Charles Bullard Fairbanks

Thomas Carlyle introduces his philosophical friend, Herr TeufelsdrÖckh, to his readers, seated in his watch-tower, which overlooks the city in which he dwells; and from which he can look down into that bee-hive of human kind, and see every thing "from the palace esplanade where music plays, while His Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane where in her doorsill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun." He draws an animated picture of that busy panorama which is ever unrolling before TeufelsdrÖckh's eyes, and moralizes upon the scene in the spirit of a true poet who has struck upon a theme worthy of his lyre. And, most assuredly, Thomas is right. The daisies and buttercups are all very well in their way; but, as raw material for poetry, what are they to the deep-furrowed pavement and the blackened chimney-pots of a city! In spite of all our pantheistic rhapsodies, man is the noblest of natural productions, and the worthiest subject for the highest and holiest of poetic raptures. My old friend, the late Mr. Wordsworth, delighted to anathematize the railway companies, and raved finely about Nature never betraying the heart that loves her; he said that

"——the sounding cataract

Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to him

An appetite;—"

and confessed that to him

"——the meanest flower that blows could give

Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."

Yet notwithstanding all this, he was constrained to acknowledge when he stood upon Westminster Bridge, and saw the vast, dingy metropolis of Britain wearing like a garment the beauty of the morning, that

"Earth has not anything to show more fair,—

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty."

When I was a young man, it was my delight to brush with early steps the dew away, and meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There was a romantic feeling about it that I liked, and I did not object to wet feet. But I have long since put away that depraved taste, although the recent application of India rubber to shoeing purposes has obviated the inconvenience of its gratification. Now, I am contented if I can find a level pavement and a clean crossing, and will gladly give up the woods and verdant fields to less prosaic and more youthful people. Your gout is a sad interferer with early poetical prejudices—but in my own case it has shown me that all such things, like most of our youthful notions, are mere fallacies. It has convinced me that the poetical abounds rather in the smoky, narrow streets of cities, than in the green lanes, the breezy hills, and the broad fields of the country. Like the toad, ugly and venomous, that fell disease is not without its jewel. It has reconciled me to life in town, and has shown me all its advantages and beauties.

If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," then are the crowded streets of the city more improving and elevating to us (if rightly meditated upon) than the academic groves. If you desire society,—in a city you may find it to your taste, however fastidious you may be. If you are a lover of solitude, where can you be more solitary than in the very whirl of a multitude of people intent upon their own pursuits, and all unknown to you! That honey-tongued doctor, St. Bernard, said that he was never less alone than when alone—a sentiment which, in its reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen of a metropolis. I always loved solitude: the old monastic inscription was always a favourite motto of mine:—

"O beata solitudo!

O sola beatitudo!"

But I have never found any solitude like the streets of a large city. I have walked in the cool, quiet cloister of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built amid the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, and—though my footfall was the only sound save the rustling of the foliage, and the song of the birds, and the bubbling of a fountain which seemed tired with its centuries of service, and which seemed to make the stillness and repose of that spacious quadrangle more profound—I could not feel so perfectly alone there as I have often felt in the thronged Boulevards or the busy Strand. Place a mere worldling in those holy precincts, and he would summon mentally around him the companions of his past pleasures, and his worldliness would be increased by his thus being driven to his only resources for overcoming the ungrateful quiet of the place. Introduce a religious man to those consecrated shades, and his devotion would be quickened; he would soon forget the world which he had not loved and which had not loved him, and his face would soon be as unwrinkled, his eye as serene, as those of the monks who dwell there. But place either of them in the most crowded thoroughfare of the city, and the worldling would be made for a time as meditative as the other. When I was a child, I delighted to watch the busy inhabitants of an ant-hill, pursuing their various enterprises with an intentness almost human; and I should be tempted to continue my observations of them, were it not that the streets of my native city offer me a similar, but a more interesting study. Xerxes, we are told, shed tears when he saw his army drawn up before him, and reflected that not one of all that mighty host would be alive a century after. Who could ride from Paddington to London Bridge, through the current of human life that flows ceaselessly through the streets of that great city, without sharing somewhat in the feelings of that tender-hearted monarch?

What are all the sermons that ever were preached from a pulpit, compared to those which may be found in the stones of a city? When we visit Pompeii and Herculaneum, we are thrilled to notice the ruts made by the wheels of chariots centuries ago. The original pavement of the Appian Way, now for some distance visible, carries us back more than almost any of the other antiquities of Rome, to the time when it was trodden by captive kings, and re-echoed with the triumphal march of returning conquerors. I pity him in whom these things awaken no new train of thought. The works of man have outlived their builders by centuries, and still remain a solemn testimony to the power and the nothingness which originated them. Nineveh, Thebes, Troy, Carthage, Tyre, Athens, Rome, London, Paris, have won the crown in their turn, and have passed or will pass away. The dilapidated sculptures of the former have been taken to adorn the museums of the latter, and crowds have gazed and are gazing on them with curious eyes, unmindful of their great lesson of the transitoriness of the glory of the world. These are, indeed, "sermons in stones"; but, like most other sermons, we look rather at their style of finish, than at the deep meaning with which they are so pregnant.

But I did not take up my pen to write about dead cities; I have somewhat to say about the life that now renders the streets of our own towns so pleasant, and makes us so forgetful of their inevitable fate. I am not going to claim for the street life of our new world the charms which abound in the ancient cities of Europe. We are too much troubled about many things, and too utilitarian to give thought to those lesser graces which delight us abroad, and which we hardly remember until we come home and miss them. Our street architecture, improved though it may have been within a few years, is yet far behind the grace and massive symmetry of European towns. Our builders and real estate owners need to be reminded that it costs no more to build in good taste than in bad; that brick work can be made as architectural as stone; and that architecture is a great public instructor, whose works are constantly open to the public eye, and from which we are learning lessons, good or bad, whether we will or not. I think it is Goethe who calls architecture frozen music. I am glad to see these tall piles rearing their ornamented fronts on every side of us, even though they are intended for purposes of trade; for every one of them is a reproach to the untasteful structures around it, and an example which future builders must copy, if they do not surpass. The quaint beauty which charms us in Rouen, and in the old towns of Belgium,—the high pitched gables leaning over, as if yearning to get across the narrow street,—these all belong to another age, and we may not possess them; but the architecture which, in its simplicity or its magnificence, speaks its adaptedness to our climate and our social wants, is within our reach, and is capable of making our cities equal to any in the world.

I have a great liking for streets. In the freshness of morning, the glare of noonday, and the coolness of evening, they have an equal charm for me. I like that market-carty period of the day, before Labour has taken up his shovel and his hoe, before the sun has tipped the chimneys with gold, and reinspired the dolorous symphony of human toil, just as his earliest beams were wont to draw supernal melodies from old Memnon's statue. There is a holy quiet in that hour, which, could we preserve it in our minds, would keep us clear from many a wrong and meanness, into which the bustle and the heat of passion betray us, and would sanctify our day. In that time, the city seems wrapped in a silent ecstasy of adoration. The incense of its worship curls up from innumerous chimneys, and hangs over it like the fragrant cloud which hovers over the altars where saints have prayed, and religion's most august rites have been celebrated for centuries. In the continental cities, large numbers of people may be seen at that early hour repairing to the churches. They are drawn together by no spasmodic, spiritual stimulation; they do not assemble to hear their fellow-sinners tell with nasal twang how bad they were once, and how good they are now, nor to implore the curse of Heaven upon those who differ from them in their belief or disbelief. They kneel beneath those consecrated arches, joining in a worship in which scarce an audible word is uttered, and drawing from it new strength to tread the thorns of life. In our own cities, too, people—generally of the poorer classes—may be seen wending their way in the early morning to churches and chapels, humbler than the marble and mosaic sanctuaries of Europe, but one with them in that faith and worship which radiates from the majestic Lateran basilica, (omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput,) and encircles the world with its anthems and supplications.

A little later in the morning, and the silence is broken by the clattering carts of the dispensers of that fluid without which custards would be impossible. The washing of doorsteps and sidewalks, too, begins to interfere with your perambulations, and to dim the lustre which No. 97, High Holborn, has imparted to your shoes. Bridget leans upon her wet broom, and talks with Anne, who leaves her water-pail for a little conference, in which the affairs of the two neighbouring families of Smith and Jenkins receive, you may be sure, due attention. Men smoking short and odorous pipes, and carrying small, mysterious-looking tin pails, begin to awaken the echoes with their brogans, and to prove him a slanderer who should say they have no music in their soles. Newspaper carriers, bearing the damp chronicles of the world's latest history bestrapped to their sides, hurry along, dispensing their favours into areas and doorways, seasoning my friend Thompson's breakfast with the reports of the councils of kings, or with the readable inventions of "our own correspondent," and delighting the gentle Mrs. Thompson with a full list of deaths and marriages, or another fatal railway accident. Then the omnibuses begin to rattle and jolt along the streets, carrying such masculine loads that they deserve for the time to be called mail coaches. Later, an odour as of broiled mackerel salutes the sense; school children, with their shining morning faces, begin to obstruct your way, and the penny postman, with his burden of joy and sorrow, hastens along and rings peremptorily at door after door. Then the streets assume by degrees a new character. Toil is engaged in its workshops and in by-places, and staid respectability, in its broadcloth and its glossy beaver, wends its deliberate way to its office or its counting-house, unhindered by aught that can disturb its equanimity, unless, perchance, it meets with a gang of street-sweepers in the full exercise of their dusty avocation.

Who can adequately describe that most inalienable of woman's rights—that favourite employment of the sex—which is generally termed shopping? Who can describe the curiosity which overhauls a wilderness of dress patterns, and the uncomplaining patience of the shopman who endeavours to suit the lady so hard to be suited,—his well-disguised disappointment when she does not purchase, and her husband's exasperation when she does? Not I, most certainly, for I detest shops, have little respect for fashions, lament the necessity of buying clothes, and wish most heartily that we could return to the primeval fig-leaves.

I love the by-streets of a city—the streets whose echoes are never disturbed by the heavy-laden wagons which bespeak the greatness of our manufacturing interests. Formerly the houses in such streets wore an air of sobriety and respectability, and the good housewifery which reigned within was symbolized by the bright polish of the brass door-plate, or bell-pull, or knocker. Now they are grown more pretentious, and the brass has given place to an outward and visible sign of silver. But the streets retain their old characteristics, and are strangers to any sound more inharmonious than the shouts of sportive children, or the tones of a hand-organ. I do not profess to be a musical critic, but I have been gifted by nature with a tolerable idea of time and tune; yet I am not ashamed to say that I do not despise hand-organs. They have given me "Sweet Home" in the cities of Italy, Yankee Doodle in the Faubourg St. Germain; and the best melodies of Europe's composers are daily ground out under my windows. I have no patience with these canting people who talk about productive labour, and who see in the organ-grinder who limps around, looking up expectantly for the remunerating copper, only a vagabond whom it is expedient for the police to counsel to "move on." These peripatetic dispensers of harmony are full as useful members of society as the majority of our legislators, and have a far more practical talent for organization. Douglas Jerrold once said that he never saw an Italian image merchant, with his Graces, and Venuses, and Apollos at sixpence a head, that he did not spiritually touch his hat to him: "It is he who has carried refinement into the poor man's house; it is he who has accustomed the eyes of the multitude to the harmonious forms of beauty." Let me apply these kindly expressions of the dead dramatist and wit to the organ-grinders. They have carried music into lanes and slums, which, without them, would never have known any thing more melodious than a watchman's rattle, and have made the poorest of our people familiar with harmonies that might "create a soul under the ribs of death." Occasionally their music may be instrumental in producing a feeling of impatience, so that I wish that their "Mary Ann" were married off, and that Norma would "hear," and make an end of it; but my better feelings triumph in the end, and I would not interfere with the poor man's and the children's concert to hear a strain from St. Cecilia's viol. Let the grinders be encouraged! May the evil days foretold in ancient prophecy never come among us, when the grinders shall cease because they are few!

It is at evening that the poetic element is found most abundant in the streets of cities. There is to me something of the sublime in the long lines of glittering shop-windows that skirt Regent Street and the Boulevards. Dr. Johnson exhorted the people who attended the sale of his friend Thrale's brewery, to remember that it was not the mere collection of boilers, and tubs, and vats which they saw around them, for which they were about to bargain, but "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice"; and, in a similar spirit, I see in the shop windows not merely the silks and laces, and the other countless luxuries and wonders which delight the eye of taste and form the source of wealth to multitudes, but a vast exposition of the results of that industry, which, next to religion and obedience to law, is the surest foundation of national greatness, and which shows us, behind the frowning Providence that laid on man the curse of labour, the smiling face of divine beneficence. There, in one great collection, may be seen the fruits of the toil of millions. To produce that gorgeous display, artists have cudgelled their weary brains; operatives have suffered; ship-masters have strained their eyes over their charts and daily observations, and borne patiently with the provoking vagaries of the "lee main brace"; sailors have climbed the icy rigging and furled the tattered topsails with hands cracked and bleeding; for that, long trains of camels freighted with the rich products of the golden East, "from silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon," have toiled with their white-turbaned drivers across the parching desert; thousands of busy hands have plied the swift shuttle in the looms of Brussels, and Tournai, and Lyons; and thousands in deep and almost unfathomable mines have suffered a living death. Manchester and Birmingham have been content to wear their suit of mourning that those windows may be radiant and gay. The tears, and sweat, and blood of myriads have been poured out behind those shining panes transmuted into shapes that fill the beholder with wonder and delight. "In our admiration of the plumage we forget the dying bird." Nevertheless, above the roar and bustle of those whirling thoroughfares, above the endless groan and "infinite fierce chorus" of manhood ground down, and starving in bondage more cruel because it does not bear the name of slavery, I hear the carol of virtuous and well-rewarded labour, and the cheerful song of the white-capped lace-makers of Belgium and the vine-dressers of Italy reminds me that powerful wrong does not have every thing its own way even in this world.

I did intend to have gone farther in my evening walk; but time and space alike forbid it. I wished to leave the loud roaring avenues for those more quiet streets, where every sight and sound speak of domestic comfort, or humble fidelity, or patient effort; where the brilliancy of splendid mansions is but imperfectly veiled by rich and heavy draperies; where high up gleams the lamp of the patient student, happy in his present obscurity because he dreams of coming fame; and where the tan on the pavement and the mitigated light from the windows are eloquent of suffering and the sleepless affection that ministers to its unspoken wants. But I must stop. If, however, I have shown one of my readers, who regrets that he is obliged to dwell in a city, that there is much that is beautiful in paved streets and smoke-stained walls, and that, if we only open our eyes to see them, even though the fresh fields and waving woods may be miles away, the beauties of nature daily fold us in their bosom,—I shall feel that I have not tasked my tired brain and gouty right hand entirely in vain.

Money, whatever those who affect misanthropy or a sublime superiority to all temporal things may say to the contrary, is a very desirable thing. We all enjoy the visit of the great Alexander to the contented inhabitant of the imperishable tub, who was alike independent of the good will and displeasure of that mighty monarch; we sympathize with all the bitter things that Timon says when he is reduced from wealth to beggary; and we are never tired of lamenting, with Virgil, that the human heart should be such an abject prey to this accursed hunger for gold. I am not sure that Horace would not be dearer to us, if he had lived in a "three-pair-back" in some obscure street, and his deathless odes had been inspired by fear of a shrewish landlady or an inexorable sheriff, instead of being an honoured guest at the imperial court, and a recipient of the splendid patronage of a MÆcenas and an Augustus. Poetical justice seems to require a setting of the most cheerless poverty for the full development of the lustre of genius. At least, we think so, at times;—though, under it all, admire as we may the successful struggles of the want-stricken bard,—we do not envy him his penury. We should shrink from his gifts and his fame, if they were offered to us with his sufferings. For underneath our abstract magnanimity lurks the conviction that money is by no means a bad thing, after all. Our enthusiasm is awakened by contemplating the self-forgetful career of Francis of Assisi, who chose Poverty for his bride, and whose name is in benediction among men, even six centuries after he entered into possession of that kingdom which was promised to the poor in spirit; and, if we should chance to see a more modern bearer of that Christian name, who worshipped the wealth which the ancient saint despised; who trampled down honest poverty in his unswerving march towards opulence; who looked unmoved upon the tears of the widow and the orphan; who exercised his sordid apostolate even to the last gasp of his miserable life; and whose name (unblessed by the poor, and unhonoured by canonization) became, in the brief period that it outlived him, a byword and a synonyme of avarice,—we should not fail to visit his memory with a cordial malediction. But, in spite of all our veneration for Francis, the apostle of holy poverty, and of loathing for his namesake, the apostle of unholy wealth, we cannot help wishing that we had a little more of that which the Saint cast away, and the miser took in exchange for his soul.

A little more—that is the phrase—and there is no human being, rich or poor, who does not think that "a little more" is all that is needed to fill up the measure of his earthly happiness. It is for this that the gambler risks his winnings, and the merchant perils the gains of many toilsome years. For this, some men labour until they lose the faculty of enjoying the fruit of their exertions; and this is the ignis fatuus that goes dancing on before others, leading them at last into that bog of bankruptcy from which they never wholly extricate themselves. Enough is a word unknown in the lexicon of those who have once tasted the joy of having money at interest, and there are very few men who practically appreciate the wisdom of the ancient dramatist who tells us that

"He is most rich who stops at competence,—

Not labours on till the worn heart grows sere,—

Who, wealth attained, upon some loftier aim

Fixes his gaze, and never turns it backward."

"Give me neither poverty nor riches," has been my prayer through life, as it was that of the ancient sage; and it has always been my opinion that a man who owns even a single acre of land within a convenient distance of State Street or of the Astor House, is just as well off as if he were rich. My petition has been answered: but it must be confessed that when I mouse in the book shops, or turn over the rich portfolios of the print dealers, I feel that I am poor indeed. I do not envy him who can adorn the walls of his dwelling with the masterpieces of ancient or modern art on their original canvas; but I do crave those faithful reproductions which we owe to the engraver's skill, and which come so near my grasp as to aggravate my covetousness, and make me speak most disrespectfully of my unelastic purse.

Few people have spent any considerable time abroad without being for a season in straitened circumstances. A mistake may have been made in reckoning up one's cash, or a bill may be longer than was expected, or one's banker may temporarily suspend payment; and suddenly he who never knew a moment's anxiety about his pecuniary affairs finds himself wondering how he can pay for his lodgings, and where his next day's beefsteak is coming from. It was my good fortune once to undergo such a trial in Paris. I say good fortune—for, unpleasant as it was at the time, it was one of the most precious experiences of my life. I do not think that a true, manly character can be formed without placing the subject in the position of a ship's helm, when she is in danger of getting aback; to speak less technically, he must (once in his life, at least) be hard up.

I was younger in those days than I am now, and was living for a time in the gay capital of France. My lodgings were in one of those quiet streets that lead to the Place Ventadour, in which the Italian Opera House stands. My room was about twelve feet square, was handsomely furnished, and decorated with a large mirror, and a polished oaken floor that rivalled the mirror in brilliancy. Its window commanded an unobstructed view of a court-yard about the size of the room itself; but, as I was pretty high up (on the second floor coming down) my light was good, and I could not complain. As I write, it seems as if I could hear the old concierge blacking boots and shoes away down at the bottom of that well of a court-yard, enlivening his toil with an occasional snatch from some old song, and now and then calling out to his young wife within the house, with a clear voice, "Marie!"—the accent of the final syllable being prolonged in a preternatural manner. And then out of the same depths came a melodious response from Marie's blithesome voice, that made me stop shaving to enjoy it—a voice that seemed in perfect harmony with the cool breath and bright sky of that sunny spring morning. Marie was a representative woman of her class. I do not believe that she could have been placed in any honest position, however high, that she would not have adorned. Her simplicity and good nature conciliated the good will of every one who addressed her, and I have known her quiet, lady-like dignity to inspire even some loud and boastful Americans, who called on me, with a momentary sentiment of respect. They appeared almost like gentlemen for two or three minutes after speaking with her. Upon my honour, sir, it was worth considerably more than I paid for my room to have the privilege of living under the same roof with such a cheery sunbeam—to see her seated daily at the window of the conciergerie with a snow-white cap on her head and a pleasant smile on her face; to interrupt her sewing, with an inquiry whether any letters had come for me, and be charmed with her alacrity in handing me the expected note, and the key of numero dix-huit. Her nightly Bon soir, M'sieur, was like a benediction from a guardian angel; her vivacious Bon jour was an augury of an untroubled day; it would have made the darkest, foggiest November afternoon seem as bright, and fresh, and exhilarating as a morning in June. These are trifles, I know, but it is of trifles such as these that the true happiness of life is made up. Great joys, like great griefs, do not possess the soul so completely as we think, as Wellington victorious, or Napoleon defeated, at Waterloo, would have discovered, if, in that great hour, they had been visited with a twinge of neuralgia in the head, or a gnawing dyspepsia.

The influenza, or grippe, as the French call it, is not a pleasant thing under any circumstances; but I think of a four days' attack, during which Marie attended to my wants, as a period of unmixed pleasure. She seemed to hover about my sick bed, she moved so gently, and her voice (to use the words of my former cherished friend, S. T. Coleridge,) was like

"——a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night

Singeth a quiet tune."

"Was it that Monsieur would be able to drink a little tea, or would it please him to taste some cool lemonade?" HÉlas! Monsieur was too malade for that; but the kind attentions of that estimable little woman were more refreshing than a Baltic Sea of the beverage that cheers but does not inebriate, or all the aid that the lemon groves of Italy could afford. Marie's politeness was the genuine article, and came right from her pure, kind heart. It was as far removed from that despicable obsequiousness which passes current with so many for politeness, as old-fashioned Christian charity is from modern philanthropy.

But—pardon my garrulity—I am forgetting my story. In a moment of kindly forgetfulness I lent a considerable portion of my available funds to a friend who was short, and who was obliged to return to America, via England. I was in weekly expectation of a draft from home that would place me once more upon my financial legs. One, two, three weeks passed away, and the letters from America were distributed every Tuesday morning, but there was none for me. It gave me a kind of faint sensation when the clerk at the banker's gave me the disappointing answer, and I went into the reading-room of the establishment to read the new American papers, and to speculate upon the cause of the unremitting neglect of my friends at home. I shall never forget my feelings when, in the third week of my impecuniosity, I found my exchequer reduced to the small sum of eight francs. I saw the truth of Shakespeare's words describing the "consumption of the purse" as an incurable disease. I had many acquaintances and a few friends in Paris, but I determined not to borrow if it could possibly be avoided. Five days would elapse before another American mail arrived, and I resolved that my remaining eight francs should carry me through to the eventful Tuesday, which I felt sure would bring the longed-for succor. I found a little dingy shop, in a narrow street behind the Church of St. Roch, where I could get a breakfast, consisting of a bowl of very good coffee and piece of bread (I asked for the end of the loaf) for six sous. My dinners I managed to bring down to the sum of twelve sous, by choosing obscure localities for the obtaining of that repast, and confining myself to those simple and nutritious viands which possessed the merit attributed to the veal pie by Samuel Weller, being "werry fillin' at the price." Sometimes I went to bed early, to avoid the inconveniences of a light dinner. One day I dined with a friend at his lodgings, but I did not enjoy his hospitality; I felt guilty, as if I had sacrificed friendship to save my dwindling purse. The coarsest bread and the most suspicious beef of the Latin Quarter would have been more delicious to me under such circumstances than the best ragout of the Boulevards or the Palais Royal.

Of course, this state of things weighed heavily upon my spirits. I heard Marie tell her husband that Monsieur l'Anglais was bien triste. I avoided the friends with whom I had been used to meet, and (remembering what a sublime thing it is to suffer and be strong) sternly resolved not to borrow till I found myself completely gravelled. It grieved me to be obliged to pass the old blind man who played the flageolet on the Pont des Arts without dropping a copper into his tin box; but the severest blow was the being compelled to put off my obliging washerwoman and her reasonable bill. The time passed away quickly, however. The Louvre, with its treasures of art, was a blessed asylum for me. It cost me nothing, and I was there free from the importunities of distress which I could not relieve. In the halls of the great public library—now the BibliothÈque ImpÉriale—I found myself at home. Among the studious throng that occupied its vast reading rooms, I was as independent as if my name had been Rothschild, or the treasures of the Bank of France had been at my command. The master spirits with whom I there communed do not ask what their votaries carry in their pockets. There is no property-test for admission to the privileges of their companionship. I felt the equality which prevails in the republic of letters. I knew that my left hand neighbour was not, in that quiet place, superior to me on account of his glossy coat and golden-headed cane, and that I was no better than the reader at my right hand because he wore a blouse. I jingled my two or three remaining francs in my pocket, and thought how useless money was, when the lack of it was no bar to entrance into the hallowed presence of

"Those dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule

Our spirits from their urns."

I shall not soon forget the intense satisfaction with which I read in the regulations of the library a strict prohibition against offering any fees or gratuities whatever to its blue-coated officials.

At last the expected Tuesday morning came. My funds had received an unlooked-for diminution by receiving a letter from my friend whose wants had led me into difficulty. He was just embarking at Liverpool—hoped that my remittance had arrived in due season—promised to send me a draft as soon as he reached New York—envied my happiness at remaining in Paris—and left me to pay the postage on his valediction. It would be difficult for any disinterested person to conceive how dear the thoughtless writer of that letter was to me in that unfortunate hour. Then, too, I was obliged to lay out six of those cherished copper coins for a ride in an omnibus, as I was caught in a shower over in the vicinity of St. Sulpice, and could not afford to take the risk of a rheumatic attack by getting wet. I well remember the cool, business-like air with which that relentless conducteur pocketed those specimens of the French currency that were so precious in my sight. Yet, in spite of these serious and unexpected drains upon my finances, I had four sous left after paying for my breakfast on that memorable morning. I felt uncommonly cheerful at the prospect of being relieved from my troubles, and stopped several minutes after finishing my coffee, and conversed with the tidy shopwoman with a fluency that astonished both of us. I really regretted for the moment that I was so soon to be placed in funds, and should no longer enjoy her kindly services. I chuckled audibly to myself as I pursued my way to the banker's, to think what an immense joke it would be for some skilful Charley Bates or Artful Dodger to try to pick my pocket just then. An ancient heathen expecting an answer from the oracle of Delphos, a modern candidate for office awaiting the count of the vote, never felt more oppressed with the importance of the result than I did when I entered the banking-house. My delight at having a letter from America put into my hands could only be equalled by my dismay when I opened it, and found, instead of the draft, a request from a casual acquaintance who had heard that I might possibly return home through England, and who, if I did, would be under great obligations if I would take the trouble to procure and carry home for him an English magpie and a genuine King Charles spaniel!

I did not stop to read the papers that morning. As I was leaving the establishment, I met its chief partner, to whom I could not help expressing my disappointment. He was one of your hard-faced, high-cheek-boned Yankees, with a great deal of speculation in his eyes. I should as soon have thought of attempting the cultivation of figs and dates at Franconia as of trying to get a small loan from him. So I pushed on into those busy streets whose liveliness seemed to mock my pitiable condition. I had come to it at last. I had got to borrow. A physician, who now stands high among the faculty in Boston, was then residing in Paris, and, as I had been on familiar terms with him, I determined to have recourse to him. He occupied two rooms in the fifth story of a house in the Rue St. HonorÉ. His apartments were more remarkable for their snugness than for the extent of accommodation they afforded. A snuff-taking friend once offered to present the doctor with one of his silk handkerchiefs to carpet that parlour with. But the doctor's heart was not to be measured by the size of his rooms, and I knew that he would be a friend in need. The concierge told me that the doctor had not gone out, and, in obedience to the instructions of that functionary, I mounted the long staircase and frapped at the door of that estimable disciple of Galen. It was not my usual thrice-repeated stroke upon the door; it was a timid and uncertain knock—the knock of a borrower. The doctor said that he had been rather short himself for a week or two, but that he should undoubtedly find a letter in the General Post that morning that would place him in a condition to give me a lift. This was said in a manner that put me entirely at my ease, and made me feel that by accepting his loan I should be conferring an inestimable favour upon him. As we walked towards the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, I amused him with the story of the preceding week's adventures. He laughed heartily, and after a few minutes I joined with him, though I must say that the events, as they occurred, did not particularly impress me as subjects for very hilarious mirth. The doctor inquired at the poste restante in vain. His friends had been as remiss as mine, and we had both got to wait another week. The doctor was not an habitually profane man, but as we came through the court-yard of the post office, he expressed his anxiety as to what the devil we should do. He examined his purse, and found that his available assets amounted to a trifle more than nineteen francs. He looked as troubled as he had before looked gay. I generously offered him my four remaining coppers, and told him that I would stand by him as long as he had a centime in his pocket. Such an exhibition of magnanimity could not be made in vain. We stopped in front of the church of Our Lady of Victories, and took the heroic resolve to club our funds and go through the week of expectation together. And we did it. I wish that space would allow of my describing the achievements of that week. Medical books were cast aside for the study of domestic economy. I do not believe that a similar sum of money ever went so far before, even in Paris. We found a place in a narrow street, near the Odeon, where fried potatoes were sold very cheap; we bought our bread by the loaf, as it was cheaper—the loaves being so long that the doctor said that he understood, when he first saw them, why bread was called the staff of life. We resorted to all sorts of expedients to make a franc buy as much as possible of the necessaries of life. We frequented with great assiduity all places of public amusement where there was no fee for admission. The public galleries, the libraries, the puppet shows in the Champs ElysÉes, were often honoured with our presence. We made a joke of our necessities, and carried it through to the end. The next Tuesday morning found us, after breakfasting, on our way to the post office, with a franc left in our united treasury. I had begun to give up all hopes of our ever getting a letter from home, and insisted upon the doctor's trying his luck first. He was successful, but the severest part of the joke came when he found that his letter (contrary to all precedent) was not postpaid. The polite official at the window must have thirty-two sous for it, and we had but twenty. Our laughter showed him the whole state of the case, and we left him greatly amused at our promises to return soon, and get the desirable prize. My application at the banker's was successful, too, and before noon we were both prepared to laugh a siege to scorn. I paid the rosy-cheeked washerwoman, bought Marie a neat crucifix to hang up in the place of a very rude one in her conciergerie, out of sheer good humour; and that evening the doctor and I laughed over the recollections of the week and a good dinner in a quiet restaurant in the Palais Royal.

The human heart loves corners. The very word "corner" is suggestive of snugness and cosy comfort, and he who has no liking for them is something more or less than mortal. I have seen people whose ideas of comfort were singularly crude and imperfect; who thought that it consisted in keeping a habitation painfully clean, and in having every book or paper that might give token of the place being the dwelling of a human being, carefully out of sight. We have great cause for thankfulness that such people are not common, (for a little wholesome negligence is by no means an unpleasant thing,) so that we can say that mankind generally likes to snuggify itself, and is therefore fond of a corner. This natural fondness is manifested by the child with his playthings and infantile sports, in one of which, at least, the attractions of corners for the feline race are brought strongly before his inquisitive mind. And how is this liking strengthened and built up as the child increases in secular knowledge, and learns in the course of his poetical and historical researches all about the personal history of Master John Horner, whose sedentary habits and manducation of festive pastry are famous wherever the language of Shakespeare and Milton is spoken!

This love of nooks and corners is especially observable in those who are obliged to live in style and splendour. Many a noble English family has been glad to escape from the bondage of its rank, and has found more real comfort in the confinement of a Parisian entresol than amid the gloomy grandeur of its London home. Those who are condemned to dwell in palaces bear witness to this natural love of snugness, by choosing some quiet sunny corner in their marble halls, and making it as comfortable as if it were a cosy cottage. Napoleon and Eugenie delight to escape from the magnificence of the Tuileries to that quiet and homelike refuge for people who are burdened with imperial dignity, amid the thick foliage and green alleys of St. Cloud. Even in that mighty maze, the Vatican, the rooms inhabited by the Sovereign Pontiff are remarkably comfortable and unpalatial, and prove the advantages of smallness and simplicity over gilding and grandeur, for the ordinary purposes of life. An American gentleman once called on the great and good Cardinal Cheverus, and while talking with him of his old friends in America, said that the contrast between the Cardinal's position in the episcopal palace of Bordeaux and in his former humble residence when he was Bishop of Boston, was a very striking one. The humble and pious prelate smiled, and taking his visitor by the arm, led him from the stately hall in which they were conversing, into a narrow room furnished in a style of austere simplicity: "The palace," said he, "which you have seen and admired is the residence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux; but this little chamber is where John Cheverus lives."

Literary men and statesmen have always coveted the repose of a corner where they might be undisturbed by the wranglings of the world. Twickenham, and Lausanne, and Ferney, and Rydal Mount have become as shrines to which the lover of books would fain make pilgrimages. Have we not a Sunnyside and an Idlewild even in this new land of ours! Cicero, in spite of his high opinion of Marcus Tullius, and his thirst for popular applause, often grew tired of urban life, and was glad to forsake the Senatus populusque Romanus for the quiet of his snug villa in a corner of the hill country overlooking Frascati. And did not our own Tully love to fling aside the burden of his power, and find his Tusculum on the old South Shore? In the Senate Chamber or the Department of State you might see the Defender of the Constitution, but it was at Marshfield that Webster really lived. Horace loved good company and the entertainment of his wealthy patrons and friends, but he loved snugness and quiet even more. In one of his odes he apostrophizes his friend Septimius, and describes to him the delight he takes in the repose of his Tiburtine retreat from the bustle of the metropolis, saying that of all places in the world that corner is the most smiling and grateful to him:—

Ille terrarum mihi prÆter omnes

Angulus ridet.

If we look into our hearts, I think we shall most of us find that we have a clinging attachment to some favourite corner, as well as Mr. Horatius Flaccus. There is at least one corner in the city of Boston, which has many pleasant associations for the lover of literature. Allusion was made a few days since, in an evening paper, to the well-known fact that the old building at the corner of Washington and School Streets was built in 1713, and is therefore older by seventeen years than the Old South Church. That little paragraph reminded me of some passages in the history of that ancient edifice related to me by an ancestor of mine, for whom the place had an almost romantic charm.

The old building (my grandfather used to tell me) was originally a dwelling-house. It had the high wainscots, the broad staircases, the carved cornices, and all the other blessed old peculiarities of the age in which it was built, which we irreverently have improved away. One hundred years ago the old corner was considered rather an aristocratic place of residence. It was slightly suburban in its position, for the town of Boston had an affection for Copp's Hill, and the inhabitants clustered about that sacred eminence as if the southern parts of their territory were a quicksand. Trees were not uncommon in the vicinity of the foot of School Street in those days, and no innovating Hathorne had disturbed the quiet of the place with countless omnibuses. The old corner was then occupied by an English gentleman named Barmesyde, who gave good dinners, and was on intimate terms with the colonial governor. My venerated relative, to whom I have already alluded, enjoyed his friendship, and in his latter days delighted to talk of him, and tell his story to those who had heard it so often, that Hugh Greville Barmesyde, Esquire, seemed like a companion of their own young days.

Old Barmesyde sprang from an ancient Somersetshire family, from which he inherited a considerable property, and a remarkable energy of character. He increased his wealth during a residence of many years in Antigua, at the close of which he relinquished his business, and returned to England to marry a beautiful English lady to whom he had engaged himself in the West Indies. He arrived in England the day after the funeral of his betrothed, who had fallen a victim to intermittent fever. Many of his relations had died in his absence, and he found himself like a stranger in the very place where he had hoped to taste again the joys of home. The death of the lady he loved so dearly, and the changes in his circle of friends, were so depressing to him, that he resolved to return to the West Indies. He thought it would be easier for him to continue in the associations he had formed there than to recover from the shock his visit to England had given him. So he took passage in a brig from Bristol to Antigua, and said farewell forever, as he supposed, to his native land. Before half the voyage was accomplished, the vessel was disabled: as Mr. Choate would express it, a north-west gale inflicted upon her a serious, an immedicable injury; and she floated a wreck upon the foamy and uneven surface of the Atlantic. She was fallen in with by another British vessel, bound for Boston, which took off her company, and with the renewal of the storm she foundered before the eyes of those who had so lately risked their lives upon her seaworthiness. When Mr. Barmesyde arrived in Boston, he found an old friend in the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Pownall had but lately received his appointment from the Crown, and being a comparative stranger in Boston, he was as glad to see Mr. Barmesyde as the latter was to see him. It was several months before an opportunity to reach the West Indies offered itself, and when one did occur, Mr. Barmesyde only used it to communicate with his agent at Antigua. He had given up all ideas of returning thither, and had settled down, with his negro servant Cato, to housekeeping at the corner of School Street, within a few doors of his gubernatorial friend.

Governor Pownall's term of office was not a long one, but even when he was removed, Mr. Barmesyde stuck faithfully to the old corner. He had found many warm friends here, and could no longer consider himself alone in the world. He was a man of good natural powers, and of thorough education. He was one of those who seem never to lose any thing that they have once acquired. In person he was tall and comely, and my grandfather said that he somewhat resembled General Washington as he appeared twenty-five years later, excepting that Mr. Barmesyde's countenance was more jolly and port-winy. From all I can learn, his face, surmounted by that carefully-powdered head of hair, must have resembled a red brick house after a heavy fall of snow. If Hugh Barmesyde had a fault, I am afraid it was a fondness for good living. He attended to his marketing in person, assisted by his faithful Cato, who was as good a judge in such matters as his master, and who used to vindicate the excellence of his master's fare by eating until he was black in the face. For years there were few vessels arrived from England without bringing choice wines to moisten the alimentary canal of Mr. Barmesyde. The Windward Isles contributed bountifully to keep alight the festive flame that blazed in his cheery countenance, and to make his flip and punch the very best that the province could produce. Every Sunday morning Mr. Barmesyde's best buckles sparkled in the sunbeams as he walked up School Street to the King's Chapel. Not that he was an eminently religious man, but he regarded religion as an institution that deserved encouragement for the sake of maintaining a proper balance in society. The quiet order and dignity of public worship pleased him, the liturgy gratified his taste, and so Sunday after Sunday his big manly voice headed the responses, and told that its possessor had done many things that he ought not to have done, and had left undone a great many that he ought to have done.

Mr. Barmesyde was not a mere feeder on good things, however; he had a cultivated taste for literature, and his invoices of wine were frequently accompanied by parcels of new books. The old gentleman took a great delight in the English literature of that day. Fielding and Smollett were writing then, and no one took a keener pleasure in their novels than he. He imported, as he used to boast, the first copy of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary that ever came to America, and was never tired of reading that stately and pathetic preface, or of searching for the touches of satire and individual prejudice that abound in that entertaining work. His well-worn copy of the Spectator, in eight duodecimo volumes, presented by him to my grandfather, now graces one of my book shelves. His books were always at the service of his friends, who availed themselves of the old gentleman's kindness to such an extent that his collection might have been called a circulating library. But it was not merely for the frequent "feast of reason and flow of soul" that his friends were indebted to him. He was the very incarnation of hospitality. I am afraid that my excellent grandparent had an uncommon admiration for this trait in the old fellow's character, for a frequent burning twinge in one of the toes of my right foot, and occasionally in the knuckles of my left hand, reminds me of his fondness for keeping his legs under Mr. Barmesyde's festive mahogany. A few years ago, when a new floor was laid in the cellar at the old corner, a large number of empty bottles was discovered, whose appearance bore witness to the previous good character of the place as a cellar. Some labels were also found bearing dates like 1697, 1708, 1721, &c. To this day the occupants of the premises take pleasure in showing the dark wine stains on the old stairs leading to the cellar.

But Mr. Barmesyde's happiness, like the gioia de profani, which we have all heard the chorus in the last scene of Lucrezia Borgia discordantly allude to, was but transient. The dispute which had been brewing for years between the colonies and the mother country, began to grow unpleasantly warm. Mr. B. was a stanch loyalist. He allowed that injustice had been done to the colonies, but still he could not throw off his allegiance to his most religious and gracious king, George III., Defender of the Faith. He was ready to do and to suffer as much for his principles as the most ardent of the revolutionists. And he was not alone in his loyalty. There were many old-fashioned conservative people in this revolutionary and ismatic city in those days as well as now. The publication in this city of a translation of De Maistre's great defence of the monarchical principle of government, (the Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions,) and of the late Mr. Oliver's "Puritan Commonwealth," proves that the surrender of Cornwallis and the formation of the Federal Constitution did not destroy the confidence of a good many persons in the truth of the principles on which the loyalists took their stand. The unfortunate occurrence in State Street, March 5, 1770, gave Mr. B. great pain. He regretted the bloodshed, but he regretted more deeply to see many persons so blinded by their hatred of the king's most excellent majesty, as to defend and praise the action of a lawless mob just punished for their riotous conduct. The throwing overboard of the tea excited his indignation. He stigmatized it (and not without some reason on his side) as a wanton and cowardly act,—a destruction of the property of parties against whom the town of Boston had no cause of complaint,—a deed which proved how little real regard for justice and honour there might be among those who were the loudest in their shrieks for freedom. Of course he could not give utterance to these sentiments without exciting the ire of many people; and feeling that he could no longer safely remain in this country, he concluded to return to England. In the spring of 1774, Hugh Greville Barmesyde gave his last dinner to a few of the faithful at the old corner, and sailed the next day with a sorrowing heart and his trusty Cato for the land of his birth. He spent the remainder of his days in London, where he died in 1795. He was interred in the vault belonging to his family, in the north transept of the Parish Church of Shepton Mallet, in Somersetshire, where there is still a handsome tablet commemorating his many virtues and the inconsolable grief of the nephews and nieces whom his decease enriched.

Some of the less orderly "liberty boys" bore witness to the imperfect sympathy that existed between them and the late occupant of the old corner, by breaking sundry panes of glass in the parlour windows the night after his departure. The old house, during the revolutionary struggle, followed the common prosaic course of ordinary occupancy. There was "marrying and giving in marriage" under that steep and ancient roof in those days, and troops of clamorous children used to play upon the broad stone steps, and tarnish the brasses that Cato was wont to keep so clean and bright. In the latter part of the last century the old house underwent a painful transformation. An enterprising apothecary perverted it to the uses of trade, and decorated its new windows with the legitimate jars of various coloured fluids. It is now nearly half a century since it became a bookstore. Far be it from me to offer any disturbance to the modesty of my excellent friends, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, by enlarging upon the old corner in its present estate. It were useless to write about any thing so familiar. They are young men yet, and must pardon me if I have used the prerogative of age and spoken too freely about their old establishment and its reminiscences. I love the old corner, and should not hesitate to apply to it the words of Horace which I have quoted above. I love its freedom from pretence and ostentation. New books seem more grateful to me there than elsewhere; for the dinginess of Paternoster Row harmonizes better with literature than the plate glass and gairish glitter of Piccadilly or Regent Street.

The large looking-glass which stands near the Washington Street entrance to the old corner used to adorn the dining-room where Mr. Barmesyde gave so many feasts. It is the only relic of that worthy gentleman now remaining under that roof. If that glass could only publish its reflexions during the past century, what an entertaining work on the curiosities of literature and of life it might make! It is no ordinary place that may boast of having been the familiar resort of people like Judge Story, Mr. Otis, Channing, Kirkland, Webster, Choate, Everett, Charles Kemble and the elder Vandenhoff with their gifted daughters, Ellen Tree, the Woods, Finn, Dickens, Thackeray, James, Bancroft, Prescott, Emerson, Brownson, Dana, Halleck, Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Willis, Bayard Taylor, Whipple, Parkman, Hilliard, Sumner, Parsons, Sprague, and so many others whose names will live in literature and history. It is a very pleasant thing to see literary men at their ease, as they always are around those old counters. It is a relief to find that they can throw off at times the dignity and restraint of authorship. It is pleasant to see the lecturer and the divine put away their tiresome earnestness and severe morality, and come down to the jest of the day. It refreshes one to know that Mr. Emerson is not always orphic, and that the severely scholastic Everett can forget his elegant and harmonious sentences, and descend to common prose. For we can no more bear to think of an orator living unceasingly in oratory than we could of Signorina Zanfretta being obliged to remain constantly poised on the corde tendue.

The bust of Sir Walter Scott has filled the space above the mirror I have spoken of, for many years. It is a fine work of Chantrey's, and a good likeness of that head of Sir Walter's, so many stories high that one can never wonder where all his novels came from. Except this specimen of the plastic art, and one of Professor Agassiz, there is little that is ornamental in the ancient haunt. The green curtain that decorates the western corner of the establishment is a comparatively modern institution. It was found necessary to fence off that portion of the shop for strict business purposes. The profane converse of the world cannot penetrate those folds. Into that sanctissimum sanctissimorum no joke, however good, may enter. What a strange dispensation of Providence is it, that a man should have been for years enjoying the good society that abounds at that corner, and yet should seem to have so little liking for a quiet jest as the estimable person who conceals his seriousness behind that green curtain!

But every thing must yield to the law of nature, and the old corner must share the common lot. Some inauspicious night, the fire-alarm will sound for District III.; hoarse voices will echo at the foot of School Street, calling earnestly on No. 3 to "hold on," and No. 9 to "play away"; where erst good liquor was wont to abound water will more abound, and when the day dawns Mr. Barmesyde's old house will be an unsightly ruin,—there will be mourning and desolation among the lovers of literature, and wailing in the insurance offices in State Street. When the blackened ruins are cleared away, boys will pick up scraps of scorched manuscripts, and sell them piecemeal as parts of the original copy of Hiawatha, or Evangeline, or the Scarlet Letter. In the fulness of time, a tall, handsome stone or iron building will rise on that revered site, and we lovers of the past shall try to invest it with something of the unpretending dignity and genial associations of the present venerable pile, which will then be cherished among our most precious memories.

We are all associationists. There is no man who does not believe in association in some degree. For myself, I am firm in the faith. Let me not be misunderstood, however; I do not mean that principle of association which the late Mr. Fourier advocated in France, and Mr. Brisbane in America. I do not believe in the utopian schemes which have been ground out of the brains of philosophers who mistake vagueness and impracticability for sublimity, and which they have misnamed association. The principle of association to which I pay homage is one which finds a home in every human heart. It is that principle of our nature which, when the bereaved Queen Constance was mourning for her absent child, "stuffed out his vacant garments with his form." It is that principle which makes a man love the scenes of his boyhood, and which brings tears to the eyes of the traveller in a foreign land, when he hears a familiar strain from a hand organ, however harsh and out of tune. Even the brute creation seems to share in it; the cat is sure to be found in her favourite place at the fireside, while the tea kettle makes music on the hob; the dog, too, (let Hercules himself do what he may,) will not only have his day, but will have his chosen corner for repose, and will stick to it, however tempting you may make other places by a superabundance of door mats and other canine furniture. And the tired cart horse, when his day's labour is over, and he finds himself once more in the familiar stall, with his provender before him—do you not suppose that the associations of equine comfort by which he is surrounded are dearer to him than any hopes of the luxury and splendour of Her Britannic Majesty's stables at Windsor could be? Ask him if he would leave his present peck of oats for the chances of royal service, and a red-waistcoated, white-top-booted groom to wait upon him, and I will warrant you that he will answer nay!

There is no nation nor people that is free from this bondage of association. We treasure General Jackson's garments with respectful care in a glass case in the Patent Office at Washington; in the Louvre, you shall find preserved the crown of Charlemagne and the old gray coat of the first Napoleon; and at Westminster Abbey, (if you have the money to pay your admission fee,) you may see the plain old oaken chair in which the crowned monarchs of a thousand years have sat. Go to Rome, and stand "at the base of Pompey's statua," and association shall carry you back in imagination to the time when the mighty Julius fell. Stand upon the grassy mounds of Tusculum, and you will find yourself glowing with enthusiasm for Cicero, and wonder how you could have grown so sleepy over Quousque tandem, &c., in your schoolboy days. Climb up the Trasteverine steep to where the convent of San Onofrio suns itself in the bright blue air of Rome, and while the monks are singing the divine office where the bones of Tasso repose, you may fill your mind with memories of the bard of the crusades, in the chamber where his weary soul found the release it craved. Go to that fair capital which seems to have hidden itself among the fertile hills of Tuscany; walk through its pleasant old streets, and you shall find yourself the slave of many pleasing associations. The very place where Dante was wont to stand and gaze at that wondrous dome which Michel Angelo said he was unwilling to copy and unable to excel, is marked by an inscription in the pavement. Every street has its associations that appeal to your love of the beautiful or the heroic. Walk out into the lively streets of that city which stands at the head of the world's civilization, and you are overwhelmed with historic associations. You seem to hear the clatter of armed heels in some of those queer old alleys, and the vision of Godfrey or St. Louis, armed for the holy war, would not astonish you. The dim and stately halls of the palaces are eloquent of power, and you almost expect to see the thin, pale, thoughtful face of the great Richelieu at every corner. Over whole districts, rebellion, and anarchy, and infidelity, once wrote the history of their sway in blood, and even now, the names of the streets, as you read them, seem to fill you with terrible mementoes.

But to us, Americans, connected as we are with England in our civilization and our literature, how full of thrilling associations is London! From Whitehall, where Puritanism damned itself by the murder of a king, to Eastcheap, where Mistress Quickly served Sir John with his sherris-sack; from St. Saviour's Church, where Massinger and Fletcher lie in one grave, to Milton's tomb in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, there is hardly a street, or court, or lane, or alley, which does not appeal by some association to the student of English history or literature. He perambulates the Temple Gardens with Chaucer; he hears the partisans of the houses of York and Lancaster, as they profane the silence of that scholastic spot; he walks Fleet Street, and disputes in Bolt Court with Dr. Johnson; he smokes in the coffee-houses of Covent Garden with Dryden and Pope, and the wits of their day; he makes morning calls in Leicester Square and its neighbourhood, on Sir Philip Sidney, Hogarth, Reynolds, and Newton; he buys gloves and stockings at Defoe's shop in Cornhill; and makes excursions with Dicky Steele out to Kensington, to see Mr. Addison. Drury Lane, despite its gin, and vice, and squalour, has its associations. The old theatre is filled with them. They show you, in the smoky green-room, the chairs which once were occupied by Siddons and Kemble; the seat of Byron by the fireside in the days of his trusteeship; the mirrors in which so many dramatic worthies viewed themselves, before they were called to achieve their greatest triumphs.

Every where you find men acknowledging in their actions their allegiance to this great natural law. Our own city, too, has its associations. Who can pass by that venerable building in Union Street, which, like a deaf and dumb beggar, wears a tablet of its age upon its unsightly front, without recalling some of the events that have taken place, some of the scenes which that venerable edifice has looked down upon, since its solid timbers were jointed in the year of salvation 1685? Who can enter Faneuil Hall without a quickening of his pulse? Who can walk by the old Hancock House, and not look up at it as if he expected to see old John (the best writer on the subject of American independence) standing at the door in his shad-bellied coat, knee-breeches, and powdered wig? Who can look at the Old South Church without thinking of the part it played in the revolution, and of the time when it was obliged to yield its unwilling horsepitality to the British cavalry? Boston is by no means deficient in associations. Go to Brattle Street, to Copp's Hill, to Mount Washington, to Deer Island,—though it must be acknowledged, the only association connected with the last-named place is the Provident Association.

If there be a fault in the Yankee character, I fear it is a lack of sufficient respect for the memory of the past. Nature will have her way with us, however we may try to resist her and trample old recollections under foot. We worship prosperity too much; and the wide, straight streets of western cities, with the telegraph posts standing like sentinels on the edge of the sidewalks, and a general odour of pork-packing and new houses pervading the atmosphere, seem to our acquisitive sense more beautiful than the sculptured arch, the moss-grown tower, the quaint gable, and all the summer fragrance of the gardens of the Tuileries or the Unterdenlinden. I am afraid that we almost deserve to be classed with those who (as Mr. Thackeray says) "have no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for any thing but success."

Many are kindled into enthusiasm by meditating upon the future of this our country,—"the newest born of nations, the latest hope of mankind,"—but for myself I love better to dwell on the sure and unalterable past, than to speculate upon the glories of the coming years. While I was young, I liked, when at sea, to stand on the top-gallant forecastle, and see the proud ship cut her way through the waves that playfully covered me with spray; but of late years my pleasure has been to lean over the taffrail and muse upon the subsiding foam of the vessel's wake. The recollection even of storms and dangers is to me more grateful than the most joyful anticipation of a fair wind and the expected port. With these feelings, I cannot help being moved when I see so many who try to deaden their natural sensibility to old associations. When the old Province House passed into the hands of the estimable Mr. Ordway, I congratulated him on his success, but I mourned over the dark fate of that ancient mansion. I respected it even in its fallen state as an inn,—for it retained much of its old dignity, and the ghosts of Andros and his predecessors seemed to brush by you in its high wainscoted passages and on its broad staircases; but it did seem the very ecstasy of sacrilege to transform it into a concert-room. I rejoiced, however, a few years since, when the birthplace of B. Franklin, in Milk Street, was distinguished by an inscription to that effect in letters of enduring stone. That was a concession to the historic associations of that locality which the most sanguine could hardly have expected from the satinetters of Milk Street.

But I am forgetting my subject, and using up my time and ink in the prolegomena. My philosophy of association received a severe blow last week. It was a pleasant day, and I hobbled out on my gouty timbers for a walk. I wandered into Franklin Place, but it was not the Franklin Place of my youth. The rude hand of public improvement had not been kept even from that row of houses which, when I was a boy, was thought an ornament to our city, and was dignified with the name of the Tontine Buildings. Franklin Place looked as if two or three of its front teeth had been knocked out. I walked on, and my sorrow and dismay were increased to find that the last vestige of Theatre Alley had disappeared. It was bad enough when the old theatre and the residence of the Catholic bishops of Boston were swept away: I still clung to the old alley, and hoped that it would not pass away in my time—that before the old locality should be improved into what the profane vulgar call sightliness and respectability, I should (to use the common expressions of one of our greatest orators, who, in almost every speech and oration that he has made for some years past, has given a sort of obituary notice of himself before closing) have been "resting in peace beneath the green sods of Mount Auburn," or should have "gone down to the silent tomb."

Do not laugh, beloved reader, at the tenderness of my affection for that old place. There is a great deal of romance of a quiet and genial kind about Theatre Alley. As I first remember it, commerce had not encroached upon its precincts; no tall warehouses shut out the light from its narrow footway, and its planks were unencumbered by any intrusive bales or boxes. Old Dearborn's scale factory was the only thing to remind one of traffic in that neighbourhood, which struck a balance with fate by becoming more scaley than before, when Dearborn and his factory passed away. The stage door of the theatre was in the alley, and the walk from thence, through Devonshire Street, to the Exchange Coffee House, which was the great hotel of Boston at that time, was once well known to many whose names are now part of the history of the drama. How often was I repaid for walking through the alley by the satisfaction of meeting George Frederick Cooke, the elder Kean, Finn, Macready, Booth, Cooper, Incledon, old Mathews, or the tall, dignified Conway—or some of that goodly company that made Old Drury classical to the play-goers of forty years ago.

The two posts which used to adorn and obstruct the entrance to the alley from Franklin Street, when they were first placed there, were an occasion of indignation to a portion of the public, and of anxiety and vexation to Mr. Powell, the old manager. That estimable gentleman had often been a witness to the terror of the children and of those of the weaker sex (I hope that I shall be forgiven by the "Rev. Antoinette Brown" for using such an adjective) who sometimes met a stray horse or cow in the alley; so he placed two wooden posts just beyond the theatre, to shut out the dreaded bovine intruders. But the devout Hibernians who used to worship at the church in Franklin Street could not brook the placing of any such obstacles in their way to the performance of their religious duties; and they used to cut the posts down as often as Mr. Powell set them up, until he took refuge in the resources of science, and covered and bound them with the iron bands which imprisoned them up to a very recent period.

Old Mr. Stoughton, the Spanish consul, used to occupy the first house in Franklin Street above the alley, behind which his garden ran back for some distance. How little that worthy gentleman thought that his tulip beds and rose bushes would one day give place to a dry goods shop! SeÑor Stoughton was one of the urbanest men that ever touched a hat. If he met you in the morning, the memory of his bland and gracious salutation never departed from you during the day, and seemed to render your sleep sweeter at night. He always treated you as if you were a prince in disguise, and he were the only person in the secret of your incognito. He enjoyed the intimate friendship of that great and good man, Dr. Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, who was afterwards transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Bordeaux, and decorated with the dignity of a Prince of the Church. He, too, often walked through the old alley. The children always welcomed his approach. They respected Don Stoughton; Bishop Cheverus they loved. His very look was a benediction, and the mere glance of his eye was a Sursum corda. That calm, wise, benignant face always had a smile for the little ones who loved the neighbourhood of that humble Cathedral, and the pockets of that benevolent prelate never knew a dearth of sugar plums. Years after that happy time, a worthy Protestant minister of this vicinity—who was blessed with few or none of those prejudices against "Romanism" which are nowadays considered a necessary part of a minister's education—visited Cardinal Cheverus in his palace at Bordeaux, and found him keenly alive to every thing that concerned his old associations and friends in Boston. He declared, with tears in his eyes, and with that air of sincerity that marked every word he spoke, that he would gladly lay down the burden of the honour and power that then weighed upon him, to return to the care of his little New England flock. Now, Cardinal Cheverus was a man of taste and of kind feelings, and I will warrant you that when he thought of Boston, Theatre Alley was included among his associations, and enjoyed a share in his affectionate regrets.

Mrs. Grace Dunlap's little shop was an institution which many considered to be coexistent with the alley itself. It was just one of those places that seem in perfect harmony with Theatre Alley as it was twenty-five years ago. It was one of those shops that always seem to shun the madding crowd's ignoble strife, and seek a refuge in some cool sequestered way. The snuff and tobacco which Mrs. Dunlap used to dispense were of the best quality, and she numbered many distinguished persons among her customers. The author of the History of Ferdinand and Isabella was often seen there replenishing his box, and exchanging kind courtesies with the fair-spoken dealer in that fragrant article which is productive of so many bad voices and so much real politeness in European society. Mrs. Dunlap herself was a study for an artist. Her pleasant face, her fair complexion, her quiet manner, her white cap, with its gay ribbons, rivalling her eyes in brightness, were all in perfect keeping with the scrupulous neatness and air of repose that always reigned in her shop. Her parlour was as comfortable a place as you would wish to see on a summer or a winter day. It had a cheerful English look that I always loved. The plants in the windows, the bird cage, the white curtains, the plain furniture, that looked as if you might use it without spoiling it, the shining andirons, and the blazing wood fire, are all treasured in my memory of Theatre Alley as it used to be. Mrs. Dunlap's customers and friends (and who could help being her friend?) were always welcome in her parlour, and there were few who did not enjoy her simple hospitality more than that pretentious kind which sought to lure them with the pomp and vanity of mirrors and gilding. Her punch was a work of art. But I will refrain from pursuing this subject further. It is no pleasure to me to harrow up the feelings of my readers by dwelling upon the joys of their prÆteritos annos.

When Mrs. Dunlap moved out of the alley, its glory began to decline. From that day its prestige seemed to have gone. Even before that time an attempt had been made to rob it of its honoured name. Signs were put up at each end of it bearing the inscription, "Odeon Avenue"; but the attempt was vain, whether it proceeded from motives of godliness or of respectability; nobody ever called it any thing but Theatre Alley. At about that time nearly all the buildings left in it were devoted to the philanthropic object of the quenching of human thirst. We read that St. Paul took courage when he saw three taverns. Who can estimate the height of daring to which the Apostle of the Gentiles might have risen had it been vouchsafed to him to walk through Theatre Alley. One of the most frequented resorts there rejoiced in the name of "The Rainbow"—an auspicious title, certainly, and one which would attract those who were averse to the cold water principle. Some of the places were below the level of the alley, and verified, in a striking manner, the truth of Virgil's words, Facilis descensus taverni. Among certain low persons, not appreciative of its poetic associations, the alley at that time was nicknamed "Rum Row"; and he was considered a hero who could make all the ports in the passage through, and carry his topsails when he reached Franklin Street. Various efforts were made at that period to bring the alley into disrepute. Among others, a sign was put up announcing that it was dangerous passing through there; I fear that Father Mathew would have thought a declaration that it was dangerous stopping, to have been nearer the truth. But the daily deputations from the Old Colony and Worcester Railways could not be kept back by any signs, and the alley echoed to their multitudinous tramp every morning. Mr. Choate, too, was faithful to the alley through good and evil report, and while there was a plank left, it was daily pressed by his India rubbers. To such a lover of nature as he, what shall take the place of a morning walk through Theatre Alley!

But venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus, and the old alley has been swept away. During the past century how many thousands have passed through it! how many anxious minds, engrossed with schemes of commercial enterprises, how many hearts weary with defeat, how many kind, and generous, and great, and good men, who have passed away from earthly existence, like the alley through which they walked! But while I mourn over the loss, I would not restore it if I could. When so many of its old associations had been blotted out; when low dram-drinking dens had taken the place of the ancient, quiet dispensatories of good cheer; when grim and gloomy warehouses, with their unsocial, distrustful iron shutters, had made the warm sunlight a stranger to it,—it was time for it to go. It was better that it should cease to exist, than continue in its humiliation, a reproach to the neighbourhood, and a libel upon its ancient and honourable fame.

In many people who have been abroad, the mere mention of the old city of Rouen is enough to kindle an enthusiasm. If you would know why this is,—why those who are familiar with the cathedrals of Cologne, Milan, Florence, and the basilicas of Rome, have yet so deep a feeling about the old capital of Normandy,—the true answer is, that Rouen, with its Gothic glories and the thrilling history of the middle ages written on its every stone, was the first ancient city that they saw, and made the deepest impression on their minds. They had left the stiff and unsympathetic respectability of Boston, the tiresome cleanliness of Philadelphia, or the ineffable filth of New York behind them; or perchance they had been emancipated from some dreary western town, whose wide, straight, unpaved streets seemed to have no beginning and to end nowhere; whose atmosphere was pervaded with an odour of fresh paint and new shingles, and whose inhabitants would regard fifty years as a highly respectable antiquity,—and had come steaming across the unquiet Atlantic to Havre, eager to see an old city. A short railway ride carried them to one in which they could not turn a corner without seeing something to remind them of what they had seen in pictures or read in books about the middle ages. The richly-carved window frames, the grotesque faces, the fanciful devices, the profusion of ornament, the shrines and statues of the saints at the corners of the streets, and all the other picturesque peculiarities of that queer old city, filled them with wonder and delight. Those fantastic gables that seemed to be leaning over to look at them, inspired them with a respect which all the architectural wonders and artistic trophies of the continent are powerless to disturb.

It was not my fortune thus to make acquaintance with Rouen. I had several times tasted the pleasure of a continental sojourn. The streets of several of the great European capitals were as familiar to me as those of my native city. Yet Rouen captivated me with a charm peculiarly its own. I shall not easily forget the delicious summer day in which I left Paris for a short visit to Rouen. That four hours' ride over the Western Railway of France was full of solid enjoyment for every sense. The high cultivation of that fertile and unfenced country—the farmers at work in the sunny broad-stretched fields—the hay-makers piling up their fragrant loads—the chÂteau-like farm houses, looking as stately as if they had strayed out of the city, and, getting lost, had thought it beneath their dignity to inquire the way back—and those old compactly built towns, in each of which the houses seem to have nestled together around a moss-grown church tower, like children at the knees of a fond mother,—made up a scene which harmonized admirably with my feelings and with the day, "so calm, so cool, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky." My fellow-passengers shared in the general joy which the blithesomeness of nature inspired. We all chatted merrily together, and a German, who looked about as lively as Scott's Commentaries bound in dark sheep-skin, tried to make a joke. So irresistible was the contagion of cheerfulness, that an Englishman, who sat opposite me, so far forgot his native dignity, as to volunteer the remark that it was a "nice day."

At last we began to consult our watches and time tables, and, after a shrill whistle and a ride through a long tunnel, I found myself, with a punctuality by which you might set your Frodsham, in the station at Rouen. I obeyed the instructions of the conductor to Messieurs les voyageurs pour Rouen to descendez, and was, in a very few minutes, walking leisurely through narrow and winding streets, which I used to think existed only in the imaginations of novelists and scene-painters. I say walking, but the fact is, I did not know what means of locomotion I employed in my progress through the town. My eyes and mind were too busy to take cognizance of any inferior matters. My astonishment and delight at all that met my sight was not so great as my astonishment and delight to find myself astonished and delighted. I had seen so many old cities that I had no thought of getting enthusiastic about Rouen, until I found myself suddenly in a state of mental exaltation. I had visited Rouen as many people visit churches and galleries of art in Italy—because I had an opportunity, and feared that in after years I might be asked if I had ever been there. But, if a dislike to acknowledge my ignorance led me to Rouen, it was a very different sentiment that took possession of me as soon as I caught the spirit of the place. The genius of the past seemed to inhabit every street and alley of that strange city. I half expected, whenever I heard the hoofs of horses, to find myself encompassed by mailed knights; and if Joan of Arc, with her sweet maidenly face beaming with the inspiration of religious patriotism, had galloped by, it would not have surprised me so much as it did to realize that I—a Yankee, clad in a gray travelling suit, with an umbrella in my hand, and drafts to a limited amount on Baring Brothers in my pocket—was moving about in the midst of such scenes, and was not arrested and hustled out of the way as a profane intruder.

Wandering through the mouldy streets without any definite idea whither they led, and so charmed by all I saw, that I did not care, I suddenly turned a corner and suddenly found myself in a market-place well filled with figures, which would have graced a similar scene in any opera-house, and facing that stupendous cathedral which is one of the glories of France. I do not know how to talk learnedly about architecture; so I can spare you, dear reader, any criticism on the details of that great church. I have no doubt that it is full of faults, but my unskilful eyes rested only on its beauties. I would not have had it one stroke of the chisel less ornate, nor one shade less dingy. I could not, indeed, help thinking what it must have been centuries ago, when it was in all the glory of its fresh beauty; but still I rejoiced that it was reserved for me to behold it in the perfected loveliness and richer glory of its decay. Never until then did I fully appreciate the truth of Mr. Ruskin's declaration, that the greatest glory of a building is not in its sculptures or in its gold, but in its age,—nor did I ever before perfectly comprehend his eloquent words touching that mysterious sympathy which we feel in "walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity."

After lingering for a while before the sacred edifice, I entered, and stood within its northern aisle. Arches above arches, supported by a forest of massive columns, seemed to be climbing up as if they aspired to reach the throne of Him whose worship was daily celebrated there. The sun was obscured by a passing cloud as I entered, and that made the ancient arches seem doubly solemn. The stillness that reigned there was rendered more profound by the occasional twitter of a swallow from some "jutty frieze," or "coigne of vantage," high up above my head. I walked half way up the aisle, and stopped on hearing voices at a distance. As I stood listening, the sun uncovered his radiant face, and poured his golden glory through the great western windows of the church, bathing the whole interior with a prismatic brilliancy which made me wonder at my presumption in being there. At the same moment a clear tenor voice rang out from the choir as if the sunbeams had called it into being, giving a wonderful expression to the words of the Psalmist, Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea; quem timebo. Then came a full burst of music as the choir took up the old Gregorian Chant—the universal language of prayer and praise. As the mute groves of the Academy reËcho still the wisdom of the sages, so did that ancient church people my mind with forms and scenes of an age long passed away. "I was all ear," and those solemn strains seemed to be endowed with the accumulated melody of the Misereres and Glorias of a thousand years.

I have an especial affection for an old church, and I pity with all my heart the man whom the silent eloquence of that vast cathedral does not move. The very birds that build their nests in its mouldering towers have more soul than he. Its every stone is a sermon on the transitoriness of human enterprise and the vanity of worldly hopes. Beneath its pavement lie buried hopes and ambitions which have left no memorial but in the unread pages of forgotten historians. Richard, the lion-hearted, who made two continents ring with the fame of his valour, and yearned for new conquests, was obliged at last to content himself with the dusty dignity and obscurity of a vault beneath those lofty arches which stand unmoved amid the contentions of rival dynasties and the insane violence of republican anarchy.

But it was not merely to write of the glories of Rouen and its churches, that I took up my neglected pen. The old cathedral of which I have now a few kind words to say, does not, like that of Rouen, date back sixteen centuries to its foundation; neither is it one of those marvels of architecture in which the conscious stone seems to have grown naturally into forms of enduring beauty. No great synods or councils have been held within its walls; nor have its humble aisles resounded daily with the divine office chanted by a chapter of learned and pious canons. Indeed it bears little in its external appearance that would raise a suspicion of its being a cathedral at all. Yet its plain interior, its simple altars, and its unpretentious episcopal throne, bear witness to the abiding-place of that power which is radiated from the shrine of the Prince of the Apostles—as unmistakably as if it were encrusted with mosaics, and the genius of generations of great masters had been taxed in its adornment.

The Cathedral of Boston is the last relic of Franklin Street as I delight to remember it. One by one, the theatre, the residence of the Catholic bishops, and the old mansions that bore such a Berkeley Square-y look of respectability have passed away; and the old church alone remains. Tall warehouses look down upon it, as if it were an intruder there, and the triumphal car of traffic makes its old walls tremble and disturbs the devotion of its worshippers. An irreverent punster ventured a few months since to suggest that, out of regard to its new associations, it ought to be rededicated under the invocation of St. Casimir, and to be enlarged by the addition of a chapel built in honor of St. Pantaleone.

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,

Joci sacra fames!

But it is well that it should follow the buildings with which it held companionship through so many quiet years. The charm of the old street has been destroyed, and the sooner the last monument of its former state is removed the better it will be. The land on which it stands formerly belonged to the Boston Theatre corporation. It was transferred to its present proprietorship in the last week of the last century, and the first Catholic church in New England was erected upon it. That church (enlarged considerably by the late Bishop Fenwick) is the one which still stands, and towards which I feel a veneration similar in kind to that inspired by the cathedrals of the old world. Even now I remember with pleasure how I used to enjoy an occasional visit to that strange place in my boyhood. "Logic made easy" and "Geometry for Infant Schools" were things unknown in my young days. I was weaned from the Primer and Spelling-book with the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and the works of Defoe, Goldsmith, Addison, and Shakespeare. Therefore the romantic instinct was not entirely crushed out of my youthful heart, and it would be difficult, dear reader, for you to conceive how much I found to feed it on, within those plain brick walls.

The lamp which used to burn constantly before the altar, until an anxiety for "improvement" removed it out of sight behind the pulpit, filled me with an indescribable awe. I was ignorant of its meaning, and for years was unaware that my childish reverence for its mild flicker was a blind homage to one of the profoundest mysteries of the Catholic faith. I remember to this day the satisfaction I took in the lighting of those tall candles, and what a halo of mysterious dignity surrounded even the surpliced boys grouped around that altar. That strange ceremonial surpassed my comprehension. The Latin, as I heard it sung there, was pronounced so differently from what I had been taught at school, that it was all Greek to me. Yet, when I saw the devotion of that congregation, and the pious zeal of the devoted clergymen who built that church, I could not call their worship "mummery," nor join in the irreverent laughter of my comrades at those ancient rites. There was something about them that seemed to fill up my ideal of worship—a soothing and consoling influence which I found nowhere else.

I never entertained the vulgar notion of a Catholic priest. Of course my education led me to regard the dogmas of the Roman Church with any thing but a friendly eye; but my ideas of the clergy of that Church were not influenced by popular prejudice. I was always willing to believe that Vincent de Paul, and Charles Borromeo, and FÉnelon were what they were, in consequence of their religion, rather than in spite of it, as some people, who make pretensions to liberality, would fain persuade us. When I recall the self-denying lives of the two founders of the Catholic Church in Boston,—Matignon and Cheverus,—I wonder that the influence of their virtues has not extended even to the present day, to soften prejudice and do away with irreligious animosity. They were regarded with distrust, if not with hatred, when they first came among us to take charge of that humble flock; but their devotedness, joined with great acquirements and rare personal worth, overcame even the force of the great Protestant tradition of enmity towards their office. Protestant admiration kept pace with Catholic love and veneration in their regard, and when they built the church which is now so near the term of its existence, there were few wealthy Protestants in Boston who did not esteem it a privilege to aid them with liberal contributions. The first subscription paper for its erection was headed by the illustrious and venerable name of John Adams, the successor of Washington in the presidency of the United States.

The memory of the first Bishop of Boston, Dr. Cheverus, is (for most Bostonians of my age) the most precious association connected with the Cathedral. He was endeared to the people of this city by ten years of unselfish exertion in the duties of a missionary priest, before he was elevated to the dignity of the episcopate. His unwillingness to receive the proffered mitre was as characteristic of his modest and humble spirit, as the meekness with which he bore his faculties when the burden of that responsibility was forced upon him. His "episcopal palace," as he used facetiously to term his small and scantily-furnished dwelling, which was contiguous to the rear of the church, was the resort of all classes of the community. His simplicity of manner and ingenuous affability won all hearts. The needy and opulent, the learned and illiterate, the prosperous merchant and the Indians in the unknown wilds of Maine, found in him a father and a friend. Children used to run after him as he walked down Franklin Place, delighted to receive a smile and a kind word from one whose personal presence was like a benediction.

His face was the index of a pure heart and a great mind. It was impossible to look at him without recalling that fine stanza of the old poet.—

"A sweete attractive kind of grace,

A full assurance given by lookes,

Continuall comfort in a face,

The lineaments of Gospel bookes;—

I trow that countenance cannot lie

Whose thoughts are legible in the eye."

One of the ancient Hebrew prophets, in describing the glories of the millennial period, tells us that upon the bells of the horses shall be the words, Holiness unto the Lord—a prophecy which always reminded me of Cheverus; for that divine inscription seemed to have been written all over his benign countenance as with the luminous pen of the rapt evangelist in Patmos.

But Bishop Cheverus was not merely a good man—he was a great man. He did not court the society of the learned, for his line of duty lay among the poor; but, even in that humble sphere, his talents shone out brightly, and won the respect even of those who had the least sympathy with the Church to which his every energy was devoted. Boston valued him highly; but few of her citizens thought, as they saw him bound on some errand of mercy through her streets, that France envied them the possession of such a prelate, that the peerage of the old monarchy was thought to need his virtuous presence, and that the scarlet dignity of a Prince of the Church was in reserve for that meek and self-sacrificing servant of the poor. Had he been gifted with prophetic vision, his humility would have had much to suffer, and his life would have been made unhappy, by the thought of coming power and honour. He had given the best part of his life to Boston, and here he wished to die. He had buried his friend and fellow-labourer, Dr. Matignon, in the Church of St. Augustine at South Boston, and when he placed the mural tablet over the tomb of that venerable priest, he left a space for his own name, and expressed the hope that, as they had lived together harmoniously for so many years, they might not in death be separated. It was a strange sight to see more than two hundred Protestants remonstrating against the translation of a Catholic bishop from their city, and speaking of him in such terms as these: "We hold him to be a blessing and a treasure in our social community, which we cannot part with, and which, without injustice to any man, we may affirm, if withdrawn from us, can never be replaced." And when he distributed all that he possessed among his clergy, his personal friends and the poor, and left Boston as poor as he had entered it, with the single trunk that contained his clothes when he arrived, twenty-seven years before,—public admiration outran the power of language. Doctrinal differences were forgotten. Three hundred carriages and other vehicles escorted him several miles on the road to New York, where he was to embark.

Of his life as Bishop of Montauban, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a Peer of France, and a Cardinal, there is not space for me to speak. Suffice it to say, that amid all the dignities to which he was successively promoted, he lived as simply and unostentatiously as when he dwelt in Franklin Street; and that in time of pestilence and public distress he showed the same unbounded charity which caused his departure from Boston to be considered a public calamity. To the last day of his life he maintained his interest in his American home, and would gladly have relinquished all his dignities to return and minister at the altar of the church he here erected. Throughout France he was honoured and beloved, even as he had been in the metropolis of New England, and a nation sorrowed at his death. Full as his life was of good works, it was not in his eloquence, nor his learning, nor in the pious and charitable enterprises which he originated, that the glory of Cardinal Cheverus consisted; it was in the simplicity of his character and the daily beauty of his life:—

"His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled,

On whose far top an angel stood and smiled,

Yet in his heart he was a little child."

The gentle and benevolent spirit of that illustrious prelate has never departed from the church he built. When Channing died, and was buried from the church which his eloquence had made famous, the successor of Cheverus caused the bell of the neighbouring Cathedral to be tolled, that it might not seem as if the Catholics had forgotten the friendly relations which had existed between the great Unitarian preacher and their first bishop. And when the good Bishop Fenwick was borne from the old Cathedral, with all the pomp of pontifical obsequies, his courtesy and regard for Dr. Channing's memory was not forgotten, and the bell which was so lately removed from the tower, where it had swung for half a century, joined with that of the Cathedral in giving expression to the general sorrow, and proved that no dogmatic differences had disturbed the kindly spirit which Channing inculcated and had exemplified in his blameless life.

Of the later history of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross I may not speak. My youthful respect for it has in no degree diminished, and I shall always consider it a substantial refutation of the old apothegm, "Familiarity breeds contempt." There are, I doubt not, those who regard that old edifice with deeper feelings than mine. Who can estimate the affection and veneration in which it is held by those who may there have found an asylum from harassing doubts, who have received from that font the joy of a renovated heart, and from that altar the divine gift which is at the same time a consolation for past sorrows and a renewal of strength to tread the rough path of life!

I am told that it will not probably be long before the glittering cross which the pure-hearted Cheverus placed upon the old church will be removed, and the demolition of his only monument in Boston will be effected. Permit me to conclude these reminiscences with the expression of the hope that the new Cathedral of Boston will be an edifice worthy of this wealthy city, and that it may contain some fitting memorial of the remarkable man who exercised his beneficent apostolate among us during more than a quarter of a century. The virtues which merited the gratitude of the poor and the highest honours which pontiffs and kings can bestow, ought not to go uncommemorated in the city which witnessed their development, and never hesitated to give expression to its love and veneration for their possessor. But whatever the new Cathedral may be,—however glorious the skill of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter may render it,—there are those in whose affections it will never be able to replace the little unpretending church which Cheverus built, and which the remembrance of his saintly life has embalmed in all their hearts.

Human suffering is an old and favourite theme. From the time when the woes of Job assumed an epic grandeur of form, and the adventures and pains of Philoctetes inspired the tragic muse of Sophocles, down to the publication of the last number of the London Lancet, there would seem to have been no subject so attractive as the sufferings of poor humanity. Literature is filled with their recital, and, if books were gifted with a vocal power, every library would resound with wailings. Ask your neighbour Jenkins, who overtakes you on your way to your office, how he is, and it is ten chances to one that he will entertain you with an account of his influenza or his rheumatism. It is a subject, too, which age cannot wither nor custom stale. It knows none of the changes which will at times dwarf or keep out of sight all other themes. The weather, which forms the raw material of so much conversation, is nothing compared to it. There is nothing which men find so much pleasure in talking about as their own ailments. The late Mr. Webster, of Marshfield, was once stopping for a single day in a western city, where he had never been before, and where there was a natural curiosity among many of the inhabitants to see the Defender of the Constitution. He therefore set apart two hours before the time of his departure for the reception of such persons as might seek the honour of a shake of his hand. The reception took place in one of the parlours of a hotel, the crowd filing in at one door, being introduced by the mayor, and making their exit by another. In the course of the proceedings, a little man, with a lustrous beaver in one hand and a gold-headed cane in the other, and whose personal apparel appeared to have been got up (as old Pelby would have said) without the slightest regard to expense, and on a scale of unparalleled splendour, walked forward, and was presented by the mayor as "Mr. Smith, one of our most eminent steamboat builders and leading citizens." Mr. Webster's large, thoughtful, serene eyes seemed to be completely filled by the result of the combined efforts of the linen-draper, the tailor, and the jeweller, that confronted him, and his deep voice made answer—"Mr. Smith, I am happy to see you. I hope you are well, sir." "Thank you, thir," said the leading citizen, "I am not very well. I wath tho unfortunate ath to take cold yethterday by thitting in a draught. Very unpleathant, Mr. Webthter, to have a cold! But Mrs. Smith thays that the thinks that if I put my feet in thome warm water to-night, and take thome-thing warm to drink on going to bed, that I may get over it. I thertainly hope tho, for it really givth me the headache, and I can't thmell at all." Mr. Webster expressed a warm interest in Mr. Smith's case, and a hope that Mrs. Smith's simple medical treatment would result beneficially, and then turned with undisturbed gravity to the next citizen, who, with some six hundred others, was anxiously waiting his turn. We are all like Mr. Smith. We laugh, it is true, at his affectations, but we are as likely to force our petty ailments upon a mind burdened with the welfare of a nation; and we never tire of hearing ourselves talk about our varying symptoms. Politeness may hold us back from importuning our friends with the diagnosis of our case, but our self-centred hearts are all alike, and a cold in the head will awaken more feelings in its victim than the recital of all the horrors of the hospital of Scutari. Nothing can equal the heroic fortitude with which we bear the sufferings of our fellows, or the saintliness of our pious resignation and acquiescence in the wisdom of the divine decrees when our friends are bending under their afflictive stroke.

I wish to say a few words about suffering. Do not be afraid, beloved reader, that I am going to carry you into rooms from which the light is excluded, and which are strangers to any sound above a whisper, or the casual movement of some of the phials on the mantel-piece. I am going to speak of suffering in its strict sense of pain,—bodily pain,—and sickness is not necessarily accompanied with pain. I cannot regard your sick man as a real sufferer. His fever rages, and he tosses from side to side as if he were suffering punishment with Dives; but from the incoherent phrases which escape from his parched lips, you learn that his other self is rapt in the blissfulness that enfolds Lazarus. He prattles childishly of other lands and scenes—he thinks himself surrounded by friends whose faces once were grateful to his sight, but who long since fell before the power with which he is struggling—or he fancies himself metamorphosed into a favourite character in some pleasant book which he has lately read. After a time he wakes forth from his delirium, but he cannot even then be called a sufferer. On the contrary, his situation, even while he is so entirely dependent upon those around him, is really the most independent one in the world. His lightest wish is cared for as if his life were the price of its non-accomplishment. All his friends and kinsmen, and neighbours whom he hardly knows by sight, vie with each other in trying to keep pace with his returning appetite. He is the absolute monarch of all he surveys. There is no one to dispute his reign. The crown of convalescence is the only one which does not make the head that wears it uneasy. He has nothing to do but to satisfy his longings for niceties, to listen to kind words from dear friends, to sleep when he feels like it, and to get better. I am afraid that we are all so selfish and so enslaved by our appetites, that the period of convalescence is the pleasantest part of life to most of us.

Therefore I shut out common sickness, fevers, and the like, from any share in my observations on suffering. If you ask me what I should be willing to consider real bodily pain,—since I am unwilling to allow that ordinary sick men participate in it,—I should say that you can find it in a good, old-fashioned attack of rheumatism or gout. I think it was Horace Walpole who said that these two complaints were very much alike, the difference between them being this: that rheumatism was like putting your hand or foot into a vice, and screwing it up as tight as you possibly can, and gout was the same thing, only you give the screw one more turn. It is no flattery to speak of the victim to either of these disorders as a sufferer. The rheumatic gout is a complaint which possesses all the advantages and peculiarities which its compound title denotes. It unites in itself all the potentiality of gout and all the ubiquity of rheumatism. Its characteristics have been impressed upon me in a manner that sets at defiance that weakness of memory which generally accompanies old age. Sharp experience, increasing in sharpness as my years pile up, makes that complaint a specialty among my acquirements. These stinging, burning, cutting pains deserve the superlative case, if any thing does. Language (that habitual bankrupt) is reduced to a most abject state when called upon to describe rheumatic gout. The disease does not seem to feel satisfied with poisoning your blood by its aciduousness, it makes your flesh tingle and burn, and, like the late Duke of Wellington, does not rest until it has conquered the bony part. The very bone seems to be crumbling wherever the demon of gout pinches. There are moments in the life of every gouty man when it seems as if nothing would be so refreshing as to indulge for a while in the use of that energetic diction, savouring more of strength than of righteousness, which is common among cavalry troops and gentlemen of the seafaring profession, but which, in society, is considered to be a little in advance of the prejudices of the age. No higher encomium could be passed upon a gouty man than to say that, with all his torments, he never swore, and was seldom petulant. But there are very few whose merits deserve this canonization.

But gout, with all its pains, has yet its redeeming characteristics. That great law of compensation which reduces the inequalities of our lot, and makes Brown, Jones, and Robinson come out about even in the long run, is not inoperative here. The gout is painful, but its respectability is unquestionable. It is the disease of a gentleman. It is a certificate of good birth more satisfactory than any which the Heralds' College or the Genealogical Association can furnish. It is but right, too, that the man who can date back his family history to Plymouth or Jamestown in this country, and to Runnymede on the other side of the Atlantic, should pay something for such a privilege. A man may never have indulged in "the sweet poison of the Tuscan grape" himself, but can he reasonably complain of an incontrovertible testimony to the fact that his ancestors lived well! Chacun À son goÛt: for myself, I should much prefer my honoured family name, with all its associations with the brave knight who made it famous, accompanied by the only possession which I have received by hereditary right, to the most unequivocal state of health burdened with such a name as Jinkins.

Mentally and spiritually, the gout is far from being a useless institution. It ripens a man's judgment, and prunes away the radical tendencies of his nature. It will convert the wildest of revolutionists into the stiffest of conservatives. It teaches a man to look at things as they really are, and not as enthusiasm would have them represented. No gouty man would ever look to the New York Tribune as the exponent of his religious or political creed. His complaint has a positive character, and it makes him earnest to find something positive in religion and politics. The negativeness of radicalism tires him. He deprecates every thing like change. He thinks that religion, and society, and government were established for some better end than to afford a perpetual employment to the destructive powers of visionary reformers and professional philanthropists. He longs to find constancy and stability in something besides his inexorable disorder.

There is another disorder which people generally seem to consider a very trifling affair, but which any one who knows it will allow to be productive of the most unmistakable pain. I refer to neuralgia. Who pities a neuralgic person? Any healthy man, when asked about it, will answer in his ignorance that it is "only a headache." But ask the school teacher, whose throbbing head seems to be beating time to the ceaseless muttering and whispering of her scholars as they bend over their tasks—ask the student, whose thoughts, like undisciplined soldiers, will not fall into the ranks, and whose head seems to be occupied by a steam engine of enormous power, running at the highest rate of pressure, with the driver sitting on the safety-valve—ask them whether neuralgia is "only a headache"! Who can tell the cause of the prevalence of this scourge? whether it proceeds from our houses overheated with intolerable furnaces and anthracite coal, or from our treacherous and unconstant climate so forcibly described by Choate: "Cold to-day; hot to-morrow; mercury at eighty degrees in the morning, with wind at south-west; and in three hours more a sea turn, with wind at east, a thick fog from the very bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees of Fahrenheit." The uncertainty which seems to attend all human science, and the science of medicine in particular, envelops this mysterious disease, and thousands of us are left to suffer and wonder what the matter is.

But all of these pains, gouty, neuralgic, and otherwise, have yet their sweet uses, and like the vile reptile Shakespeare tells us of, are adorned with a precious jewel. The old Roman emperors in the hour of triumph used to have a slave stand behind them to whisper in their ear, from time to time, the unwelcome but salutary truth that they were but mortal men. Even now, on the occasion of the enthronement of a Pope, a lighted candle is applied to a bunch of flax fixed upon a staff, and as the smoke dissipates itself into thin air before the newly-crowned Pontiff, surrounded as he is by all the emblems of religion and all the insignia and pomp of worldly power, the same great truth of the perishableness of all mortal things is impressed upon his mind by the chanting of the simple but eloquent phrase, Sic transit gloria mundi. But we neuralgic and gouty wretches need no whispering slave nor smoking flax to remind us of our frailty and the transientness of our happiness and glory. We carry with us a monitor who checks our swelling pride, and teaches us effectually the brevity of human joys. We are very apt, in our impatience and short-sightedness, to think that if we had the management of the world and the dispensation of pleasure and suffering, every thing could be conducted in a much more satisfactory manner. If it were so, we should undoubtedly carry things on in the style of a French restaurant, so that we could have pain À discretion. But on the whole, I am inclined to think that we had better leave these matters to the management of that infinite Power which gives us day by day our daily pain, and from which we receive in the long run about what is meet for us. I hope that I shall not be thought ill-bred or profane in using such expressions as these. At my time of life it is too late to begin to murmur. A few twinges more or less are nothing when the hair grows gray and the eye is dimmed with the mists of age. The man who knows nothing of the novitiate of patience—who has passed through life without the chastening discipline of bodily pain—has missed one of the best parts of existence. To suffer is one of the noblest prerogatives of human nature. Without suffering, life would be robbed of half its zest, and the thought of death would drive us to despair.

When I was a young man, and gave little thought to the gout and the other ills that vex me at present, I saw a wonderful exhibition of patience, which I now daily recall to mind, and wish I could imitate. I was sojourning in Florence, that lovely city, whose every association is one of calm and satisfactory pleasure undisturbed by any thing like bodily suffering. I enjoyed the friendship of a young American amateur artist of unquestioned talent, but whose artistic efforts were interfered with by the frequent attacks of a serious and excruciating disorder. It was considerable time after I made his acquaintance before I knew that he was an invalid. I noticed his lameness, but whenever we met he wore a smiling face, and had a cheerful word for every body. One evening I called in at his quiet lodgings near the Lung' Arno, and found a party of some six or eight Americans talking over their recollections of home. He was entertaining them with the explanation of an imaginary panorama of New England, and a musical friend threw in illustrative passages from the piano in the intervals. The parlour resounded with our laughter at his irresistible fun; but in the midst of it all, he asked us to excuse him for a moment, and went into his bedroom. After a little while, another engagement calling me away, I went into his chamber to speak with him before leaving. I found him lying upon his bed, writhing like LaocoÖn, while great drops stood upon his brow and agony was depicted on his patient face. He resisted all my attempts to do any thing for him; the attack had lasted all day, but was at some times severer than at others; he should feel better soon, and would go back to his friends; I had better not stop with him, as it might attract their attention in the parlour, &c. So I took my leave. The next morning I met one of his friends, who told me that he returned to his company a few minutes after my departure, and entertained them for an hour or more with an exhibition of his powers of wit and humour, which eclipsed all his previous efforts. Poor S. C.! His weary but uncomplaining spirit laid down that crippled body, which never gave aught but pain to its possessor, three or four years ago, and passed, let us hope, into a happier state of existence, which flesh and blood, with their countless maladies and dolours, may not inherit.

The traveller in the south of Europe frequently encounters, in his perambulations through the streets and squares of cities, a group of people gathered around a monk, who is discoursing to them of those sublime truths which men are prone to lose sight of in their walks abroad. The style of the sermon is not, it is true, what we should look for from Newman, or Ravignan, or Ventura, but it has in it those fundamental principles of true eloquence, simplicity and earnestness; and the coarse brown habit, the knotted cord, and the pale, serene, devout face of the preacher, harmonize wondrously with the self-denying doctrine he teaches, and give a double force to all his words. His instructions frequently concern the simple moral duties of life and the exercise of the cardinal virtues, which he enforces by illustrations drawn from the lives of canonized saints, who won their heavenly crown and their earthly fame of blessedness by the practice of those virtues. Allow me to close my sermon on suffering in the manner of the preaching friars, though I may not draw my illustrations from the ancient martyrologies; for I apprehend that it will be more in keeping with the serious character of this essay to take them from another source. We have all laughed at Dickens's characters of Mark Tapley and Mr. Toots. The former was celebrated for "keeping jolly under disadvantageous circumstances," and seemed to mourn over those dispensations of good fortune which detracted from his credit in being jolly. The latter was never known to indulge in any complaint, but met every mishap and disappointment with a manly resignation and the simple remark, "It's of no consequence." Even when he was completely ingulfed in misfortunes, when Pelion seemed to have been heaped upon Ossa, and both upon him, he did not give way to despair. He only gave utterance more fervently to his favourite maxim, "It's of no consequence. Nothing is of any consequence whatever!" Now, laugh at it as we may, this is a great truth. It is the foundation of all true philosophy—of all practical religion. A few years more, and what will it avail us to have bargained successfully, to have lived in splendour, to have left in history a name that shall be the synonyme of power! A few years, and what shall we care for all our present sufferings and the light afflictions which are but for a moment! May we not say with Solomon, that "All is vanity," and with poor Toots, that "Nothing is of any consequence whatever"? Now, if there are any people who are likely to arrive at this satisfactory conclusion, and who need the consolation imparted by the reception and full appreciation of the deep truth it contains, it is the gouty, and rheumatic, and neuralgic wretches whom I have had in mind while writing this paper. Let me, in conclusion, as one who has had some experience, and is not merely theorizing, exhort all such persons to meditate upon the lives of the two great patterns of patience whom I have brought forward as examples; and to bear in mind that it is only through the resignation of Toots, that they can attain to the jollity of Tapley. Likewise let me counsel those who may be passing through life unharmed by serious misfortune and untrammelled by bodily pain, never to lose sight of that striking admonition of old Sir Thomas Browne's, "Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be contented with under it."

Human nature is a very telescopic "institution." It delights to dwell on whatever is most distant. Lord Rosse's famous instrument dwindles down to a mere opera glass if you compare it with the mental vision of a restless boy, looking forward to the time when he shall don a tail-coat and a beaver hat. How his young heart swells with pride as he anticipates the day when he shall be his own master, as the phrase is—when he shall be able to stay out after nine o'clock in the evening, and to go home without being subjected to the ignominy of being escorted by a chambermaid! If he be of a particularly sanguine temperament, his wild imagination is rapt in the contemplation of the possibility of one day having his name in the newspapers as secretary of some public meeting, or as having made a vigorous speech at a political caucus where liberty of speech runs out into slander, and sedition is mistaken for patriotism,—or perhaps even of being one day a Common Councilman, or a member of the Great and General Court. A popular poet of the present day has expressed the same idea in a less prosaic manner:—

"Not rainbow pinions coloured like yon cloud,

The sun's broad banner o'er his western tent,

Can match the bright imaginings of a child

Upon the glories of his coming years:"—

and another bard avers that human blessings are always governing the future, and never the present tense,—or something to that effect. The truth of this nobody will deny who has passed from the boxes of childhood upon the stage of manhood which so charmed his youthful fancy, and finds that the heroes who dazzled him once by their splendid achievements are mere ordinary mortals like himself, whom the blindness or caprice of their fellows has allowed to be dressed in a little brief authority; that the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces he used to gaze on from afar, prove, on a closer inspection, to be mere deceptions of paint and canvas, and that he has only to look behind them to see the rough bricks and mortar of every-day life.

The voyager who sails from the dark waters of the restless Atlantic into the deep blue Mediterranean, notices at sunset a rich purple haze which rises apparently from the surface of that fair inland sea, and drapes the hills and vales along the beautiful shore with a glory that fills the heart of the beholder with unutterable gladness. The distant, snow-covered peaks of old Granada, clad in the same bright robe, seem by their regal presence to impose silence on those whom their majestic beauty has blessed with a momentary poetic inspiration which defies all power of tongue or pen. It touches nothing which it does not adorn, and the commonest objects are transmuted by its magic into fairy shapes which abide ever after in the memory. Under its softening influence, the dingy sail of a fisherman's boat becomes almost as beautiful an object to the sight as the ruins of the temple which crowns the height of Cape Colonna. But when you approach nearer to that which had seemed so charming in its twilight robes, your poetic sense is somewhat interfered with. You find the fishing boat as unattractive as any that anchor on the Banks from which we obtain such frequent discounts of nasty weather, and the shore, though it may still be very beautiful, lacks the supernal glory imparted to it by distance. It is very much after this fashion with manhood, when we compare its reality with our childish expectations. We find that we have been deceived by a mere atmospheric phenomenon. But the destruction of the charm which age had for our eyes as children, is compensated for by the creation of a new glory which lights up our young days, as we look back upon them with the regret of manhood, and realize that their joys can never be lived over again.

Pardon me, gentle reader, for all this prosing. I have been reading that pleasant, hearty book, "Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby," during the past week, and it has set me a-thinking about my own boyhood; for, strange as it may seem, there was a time when this troublesome foot was more familiar with the football and the skate than with gout and flannel,—and Tom Brown's genial reminiscences have revived the memory of that time most wonderfully. There was considerable fun in Boston in my childhood, even though most of the faces which one met in Marlboro' Street and Cornhill were such as might have appropriately surrounded Cromwell at Naseby or Marston Moor. There were many people, even then, who did not regard religion as an affair of spasmodic emotions, and long, bilious-looking faces, and psalm-singing, and neck-ties. They thought that, so long as they were honest in their dealings, and did not swear to false invoices at the customhouse, and did as they would be done by, and lived virtuously, that He to whom they had been taught by parental lips to pray, would overlook the smaller offences—such as an occasional laugh or a pleasant jest—into which weak nature would now and then betray them. I cannot help thinking that they were about right, though I fear that I shall be set down as little better than one of the wicked by Stiggins, Chadband, Sleek & Co.

Yes, there was a good deal of fun among the boys in those old days. Boys will be boys, however serious the family may be; and if you take away their marbles, some other "vanity" will be sure to take their place. What jolly times we used to have Artillery Election! How good the egg-pop used to taste, in spite of the dust of Park Street, which mingled itself liberally with the nutmeg! How we used to save up our money for those festive days! How hard the arithmetic lessons seemed, particularly in the days immediately preceding vacation! How dreary were those long winters; and yet how short and pleasant they seemed to us! for we loved the runners, and skates, and jingling bells, and, as Pescatore, the Neapolitan poet, sings, "though bleak our lot, our hearts were warm."

Newspapers were not a common luxury in those times, and I suppose that I took as little notice of passing events as most children; yet I well remember the effect produced upon my mind one dark, threatening afternoon, near the close of the last century, by the announcement of the death of General Washington. I had been accustomed to hear him talked about as the Father of his Country; I had studied the lineaments of his calm countenance, as they were set forth for the edification of my patriotism on some coarse handkerchiefs presented to me by a public-spirited aunt, until I began to look upon him as almost a supernatural being. If I had been told that the Old South had been removed to Dorchester Heights, or that the solar system was irreparably disarranged, I should not have been more completely taken aback than I was by that melancholy intelligence. I need not say that afterwards, when I grew up and found that Washington was not only a mortal like the rest of us, but that he sometimes spelt incorrectly enough to have suited Noah Webster, (the inventor of the American language,) my supernatural view of that estimable general and patriot was very materially modified. I remember, too, how much I used to hear said about an extraordinary man who had risen up in France, and who seemed to be bending all Europe to his will. I never shall forget my astonishment on finding that Marengo was not a man, but a place. The discovery shamed me somewhat, and afterwards I always read whatever newspapers came in my way. When some slow tub of a packet had come across the ocean, battling with the nor'-westers, and was announced to have made a "quick passage of forty-eight days," how eagerly I followed the rapid fortunes of the first Napoleon! His successes, as they intoxicated him, dazzled and bewildered my boyish imagination. I understood the matter imperfectly, but I loved Napoleon, and delighted to repeat to myself those stirring names, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, &c. How I hated Russia after the disastrous campaign of 1812! (By the way, the exhibition of the Conflagration of Moscow, which used to have its intermittent terms of exhibition here some years since, always brought back all my youthful feelings about the old Napoleon; the march of the artillery across the bridge, in the foreground of the scene, the rattling of the gun carriages,—that most warlike of all warlike sounds,—the burning city, the destruction of the Kremlin, all united in my mind to form a sentiment of admiration and sympathy for the baffled conqueror. If that admirable show were to be revived once more, I should be tempted to take a season ticket to it, for I have no doubt that it would thrill me just as it did before my head could boast of a single gray hair.) Nor was my admiration for Napoleon's old marshals much below that which I entertained for the mighty genius who knew so well how to avail himself of their surpassing bravery and skill. I felt as if the unconquerable Murat, Lannes, Macdonald, Davoust, were my dearest and most intimate friends. The impetuous Ney, "the bravest of the brave," as his soldiers called him; and the inflexible MassÉna, "the favourite child of victory," figured in all my dreams, heading gallant charges, and withstanding deadly assaults, and occupied the best part of my waking thoughts. I do not doubt that there is many a schoolboy nowadays who has dwelt with equal delight on the achievements of Scott and Taylor, of Canrobert, Bosquet and PÉlissier, of Fenwick Williams and Havelock, and poor old Raglan, (that brave man upon whom the Circumlocution Office tried to fasten the blame of its own inefficiency, and who died broken-hearted, a melancholy illustration of the truth of Shakespeare's lines,—

"The painful warrior, famousÉd for fight,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honour razÉd quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled,")

and who cherishes them as I did the heroes of half a century ago.

But, as I was saying, Tom Brown's happy reminiscences of Rugby have awakened once more all my boyish feelings; for New England has its Rugby, and many of the readers of the old Rugby boy's pleasant pages will grow enthusiastic with the recollection of their schoolboy days at Exeter,—their snowballings, their manly sports, their mighty contests with the boys of the town,—and, though they may not claim the genius of the former head-master of Rugby for the guardian of their youthful sports and studies, will apply all of the old boy's praises of Dr. Arnold to the wise, judicious, and lovable Dr. Abbot.

I always cherished an unbounded esteem for boys. The boy—the genuine human boy—may, I think, safely be set down as the noblest work of God. Pope claims that proud distinction for the honest man, but at the present time, the nearest we can come to such a mythological personage as an honest man, (even though we add Argand burners, expensive Carcels, Davy safeties, and the Drummond light to the officially recognized lantern of Diogenes,) is a real human boy, without a thought beyond his next holiday, with his heart overflowing with happiness, and his pockets chock full of marbles. Young girls cannot help betraying something of the in-dwelling vanity so natural to the sex; you can discern a self-consciousness in their every action which you shall look for in vain in the boy. Bless your heart!—you may dress a real boy up with superhuman care, and try to impress on his young mind that he is the pride of his parents, and one of the most remarkable beings that ever visited this mundane sphere, and he will listen to you with becoming reverence and docility; but his pure and honest nature will give the lie to all your flattery as soon as your back is turned, and in ten minutes you will find him kicking out the toes of his new boots, or rumpling his clean collar by "playing horse," or using the top of his new cap for a drinking vessel, and mixing in with the Smiths, and Browns, and Jinkinses, on terms of the most unquestioned equality. The author of Tom Brown says that "boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles." This is undoubtedly true; but still there is a generous instinct in boys which is far more trustworthy than those sliding, and unreliable, and deceptive ideas which we call settled principles. The boy's thinking powers may be fallible, but his instinct is, in the main, sure. There is no aristocracy of feeling among boys. Linsey-woolsey and broadcloth find equal favour in their eyes. What they seek is just as likely to be found under coarse raiment as under purple and fine linen. If their companion is a real good feller, even though he be a son of a rich merchant or banker, he is esteemed as highly as if his father were an editor of a newspaper.

The nature of the boy is full of the very essence of generosity. The boys who hide away their gingerbread, and eat it by themselves,—who lay up their Fourth of July five-cent pieces, for deposit in that excellent savings institution in School Street, instead of spending them for the legitimate India crackers of the "Sabbath Day of Freedom,"—are exceptions which only put the general rule beyond the pale of controversy. The real boy carries his apple in one of his pockets until it is comfortably warm, and he has found some companion to whom he may offer a festive bite; for he feels, with Goethe, that

"It were the greatest misery known

To be in paradise alone;"

and if, occasionally, when he sees his friend gratifying his palate with a fair round specimen of the same delicious fruit, he asks for a return of his kindness, with a beckoning gesture, and a free and easy—"I say, you know me, Bill!"—he is moved thereto by no mere selfish liking for apples, but by a natural sense of friendship, and of the excellence of the apostolic principle of community of goods. This spirit of generosity may be seen in the friendships of boys, which are more entire and unselfish than those by which men seek to mitigate the irksomeness of life. There are more Oresteses and Pyladeses, more Damons and Pythiases, at twelve years of age than at any later period of life. The devotedness of boyish friendship is peculiar from the fact that it is generally reciprocal. In this it is superior to what we call love, which, if we may believe the French satirist, in most instances consists of one party who loves, and another who allows himself or herself to be loved. This phenomenon has not escaped the notice of that great observer of human nature, Thackeray.

"What generous boy," he asks, "in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation; whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if need be; who is his hero."

The generosity, and all the priceless charms of boyhood, rarely outlive its careless years of happiness. They are generally severely shaken, if not wholly destroyed, when the youth enters upon that crepuscular period of manhood in which his jacket is lengthened into a sack, and he begins to take his share in the conceit, and ambition, and selfishness of full-grown humanity. It is sad to think that a human boy, like the morning star, full of life and joy, may be stricken down by death, and all his hilarity stifled in the grave; but to my mind it is even more melancholy to think that he may live to grow up, and be hard, and worldly, and ungenerous as any of the rest of us. For this latter fate is accompanied by no consolations such as naturally assuage our sorrow when an innocent child is snatched from among his playthings,—when "death has set the seal of eternity upon his brow, and the beautiful hath been made permanent" I have seen few men who would be willing to live over again their years of manhood, however prosperous and comparatively free from trouble they may have been; but fewer still are those whom I have met, in whose memory the records of boyhood are not written as with a sunbeam. No, talk as we may about the happiness of manhood, the satisfaction of success in life, of gratified ambition, of the possession of the Mary or Lizzie of one's choice,—what is it all compared to the unadulterate joy of that time when we built our card houses, and made our dirt pies, or drove our hoops, unvexed by the thoughts that Jinkins's house was larger than ours, or by any anxiety concerning the possibility of obtaining our next day's mutton-chop and potatoes? Except the momentary pain occasioned by the exercise of a magisterial rattan upon our persons, or an occasional stern reproof from a hair-brush or the thin sole of a maternal shoe, that halcyon period is imperturbed, and may safely be called the happiest part of life.

My venerated friend, Baron Nabem, who has been through all these "experiences," and therefore ought to know, insists upon it that no man really knows any thing until he is forty years old. For when he is eighteen or twenty years of age, he esteems himself to be a sort of combination of the seven wise men of Greece in one person, with Humboldt, Mezzofanti, and Macaulay thrown in to make out the weight; at twenty-five, his confidence in his own infallibility begins to grow somewhat shaky; at thirty, he begins to wish that he might really know a tenth part as much as he thought he did ten years before; at thirty-five, he thinks that if he were added up, there would be very little to carry; and at forty the great truth bursts upon him in all its effulgence that he is an ass. There are some who reach this desirable state of self-knowledge before they attain the age specified by the Baron; other some there are who never reach it at all,—as we all see numerous instances around us,—but these are mere exceptions strengthening rather than invalidating the common rule. It is a humiliating acknowledgment, but if we consider the uncertainty of all earthly things, if we try the depth of the sea of human science, and find how easy it is to touch bottom any where therein, if we convince ourselves of the impenetrability of the veil which bounds our mental vision,—I think that we shall be obliged to allow that the recognition of our own nothingness and asininity is the sum and perfection of human knowledge. Now, Solomon tells us that he who increases knowledge increases sorrow; and it naturally follows that when a man has reached the knowledge which generally comes with his fortieth year, he is less happy than he was when he wrapped himself in the measureless content of his twentieth year's self-deception. And it follows, too, most incontrovertibly, that he is happier when unpossessed by that exaggerated self-esteem which rendered the discovery of his fortieth year necessary to him; and when is that time, if not during the careless, happy years of boyhood?

The period of boyhood has been shortened very considerably within a few years; and real boys are becoming scarce. They are no sooner emancipated from the bright buttons which unite the two principal articles of puerile apparel, than they begin to pant for virile habiliments. Their choler is roused if they are denied a stand-up dickey. They sport canes. They delight to display themselves at lectures and concerts. Their young lips are not innocent of damns and short-sixes; and they imitate the vulgarity and conceit of the young men of the present day so successfully that you find it hard to believe that they are mere children. Since this period of dearth in the boy market set in, of course the genuine, marketable article has become more precious to me. I remember seeing an old physician in Paris, who was as true a boy as any beloved twelve-year-old that ever snapped a marble or stuck his forefinger into a preserve jar on an upper shelf in a china closet. A charming old fellow he was, too. He used to stop to see the boys play in the gardens of the Tuileries, and I knew him once to spend a whole afternoon in the avenue of the Champs ElysÉes looking at the puppet shows and other sights with the rest of the youngsters. He told me afterwards that that was one of the happiest days of his life; for he had felt as if he were back again in the pleasant time before he knew any thing of that most uncertain of all uncertain things—the science of medicine; and he doubted whether any boy there had enjoyed the cheap amusement more than himself. I envied him, for I knew that he who retained so much of the happy spirit of boyhood could not have outlived all of its generosity and simplicity. "Once a man and twice a child," says the old proverb; and I cannot help thinking that if at the last we could only recall something of the sincerity, and innocence, and unselfishness of our early life, second childhood would indeed be a blessed thing.

A bright-eyed, fair, young maiden, whose satchel I should insist upon carrying to school for her every morning if I were half a century younger, came to me a day or two after the publication of my last essay, and, placing her white, taper fingers in my rough, Esau-like hand, said, "I liked your piece about the boys very much; and now I hope that you'll write something about girls." "My dear Nellie," replied I, "if I should do that I should lose all my female acquaintances. I have a weakness for telling the truth, and there are some subjects concerning which it is very dangerous to speak out 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'" The gentle damsel smiled, and looked

"Modest as justice, and did seem a palace

For the crown'd truth to dwell in,"

as she still urged me on, and refused to see any danger in my giving out the plainest truth about girlhood. She had no fear, though all the truth were told; and I suppose that if we had some of Nellie's purity and gentleness remaining in our sere and selfish hearts, we should be much better and happier men and women, and should dread the truth as little as she does. But I must not begin my truth-telling by seeming to praise too highly, though it must be confessed, even at my time of life, if I were to describe the charming young person I have referred to, with the merciless fidelity of a daguerreotype and an absence of hyperbole worthy of the late Dr. Bowditch's work on Navigation, I should seem to the unfortunate "general reader" who does not know Nell, to be indulging in the grossest flattery, and panting poesy would toil after me in vain. So I will put aside all temptations of that kind, and come down to the plain prose of my subject.

There is, in fact, very little that can be said about girlhood. Those calm years that come between the commencement of the bondage of the pantalettes and emancipation from the tasks of school, present few salient points upon which the essayist (observe he never so closely) may turn a neat paragraph. They offer little that is startling or attractive either to writer or reader,—

"As times of quiet and unbroken peace,

Though for a nation times of blessedness,

Give back faint echoes from the historian's page."

The rough sports of boyhood, the out-door life which boys always take to so naturally, and all their habits of activity, give a strength of light and shade to their early years which is not to be found in girlhood. It is not enough to say that there is no difference in kind, but simply one in degree,—that the years of boyhood are calm and happy, and that those of girlhood are so likewise,—that the former resemble the garish sunshine, and the latter the mitigated splendour of the moon; for the characters of boys seem to be struck in a sharper die than those of girls, which gives them an absoluteness quite distinct from the feminine grace we naturally look for in the latter. The free-hearted boy, plunging into all sorts of fun without a thought of his next day's arithmetic lesson, and with a charming disregard of the expense of jackets and trousers, and the gentle girl, who clings to her mother's side, like an attendant angel, and contents herself with teaching long lessons to docile paper pupils in a quiet corner by the fireside, are representatives of two distinct classes in the order of nature, and (untheologically, of course, I might add) of grace. There is not a greater difference between a hockey and a crochet needle than there is between them.

I have, as a general thing, a greater liking for boys than for girls; for the vanity so common to all mankind is not developed in them at so early an age as in the latter. Still I must acknowledge that I have seen some splendid exceptions, the mere recollection of which almost tempts me to draw my pen through that last sentence. Can I ever forget—I can never forget—one into whose years of girlhood the beauty and grace of a long, pure life seemed to have been compressed? It was many years ago, and I was younger than I am now—so pardon me if I should seem to catch a little enthusiasm of spirit from the remembrance of those days. Like the ancient Queen of Carthage, Agnosco veteris vestigia flammÆ. I was living in London at that time, or rather at Hampstead, which had not then become a mere suburb of the great metropolis, but was a quiet town, whose bright doorplates, and well-scoured doorsteps, and clean window curtains contrasted finely with the dingy brick walls of its houses, and impressed the visitor with the general prosperity and quiet respectability of its inhabitants. In my daily walks to and from the city, I frequently met a gentleman whose gray hairs and simple dignity of manners always attracted me towards him, and exacted from me an involuntary tribute of respectful recognition. One day he overtook me in a shower, and gave me the benefit of his umbrella and his friendship—for an intimacy which ended only with his death commenced between us from that hour. He was a gentleman of good family and education, who had seen thirty years of responsible service in the employ of the Honourable East India Company, had attained a competency, and had forsworn Leadenhall Street for a pension and a quiet retreat on the heights of Hampstead. His wife was a lady of cultivated tastes, whose sober wishes never learned to stray from the path of simple domestic duty, and the presence of the books in which she found her daily pleasures.

"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

Their only child, "one fair daughter, and no more," was a gentle and merry-hearted creature, who, in the short and murky days of November, filled that cottage with a more than June-like sunshine. Her parents always had a deep sympathy with that unfortunate Empress of France whose dismission from the throne was the commencement of the downward career of the first Napoleon, and bore witness to it by giving her name to their only child. They lived only three or four doors from my lodgings, and there were few days passed after the episode of the umbrella in which I did not find a welcome in their quiet home. Their daughter was their only idol, and I soon found myself a convert to their innocent system of paganism. We all three agreed that Josey was the incarnation of all known perfections, and the lapse of forty years has not sufficed to weaken that conviction in my mind. She had risen just above the horizon of girlhood, and the natural beauty of her character made the beholder content to forget even the promise of her riper years. I do not think she was what the world calls handsome. I sometimes distrust my judgment in the matter of female beauty; indeed, some of my candid friends have told me that I had no judgment in such things. Well, as I was saying, Josey was not remarkable for personal beauty—in fact, I think I remember some persons of her own sex who thought her "very plain"—"positively homely"—and wondered what there was attractive about her. There are circumstances under which I should not have hesitated to attribute such remarks to motives of envy and jealousy; but as they came from girls whose attractions of every kind were far below those of the gentle creature whom they delighted to criticise, how can I account for them? Josey's complexion was dark—her forehead, like those of the best models of female comeliness among the ancients, low. Her teeth were pearly and uniform, and her clear, dark eyes seemed to reflect the happiness and hope which were the companions of her youth. Her beauty was not of that kind which consists in mere regularity of features; it was far superior to that. You could discern under those traits, none of which were conspicuous, a combination of mental and social qualities which were far above the fleeting charms that delight so many, and which age, instead of destroying, would increase and perfect. She was quiet and gentle, without being dull or moody; light-hearted and cheery, without being frivolous; and witty, without being pert or conceited. Her unaffected goodness of heart found many an opportunity of exercise. I often heard of her among the poor, and among those who needed words of consolation even more than the necessaries of life. It was her delight to intercede with the magistrate who had inflicted a punishment on some disorderly brother of one of her poor clients, and to obtain his pardon by promising to watch over him and insure his future good behaviour; and there were very few, among the most reckless, who were not restrained by the thought that their offences would give pain to the kind-hearted girl who had so willingly become their protector.

During the months that I lived at Hampstead my intercourse with that excellent family was as familiar as if I had been one of their own kindred. A little attack of rheumatism, which confined me to my lodging for a fortnight or three weeks, proved the constancy of their friendship. The old gentleman came daily to see me—told me all the news from the city, and read to me; the mother sent me some of her favourite books; and Josey came to get assistance in her Latin and French, and brought me sundry little pots of grape jelly and other preserves, which tasted all the sweeter for being the work of her fair hands. It was a sad parting when I was called away to America—sad for me; for I told them that I hoped that my absence from England would be but temporary, when I felt inwardly that it might extend to several years.

Two or three months after my arrival at home, I received a letter from the old gentleman, written in his deliberate, round, clerk-like style, informing me of his wife's death. A note was enclosed from Josey, in which she described with her pencil the spot where her mother was buried in the old churchyard, and told me of her progress in her studies. More than a year passed by without my hearing from them at all, two or three of my letters to them having miscarried. Nearly seven years elapsed before I visited England again. Two years before that, I had read the decease of the old gentleman, in a stray London newspaper. I had written to Josey, sympathizing with her in her desolation, but had received no answer. So, the day after my arrival in London, I determined to make a search for the beloved Josey. I went to Hampstead, and my heart beat quicker as I approached the cottage where I had spent so many happy hours. My throat felt a little choky, as I recognized the neat bit of hedge before the door, the graceful vine which overhung it, and the familiar arrangement of the flower pots in the frames outside the windows; but my hopes received a momentary check when I found a strange name on the plate above the knocker. I knocked, and inquired concerning the former occupants of the house. After a severe effort to overcome the Boeotian stupidity of the housemaid, she ushered me into the little breakfast room, and said she would "call her missus." Almost before I had time to look about me, Josey entered the room. The little girl whose Latin exercises I had corrected, and who had always lived in my memory as she appeared in those days, suddenly came before me

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command;

And yet a spirit still and bright

With something of an angel light."

Yet she was hardly changed at all. She had lost none of those charming qualities which had made the thought of her precious to me during long years of absence. She had gained the maturity and dignity of womanhood without losing any of the simplicity and light-heartedness of girlhood. She was married. Her husband was a literary man of considerable reputation. Though only in middle age, he was a great sufferer with the gout. He was, generally speaking, a patient man; but I found, after I became intimate with him, that his pains sometimes made him express himself with a force of diction somewhat in advance of the religious prejudices of his gentle Josey, who tended him and ministered to his wants like an angel, as she was. But excuse me for wandering so far from my theme. To make a long story short, Josey went to Italy with her husband, who had been ordered thither by his physicians, and I never saw her afterwards. She deposited her husband's remains in the cemetery where those of Shelley and Keats repose, and found for two or three years a consolation for her bereaved spirit in residence in that city which more than all others proclaims to our unwilling hearts the vanity and transitoriness of this world's hopes, and the glory of the unseen eternal. Years after, I met one of her husband's friends in Paris, who told me that some four years after his death, she had entered a convent of a religious order devoted to the reclaiming of the degraded of her sex, in Brussels. There she had found a fitting occupation for the natural benevolence of her heart, and the peace which the world could not give. She had concealed the glory of her good works under her vow of obedience—her personality was hidden under the common habit of her Order—the very name which was so dear to me had been exchanged for another on the day that saw her covered with the white veil of the novice. I was about returning to England from the continent when I heard this, and I resolved to take Belgium's fair capital in my route. I found the convent readily enough, and waited in its uncarpeted but scrupulously clean parlour some time for the Lady Superior. She was a lady of dignified mien, with the clear complexion, the serene brow, and the dovelike eyes so common among nuns, and her face lighted up, as she spoke, with a gentle smile, which seemed almost like a presage of immortality. I explained my errand, and she told me that the good English sister had been dead more than a year. The intelligence pained me, and it gave me a feeling of self-reproach to notice that the nun, who had been with her in her last hour, spoke of her as if she had merely passed into another part of the convent we were in. The Superior, perceiving my emotion, conducted me through the garden of the convent to a shady corner of the grounds, where there were several graves. She stopped before a mound, over which a rose bush bent affectionately, as if its white blossoms craved something of the purity which was enshrined beneath it. At its head was a simple wooden cross, on which was inscribed the name of "Sister Helen Agnes," the date of her death, and the common supplication that she might rest in peace; and that was the only memorial of Josey that remained to me.

I have not forgotten, dear reader, that I am writing about girls; but having brought forward one who always seemed to me to be about as near perfection as it is vouchsafed to poor humanity to approach, I could not help following her to the end, and showing how she went from a beautiful girlhood to a still more beautiful womanhood, and a death which all of us might envy; and how lovely and harmonious was her whole career. For I feel that the consideration of the contrast which most of the young female readers of these pages will discover between themselves and Josey, will do them some good.

I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their tongues can wag, (forty-woman power,) and clinging inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, À la Napolitaine. Their independence is quite refreshing. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden Opera House with half the consciousness of making a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delightful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence; for perfect modesty does not even know how to blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their teens! How careful they are that the crinoline "sticks out" properly before they venture on the road to school! If Mother Goose (of blessed memory) could take a look into this world now, she would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her patrons,—

"Come with a whoop—come with a call," &c.,—

for she would find that it is now their custom to come with a hoop when they come for a call.

When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulet's garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that interesting young person:—

"She speaks, yet she says nothing."

I have seen many young ladies of Juliet's time of life in my day of whom the same thing might be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet take them on such a subject as the trimming of a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those entertaining topics more or less connected with the adornment of their persons, and how voluble they are! To the stronger sex, which of course cares nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on such themes are mere unmeaning words; but I must do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, that gimp, and flounces, and trimming generally, have a real, tangible existence.

How sentimental they are! In my young days albums were all the rage among young ladies; but now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and young ministers have taken their place. What pains will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. Simkins! They swarm around him after service, like flies around the bung of a molasses cask. Raphael never had such a face as his; Massillon never preached as he does. What a wilderness of worsted work are they not willing to travel over for his sake! How do they exhaust their inventive faculties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the feet at which they delight to sit! But when Simkins marries old Thompson's youngest daughter and a snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popularity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his stead among the volatile devotees; and Simkins then sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of the favour his preaching of the gospel found among those thoughtless young people than was the popularity of the good-looking light comedian, after whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black frock coat.

Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girlhood. Whatever meets their eyes is either "splendid" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term not contained in their lexicon. They take a momentary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their smiles until some new face takes his place in their fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are frittered away in successive flirtations before their possessors have reached womanhood. But it would be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about "speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few victims of the tender passion, from Pyramus and Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown hanging on his arm,—who have not sadly needed the advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen very few people in my day who really speak the truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for a fault which is common to all mankind.

Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent with cunning; but in most girls I think the two things are singularly combined. I am told that there is an academy in this city, frequented by many young women, known as the School of Design. The fact is a gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish nature had led me to suppose that there were very few indeed of the young ladies of these days who required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the fact as a good omen for the sex. Action from impulse carries its young victims to the extremes of good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the majority of her sex. Defeated in their hopes, they are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blistered Adam's cowardly tongue.

But I am making a long preachment, and yet I have said very little. I must leave my young friends, however, to draw their own lessons from the portrait I have given of one whose perfections would far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculpture their later career after any less perfect shape. There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dressmaker parading the streets, and more true women presiding over the homes of America. The imitation of her virtues will be found a better preservative of beauty than any eau lustrale; for it will create a beauty which "time's effacing fingers" are powerless to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a source of perpetual benediction.

It was a favourite wish of the beneficent Caligula that all mankind had but one neck, that he might finish them off at a single chop. It would ill comport with my known modesty, were I to lay claim to any thing like the all-embracing humanity of the old Roman philanthropist; but I must acknowledge that I have frequently felt inclined to apply his pious aspiration to the commentators on Shakespeare. Impatience is not my prevailing weakness; but these pestilent annotators have often been instrumental in convincing me that I am no stoic. I have frequently regretted the days of my youth, when no envious commentary obscured the brilliancy of that genius which has consecrated the language through which it finds utterance, and made it venerable to the scholars of all lands and ages. My love of Shakespeare, like the gout which has been stinging my right foot all the morning, is hereditary. My revered grandmother was very fond of solid English literature. She had not had, it is true, the advantages which the young people of the present day rejoice in; she had not studied in any of those seminaries which polish off an education in a most Arabian-Nightsy style of expedition, and send a young lady home in the middle of her teens, accomplished in innumerous ologies, and knowing little or nothing that is really useful, or that will attract her to intellectual pursuits or pleasure in after life. She had acquired what is infinitely better than the superficial omniscience which is so much cultivated in these days. The more active duties of life pleased her not; and Shakespeare was the never-failing resource of her leisure hours. Mr. Addison's Spectator was for her a "treasure of contentment, a mine of delight, and, with regard to style, the best book in the world." I shall never forget that happy day (anterior even to the jacket era of my life) when she took me upon her knee, and read to me the speeches of Marullus, and Mark Antony, and Brutus. In that hour I became as sincere a devotee as ever bent down before the shrine of Shakespeare's genius. Nor has that innocent fanaticism abated any of its ardour under the weight laid upon me by increasing years. The theatre has lost many of its old charms for me. The friendships of youth—the only enduring intimacies, for our palms grow callous in the promiscuous intercourse of the world, and cannot easily receive new impressions—have either been terminated by that inexorable power whose chilling touch is merciless alike to love and enmity, or have been interfered with by the varying pursuits of life. But Shakespeare still maintains his wonted sway, and my loyalty to him has not been disturbed by any of the revolutionary movements which have made such changes in most other things. Martin Farquhar Tupper has written, but I am so old-fashioned in my prejudices that I find myself constantly turning to my Shakespeare, in preference even to that gifted and proverbially philosophic bard.

But I am wandering. From the day I have mentioned, Robinson Crusoe was obliged to abdicate, and England's "monarch bard" (as Mr. Sprague calls Anne Hathaway's husband) reigned in his stead. I first devoured the Julius CÆsar. I say "devoured," for no other word will express the eager earnestness with which I read. The last time I read that play through, it was "within a bowshot where the CÆsars dwelt," and but a few minutes' walk from the palace which now holds great Pompey's statua, at whose foot the mighty Julius fell. Increase of appetite grew rapidly by what it fed on, and I was not long in learning as much about the black-clad prince, the homeless king, the exacting usurer, the fat knight and his jolly companions, the remorseful Thane, and generous, jealous Moor, as I knew about Brutus and the other red republican assassins of imperial Rome. My love of Shakespeare was greatly edified by a friendship which I formed in my earliest foreign journeyings. It was before the days of railways,—which, convenient as they are, have robbed travelling of half its zest, by rendering it so common. I had been making a little tour through the north of France. I had admired the white caps and pious simplicity of the peasants of Normandy, and had drunk in that exaltation of soul which the lofty nave of the majestic Cathedral of Amiens always imparts, and was about returning to Paris, when a rheumatic attack arrested my progress and prolonged my stay in the pleasant city of Douai. I there met accidentally with an English monk of that grand old Benedictine order, whose history for more than twelve centuries has been the history of civilization, and literature, and religion. He was descended from one of those old families which refused to modify their creed at the demand of a divorce-seeking king. He was a man of clear intellect and fascinating simplicity of character. He seemed to carry sunshine with him wherever he went. He occupied a professional chair in the English College attached to the Benedictine Monastery at Douai, and when his class hours were ended, he daily came to visit me. His sensible and sprightly conversation did more towards untying the rheumatic knots in my poor shoulder, than all the pills and lotions for which M. le MÉdecin charged me so roundly. When I visited him in his cell, I found that a well-worn copy of Shakespeare was the only companion of his Breviary, his Aquinas and St. Bernard on his study table. He loved Shakespeare for himself alone. He never used him as a lay figure on which he might display the drapery of a pedant. He hated commentators as heartily as a man so sincerely religious can hate any thing except sin, and was as earnest in his predilection for Shakespeare, "without note or comment," as his dissenting fellow-countrymen would have wished him to be for a similar edition of the only other inspired book in the world. He had his theories, however, concerning Shakespeare's characters, and we often talked them over together; but I must do him the justice to say that he never published any of them. I always regarded this fact as a splendid evidence of the entireness of his self-abnegation, and of his extraordinary advancement in the path of religious perfection. Many have taken the three monastic vows by which he was bound, and have lived up to them with conscientious fidelity; but few scholars have studied Shakespeare as he did, and yet resisted the temptation to tell the world all about it in a book.

Mousing the other day in the library of a venerable citizen of Boston, who is no less skilled in the gospel (let us hope) than in the law, I stumbled over a seedy-looking folio containing A Treatise of Original Sinne, by one Anthony Burgesse, who flourished in England something more than two centuries ago. One of the discoloured fly-leaves of this entertaining tome informed me, in a hand-writing which resembled a dilapidated rail-fence looked at from the window of an express train, that Jacobus Keith me possedit, An. Dom. 1655; and also bore this inscription, so pertinent to my present theme: "Expositors are wise when they are not otherwise." I feel that it is safe to leave my readers to make the application of this apothegm to the Shakespearean annotators of their acquaintance, so few of whom are wise, so many otherwise. I think it was the late Mr. Hazlitt who said (and if it was not, it ought to have been) that if you desire to know to what sublimity human genius is capable of ascending, you must read Shakespeare; but that if you seek to ascertain to what a depth of imbecility the intellect of man may be brought down, you must read his commentators.

Notwithstanding the low estimate which I am inclined to place upon the labour of the majority of the commentators on Shakespeare, still I have often felt a strong temptation to enroll myself among them. Not all their stupidity in explaining things which are clear to the meanest capacity, not all their pedantry in elucidating matters which are simply inexplicable, not all their inordinate voluminousness, could quench my ambition to fasten my roll of waste paper to the bob (already so unwieldy) of the Shakespearean kite. Others have soared into fame by such means; why should not I? We ought not to study Shakespeare so many years for nothing, and I feel that a sacred duty would be neglected if the result of my researches were withheld from my suffering fellow-students. But let me be more merciful than other commentators; let me confine my remarks to a single play. From that one you may learn the tenor of my theories concerning the others; and if you wish for another specimen, I shall consider that I have achieved an unheard-of triumph in this department of literature.

The tragedy of Hamlet has always been regarded as one of the most creditable of Shakespeare's performances. It needs no new commendation from me. Dramatic composition has made great progress within the two hundred and sixty years that have elapsed since Hamlet was written, yet few better things are produced nowadays. We may as well acknowledge the humiliating fact that Hamlet, with all its age, is every whit as good as if it had been written since Lady Day, and were announced on the playbills of to-morrow night, with one of Mr. Boucicault's most eloquent and elaborate prefaces. The character of Hamlet has been much discussed, but, with all due respect for the genius of those who have fatigued their reader with their treatment of the subject, I would humbly suggest that they are all wrong. Hamlet resembles a picture which has been scoured, and retouched, and varnished, and restored, until you can hardly see any thing of the original. Critics and commentators have bedaubed the original character so thoroughly, and those credulous people who rejoice that Chatham's language is their mother tongue, have heard so much of their estimate of Hamlet's character, that they receive them on faith, flattering themselves all the while that they are paying homage to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. High-flown philosophy exerts its powers upon the theme, and Goethe gives it as his opinion that the dramatist wished to portray the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment, and compares it to an oak planted in a china vase, proper to receive only the most delicate flowers, and which flies to pieces as soon as the roots begin to strike out.

Now let us drop all this metaphysical and poetical cant, and go back to the play itself. Shakespeare will prove his own best expositor, if we read him with docile minds, having previously instructed ourselves concerning the history of the time of which he wrote. There is a tradition common in the north of Ireland that Hamlet's father was a native of that country, named Howndale, and that he followed the trade of a tailor; that he was captured by the Danes, in one of their expeditions against that fair island, and carried to Jutland; that he married and set up in business again in that cold region, but that he afterwards forsook the sartorial for the regal line, by usurping the throne of Denmark. The tradition represents him to have been a man of violent character, a hard drinker, and altogether a most unprincipled and unamiable person, though an excellent tailor. Now, if we take the old chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, (Historia Danorum,) from which Shakespeare drew the plot for his tragedy, we shall find there little that does not harmonize with this tradition. Saxo Grammaticus tells us that Hamlet was the son of Horwendal, who was a famous pirate of Jutland, whom the king, Huric, feared so much, that, to propitiate him, he was obliged to appoint him governor of Jutland, and afterwards to give him his daughter Gertrude in marriage. Thus he obtained the throne. The old Irish name, Howndale, might easily have been corrupted into Horwendal by the jaw-breaking Northmen, and for the rest, the Danish chronicle and the Irish tradition are perfectly consistent. That there was frequent communication at that early period between Denmark and Ireland, I surely need not take the trouble to prove. All the early chronicles of both of those countries bear witness to it. It was to the land evangelized by St. Patrick that Denmark was indebted for the blessings of education and the Christian faith. But the visits of the Danes were not dictated by any holy zeal for the salvation or mental advancement of their benefactors, if we may believe all the stories of their piratical expeditions. An Irish monk of the great monastery of Banchor, who wrote very good Latin for the age in which he lived, alludes to this period in his country's history in a poem, one line of which is sometimes quoted, even now:—

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

"Time was, O Danes, we feared your gifts."

The great Danish poet, ŒhlenschlÆger, makes frequent allusions in the course of his epic, The Gods of the North, to the relations that once existed between Denmark and Ireland, and to the fact that his native land received from Ireland the custom of imbibing spirituous liquors in large quantities.

Hamlet's Irish parentage would naturally be concealed as much as possible by him, as it might prejudice his claims to the throne of Denmark; therefore we can hardly expect to find the ancient legend confirmed in the play, except in a casual manner. The free, outspoken, Irish nature would make itself known occasionally. Thus we find that when Horatio tells him that "there's no offence," he rebukes him with

"Yes, by St. Patrick, but there is, Horatio!"

There certainly needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that no true-born Scandinavian would have sworn in an unguarded moment by the Apostle of Ireland. Again, when Hamlet thinks of killing his uncle, the wrongful king, he apostrophizes himself by the name which he probably bore when he assisted his father (whose death he wishes to avenge) in his shop in Jutland:—

"Now, might I do it, Pat, now he is praying."

Then, too, he speaks to Horatio of the "funeral baked meats" coldly furnishing forth the marriage table at his mother's second espousal. The custom of baking meats is as well known to be of Irish origin, as that of roasting them is to be peculiar to the northern nations of continental Europe.

The frequent allusions in the course of the play to drinking customs not only prove that Hamlet descended from that nation whose hospitality is its greatest fault, but that he and his family were far from being the refined and philosophic people some of the commentators would have us believe. Thus he promises his old companion,—

"We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart,"—

which the most prejudiced person will freely allow to be truly a Corkonian phrase. This frailty of the family may be seen throughout the play. In the last scene, it is especially apparent. All the royal family of Denmark seem to have joined an intemperance society. The queen even, in spite of her husband's remonstrances, joins in the carousal. Hamlet, too, while he is dying, starts up on hearing Horatio say, "Here's yet some liquor left," and insists upon the cup being given to him. I know that it may be urged, on the other hand, that in the scene preceding the first appearance of the ghost before Hamlet, he indulges in some remarks which would prove him to have entertained sentiments becoming his compatriot, the noble Father Mathew. Speaking of the custom of draining down such frequent draughts of Rhenish, he pronounces it to his mind

"a custom

More honoured in the breach than the observance."

It must be remembered that the occasion on which this speech was uttered was a solemn one. Under such supernatural circumstances old Silenus or the King of Prussia himself might be pardoned for growing somewhat homiletic on the subject of temperance. The conclusion of this speech has given the commentators a fine chance to exercise their ingenuity.

"The dram of bale

Doth all the noble substance often doubt

To his own scandal."

They have called it the "dram of base," the "dram of eale," &c., and then have been as much in the dark as before. Some have thought that Shakespeare intended to have written it "the dram of Bale," as a sly hit at Dr. John Bale, the first Protestant Bishop of Ossory in Ireland, who was an unscrupulous dram-drinker as well as dramatist, for he wrote a play called "Kynge Johan," which was reprinted under the editorial care of my friend, Mr. J. O. Halliwell, by the Camden Society, in 1838. But this attempt to make it reflect upon the Ossory prelate is entirely uncalled for. A little research would have showed that bale was a liquor somewhat resembling our whiskey of the true R. G. brand, the consumption of which in the dram-shops of his country the Prince Hamlet so earnestly deplored. The great Danish philosopher, V. Scheerer Homboegger, in his autobiography, speaks of it, and says that like all the Danes he prefers it to either wine or ale, or water even: Der er vand, her er vun og oel,—men allested BAELE drikker saaledes de Dansker. (Autobiog. II. xiii. Ed. Copenhag.)

As to the proofs that Hamlet's family was closely connected with the tailoring interest, they are so thickly scattered through the entire tragedy, and are so apparent even to the casual reader, that, even if I had room, it would only be necessary to mention a few of the principal ones. In the very first scene in which he is introduced, Hamlet talks in an experienced manner about his "inky cloak," "suits of solemn black," "forms" and "modes," and tries to defend himself from the suspicion which he feels is attached to him by many of the courtiers, by saying plainly, "I know not seams." This first speech of Hamlet's is a key to the wanton insincerity of his character. His mother has begged him to change his clothes,—to "cast his nighted colour off,"—and he answers her requests with, "I shall in all my best obey you, madam;" yet it is notorious that he heeds not this promise, but wears black to the end of his career.

He repeatedly uses the expressions which a tailor would naturally employ. His figures of speech frequently smell of the shop. As, for instance, he says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb;" in the scene preceding the play he declares that, though the devil himself wear black, he'll "have a suit of sables." In the interview with his mother, who may be supposed not to have forgotten the early history of the family, he uses such figures with still greater freedom:—

"That monster custom who all sense doth eat

Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this;

That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewise gives a frock or livery,

That aptly is put on."

In his instruction to the players he speaks of tearing "a passion to tatters, to very rags" and says of certain actors that when he saw them it seemed to him as if "some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well." In the fourth act, he calls Rosencrantz a sponge.

What better evidence of the skill of Hamlet and his father in their common trade can we have than that afforded by the fair Ophelia, who speaks of the Prince as "the glass of fashion and the mould of form"? In the chamber scene with his mother, Hamlet is taken entirely off his guard by the sudden appearance of his father's ghost, whom he apostrophizes, not in the set phrases which he used when Horatio and Marcellus were by, but as "a king of shreds and patches". Old Polonius does not wish his daughter to marry a tailor, but is too polite to tell her all of his objections to Lord Hamlet's suit; so he cloaks his reasons under these figures of speech, instead of telling her, out of whole cloth, that Hamlet is a tailor, and the match will never do:—

"Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,

Not of that dye which there in vestments show,

But implorators of unholy suits," &c.

Some late editions of the Bard make the second line of this passage read,—

"Not of that die which their investments show,"——

which is as evident a corruption of the text as any of those detected by the indefatigable Mr. Payne Collier.

If any further proof is needed of a matter which must be clear to every reasoning mind, it may be found in that solemn scene in which the Prince, oppressed by the burden of a life embittered and defeated in its highest aims, meditates suicide. Now, if there is a time when all affectation of worldly rank would be likely to be forgotten and swallowed up in the contemplation of the terrible deed which occupies the mind, it is such a time as this. And here we find Shakespeare as true as Nature herself. The soldier, weary of life, uses the sword his enemies once feared, to end his troubles. Hamlet's mind overleaps the interval of his princely life, and the weapon which is most naturally suggested by his youthful career is "a bare bodkin."

Had I not already written more than I intended on this subject, I might go on with many other evidences of the truth of my view of this remarkable character. I did wish also to show that Hamlet was a most disreputable character, and by no means entitled to the sympathy or admiration of men. Suffice it to say that he was, even to his last hour, fonder of drink than became a prince (except perhaps a Prince Regent)—that he treated Ophelia improperly—that he often spoke of his step-father in profane terms—that he indulged in the use of profane language even in his soliloquies, as for example,—

"The spirit I have seen

May be a devil; and the devil hath power

To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,

(As he is very potent with such spirits)

Abuses me too,—damme!"

His familiarity with the players likewise is an incontrovertible proof of his depravity; for the theatrical people of Denmark in his age were not what the players of our day are. They were too often people of loose and reckless lives, careless of moral and social obligations, and whose company would by no means be acceptable to a truly philosophic prince.

If this pre-Raphaelite sketch of Hamlet's character should seem unsatisfactory, it can be filled out by a perusal of the play itself, if the reader will only cast aside the trammels which the commentators have placed in his way. It may be a new view to most of my readers; but I am convinced that the theory, of which I have given an outline, is fully as tenable as many of the countless conjectural essays to which that matchless drama has given rise. If it be untrue, why, then we must conclude that all similar theories, though they may be sustained by as many passages as I have adduced in support of my Hibernico-sartorial hypothesis, are equally devoid of a foundation of common sense. If my theory stands, I have the satisfaction of having connected my name (which would else be soon forgotten) with one of Shakespeare's masterpieces; and that is all that any commentator has ever done. And if my theory proves false, it consoles me to think that the splendour of the genius which I so highly reverence is in no wise obscured thereby; for the stability and grandeur of the temple cannot be impaired by the obliteration of the ambitious scribblings and chalk-marks with which some aspiring worshippers may have defaced its portico.

Of all the studies to which I was ever impelled in my youth, either by fear of the birch or by the hope of the laurel or the bays, mythology was perhaps the most charming. It was refreshing, after trying in vain to conjugate a verb, and being at last obliged to decline it—after adding up a column of figures several times, and getting many different results, and none of them the right one—and after making a vain attempt to comprehend the only algebraic knowledge that ever was forced into my unmathematical brain, viz., that x equals an unknown quantity,—it was, I say, refreshing to turn over the leaves of my Classical Dictionary, and revel among the gods and heroes whose wondrous careers were embalmed in its well-thumbed pages. LempriÈre was the great magician who summoned up before my delighted eyes the denizens of a sphere where existence was unvexed by any pestilent arithmetics, and where the slavery of the inky desk was unknown. It always seemed to me as if the knowledge that I gained out of those enchanted chronicles not only improved my mind, but made my body more robust; for I joined in the chase, fought desperate battles, as the gods willed it, and breathed all the while the pure, invigorating air of old Olympus. The consecrated groves were the dwelling-place of my mind, and I became for a time a sharer in the joys of beings in whom I believed with all the ardour and simplicity of childhood. I enjoyed my mythological readings all the more because they did not generally find favour with my school companions, most of whom vindicated their nationality by professing their affection for the Rule of Three. One of them, I remember, was especially severe on the uselessness of the studies in which I took pleasure. He, parcus deorum cultor, et infrequens, could get no satisfaction out of the books in which I revelled; if he had got to study or read, he could not afford to waste his brains over the foolish superstitions of three thousand years ago. He did not care how much romance and poetic beauty there might be in the ancient mythology: what did it all come to in the end? It didn't pay. It was a humbug. Our paths in life separated when we graduated from jackets and peg-tops. He remained faithful to his boyish instincts, and pursued the practical as if it were a reality. After a few years his face lost all its youthful look; an intense spirit of acquisitiveness gleamed in his calculating eye, and an interest table seemed to be written in the lines of his care-worn countenance. We seldom had any conversation in our after years, for he always seemed to be under some restraint, as if he feared that I wished to borrow a little money of him, and he did not wish to refuse for the sake of the old time when we sat at the same desk, although he knew that my note was good for nothing. His devotion to his deity, the practical, did not go unrewarded. He became like the only mythological personage whom he would have envied, had he known any thing of the science he despised. His touch seemed to transmute every thing into gold. His speculations during the war of 1812 were all successful. Eastern lands harmed him not. The financial panic of 1837 only put money in his purse. He rolled up a large fortune, and was happy. He looked anxious, but of course he was happy. What man ever devoted his life to the working out of the dreams of his youth in the acquisition of riches, and succeeded beyond his anticipations, without being very happy? But, if his gains were something practical and real, his losses were doubly so. Each one of them was as a dagger stuck into that sere heart. His only son gave him much trouble by his wild life, and, what touched him still more, wasted the money he had laboured to pile up, at the gaming tables of Baden. I saw him walking down Tremont Street the other day, looking care-worn and miserable, and I longed to ask him what he thought of the real and practical after trying them. He would certainly have been willing to acknowledge that there is more reality in the romance and poetry of mythology than in the thousands which he invested in the Bay State Mills. His practical life has brought him vanity and vexation of spirit, while the old LempriÈre, which he used to treat so contemptuously, flourishes in immortal youth, unhurt amid the wreck of fortunes and the depreciation of stocks.

But I am not writing an essay on mythology. I wish to treat of one who is sometimes considered a myth, but who is a living and breathing personality like all of us. This wide-spread scepticism is one of the most fatal signs of the times. Because the late Mrs. Sairey Gamp supposed herself justified in cultivating a little domestic mythology in the shade of the famous Mrs. Harris, are we to take all the personages who have illustrated history as myths and unrealities? Shade of Herodotus, forbid it! There are some unbelieving and irreverent enough to doubt whether there is really such a person as Mrs. Partington; other some there are so hardened in their incredulity as to question the existence of the individual who smote Mr. William Patterson, and even of the immortal recipient of the blow himself. Therefore we ought not to think it strange that the lady whose name adorns the title of this article should not have escaped the profane spirit of the age.

Unfortunately for us, Mrs. Grundy is no myth, but a terrible reality. She is a widow. The late Mr. Grundy bore it with heroic patience as long as he could, and then, by a divine dispensation in which he gladly acquiesced, was relieved of the burden of life. If he be not happy now, the great doctrine of compensation is nought but a delusion and a sham. If endless happiness could only be attained through such a purgatory as poor Grundy's life, few of us, I fear, would yearn to be counted among the elect. Martyrs, and confessors, and saints of every degree have won their crowns of beatitude with comparative ease; if they had been subjected to a twenty years' novitiate with Mrs. Grundy and her tireless tongue, they would have found how much more terrible that was than the laborious life or cruel death by which they passed from earth, and fewer bulls of canonization would have received the Seal of the Fisherman. I have heard from those who were acquainted with that estimable and uncomplaining man that he married for love. His wife was a person of considerable attractions, of an inquiring turn of mind, and of uncommon energy of character. In her care of his household there was nothing of which he might with reason complain. She kept a sharp look-out over all those matters in which the prudent housewife delights to show her skill; her table was worthy to receive regal legs beneath its shining mahogany and spotless cloth, and I have even heard that her husband never had occasion to curse mentally over the lack of a shirt-button. Yet was Giles Grundy, Esquire, one of the most miserable of men. Of what avail was it to him that his wife could preserve quinces, if she could not preserve her own peace of mind? What did it matter how well she cured hams, if she always failed so miserably in curing her tongue? What profit was it that her accounts with her butcher and grocer were always correctly kept, if her accounts of all her neighbours constantly overran and kept her and her spouse in a perpetual state of moral bankruptcy? What difference did it make how well she took care of her own family, if they were to be kept in an unending turmoil by her solicitude concerning that of every body else?

If you had visited Mrs. Grundy, and remarked the brightness of the door-knocker, the stair-rods, the andirons, and every other part of her premises that was susceptible of polish, and the scrupulous cleanliness that held absolute sway around her, you would have sworn that she was gifted with the hundred arms of Briareus: if you had listened for fifteen minutes to her observations of men and things, you would have had a conviction amounting to absolute certainty that she possessed the eyes of Argus. Nobody ever doubted that she was a most religious person. She attended to all her religious duties with most edifying exactness. She was always in her seat at church, and could tell you, to a bonnet ribbon, the dress of every person who honoured the sacred edifice with his or her presence. If you would know who of the congregation were so lacking in fervour of spirit as to neglect to bow in the creed, or to commit the impropriety of nodding during the sermon, Mrs. Grundy could give you all the information you could wish. She carried out the divine precept to the letter: she watched as well as prayed. But her religion did not waste itself in mere devotional ecstasy; it took the most attractive form of religion—that of active benevolence. And her pious philanthropy was not of that exclusively telescopic character that looks out for the interests of the Cannibal Islands and the king thereof, and cannot understand that there is any spiritual destitution nearer home. She subscribed, it is true, to support the missionaries with their wives and numerous children, who were devoted to the godly work of converting the Chinese and the Juggernauts; but she did something also in the way of food and flannel for the victims of want in her own neighbourhood. She established a sewing circle in the parish where she lived, and never appeared happier than when busily engaged with her female companions in their weekly task and talk. I am afraid that there was other sowing done in that circle besides plain sewing. The seeds of domestic unhappiness and strife were carried from thence into all parts of the parish. Reputations as well as garments took their turn among those benevolent ladies, and were cut out, and fitted, and basted, and sewed up, and overcast. The sewing circle was Mrs. Grundy's confessional. Do not misapprehend me—I would not asperse her character by accusing her of what are known at the present day as "Romanizing tendencies"; for she lived long before the "scarlet fever" invaded the University of Oxford and carried off its victims by hundreds; and nobody ever suspected her of any desire to tell her own offences in the ear of any human being. No, she detested the Roman confessional in a becoming manner; but she upheld, by word and example, that most scriptural institution, the sewing circle—the Protestant confessional, where each one confesses, not her own sins, but the sins of her neighbours. Mrs. Grundy's success with her favourite institution encouraged others to emulate her example; and now sewing circles are common wherever the mother tongue of that benevolent lady is spoken. It must in justice be acknowledged that there are few institutions of human invention which have departed from the spirit of their original founder so little as the sewing circle.

Yet, in spite of all her virtues as a housekeeper, a philanthropist, and a Christian, Mrs. Grundy had her enemies. Some people were uncharitable enough to say that she was the cause of more trouble than all the rest of the female population of the town. They accused her of setting herself up as a censor, and giving judgments founded upon hearsay testimony rather than sound legal evidence. They even said that she made her visits among the poor a cloak for the gratification of her inquisitiveness; and, if it is ever pardonable to judge of the motives of a fellow-being, I think that, in consideration of their exasperation, they must be excused for making so unkind a charge, it seemed to be so well founded. Far be it from me to say that Mrs. Grundy ever wilfully misrepresented. She would have shrunk instinctively from a falsehood. But she delighted to draw inferences; and no fact or rumour ever came to her without being classified properly in her mental history of her neighbours, and being made to shed its full influence upon her next conversation. It is astonishing how much one pair of eyes and ears will do in the collection of information when a person is devoted to it in earnest. In her younger days, Mrs. Grundy had taken pleasure in watching her neighbours and keeping up a running commentary on their movements; as she advanced in life, it became her business. Her efforts in that way were rather in the style of an amateur up to the time of her marriage; afterwards she adopted a professional air. She placed herself at her favourite window, ornamenting its seat with her spools, and though she stitched away with commendable industry, nothing escaped her that came within range of her keen powers of observation.

If Mr. Brown called on Mrs. White over the way, Mrs. Grundy set it down as a remarkable occurrence: if he repeated his visit a week later, she would not declare it positively scandalous, but it was evident that her nicer sense of propriety was deeply wounded: if he passed by the door without calling, it was clear that there had been a falling out—that Mrs. White had seen the error of her ways, or that her husband had, and had given Brown a warning. If a stranger was seen exercising Jones's bell-pull on two consecutive days, this indefatigable woman allowed not her eyes to sleep nor her eyelids to slumber until she had satisfied herself concerning his name and purpose. If Mr. Thompson waited upon pretty Miss Jenkins home in a shower, and treated her kindly and politely, (and who could do otherwise with a young angel in blue and drab, who might charm a Kaffir or a Sepoy into urbanity?) Mrs. Grundy straightway instituted inquiries among all the neighbours as to whether it was true that they were engaged. After this fashion did Mrs. Grundy live. Her words have been known to blast a reputation which under the sunshine of prosperity and the storms of misfortune had sustained itself with equal grace and honour. It was useless to bring up proofs of a life of integrity against her sentence or her knowing smile. There was no appeal from her decision. Not that she was uncharitable,—only it did seem as if she were rather more willing to believe evil of her neighbours than good; and she appeared slow to trust in the repentance of any one who had ever fallen into sin, especially if the person were of her own sex. I am not complaining of this peculiarity; we must be circumspect and strict, and mercy is a quality too rare and divine to be wasted on every trivial occasion. But I cannot help thinking that, if the penitent found it as hard to gain the absolving smile of that Power to which alone we are answerable for our misdeeds as to reinstate himself in the good graces of Mrs. Grundy, how few of us could have any hope of the beatific vision!

Mrs. Grundy had great influence; she was respected and feared. People found that she would give her opinion ex cathedra, and that, however unfounded that opinion might be, there were those who would reËcho it until common repetition gave it the force of truth; so they tried to conciliate her by graduating their actions according to what they supposed would be her judgment. When this was seen, she began to be envied by some who had once hated her, and her idiosyncrasies were made the study of many of her sex who longed to share her empire over the thoughts and actions of their fellow-creatures. Thus, by a sort of multiplex metempsychosis, were Mrs. Grundy's virtues perpetuated, and she was endowed with a species of omnipresence. In this country Mrs. Grundy is a power. She is the absolute sovereign of America. Her reign there is none to dispute. Our national motto ought to be, instead of E pluribus unum, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" There is no class in our community over which she does not exercise more or less power. Our politicians, when they cease to regard their influence as a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder, act, not from any fixed principles, but with a single eye to the good will of Mrs. Grundy. If a man is buying a house, it is ten chances to one that Mrs. Grundy's opinion concerning gentility of situation will carry the day against cosiness and real comfort. If your wife or daughter goes to buy a dress, Mrs. Grundy's taste will be consulted in preference to the durability of the fabric or the condition of your purse. Mrs. Grundy dictates to us how we shall furnish our houses, and prescribes to us our whole rule of life. Under her stern sway, multitudes are living beyond their means, and trying to avert the bankruptcy and unhappiness that inevitably await them. It is not merely in the management of temporal affairs that Mrs. Grundy makes her power felt. Her vigilance checks many a generous impulse, stands between the resolution to do justice and its execution, and is a fruitful source of hypocrisy. She presides over the pulpit; the power of wardens and vestrymen is swallowed up by her; and the minister who can dress up his weekly dish of moral commonplaces so as not to offend her discriminating taste deserves to retain his place, and merits the unanimous admiration of the whole sewing circle. She is to be found in courts of law, animating the opposing parties, and enjoying the contest; actions of slander are an agreeable recreation to her; petitions for divorce give her unmixed joy. Like the fury, Alecto, so finely described by Virgil, Mrs. Grundy can arm brothers to deadly strife against each other, and stir up the happiest homes with infernal hatred; to her belong a thousand woful arts—Sibi nomina mille, mille nocendi artes. Mrs. Grundy's philanthropy confines itself to no particular class; it is universal. Nothing that relates to human kind is alien to her. There is nothing earthly so high that she does not aspire to control it, nor any thing too contemptible for her not to wish to know all about it.

Mrs. Grundy is omnipresent. Go where you will, you cannot escape from her presence. She stands guard unceasingly over your front door and back windows. Her watchful eye follows you whene'er you take your walks abroad. Your name is never mentioned that she is not by, and seriously inclined to hear aught that may increase her baleful stock of knowledge. It is all the same to her whether you have lived uprightly or viciously; beneath her Gorgon glance all human actions are petrified alike. And if she does not succeed in sowing discord around your hearthstone, and in driving you to despair and self-murder, as she did poor Henry Herbert the other day, it will be because you are not cursed with his fiery sensitiveness, and not because she lacks the will to do it.

There is but one way in which the Grundian yoke can be thrown off. We must treat her as the English wit treated an insignificant person who had insulted him; we must "let her alone severely." We pay a certain kind of allegiance to her if we take notice of her for the purpose of running counter to her notions. We must ignore her altogether. It is true, this requires a great deal of moral courage, particularly in a country where every body knows every body else's business; but it is an easier task to acquire that courage than to submit patiently to Mrs. Grundy's dictation and interference. Who shall estimate the happiness of that millennial period when we shall cease to ask ourselves before our every action, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" and shall begin in earnest to live up to the golden rule that counsels us to mind our own business? When that day comes, what a world this will be! How will superficial morality and skin-deep propriety, envy and uncharitableness, be diminished! How will contentment, and mutual good will, and domestic peace be augmented! Think on these things, O beloved reader; mind your own business, and the day is not far distant when, for you at least, the iron sceptre of Dame Grundy shall be powerless, and the spell broken that held you in so humiliating a thraldom.

Life is what we make it. The same scenes wear a very different appearance to an ingenuous youth "in the bright morning of his virtues, in the full spring blossom of his hopes," and to the disappointed wretch who gazes on them "with the eyes of sour misanthropy." The horse that was turned by his benevolent owner into a carpenter's shop, with a pair of green spectacles prefixed to his nose, and mistook the dry pine shavings for his legitimate fodder, was very much in the condition of a youth looking upon life and yielding to the natural enthusiasm of his unwarped spirit. Like the noble brute, however, the young man is undeceived as soon as he tries to sustain himself with the vanities which look so tempting and nutritious. He may, like a Wolsey, a Charles V., or a Napoleon, attain to the heights of power before the delusive glasses drop off; but even though the moment be delayed until he lies gasping in the clutch of that monarch to whom the most absolute of sovereigns and the most radical of republicans alike must yield allegiance, it is sure to come, and show him the ashes that lay hid beneath the fair, ripe-looking rind of the fruit he climbed so high to obtain. Life passes before us like a vast panorama, day by day and year by year unrolling and disclosing new scenes to charm us into self-forgetfulness. At one time, we breathe the bracing air of the mountains; at another, our eyes are gladdened by the sight of sunshiny meadows, or of fertile and far-reaching prairies; and then the towered city, with its grove of masts and its busy wharves, makes all mere natural beauty seem insignificant in comparison with the enterprise and ambition of man; until, at last, the canvas is rolled away, the music ceases, the lights are put out, and we are left to realize that all in which we delighted was but an illusion and a "fleeting show."

Nevertheless, in spite of the vanities that surround us,—in spite of the sublime world-sickness of Solomon and the Preacher, and the fierce satire of Juvenal, (who was as anxious to ascertain the precise weight of Hannibal as if that illustrious dux had been a prize-fighter,)—there is considerable reality in life. The existence of so much sham and make-believe implies the existence of the real and true. Sir Thomas Browne tells us that "in seventy or eighty years a man may have a deep gust of the world"; and it were indeed melancholy if any one with hair as gray as mine should look despairingly over the field of human existence and effort, and cry, "All is barren."

Life, as I have before said, is whatever we choose to make it. Its true philosophy is that divine art which enables us to transmute its every moment into the pure gold of heroic and changeless immortality. Without that philosophy, it is impossible for the world not to seem at times as it did to the desponding Danish prince, "a sterile promontory," and a "foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." Without it, life is like an elaborate piece of embroidery, looked at from the wrong side; we cannot but acknowledge the brilliancy of some of its threads, and the delicate texture of the work, but its lack of system, and of any appearance of utility, fatigues the mind that hungers after perfection, and tempts it to doubt the divine wisdom and goodness from which it originated. With it, however, we gaze with admiration and awe upon the front of the same marvellous work. Our sense is no longer puzzled by any straggling threads, or loose ends; the exquisite colours, the contrast of light and shade, and the perfect symmetry and harmony of the design, fill the heart of the beholder with wonder and delight, and draw him nearer to the source of those ineffable perfections which are but imperfectly symbolized in the marvels of the visible universe.

The philosophy which can do all this is sincerity. "I think sincerity is better than grace," says Mr. T. Carlyle; and the Scotch savage is right. All the amenities of life that spring from any other source than a true heart, are but gratuitous hypocrisy. The kind-hearted knight whom I have already quoted showed how highly he esteemed this virtue when he said, "Swim smoothly in the stream of nature, and live but one man." This double existence, that most of us support,—that is, what we really are, and what we wish to be considered,—is the source of many of our faults, and most of our vexation and wretchedness. He is the truly happy man who forgets that "appearances must be kept up," and remembers only that "each of us is as great as he appears in the sight of his Creator, and no greater." A great French philosopher has truly said, "How many controversies would be terminated, if the disputants were obliged to speak out exactly what they thought!" And surely he might have gone farther in the same line of thought; for how much heartburning, domestic unhappiness, dishonesty, and shameful poverty might be prevented, if my neighbour Jinkins and his wife were content to pass in the world for what they are, instead of assuming a princely style of living that only makes their want of true refinement more apparent, and if Johnson and his wife could be induced not to imitate the vulgar follies of the Jinkinses! Believe me, incredulous reader, there is more wisdom in old Sir Thomas's exhortation to "live but one man" than appears at first sight.

But to leave this great primary virtue, which policy teaches most men to practise, though they love it not,—there are two or three principles of action which I have found very useful in my career, and which form a part of my philosophy of life. The first is, never to anticipate troubles. Many years ago, I was travelling in a part of our common country not very thickly settled, and, coming to a place where two roads met, I applied, in my doubt as to which one I ought to take, to an old fellow (with a pair of shoulders like those of Hercules, and a face on which half a century of sunshine, and storm, and toddies had made an indelible record) who was repairing a rickety fence by the wayside. He scanned me with a look that seemed to take in not only my personal appearance, but the genealogy of my brave ancestor, who might have fallen in a duel if he had not learned how "to distinguish between the man and the act," and then directed me to turn to the left, as that road saved some three or four miles of the distance to the farm-house to which I was journeying. As it was spring-time, I manifested some anxiety to know whether the freshets, which had been having quite a run of business in some parts of the country, had done any damage to a bridge which I knew I must cross if I took the shorter road. He sneered at my forethought, and said he supposed that the bridge was all right, and that I had better "go ahead, and see." I was acting upon his advice, when a shout from his hoarse, nasal voice caused me to look back. "I say, young man," he bawled out to me, "never cross a bridge till you come to it!" There was wisdom in the old man's rough-spoken sentence—"solid chunks of wisdom," as Captain Ed'ard Cuttle would fain express it—and it sank deep into my memory. There are very few of us who have not a strong propensity to diminish our present strength by entertaining fears of future weakness. If we could content ourselves to "act in the living present,"—if we could keep these telescopic evils out of sight, and use all our energies in grappling with the difficulties that actually beset our path,—how much more we should achieve, and how greatly would our sum of happiness be increased!

Another most salutary principle in my philosophy is, never to allow myself to be frightened until I have examined and fairly established the necessity of such a humiliation. I adopted this principle in my childhood, being led to it in the following manner: I was visiting my grandfather, who lived in a fine old mansion-house in the country, with high wainscotings, capacious fireplaces, heavy beams in the ceilings, and wide-arching elms overshadowing the snug porch where two or three generations had made love. Sixty years and more have elapsed since that happy time, yet it seems fresher in my memory than the events of only quarter of a century back. My grandfather was a lover of books, and possessed a good deal of general information. He thought it as advisable to keep up with the history of his own times as to be skilled in that of empires long since passed away. It is not to be wondered at that he should have treasured every newspaper—especially every foreign journal—that he could lay his hands upon. It was under his auspices that I first read the dreadful story of the Reign of Terror, and acquired my anti-revolutionary principles.

I shall never forget the bright autumnal afternoon when the mail coach from Boston brought a package of books and papers to my grandfather. It was the last friendly favour, in fact the last communication, that he ever received from his old Tory friend, Mr. Barmesyde, whom I mentioned with respect in a former essay; for that genial old gentleman died in London not long after. The parcel had made a quick transit for those days, Mr. Barmesyde's letter being dated only forty-six days before it was opened by my grandsire, and we enjoyed the strong fragrance of its uncut contents together. The old gentleman seized upon a copy of Burke's splendid Essay on the French Revolution, which the package contained, and left me to revel in the newspapers, which were full of the dreadful details of that bloody Saturnalia. I got leave from my grandfather (who was so deep in Burke that he answered me at random) to sit up an hour later than usual. Terrible as all the things of which I read seemed to my young mind, there was a fascination about the details of that sanguinary orgie that completely enchanted me. My imagination was full of horrible shapes when I was obliged to leave the warm, cheerful parlour, and Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were the infernal chamberlains that attended me as I went up the broad, creaking staircase unwillingly to bed. A fresh north-west breeze was blowing outside, and the sere woodbines and honeysuckles that filled the house with fragrance, and gave it such a rural look in summer, startled me with their struggles to escape from bondage. Had it been spring, my young imagination was so excited that I should have feared that they might imitate the insurgents of whom I had been reading and begin to shoot! In the night my troubled slumbers were disturbed by a noise that seemed to me louder than the discharge of a heavy cannon. I sat up in the high, old-fashioned bed, and glared around the room, which was somewhat lighted by the beams of the setting moon. There was no mistake about my personal identity—I was neither royalist nor jacobin; there was no doubt that I was in the best "spare chamber" of my grandfather's house, and not in the Bastile, and that the dark-looking thing in the corner was a solid mahogany chest of drawers, and not a guillotine; but all these things only served to increase my terror when I noticed a dark form standing near the foot of the bed and staring at me with pale, fiery eyes. I rubbed my own eyes hard, and pinched myself severely, to make sure that I was awake. The room was as still as the great chamber in the pyramid of Cheops. I could hear the old clock tick at the foot of the stairs as plainly as if I had been shut up in its capacious case. In the midst of my perturbation it made every fibre of my frame tremble by striking one with a solemn clangour that I thought must have waked every sleeper in the house. The stillness that followed was deeper and more terrifying than before. I heard distinctly the breathing of the monster at the foot of the bed. I tried to whistle at the immovable shape, but I had lost the power to pucker. At last, I formed a desperate resolution. I knew that, if the being whose big, fierce eyes filled me with terror were a genuine supernatural fiend, it was all over with me, and I might as well give up at once. But, if perchance a human form were hid beneath that dreadful disguise, there was some room for hope of ultimate escape. To settle this point, therefore, became necessary to my peace of mind, and I determined that it should be done. Bending up "each corporal agent to the terrible feat," I slid quietly out of bed. The monster was as motionless as before, but I noticed that his head was covered with a white cloth, which made his head seem ghastlier than ever. Setting my teeth firmly together, and clinching my little fists to persuade myself that I was not afraid, I made the last, decisive effort. I walked across the room, and stood face to face with that formidable shape. My grandfather's best coat hung there against the wall, its velvet collar protected from the dust by a white cloth, and the two gilt buttons on its back glittering in the moonlight. This was the tremendous presence that had appalled me. The weakness in the knees, the chattering of my teeth, and the profuse perspiration which followed my recognition of that harmless garment, bore witness to the severity of my fright. Before I crawled back into the warm bed, I resolved never in future to yield to fear, until I had ascertained that there was no escape from it; and I have had many occasions since to act upon that principle.

Speaking of fear, a friend of mine has a favourite maxim, "Always do what you are afraid to do;" to which (in a limited sense, so far as it relates to bodily fear) I subscribed even in my boyhood. I was returning one evening to my grandfather's house, during one of my vacation visits, and yielded to the base sentiment of timidity so far as to choose the long way thither by the open road, rather than to take the short cut, through the graveyard and a little piece of woodland, which was the ordinary path in the daytime. I pursued my way, thinking of what I had done, until I got within sight of the old mansion and its guardian elms, when shame for my own cowardice compelled me to retrace my steps a quarter of a mile or more, and take the pathway I had so foolishly dreaded. The victory then achieved has lasted to this hour. Dead people and their habitations have not affrighted me since; indeed, some grave men whom I have met have excited my mirth rather than my fears.

But overcome our fears and our propensity to borrow trouble, as we may,—in spite of all our philosophy, life is a severe task. I have heard of a worthy Connecticut parson of the old school, who enlarged upon the goodness of that Providence which dealt out time to a man, divided into minutes, and hours, and days, and months, and years, instead of giving it to him, as it were, in a lump, or in so large a quantity that he could not conveniently use it! Laugh as much as you please, gentle reader, at the seeming absurdity of the venerable divine, but do not neglect the great truth which inspired his thought. Do not forget what a great mercy it is that we are obliged to live but one day at a time. Do not overlook the loving kindness which softens the memory of past sorrows, and conceals from us those which are to come. I have no respect for that newest heresy of our age, which pretends to read the secrets of the unseen world, nor any sympathy with those morbid minds that yearn to tear away the veil which infinite wisdom and mercy hangs between us and the future. With all our boasted learning we know little enough; but that little is far too much for our happiness. How many of our trials and afflictions could we have borne, if we had been able to foresee their full extent and to anticipate their combined poignancy? Truly we might say with Shakespeare,—

"O, if this were seen,

The happiest youth—viewing his progress through,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue—

Would shut the book, and sit him down and die."

He only is the true philosopher who uses life as the usurer does his gold, and employs each shining hour so as to insure an ever-increasing rate of interest. He does not bury his gift, nor waste it in frivolity. Like the old Doge of Venice, he grows old but does not wear out: Senescit, non segnescit. And he truly lives twice, as an old classical poet expresses it, inasmuch as he renews his enjoyment of the past in the recollection of his good actions and of pleasures "such as leave no sting behind."

There is no pleasure so satisfactory as that which an old man feels in recalling the happiness of his youthful days. All the woes, and anxieties, and heart-burnings that disturbed him then have passed away, and left only sunshine in his memory. And this retrospective enjoyment increases with every repeated recital, until the scenes of his past history assume a magnificence of proportion that bewilders the narrator himself, and sets the principles of optics entirely at defiance. It is with old men looking back on their younger days very much as it is with people who have travelled in Italy. How do the latter glow with enthusiasm at the mere mention of the "land of the melting lyre and conquering spear"! How do their eyes glisten as they tell of the time when they mused among the broken columns of the Forum, or breathed the air of ancient consecration under the majestic vaults of the old basilicas, or walked along the shores of the world's most beautiful bay, and watched the black form of Vesuvius striving in vain to tarnish with its foul breath the blue canopy above it! They have forgotten their squabbles with the vetturini, the draughtless chimneys in their lodgings, and the dirty staircase that conducted to them; the fleas, with all the other disagreeable accompaniments of Italian life, have fled into oblivion; and Italy lives in their memories only as a land of gorgeous sunsets, and of a history that dwarfs all other human annals. And so it is with an old man looking back upon his youth: he forgets how he cried over his arithmetic lessons; how unfilial his feelings were when his governor refused him permission to set up a theatre in the cellar; how sheepishly he slunk through all the back alleys on the day when he first mounted a tail-coat and a hat; how unhappy he was when he saw his heart's idol, Mary Smith, walking home from school with his implacable foe, Brown; how his head used to ache after those noctes coenÆque deÛm with his club at the old Exchange Coffee House; and what a void was created in his heart when his crony of cronies was ordered off by a commission from the war department. There is no room in his crowded memory for such things as these. Sitting by his fireside, as I do now, he recalls his youth only as a season of bats and balls, and marbles, of sleds, and skates, and bright buttons, and clean ruffled collars, of Christmas cornucopias of hosiery, and no end of Artillery Elections and Fourths of July, with coppers enough to secure the potentiality of obtaining egg-pop to an alarming extent.

How he fires up if you mention the theatre to him! He will allow that Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Warren are most excellent in their way; but bless your simple heart, what is the stage now compared to what it was in the first part of this century? And he is about right. It is useless for us, who remember the old Federal Street playhouse, and the triumphs of Cooke and the great Kean, to try to go to the theatre now. Our new theatre is more stately and splendid than Old Drury was, but our players do not reach my youthful standard. I miss those old familiar faces and voices that delighted me in times long past, and the stage has lost most of its charms. I can find my best theatrical entertainment here at home. I call up from among the shadows that the flickering firelight casts upon the wall, the tall, knightly figure of Duff, the brisk, busy, scolding Mrs. Barnes, the sedate and judicious Dickson, the grotesque Finn, the stately and elegant Mrs. Powell, looking like the personification of tragedy, and bluff old Kilner, fat and pleasant to the sight, and with that hearty laugh that made all who heard it love him.

What is the excitement occasioned by the Ellsler or Miss Lind compared to that which attended the advent of the elder Kean? What crowds used to beset the box office in the ten-footer next to the theatre, from the earliest dawn until the opening! I often think, when I meet some of our gravest and grayest citizens in their daily walks, what a figure they cut now compared with the days when they were fighting their way into the box office of the old theatre! Talk of enthusiasm! What are all our political campaigns and public commemorations compared with that evening during the last war with Great Britain, when Commodore Bainbridge came into Boston Bay after his victory over the Java! That admirable actor, the late Mr. Cooper, was playing Macbeth, and interrupted his performance to announce the victory.

But, pardon me, I did not sit down here to lose myself in the reminiscences of half a century ago. Let me try to govern this truant pen, and keep it more closely to my chosen theme. Do you remember, beloved reader, your second visit to the theatre? If you do, cherish it; let it not depart from you, for in the days that are in store for you, when age and infirmity shall stand guard over you, and you are obliged to find all your pleasures by your fireside, the memory of your second play will be very precious to you. You will find, on looking back to it through a vista of sixty years or more, that all the pleasure you then enjoyed was placed on the credit side of your account, and has been increasing by a sort of moral compound interest during the long years that you have devoted to delights less innocent, perhaps, and certainly less satisfactory, or to the pursuit of objects far more fleeting and unreal than those which then fascinated your youthful mind. I say your "second play," for the first dramatic performance that the child witnesses is too astonishing to afford him its full measure of gratification. It is only after he has told his playmates all about it, and imitated the wonderful hero who rescued the beautiful lady in white satin, and dreamed of the splendour of the last great scene, when all the persons of the drama stood in a semicircle, and the king, with a crown of solid gold upon his head, addressed to the magnanimous hero the thrilling words,—

"It is enough: the princess is thine own!"—

and all the characters struck impressive attitudes, and the curtain descended upon a tableau lighted up by coloured fires of ineffable brilliancy,—it is only after all these things have sunk deep into the young mind, and he has resolved to write a play himself, and never to rest satisfied until he can bring down the house with the best of the actors he has seen, that he fully appreciates the entertainment which has been vouchsafed to him.

What a charm invests the place where we made our first acquaintance with the drama! It becomes an enchanted spot for us, and I doubt if the greatest possible familiarity in after life can ever breed contempt for it in our hearts. For my own part, I regarded the destruction of the old theatre in Federal Street, and the erection of warehouses on its hallowed site, as a positive sacrilege. And I cannot pass that spot, even at this late day, without mentally recurring to the joys I once tasted there. Perhaps some who read this may cherish similar sentiments about the old Tremont Theatre, a place for which I had as great a fondness as one can have for a theatre in which he did not see his first play. The very mention of it calls up its beautiful interior in my mind's eye,—its graceful proscenium, its chandeliers around the front of the boxes, its comfortable pit, where I enjoyed so much good acting, and all the host of worthies who graced that spacious stage. Mr. Gilbert was not so fat in those days as he is now, nor Mr. Barry so gray. What a picturesque hero was old Brough in the time when the Woods were in their golden prime, and the appearance of the Count Rodolpho on the distant bridge was the signal for a tempest of applause! Who can forget how Mr. Ostinelli's bald head used to shine, as he presided over that excellent orchestra, or how funny old Gear's serious face looked, as he peered at the house through those heavy, silver-bowed spectacles? Perhaps for some of my younger readers the stage of the Museum possesses similar charms, and they will find themselves, years hence, looking back to the happy times when Mr. Angier received their glittering quarters, and they hastened up stairs, to forget the wanderings of Æneas and the perplexities of arithmetic in the inimitable fun of that prince-regent among comedians, Mr. William Warren.

But wherever we may have commenced our dramatic experience, and whatever that experience may have been, we have all, I am sure, felt the influence of that mysterious charm which hangs over the stage. We have all felt that keen curiosity to penetrate to the source of so much enjoyment. Who has not had a desire to enter that mysterious door which conducts the "sons of harmony" from the orchestra to the unknown depths below the stage? It looks dark and forbidding, but we feel instinctively that it is not so, when we see our venerated uncle Tom Comer carrying his honest and sunshiny face through it so often. That green curtain, which is the only veil between us and a world of heroes and demigods,—how enviously do we look at its dusty folds! With what curiosity do we inspect the shoes of varied make and colour that figure in the little space between it and the stage! How do we long to follow the hero who has strutted his hour upon the stage into the invisible recesses of P. S. and O. P., and to know what takes the place of the full audience and the glittering row of footlights in his eyes when he makes his exit at the "upper entrance, left," or through the "door in flat" which always moves so noiselessly on its hinges! I think that the performance of the "Forty Thieves" awakened this curiosity in my mind more than almost any other play. I longed to inspect more closely those noble steeds that came with such a jerky gait over the distant mountains, and to know what produced the fearful noise that attended the opening of the robbers' cave. I believed in the untold wealth that was said to be heaped up in those subterranean depths, but still I wished to look at the "cavern goblet," and see how it compared with those that adorned the cases of my excellent friends, Messrs. Davis and Brown. I can never forget the thrill that shot through me when Morgiana lifted the cover of the oil jar, and the terrible question, "Is it time?" issued from it, nor my admiration for the fearlessness of that self-possessed maiden when she answered with those eloquent and memorable words, "Not yet, but presently." I believed that the compound which Morgiana administered so freely to the concealed banditti was just as certain death to every mother's son of them as M. Fousel's Pabulum VitÆ is renewed life to the consumptives of the present day; and, years after I had supposed my recollections of the "Forty Thieves" to have become very misty and shapeless, I found myself startled in an oriental city by coming upon several oil jars of the orthodox model, and I astonished the malignant and turbaned Turk who owned them, and amused the companion of my walks about Smyrna, by lifting the lid of one of them, and quoting the words of Morgiana. My superstitions concerning that pleasant old melodrama of course passed away when I became familiar with the theatre by daylight, and was accustomed to exchange the compliments of the morning with the estimable gentleman who played Hassarac; but the illusion of its first performance has never been entirely blotted from my mind.

Some years ago it was my privilege to visit a place which is classical to every lover of the drama and its literature. Drury Lane Theatre, now that its ancient rival, Covent Garden, has passed away, and been replaced by a house exclusively devoted to the lyric muse, is the only theatre of London which is associated in every mind with that host of geniuses who have illustrated dramatic art from the times of Garrick to our own. That gifted and versatile actor, Mr. Davenport, who stands as high in the favour of the English as of the American public, conducted me through that immense establishment. We entered the door, which I had often looked at with curiosity as I passed through the long colonnade of the theatre, encountering several of those clean-shaven personages in clothes that would be much refreshed if they were allowed to take a nap, and, after traversing two or three dark corridors, found ourselves upon the stage. The scene of so many triumphs as have there been achieved is not without its attractions, even though it may look differently en dÉshabille from what it does in the glitter of gaslight. The stage which has been trod by the Kembles, the Keans, Siddons, Macready, Young, Palmer Dowton, Elliston, Munden, Liston, and Farren, is by no means an ordinary combination of planks. We know, for Campbell has told us, that

"——by the mighty actor brought,

Illusion's perfect triumphs come;

Verse ceases to be airy thought,

And sculpture to be dumb."

Yet what a shadowy, intangible thing the reputation of a great actor would seem to be! We simply know of him that in certain characters his genius held the crowded theatre in willing thraldom, and made the hearts of hundreds of spectators throb like that of one man. Those who felt his wondrous power have passed away like himself; and all that remains of him who once filled so large a space in the public eye is an ill-written biography or a few hastily penned sentences in an encyclopÆdia.

I was too full of wonder at the extent of that vast stage, however, to think much of its ancient associations. Those lumbering stacks of scenery that filled a large building at the rear of the stage, and ran over into every available corner, told the story of the scenic efforts of Old Drury during nearly half a century. How many dramas, produced "without the slightest regard to expense," and "on a scale of unparalleled splendour," must have contributed to the building up of those mighty piles! The labyrinthine passages, the rough brick walls, darkened by time and the un-Penelope-like spiders of Drury Lane, were in striking contrast to the stage of that theatre as it appears from the auditorium. The green-room had been placed in mourning for the "goodlie companie" that once filled it, by the all-pervading, omnipresent smoke of London. Up stairs the sight was still more wonderful. The space above the stage was crowded full of draperies, and borders, and dusty ropes, and wheels, and pulleys. Davenport enjoyed my amazement, and led me through a darksome, foot-wide passage above the stage, through that wilderness of cordage to the machinists' gallery. Take all the rope-walks that you have ever visited, dear reader, and add to them the running gear of several first-class ships, and you may obtain something of an idea of the sight that then met my view. I have often heard an impatient audience hiss at some trifling delay in the shifting of a scene. If they could see the complicated machinery which must be set in motion to produce the effects they desire, their impatience would be changed to wonder at the skill and care which are so constantly exerted and make so few mistakes. A glance into two or three of the dressing-rooms, and a hasty visit to the dark maze of machinery beneath the stage for working the trapdoors, completed my survey of Old Drury, and I left its ancient walls with an increased respect for them, and a feeling of self-gratulation that I was neither an actor nor a manager.

Not long after the above visit, I availed myself of an opportunity to make a similar inspection of the ThÉÂtre FranÇais, in the Palais Royal at Paris. The old establishment is not so extensive as that of Drury Lane, but its main features are the same. There was an air of government patronage about it which was apparent in its every department. The stage entrance was through a long and well-lighted corridor that might have led to a banking-house. Its green-room was a luxurious saloon, with a floor of tessellated walnut and oak, waxed and polished so highly that you could see your figure in it, and could with difficulty avoid becoming a lay figure upon it. Its frescoed ceiling and gilded cornices, its immense mirrors, and its walls covered with the portraits of several generations of players, whose genius has made the very name of that theatre venerable throughout the civilized world, were very different from most of the green-rooms that I had seen. In the ancient colleges in Italy the walls of the classrooms are hung with portraits of the distinguished scholars, illustrious prelates, and sometimes of the canonized saints, who once studied under their time-honoured roofs. In the same spirit, the green-room of the ThÉÂtre FranÇais is adorned with busts and pictures; and the chairs that once were occupied by a Talma, a Mars, and a Rachel are held in honour in the place where their genius received its full development. The dressing-rooms of the brilliant company which sustains the high reputation of that house are in perfect keeping with its green-room. Each of the leading actors and actresses has a double room, furnished in a style of comfortable elegance. In the wardrobe and property rooms, the imperial patronage is visible in the richness of the stage furniture and the profusion of dresses made of the costliest silks and velvets. The stage, however, is very much like that of any other theatre. There were the same obscure passages, the same stupendous collection of intricate machinery, and the same mysterious odour, as of gas and musty scenery, pervaded the whole. I was permitted to view all its arcana, from the wheels that revolve in dusty silence eighty or ninety feet above the stage to the ponderous balance weights that dwell in the darkness of the second and third stories below it; and enjoyed it so keenly that I regretted to be told that I had seen all, and to find myself once more in the dazzling sunshine of the Rue de Richelieu.

We are accustomed to speak of the theatre as a repository of shams and unrealities, and to contrast it with the actualities of every-day life. I hope that you will excuse me, gentle reader, for venturing to deny the justice of all such figures of speech. They are as false as that common use of the expressions "sunrise" and "sunset," when we know that the sun does not really rise or set at all. No, it is the theatre that is the reality, and the life we see on every side the sham. The theatre is all that it pretends to be—a scenic illusion; and if we compare it to the world around us, with its loving couples, my-dearing each other before folks, and exchanging angry words over the solitary tea-tray,—its politicians, seeking nominations and votes, and then reluctantly giving up their private interests and comforts for the "public good," (as the spoils of office are facetiously termed,)—its so-called ministers of the gospel, who speak of an offer of increased salary as "an opportunity to labour in a wider sphere of usefulness,"—and its funerals, where there is such an imposing show of black crape and bombazine, but where the genuine mourning commences only after the reading of the will of the deceased,—I am sure that we shall be justified in concluding that the fictitious affair which we try to dignify with the title of "real life" is a far less respectable illusion than the mimic scene that captivates us in the hours of relaxation.

Be not dismayed, kind reader,—I have no intention of impressing you for a tiresome cruise in the high and dangerous latitudes of German metaphysics; nor do I wish to set myself up as a critic of pure reason. In spite of Noah Webster and his inquisitorial publishers, I still cherish a partiality for correct orthography; and I would not be understood as referring in the caption of this article to the celebrated founder of the transcendental school of philosophy. I cannot but respect Emmanuel Kant as a remarkable intellectual man; and I hope to be pardoned for saying that his surname might properly be anglicized, by spelling it with a C instead of a K. Neither did I allude to the useful art of saying "No" opportunely, which an excellent friend of mine (whose numerous virtues are neutralized by his propensity to fabricate puns in season and out of season) insists upon denominating the "philosophy of can't." That faculty which is, in more senses than one, a negative virtue, is unhappily a much harder thing to find than the vice of which I have a few words to say.

I do not mean cant in the worse sense of the word, as exemplified in the characters of Pecksniff, Stiggins, Chadband, and Aminadab Sleek, nor even in those of that large school of worshippers of propriety and bond-servants of popular opinion, who reverse the crowning glory of the character of Porcius Cato, and prefer to seem, rather than to be, good. The cant I allude to is the technical phraseology of the various virtues, which some people appear to think is the same thing as virtue itself. They do not remember that a greasy bank-note is valueless save as the representative of a given quantity of bullion, and that pious and virtuous language is of no account except its full value be found in the pure gold of virtue stored away in the treasure-chambers of the heart. For such cant as this I have less respect than for downright hypocrisy; for there is something positive about the character of your genuine villain, which certainly does not repel me so strongly as the milk-and-watery characteristics of that numerous class of every-day people who (not being good enough to serve as examples, nor bad enough to be held up as warnings) are of no use whatever in their day and generation. What possible solace can he who deals in the set phrases of consolation administer to the afflicted spirit in that hour, when (even among the closest friends) "speech is silver, but silence is golden"?

There is scarcely a subject upon which men converse, in which this species of cant does not play its part; but there are some matters in which it makes itself so conspicuous that I cannot resist the temptation to pay particular attention to them. And, as the subject is rather an extensive one, I will parley no longer in its vestibule, but pull off my overcoat, and make myself at home in its front parlour. I wish to make a few observations on cant as it manifests itself in regard to morality, philanthropy, religion, liberty, and progress. My notions will excite the sneers of some of my younger readers, I doubt not, and perchance of some older ones; but, while I claim the privilege of age in speaking out my mind, I shall try to avoid the testiness which senility too often manifests towards those who do not respect its opinions. Convinced that mine are true, I can afford to emulate "Messire de Mauprat" in his patience, and wait to see my fellow-men pass their fortieth birthday, and, leaving their folly and enthusiasm behind them, come round to my position.

The cant of Morality is so common that it is mistaken by many excellent people for morality itself. To leave unnoticed the people who consider it very iniquitous to go to the theatre, but perfectly allowable to laugh at Mr. Warren on the stage of the Museum; who enjoy backgammon, but shrink from whist with holy horror; and who hold up their hands and cry out against the innocent Sunday recreations of continental Europe, yet think themselves justified in reading their Sunday newspapers and the popular magazines, or talking of the style of the new bonnets which made their first appearance at the morning service,—to say nothing about the moralists of this school, I am afraid that the prevailing notions on matters of greater import than mere amusement are not such as would stand a very severe moral test. When I see so much circumspection with regard to external propriety, joined with such an evident want of principle, it seems to me as if the Ten Commandments of the Old Law had been superseded by an eleventh: Thou shalt not be found out. When I see people of education in a city like Boston, dignifying lust under the title of a spiritual affinity, and characterizing divorce as obedience to the highest natural law,—and still more, when I see how little surprise the enunciation of such doctrines occasions,—I no longer wonder at infidelity, for I am myself tempted to ask whether there is any such thing as abstract right or abstract wrong, and to question whether morality may not be an antiquated institution, which humanity is now sufficiently advanced to dispense with. It is a blessed thing that we have not the power to read one another's hearts. To pass by the unhappiness it would cause us, what changes it would occasion in our moral classifications! How many men, clad in picturesque and variegated costumes, are labouring in the public workshops of Charlestown, or Sing Sing, or Pentonville, who, if the heart were seen, would be found worthier by far than some of those ornaments of society who are always at the head of their pews, and whose names are found alike on false invoices and subscription lists for evangelizing some undiscovered continent! What a different balance would be struck between so-called respectability in its costly silks and its comparative immunity from actual temptation, and needy wantonness displaying its rouge and Attleborough jewelry all the more boldly because it feels that the ban of society is upon it!

And this brings me to the cant of Philanthropy. That excellent word has been so shamefully abused of late years, by being applied to the empirical schemes of adventurers and social disorganizers, that you cannot now say a much worse thing of a man than that he is a "philanthropist." That term ought to designate one of the noblest representatives of the unselfish side of human nature; but to my mind, it describes a sallow, long-haired, whining fellow, who has taken up with the profession of loving all men in general, that he may better enjoy the satisfaction of hating all men in particular, and may the more effectually prey upon his immediate neighbours; a monomaniac, yet with sufficient "method in his madness" to make it pay a handsome profit; a knave whose telescopic vision magnifies the spiritual destitution of Tching-tou, and can see nothing wanting to complete our Christian civilization but a willingness to contribute to the "great and good work," and whose commissions for disbursing the funds are frightfully disproportionate to the amount collected and the work done. But there is a great deal of the cant of philanthropy passing current even among those who have no respect for the professional philanthropist. With all possible regard for the spirit of the age, I do not believe that modern philanthropy can ever be made to take the place of old-fashioned Christian charity. Far be it from me to underrate the benevolent efforts which are made in this community; but I cannot help seeing that while thousands are spent in alms, we lack that blessed spirit of charity which imparted such a charm to the benevolent institutions of the middle ages. They seemed to labour among the poor on the principle which Sir Thomas Browne laid down for his charities—"I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it." We irreverent moderns have tried to improve upon this, and the result is seen in legal enactments against mendicancy, in palatial prisons for criminals, and in poorhouses where the needy are obliged to associate with the vicious and depraved. The "dark ages" (as the times which witnessed the foundation of the greatest universities, hospitals, and asylums the world ever saw, are sometimes called) were not dark enough for that.

Do what we may to remedy this defect in our solicitude for the suffering classes, the legal view of the matter will still predominate. We may imitate the kindliness of the ancient times, but we cannot disguise the fact that pauperism is regarded not only as a great social evil, but as an offence against our laws. While this is so, we shall labour in vain to catch the tone of the days when poverty was ennobled by the virtues of the apostolic Francis of Assisi and the heroic souls that relinquished wealth and power to share his humble lot. The voice of our philanthropy may be the voice of Jacob, but the hand will be the hand of Esau. That true gentleman and kind-hearted knight whom I have already quoted, had no patience with this contempt for poverty which was just growing into sight in his time, but is now so common; and he administered to it a rebuke which has lost none of its force by the lapse of more than two hundred years: "Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without poverty, take away the object of charity, not understanding only the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ."

In making any allusion to religious cant, I am sensible that I tread on very dangerous ground. Still, in an essay on such a subject as the present, revivalism ought not to go unnoticed. God forbid that a man at my time of life should pen a light word against any thing that may draw men from their worldliness to a more intimate union with their Creator. But the revival extravagances which last year made the profane laugh and the devout grieve, merit the deprecation of every person who does not wish to see religion itself brought into contempt. I do not believe in the application of the high-pressure system to the spiritual life. Some persons seem to regard a religious excitement as an evidence of a healthy spiritual state. As well might they consider a fever induced by previous irregularity to be a proof of returning bodily health. As the physician of the body would endeavour to restore the patient to his normal state, so too the true physician of the soul would labour to banish the religious fever from the mind of his patient, and to plant therein the sure principles of spiritual health—a clearly-defined dogmatic belief, and a deep conviction of the sinfulness of sin. We all need to be from time to time reminded that true religion is not a mere effervescence, not a vain blaze, but a reality which reflects something of the unchangeable glory of its divine Author. It is not a volcano, treasuring within its bosom a fierce, destructive element, sullenly smouldering and smoking for years, and making intermittent exhibitions of a power as terrible as it is sublime. No; it is rather a majestic and deep-flowing river, taking its rise amid lofty mountains whose snowy crags and peaks are pure from the defilement of our lower world, fed from heaven, bearing in its broad current beauty, and fertility, and refreshment, to regions which would else be sterile and joyless, and emptying at last into a shoreless and untroubled sea, whose bright surface mirrors eternally the splendour of the skies.

That the cant of Liberty should be popular with the American tongue is not, perhaps, to be wondered at. A young nation,—which has achieved its own independence in a contest with one of the most powerful governments in the world,—which has grown in territory, population, and wealth beyond all historical precedent,—and which has a new country for its field of action, so that its progress is unimpeded by the relics of ancient civilization or the ruins of dead empires,—could not reasonably be expected to resist all temptations to self-glorification. The American eagle is no mere barnyard fowl—content with a secure roost and what may be picked up within sight of the same. He is the most insatiable of birds. His fierce eye and bending beak look covetous, and his whole aspect is one of angry anxiety lest his prey should be snatched from him, or his dominion should be called in question. In this regard he differs greatly from his French relative, who squats with such a conscious air of superiority on the tops of the regimental standard-poles of the imperial army, and surveys the forest of bayonets in which he makes his nest as if he felt that his power was undisputed. And we Americans are not less uneasy and wild than the bird we have chosen for our national emblem, and appear to think that the essential part of liberty consists in keeping up an endless talk about it. Our cant of freedom needs to be reminded of Tom Hood's observation concerning religious cant:—

"'Tis not so plain as the old hill of Howth,

A man has got his bellyful of meat,

Because he talks with victuals in his mouth!"

With all our howling about liberty, we Americans are abject slaves to a theory of government which we feel bound to defend under all circumstances, and to propagate even in countries which are entirely unfitted for it. This constitutional theory is a fine thing to talk about; few topics afford so wide a range to the imaginative powers of a young orator. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that the subject should be so often forced upon us, and that so many startling contrasts should be drawn between our governmental experiment and the thousand-years-old monarchies of Europe. These comparisons (which some people who make republicanism such an article of faith, that they must find it hard to repeat the clause of the Lord's prayer, "Thy kingdom come,"—are so fond of drawing) remind me of the question that was discussed in the Milesian debating society—"Which was the greatest man, St. Patrick or the Fourth of July?" and the conclusions drawn from them are very like the result of that momentous debate, which was decided in the affirmative.

For my own part, I have got past the age when eloquence and poetry are of much account in matters of such vital importance as government. When I buy a pair of overshoes, my first object is to get something that is water-proof. So, too, in the matter of government, I only wish to know whether the purposes for which government is instituted—the protection of the life, property, and personal liberty of its subjects—are answered; and, if they are, I am ready to swear allegiance to it, not caring a splinter of a ballot-box whether it be founded on hereditary succession or a roll of parchment, or whether its executive authority be vested in a president, a king, or an emperor. That is the best government which is best administered; it makes little difference what you call it, or on what theory it is built. I love my country dearly, and yield to no one in my loyalty to her government and laws; but (pardon me for being so matter-of-fact, and seemingly unpatriotic) I would willingly part with some of this boasted liberty of ours, to secure a little more wisdom in making laws, and a good deal more strength in executing them. I count the privilege of talking politics and of choosing between the various political adventurers who aspire to be my rulers, as a very insignificant affair compared with a sense of security against popular violence and the dishonesty of dealers in the necessaries of life. And I cannot help thinking, that for the inhabitants of a country where there is little reverence for authority or willing obedience to law, where the better class of the citizens refuse to take any part in politics, and where the legislative power is enthroned, not in the Senate, nor in the House of Representatives, but in the Lobby,—for the inhabitants of such a country to boast of their liberty aloud, is the most absurd of all the cants in this canting world.

Little as I respect the cant of liberty, I care even less for the cant of Progress. I never had much patience with this worship of the natural sciences, which is rapidly getting to be almost the only religion among certain cultivated people in this quarter. I remember in my boyhood startling by my scientific apathy a precocious companion who used to bother his brains about the solar system, and one useless ology and another, in the precious hours which ought to have been devoted to Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. He had been labouring hard to explain to me the law of gravitation, and concluded with the bold statement that, were it not for that law, an apple, with which he had been illustrating his theory, instead of falling to the earth, might roll off the unprotected side of this sublunary sphere into the abyss of space,—or something to that effect. He could not conceal his contempt for my want of scientific ardour, when I asked him whether he should really care if it did roll off, so long as there was a plenty left! I did wrong to joke him, for he was a good fellow, in spite of his weakness. It is many years since he figured himself out of this unsatisfactory world, into a state of existence where vision is clearer even than mathematical demonstration, and where x does not "equal the unknown quantity."

Pardon this digression: in complaining of the vaunted progress of this rapid age, I am making little progress myself. It appears to me that the people who laud this age so highly either do not know what true progress is, or suffer themselves to mistake the means for the end. Your cotton mills, and steam engines, and clipper ships, and electric telegraphs, do not constitute progress; they are means by which it may be attained. If gunpowder, immediately after its invention, had been devoted to the indiscriminate destruction of mankind, could such an invention have justly been termed progress? If the press were used only to perpetuate the blasphemies and indecencies of Mazzini and Eugene Sue, who would esteem Gutenberg and Fust as benefactors, or promoters of true progress? And if the increased facilities for travel, and the other inventions on which this age prides itself, only tend to make men's minds narrower by absorbing them in material interests, and their souls more mean by giving them the idol of prosperity to worship, then is this nineteenth century a century of progress indeed, but in the wrong direction. And if our mode of education only augments the ratio of crime among the lower class, and makes superficial pretenders of the higher orders of society, it is not a matter which will justify our setting ourselves quite so high above past ages and the rest of the world.

I cannot see what need nor what excuse there is for all this bragging. A great many strong men lived before Agamemnon,—and after him. We indeed do some things that would astonish our forefathers; but how are we superior to them on that account? We enslave the lightnings of heaven to be our messengers, and compel the sun to take our portraits; but if our electric wires are prostituted to the chicanery of trade or politics, and the faces which the sun portrays are expressive of nothing nobler than mercantile shrewdness and the price of cotton, the less we boast of our achievements, the better. Thucydides never had his works puffed in a newspaper, Virgil and Horace never poetized or lectured for a lyceum; Charlemagne never saw a locomotive, nor did St. Thomas Aquinas ever use a friction match. Yet this unexampled age possesses, I apprehend, few historians who would not shrink from being compared with the famous Greek annalist, few poets worthy to wear the crowns of the friends of the great Augustus, few rulers more sagacious and firm than the first Emperor of the West, and few scholars who would not consider it a privilege to be taught by the Angelic Doctor.

True progress is something superior to your puffing engines and clicking telegraphs, and independent of them. It is the advancement of humanity in the knowledge of its frailty and dependence; the elevation of the mind above its own limited acquirements, to the infinite source of knowledge; the cleansing of the heart of its selfishness and uncleanness; in fact, it is any thing whatever that tends to assimilate man more closely to the divine Exemplar of perfect manhood.

THE END.

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