whitened in company, hast no consideration for my peace of mind-positively none! Harkee, Benjamin the inflexible! since Mr. C., in unappreciable kindness to thy grim-visaged grandson, has chosen to be my bonny half-bairn's charioteer, I suspect thou hast in gratitude to him propelled the movements of the clocks, sir. Now it contenteth the responsible tenant of the Lodge to keep up with the age-nay, Ben, to jog along a little in the rear: but say, O Watchman set in alabaster! what of the night?” Benjamin replies and makes his exit, and the Elder changes his key: "Within those stolid and impassive outworks there beats a brave heart and warm; and if Benjamin were taken from me, then indeed should I be bereaved. If there are two living creatures who understand each other better than do Ben and I, it would gratify my curiosity to see them. My pleasantry passes by him, as you observe, like an idle wind; and though it may secretly affright his staid propriety, it never disturbs his serenity. Once only did he ever dubiously regard me; it was when, in gardening operations, I declared myself almost a proselyte to the Wordsworthian theory of a sentient principle in plants: at what he thought and called the monstrous "faith, 'that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes,' infidelity, graven as in adamant, was so perspicuously the expression of his physiognomy, that, rather than endanger the issue of a writ De lunatico at the suit of my servants, I suffer Benjamin to remain in unmolested herbal heathenism. But we are deserting our Idol of the evening without one praiseful or valedictory farewell. Be thine, O honored WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE! a lofty throne where all are kings!— anon of thee, Monarch of the Muses' Sons! And bless thee, darling Child, Mary avourneen! Look now, the sky is one wide smile, but chastened, for the glittering orbs are in adoration, could we but hear them. Or rather, is it not the Boundary of the Blest we see above us? and what we count as shining stars, are they not angels' eyes-bright, but full of pity as they gaze on a scene which the presence of their God does not gladden ? Ay, therein lies the secret of the pensiveness of Night! Surely at this moment is God beautifying and hallowing the world with his blessing; and living things are breathingscarcely breathing is the silent Earth-as conscious of the effluence of Heaven. A fond farewell, sweet Mary! 'Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered!'" COLLOQUY IV. Twenty Minutes Talk about Milton. CHAPTER VI. "I am become a NAME: I am a part of all that I have met : Yet all experience is an an arch wherethro' It would be a mode of procedure quite un-English, to enter upon several consecutive colloquies without commenting on the state of the weather. Moreover when, without violating Truth to gratify Patriotism, a compliment can be paid to the climate of his country, it is a Briton's duty to do so; for foreign calumnies upon our native skies are permitted to provoke undue contumely also from a people incontinently prone to grumble among themselves at much that invigorates their individual constitution and national. Touching that basely-traduced atmospherical production, called English weather, we owe an im mense amount of thanksgiving to that more dauntless class of Nature's minstrels, who, leaving gentler poets to sound their pæans to the praise of stars and zephyrs, proclaim the sterner merits of hail, snow, wind, storm, and vapour. And, chiefly because eccentric and halfanomalous, among this "dauntless" band, let us elect the mild Cowper, for himself and clan, as the recipient of our gratulations. It is pleasure, slightly tinged with pity, to accompany the valiant valetudinarian— bold in seclusion, timid in the shock of men-while he scourges the " pleasant vices" of the herd which he, “a stricken deer," had quitted ;—right comfortable is it to see him putting upon his country a commanding aspect which he could not put upon himself; and to hear him thus venting the healthy vigor of his English heart, before one of the gloomiest of national pictures "Though thy clime Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers." Now in the creed of one at least (and of the least) of his compatriots, of few pleasanter sensations is this cold hut of human clay susceptible, than when the genial sun melts all the heart within it into a gaêté so diffusive, that after inundating all its environs with its flood of joy, it extends a lavish flow of compassion to those misjudging masses abroad who imagine the Indomitable Isle to be enveloped in perpetual brouillards. If Variety be " the very spice of life," as some have chosen to denominate it, then life in England is surely highly flavoured, elementally: still there are who complain fastidiously that the element is not to their taste; and the aërial ragout is taken with especially-wry faces by nervous elderlings subject à l'ennuyeuse maladie, ce de conserver la santé par un trop grand régime. In the course of a brief professional career I have advocated more dispiriting causes than that which now, without con-si-de-ra-tion of any kind, I have undertaken on behalf of the climate of my country. Addressing, of course, a discriminating jury, I contend, of course with deference, that to an English subject on whose amiable temperament the evidence of sociality has a soothing effect, and who (perchance not caring "to unsphere the spirit of Plato,") may, in the lower walks of practical philosophy, be placidly making the best of his condition at all times and in all places,-to such an one it cannot be merely reconciliatory, it is more a matter of active rejoicing, that the Four Seasons which preside over his country's year, and exercise *La Rochefoucauld. |