Oh! that this lovely vale were mine- There would unto my soul be given, And thoughts would come of mystick mood, And did I ask to whom belonged She spreads her glories o'er the earth, Yea! long as Nature's humblest child Earth's fairest scenes are all his own, Is built amid the skies. FROM early childhood, even, as hath been said, Rise up and bathe the world in light! He looked- And ocean's liquid mass beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none, Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. Low thoughts had there no place; yet was his heart Oft as he called those ecstasies to mind, And whence they flowed;-and from them he acquired LESSON CXXII. The Shipwreck.-WILSON. HER giant-form O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm, Mid the deep darkness white as snow! The main she will traverse for ever and aye. Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast! -Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her last. Five hundred souls in one instant of dread Are hurried o'er the deck; And fast the miserable ship Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock, Her planks are torn asunder, And down come her masts with a reeling shock, And a hideous crash like thunder. Her sails are draggled in the brine That gladdened late the skies, And her pendant that kissed the fair moonshine Down many a fathom lies. Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues Gleamed softly from below, And flung a warm and sunny flush O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow, To the coral rocks are hurrying down, To sleep amid colours as bright as their own. An hour before her death; And sights of home with sighs disturbed The hum of the spreading sycamore To the dangers his father had passed; -He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll, But the new-risen sun and the sunny sky. Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapour Bedims the waves so beautiful; While a low and melancholy moan Mourns for the glory that hath flown. dull LESSON CXXIII. Dr. Slop and Obadiah, meeting.-STERNE. IMAGINE to yourself, a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Dr. Slop, of about four feet and a half, perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a sergeant in the horse-guards. Such were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, which-if you have read Hogarth's analysis of beauty, (and if you have not, I wish you would;)-you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred. Imagine such a one, for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling through the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour-but of strength— alack! scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition. They were not. Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way. Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description. Had Dr. Slop beheld Obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,splashing and plunging like a devil through thick and thin as he approached, would not such a phenomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis, have been a subject of juster apprehension to Dr. Slop in his situation, than the worst of Whiston's comets? -To say nothing of the nucleus; that is, of Obadiah and the coach-horse. In my idea, the vortex alone of them was enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor's pony, quite away with it. What then do you think must the terrour and hydrophobia of Dr. Slop have been when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards Shandy Hall, and had approached within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden wall,—and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,— when Obadiah and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, furious,-pop,-full upon him -Nothing, I think, in nature can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,―so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as Dr. Slop was! What could Dr. Slop do ?- -he crossed himself -Pugh! -but the doctor, Sir, was a Papist.-No matter; he had better have kept hold of the pummel.-He had so; nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,- -and in attempting to save his whip between his knee and his saddle's skirt, as it slipped, he lost his stirrup,-in losing which he lost his seat; and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the by, shew what little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. So that with out waiting for Obadiah's onset, he left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the style and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the mire. Obadiah pulled off his cap twice to Dr. Slop; -once as he was falling, and then again when he saw him seated.-Ill-timed complaisance!had not the fellow better have stopped his |