"Sir Herbert had one daughter married in Scotland, who seldom or ever visited him; and his only son, who lived with him, had imbibed, from the example of his father, since the death of Lady Williams, a love for solitude, and a partiality for Swansea, that prevented his wishes from roving beyond it. The old English hospitality prevailed in their house, but its visitors were confined to their poorer neighbours, who always found a welcome in it.
"There was a communication through a shrubbery into a part of Sir Herbert"s house, in which was my apartment. From thence my Julia could steal unperceived there, when at times she wished to visit me, unrestrained by the necessary formalities of dress or the being observed by the family."
(To be concluded in our next.)
THE STORM.
A Fragment.
It is dark, and a silent gloom pervades the face of Heaven and of Earth, that makes my soul expand to such a magnitude, as if it would burst the very bosom which contains it.--All is silent!--fear takes possession of my mind; when, from an angry cloud, the liquid flames flash forth with terrible sublimity; darting from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, with such repeated swiftness, blazing expansive through the heaven"s high vaults, then on a sudden vanishing! On rolls the distant thunder solemnly sublime, and with the pelting rain and howling wind, approaches nearer: between each peal out flashes the sulphureous flame, illumining the rushing cataract with its light; succeeded by a crash most horrible, which shakes the very earth to its centre! Once more a sombre gloom spreads over the face of nature--again, all is terror and confusion!--
DUDLEY.
_WISDOM._
Lessons of Wisdom have never such power over us as when they were wrought into the heart through the ground work of a story which engages the pa.s.sions. Is it that we are like iron and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon? or is the heart so in love with deceit, that where a true report will not reach it, we must cheat it with a fable, in order to come at truth?
_LEVITY._
A Devonshire droll has thus burlesqued the lullababy pastoral of Shenstone. "My banks they are furnish"d with bees, &c."
My beds are all furnish"d with fleas, Whose bitings invite me to scratch; Well stock"d are my orchards with jays, And my pig sties white over with thatch.
I seldom a pimple have met, Such health does magnecia bestow: My horsepond is border"d with wet, Where burdock and marsh-mallows grow.
_ANECDOTES._
A gentleman, reading in one of the public prints, that Mr. _Monday_, of Oxford, was dead, exclaimed,--"Alas! my friends, we now have reason to lament, like _Aurelius_, that we have _lost a day!_"
A gentleman, reading in one of the daily prints that thirteen hundred of the French had been _drowned_, said, "Thus should the courage of all our enemies be _damped_."
_THE FARRAGO._
N. VIII.
Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all admiring, with an inward wish You would desire that he were made a Prelate.
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You"d say it had been all his study: List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle, rendered you in music: Turn him to any cause of policy, The gordian knot of it he will unloose Familiar as his garter; when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still; And the mute wonder lurketh in men"s ears To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.
SHAKESPEARE.
No character of antiquity is more brilliant and captivating, than that of Alchibiades, the versatile Athenian. Cornelius Nepos, the Roman biographer, has on this occasion, become the very Rubens of character painters, and has happily sketched every flexile feature.--Nature, says he, appears to have exerted her strongest energies in moulding Alchibiades. In the hour of business he was a statesman, a general and an orator. In the hour of revel, the rakes retired from that bagnio at twelve, which the accommodating Alcibiades gladdened at two. Inhabiting a city, studious of magnificence, he surpa.s.sed in equipage, the most ostentatious grandees; and, when an exile among the hardy Thebans, he carried heavier burdens than the broadest shouldered porter in Btia. At Lacedemon his palate relished the black broth of Sparta; among the dissolute Thracians, those sensual swine of Epicurus"s stye, the greyest veteran of Venus made one sacrifice, less than he; and in all the taverns of Thrace, Bacchus could not recognize a more thirsty toper.
If we deduct from Alchibiades his compliance with vicious customs, no model of conduct, can be mere worthy imitation and praise. Since the aera of Chesterfield, a dissembling n.o.bleman, who possibly pushed the praise of flexibility of manners too far, accommodation has been acrimoniously censured; and the narrow Knox, in his dogmatizing essays has a.s.serted, that the meanest selfishness is the parent of versatility. But, though the Tunbridge teacher, ostentatiously vaunts of his intimacy with the Bible, he forgot that Paul of Tarsus, whose knowledge of the world was as indubitable as his piety, exhorts to "become all things to all men, if by any means we may gain some." Paul was no less a gentleman than saint; and his knowledge of the world taught him the propriety of varying his means to secure the end, and to become a most accommodating apostle. Hence his compliment to Agrippa, for his skill in the jurisprudence of Judea. Hence his adroitness in persuading the superst.i.tious men of Athens, that the Being they, and he worshipped, were the same. Hence he could charm both the courtly Felix, and the camp-bred centurion.
If the art of pleasing be worth practice in society, then will the praises of versatility be fully justified. He who in conversation, adheres to topics peculiar to himself, or to a profession, is deservedly dubbed pedant; and all unite in frowning upon him, by whom all are equally neglected. Minds of the first energy, may sometimes effect the unyielding quality of the oak, rather than the suppleness of the ozier.
A cardinal Ximenes, a chancellor Thurlow, and a secretary Pitt, may be "original and unaccommodating." But he, whom every circle courts, is that Proteus in demeanour, who can with the same ease that he shifts his shoe, mutilate, or increase his bows, accordingly, as he a.s.sociates with the cit, or the courrier. The object of our fondest admiration is the man of letters and the man of the world blended, who can sublimely speculate with science in the morning, and agreeably trifle with ladies at night. Of this cla.s.s is Charles Cameleon. The "omnis h.o.m.o" of Horace, the "all accomplished" of Pope Charles, when at school, was equally the darling of the scholars, on the first form, and the truants on the lower. He could repeat the five declensions with prompt.i.tude, and then drive hoop, or toss b.a.l.l.s alertly. With the same facility, could he make correct latin, and high flying kites. Unaided by the "ladder to Parna.s.sus," he would now ascend to the summit of Virgilian verse, and now grovel in the mire, to win marbles of every sportive schoolfellow.
At the university he heard morning prayers with the saddened sedateness of a Pharisee, argued with tutors on personal ident.i.ty, as if inspired by the very spirit of Locke--and, on syllogistic ground, vanquished every Aristotelean adversary. At noon you might see him sauntering with loungers, and kindling a smile even in vacancy"s face. The declining sun left him deploring, that twilight should snap speculation"s thread; or compel him to leave unfinished the song to _Myra_; and when the college bell tolled twelve, his convivial club chose Charles president, and the room would echo with,
"Since we"ve tarried all day to drink down the Sun, "Let"s tarry, and drink down the Stars."
Educated for the bar, Cameleon is now an eloquent and employed advocate.
But year-books and entries, cannot preclude the system of Sydenham, and Saurin"s sermons. An apothecary, hearing him harrangue upon the superiority of Brown to Boerhave, mistakes him for a regular bred physician, and asks, when he received a medical degree from Edinburgh.
Charles is intimately conversant with all the fathers of the church, repeats whole pages from Justin Martyr, and quotes St. Gregory on good works with more readiness than the parson. As he converses with the grave, or the gay, he is alternately a believer, and a sceptic: and one Sunday, after acknowledging to a devout deacon, that the internal evidence of christianity was its chief corner stone; when afternoon service was over, he agreed, to please a disciple of Voltaire, that the clashing testimony of four evangelists, completely corroded the _root_ of our religion. Among the ladies, he holds most gracefully ""twixt his finger and thumb, a pouncet box," and chatters on Canterbury-gowns and French millinery, like a fop of France. To a lover of the fine arts, quotes Hogarth"s "a.n.a.lysis of beauty," and viewing Trumbull"s celebrated painting of the sortie from Gibralter, the artist acknowledged that he talked of lights and shades more rapidly and correctly than himself. In a club of wits, he declaims Shakespeare, in a style of _Garrick_, he repeats original poems, the very gems of fancy, and sets the "table on a roar" with merry tales, and ludicrous combination. The eye of every reveller brightens at his approach, and when he retires, Milton"s invocation to Mirth is unanimously applied:
"Haste thee CHARLES and bring with thee Joy and youthful jollily, Sport that wrinkled care derides, And laughter holding both his sides."
INTERESTING STORY OF MADELAINE.
By Helen Maria Williams.
[Concluded from page 399.]
Madelaine pa.s.sed the remaining part of the winter in the convent of ----, during which period she received frequent letters from Auguste; and when spring arrived he conjured her, instead of removing to her own province, to remain a little longer in her present situation; and flattered her with hopes of being able ere long to fulfil those engagements upon which all his happiness depended.
In the summer of this year an event took place which will render that summer forever memorable. The French nation, too enlightened to bear any longer those monstrous oppressions which ignorance of its just rights alone had tolerated, shook off its fetters, and the revolution was accomplished.
Madelaine was a firm friend to the revolution, which she was told had made every Frenchman free. "And if every Frenchman is free," thought Madelaine, "surely every Frenchman may marry the woman he loves." It appeared to Madelaine, that, putting all political considerations, points upon which she had not much meditated, out of the question, obtaining liberty of choice in marriage was alone well worth the trouble of a revolution; and she was as warm a patriot from this single idea, as if she had studied the declaration of rights made by the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, in all its extent and consequences.
The Count de ----, who was informed of the correspondence between the two lovers, and who saw little hopes of his son"s subduing a pa.s.sion which this intercourse of letters served to cherish, contrived means to have Auguste"s letters intercepted at the convent. In vain Madelaine enquired with all the anxiety of tenderness for letters. In vain she counted the hours till the return of the post-days. Post after post arrived, and brought no tidings of Auguste. Three months pa.s.sed in the cruel torments of anxiety and suspense, and were at length succeeded by despair. Madelaine believed she was forgotten--forgotten by Auguste!--She consulted her own heart, and it seemed to her impossible; yet, after a silence of three months, she could doubt no longer.
Poor Madelaine now recollected with anguish, instead of pleasure that all Frenchmen were free. She would have found some sad consolation in believing that all Frenchmen were slaves. It would have been some alleviation of her sorrows if Auguste had been forced to abandon her; and she fancied she could have borne to lose him, if she had been sure that he still loved her--it was losing him by his own fault that filled her heart with pangs almost insupportable.
The little pittance which Madelaine, after paying her father"s debts, had left for her own support, was insufficient to defray her expenses as a pensioner in the convent. She had already, by her sweetness and gentleness, gained the affections of some of the nuns, to whom she was also attached, and who incessantly conjured her to take the veil. "And why," she sometimes exclaimed, "why should I hesitate any longer in so doing? Since Auguste is lost, what have I to regret in renouncing the world? What sacrifice do I make? what happiness do I resign?"
Madelaine had no ties to the world, of which she knew but little: but to separate herself irrecoverably, and for ever, from him to whom her soul was devoted--to see him, to hear his voice no more--to take vows which would make it even a crime to think of him--to banish him even from her thoughts--alas! Madelaine felt like Eloisa--