that was supposed fitting for her sex, and at the same time forcing upon him a sense of the very beauty of her conduct by its principled excess. It is probable, that as he could not religious oath when he made his promise: but be this as it may, he took every possible precaution to secure her modesty from hurt. The people of Coventry were ordered to keep within doors, to close up all their windows and outlets, and not to give a glance into the streets upon pain of death. The day came; and Coventry, it may be imagined, was silent as death. The lady went out at the palace door, was set on horseback, and at the same time divested of her wrapping garment, as if she had been going into a bath; then taking the fillet from her head, she let down her long and lovely tresses; which poured around her body like a veil; and so, with only her white legs remaining conspicuous, took her gentle way through the streets.*

THIS is the lady who, under the title of Countess of Cov-prevail upon her to give up her design, he had sworn some entry, used to make such a figure in our childhood upon some old pocket-pieces of that city. We hope she is in request there still; otherwise the inhabitants deserve to be sent from Coventry. That city was famous in saintly legends for the visit of the eleven thousand virgins,-an" incredible number," quoth Selden. But the eleven thousand virgins have vanished with their credibility, and a noble-hearted woman of flesh and blood is Coventry's true immortality.

The story of Godiva is not a fiction, as many suppose it. At least it is to be found in Matthew of Westminster, and is not of a nature to have been a mere invention. Her name, and that of her husband, Leofric, are mentioned in an old charter recorded by another early historian. That the story is omitted by Hume and others, argues little against What scene can be more touching to the imaginationit; for the latter are accustomed to confound the most inter- beauty, modesty, feminine softness, a daring sympathy; an esting anecdotes of times and manners with something be- extravagance, producing by the nobleness of its object and low the dignity of history (a very absurd mistake;) and Hume, the strange gentleness of its means, the grave and profound of whose philosophy better things might have been expect-effect of the most reverend custom. We may suppose the ed, is notoriously less philosophical in his history than in any other of his works. A certain coldness of temperament, not unmixed with aristocratical pride, or at least with a great aversion from everything like vulgar credulity, rendered his scepticism so extreme, that it became a sort of superstition in turn, and blinded him to the claims of every species of enthusiasm, civil as well as religious. Milton, with his poetical eyesight, saw better, when he meditated the history of his native country. We do not remember whether he relates the present story, but we remember well, that at the beginning of his fragment on that subject, he says he shall relate doubtful stories as well as authentic ones, for the benefit of those, if no others, who will know how to make use of them, namely, the poets. We have faith, however, in the story

When Dr. Johnson, among his other impatient accusations of our great republican, charged him with telling unwarrantable stories in his history, he must have overlooked this announcement; and yet, if we recollect, it is but in the second

scene taking place in the warm noon; the doors all shut, the windows closed; the earl and his court serious and wondering; the other inhabitants, many of them gushing with grateful tears, and all reverently listening to hear the footsteps of the horse; and lastly, the lady herself, with a downcast but not a shamefaced eye, looking towards the earth through her flowing locks, and riding through the dumb and deserted streets, like an angelic spirit.

It was an honourable superstition in that part of the counpage of the fragment. So hasty, and blind, and liable to be put to shame, is prejudice.

dens, crines capitis et tricas dissolvens, corpus suuin totum, Nuda," says Matthew of Westminster, "equum ascenpræter crura candidissima, inde velavit." See Selden's Notes to the Polyolbion of Drayton: Song 13. It is Selden from whom we learn, that Leoiric was Earl of Leicester, and the other particulars of him mentioned above. The Earl was buried at Coventry, his Countess most probably in the same tomb.

try, that a man who ventured to look at the fair saviour of his native town, was said to have been struck blind. But the vulgar use to which this superstition has been turned by some writers of late times, is not so honourable. The whole story is as unvulgar and as sweetly serious, as can be conceived.

Drayton has not made so much of this subject as might have been expected; yet what he says is said well and earnestly :

Coventry at length

From her small mean regard, recovered state and strength;
By Leofric her lord, yet in base bondage held,
The people from her marts by tollage were expelled;
Whose duchess which desired this tribute to release,
Their freedom often begged. The duke, to make her cease,
Told her, that if she would his loss so far enforce,
His will was, she should ride stark naked upon a horse
By daylight through the street: which certainly he thought
In her heroic breast so deeply would have wrought,
That in her former suit she would have left to deal.
But that most princely dame, as one devoured with zeal,
Went on, and by that mean the city clearly freed.

ADVICE TO THE MELANCHOLY.

If you are melancholy for the first time, you will find upon a little inquiry, that others have been melancholy many times, and yet are cheerful now. If you have been melancholy many times, recollect that you have got over all those times; and try if you cannot find out means of getting over them better.

Do not imagine that mind alone is concerned in your bad spirits. The body has a great deal to do with these matters. The mind may undoubtedly affect the body; but the body also affects the mind. there is a re-action between them; and by lessening it on either side, you diminish the pain on both.

If you are melancholy, and know not why, be assured it must arise entirely from some physical weakness; and do your best to strengthen yourself. The blood of a melancholy man is thick and slow; the blood of a lively man is clear and quick. Endeavour therefore to put your blood in motion. Exercise is the best way to do it; but you may also help yourself, in moderation, with wine, or other excitements. Only you must take care to so proportion the use of any artificial stimulus, that it may not render the blood languid by over-exciting it at first; and that you may be able to keep up, by the natural stimulus only, the help you have given yourself by the artificial.

of your friends, the company of agreeable children, music,
theatres, amusing books, an urbane and generous gallantry.
He who thinks any innocent pastime foolish, has either to
In the one case,
grow wiser or is past the ability to do so.
his notion of being childish is itself a childish notion. In the
other, his importance is of so feeble and hollow a cast, that
it dare not move for fear of tumbling to pieces.

A friend of ours who knows as well as any man how to unite industry with enjoyment, has set an excellent example to those who can afford leisure, by taking two Sabbaths every week instead of one,-not Methodistical Sabbaths, but days of rest which pay true homage to the Supreme Being by enjoying his creation.

One of the best pieces of advice for an ailing spirit is to go to no sudden extremes-to adopt no great and extreme changes in diet or other habits. They make a man look very great and philosophic to his own mind: but they are not fit for a being, to whom custom has been truly said to be a second nature. Dr. Cheyne may tell us that a drowning man cannot too quickly get himself out of the water; but the analogy is not good. If the water has become a second habit, he might almost as well say that a fish could not get too quickly out of it.

Upon this point, Bacon says that we should discontinue what we think hurtful by little and little. And he quotes with admiration the advice of Celsus:-that" a man do vary and interchange contraries, but rather with an inclination to the more benign extreme." "Use fasting," he says, "and full eating, but rather full eating; watching and sleep, but rather sleep; sitting and exercise, but rather exercise, and the like; so shall nature be cherished, and yet taught masteries."

dom.

We cannot do better than conclude with one or two other passages out of the same Essay, full of his usual calm wis"If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too strange for your body when you need it." (He means that a general state of health should not make us over-confident and contemptuous of physic; but we should use it moderately if required, that it may not be too strange to us when required most.) "If you make it too familiar, it will have no extraordinary effect when sickness cometh. I commend rather some diet for certain seasons, than frequent use of physic, except it be grown into a custom; for those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less."

"As for the passions and studies of the mind," says he, avoid envy, anxious fears, angry fretting inwards, subtle and knotty inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not communicated" (for as he says finely someRegard the bad weather as somebody has advised us to||where else, they who keep their griefs to themselves, are handle the nettle. In proportion as you are delicate with it, "cannibals of their own hearts.") Entertain hopes; mirth it will make you feel; but

Grasp it like a man of mettle,

And the rogue obeys you well.

rather than joy;" (that is to say, cheerfulness rather than boisterous merriment ;) "variety of delights rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature."

THE ANTIQUE CABINET.

Do not the less, however, on that account, take all reasonable precaution and arms against it, your boots, &c. against wet feet, and your great-coat or umbrella against the rain. It is timidity and flight, which are to be deprecated, not proper armour for the battle. The first will lay you WHETHER it is a perverse pleasure in seeing costly things open to defeat, on the least attack. A proper use of the lat-out of place, or an aversion we have to new things, (except ter will only keep you strong for it. Plato had such a high opinion of exercise, that he said it was a cure even for a wounded conscience. For there is no system, even of superstition, however severe or cruel in other matters, that does not allow a wounded conscience to be curable by some means. Nature will work out its rights and its kindness some way or other, through the worst sophistications; and this is one of the instances in which she seems to raise herself above all contigencies. The conscience may have been wounded by artificial or by real guilt; but then she will tell it in those extremities, that even the real guilt may have been produced by circumstances. It is her kindness alone, which nothing can pull down from its predominance.

new thoughts, new toothpicks, and new ladies' gear,) or the natural love for miscellany common to all mankind-whether it is for one of these reasons, or for a little of eachwe are in the habit of bestowing the loose ends of our idleness upon the warehouses of second-hand furniture. Nothing grows upon a man like a habit of choice between such entertainment and any society merely tolerable-the preference given, of course, to the shabby but more suggestive damask and mahogany. Ah, the variety of things people scll to get money! What curious places shops are, where they will buy anything that is "sacrificed!" How entertaining to mousle about among old portraits, broken ornaments, miniatures soiled by wearing in the bosom, un

See fair play between cares and pastimes. Diminish your artificial wants as much as possible, whether you are rich or poor; for the rich man's, increasing by indulgence, are apt to outweigh even the abundance of his means; and the poor man's diminution of them renders his means the great-strung harps, battered statuary, and furniture that has kept er. On the other hand, increase all your natural and healthy proud company! How curious-minded must become at last enjoyments. Cultivate your afternoon fire-side, the society these dealers in nothing with a gloss on! How exactly they

must know the duration and value of fashionable newness! How well they must understand the pitiless transit from ornament to lumber-how well the sudden chill of the moneytest to articles valued, till then, only by affection! But we cannot afford a digression on the last page.

Committee. You see the ink wet in my pen-I was just about to dash into a critique. That straw-coloured volume of poems, by Mrs. Lewis, shows feathers from Pegasus ; though, as usual with lady-poems, without any parings from the hoof-any trace of that part of the old steed that touches earth. It takes wrongs and sufferings-like those of Mrs. Norton, L. E. L., and Mrs. Hemans-to compound a poet. ess of any reality and strength. Soil, that, if torn up with a ploughshare, may yield the heavy grain of anguish, will

in the sunshine. Yet this same white clover is very sweet grazing, and Mrs. Lewis's is a very sweet book. May she never write a better one-by having suffered enough to "qualify!"

Brigadier.-Amen! I say, my boy, what a clever thing Inman is making of his Magazine! The May number is beautiful. What a good pick he has among the magazine writers!

Resting our umbrella on the steps to a high bed the other day, and our chin on our umbrella, (a posture taken for the leisurely perusal of a crowded corner of an old furniture shop,) we began to pick out, from the mass, an outline of an old cabinet secretary. Now we have been that degree || yield nothing but daisies and white clover, lying undisturbed of vagabond, that we have to confess having fairly topped our meridian without the knowledge of more luxury in writing-tools than any table, any pen, and any conceivable vagary of ink-holder. It is true that while travelling we got accustomed to fastening the other end of our thought-string to an old black trunk-a companion to our hithering and thithering for seven long year-and, by dint of habit in many a far country, we could ill write, at last, where that old portmanteau was not ready to receive our eyes as they came off the paper. But, in reforming our baggage for matrimony, the old trunk was degraded to a packing-box, and at present it peacefully reposes, smelling of quinces, and holding the modest Sunday-clothes of our farmer's dame at Glenmary. Save and since this, our travelled and "picked|| pen of countries" has been without appanage or equipage, wearing all its honours upon its bare plume of service, and, like a brave and uncomplaining soldier, scorning to claim the dignities which should have been plucked down by its deservings. Well-well!" the whirligig of time!" "Pen!" we mentally ejaculated, as we made out the corners and queer angles of the antique cabinet-" thy proper honours are in flower! Thou shalt do thy work in luxury after this! What pigeon-holes can do, to make thee comfortable-what| But now we think of it—you are bound to be particularly drawers, what slits, what niches and nooks-is as good as good-natured, my dear Brigadier! With what enthusiasm done! Rise to-morrow rich and glorious."

Committee.-Excellent-but he uses himself up with making his correspondents work, and sets too little value on his own writings. He wants a sub. for drudgery. He could, with his strong fabric of good sense, (which is genius,) and his excellent critical powers, make all the rest of the “CoLUMBIAN" subservient to his own articles. Brigadier. Tell him so!

Committee. Will he stand it-as your firm ally? Brigadier-Bless your soul, he has told you many a plainer thing in print.

Committee. Has he?-Here goes, then :

"For Jove's right hand, with thunder cast from sky, Takes open vengeance oft for secret ill!"

they received your song the other night at the Tabernacle"the Pastor's Daughter!" That, and "Boatman haste," and

We had the advantage to be favourably known to the furniture-dealer. He was a man who rejoiced in our promo-"Cheerly o'er the mountains," are three songs, that, skil

fully built, as they are, upon three of our most exquisite national melodies, and intrinsically beautiful in words and music, will be classics. Atwill has published them charmingly, What lots of money you ought to make out of these universalities!

Brigadier. My dear boy! stop praising me at a judicious place-for praise, like" heat hath three degrees:— first, it indurateth or maketh strong; next, it maketh fragile; and lastly, it doth encinerate or calcinate, or crumble to pieces."

tions. We bought the old secretary without chaffer, at the
lowest figure," and requested that it might be dug out from
its unsold neighbours, and sent home, not too vigorously
dusted. Here it is. We are writing upon its broad let-too.
down leaf, and our pen struts like a knight wearing for the
first hour his well earned spurs. It is an old chamberer-
the secretrary-brown-black mahogany, inlaid with sandal-
wood-and has held money, and seen frowns and smiles.
In its experience, (for which we would give a trifle,) we
ourself are but a circumstance. The hand that first wrote
at it is cold; and, for the hands that are to write at it here-
after, nature may not yet have sorted out the nails. Our
own hand will give over its cunning and turn to ashes, mean-
time. One man's life and using are but of the duration of a
coat of varnish, to this old cabinet's apprehension. Ah
"we !"

"By the pricking of our thumbs," the Brigadier is mounting the stairs. Since the possession of our first operative luxury, we have taken a disgust to the cloister-conceiting that the smell of soap, from the lavendering in the backyard, gave a stain to such flowers of imagination as were born there. The Brigadier says we grow superfine. Soit! It is time-after "taking it as it comes" for so many years. Besides, we must have something to set off against his epaulettes! Glory in your staff, dear Brigadier, but leave us our cabinet!

Brigadier-(entering out of breath.)-Paff! paff! How the breath of life flutters with this vicinity to heaven Paff! paff!-prophetic nature! How are you, my dear upster?

Committee.-Subtle tactician! How you have corrupted my rural simplicity! Mff-mff-mff! I think I sniff mint! the juices to talk pleasantly with a friend, and, by the way, The wind sets this way from Windust's. How it exhausts soft crabs are in the market. What say to a dish of watercresses, and such other things as may suggest themselvesdine in public to-day. We should seem to lack modesty, we two-over the way! We are in too good humour to with this look of exultation on our faces.

Brigadier. To dinner, with all my heart-for the Mirror has an appetite-the philosopher's tranquil appetite-idem contemptui et admirationi habitus.

Committee. I go to shave off this working face, my dear General! Please amuse yourself with my warm pen. Our correspondents " Y.” and “E. K."—two “treasures trove," if such periodical ever had-should be gracefully and grate. fully thanked. Do it, while I am gone, with your usual suaviter.

(Brigadier writes.)