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week days into Sundays, and these latter which, in triumphant progress, dolphininto minor heavens.*

seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant Tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in | the deeps,-I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wits' end;-clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me-priests, altars, censers, dazzle before

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim Abbey, some fiveand-thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my young apprehension (whether it be that, in which the Psalmist, weary of the persecu-me-the genius of his religion hath me in tions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wings or that other, which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind)-a holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the time

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-rapt above earth,

And possess joys not promised at my birth.

her toils-a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous-he is Pope,-and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too,— tri-coroneted like himself!-I am converted, and yet a Protestant ;-at once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my person:-I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus-Gog and But when this master of the spell, not Magog-what not ?-till the coming in of content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figon, in his power, to inflict more bliss than ment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer lies in her capacity to receive,-impatient to (in which chiefly my friend shows himself overcome her "earthly" with his "heavenly," no bigot) at once reconciles me to the ration--still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh alities of a purer faith; and restores to me waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or the genuine unterrifying aspects of my from that inexhausted German ocean, above pleasant-countenanced host and hostess.

ALL FOOLS' DAY.

THE Compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all!

Many happy returns of this day to youand you-and you, Sir-nay, never frown, man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one another? what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch of that same-you understand mea speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who on such a day as this, the general festival, should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet with no wise-acre, I can tell him. Stultus Translate me that, and take the

sum.

I have been there, and still would go;
"Tis like a little heaven below.-DR. WATTS.

meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What! man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least computation.

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry —we will drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day-and let us troll the catch of Amiens-duc ad me-duc ad me-how goes it?

Here shall he see
Gross fools as he.

Now would I give a trifle to know, historically and authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would certainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without much difficulty name you the party.

Remove your cap a little further, if you please it hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust away his

bells to what tune he pleases. I will give your worship's poor servant to command. you, for my part,

-The crazy old church clock,
And the bewildered chimes.

Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is long since you went a salamander-gathering down Ætna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 'Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your mustachios.

Ha! Cleombrotus! and what salads in faith did you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean ? You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists.

Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat.

-Master Silence, I will use few words with you.-Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere-You six will engross all poor wit of the company to-day.-I know it, I know it.

the

Ha! honest R, my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless thy doublet, it is not overnew, threadbare as thy stories-what dost thou flitting about the world at this rate?— Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago.-Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk a volume or two.-Good Granville S thy last patron, is flown.

King Pandion, he is dead,

All thy friends are lapt in lead.

Nevertheless, noble R- come in, and take your seat here, between Armado and Quisada; for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be happy with either, situated between those two ancient spinsters-when I forget the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvolian smile-as it Mister Adams-'odso, I honour your Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his coat-pray do us the favour to read to us hero; and as if thousands of periods must that sermon, which you lent to Mistress revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could Slipslop the twenty and second in your have given his invidious preference between portmanteau there on Female Inconti- a pair of so goodly-propertied and merit-the same-it will come in most orious-equal damsels. irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the time of the day.

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears?-cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet!

nence

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error.——

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across them.

Master Stephen, you are late.-Ha! Cokes, is it you?—Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.-Master Shallow,

*

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day,-for I fear the second of April is not many hours distant-in sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I love a Fool-as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read those Parables-not guessing at the involved wisdom - I had more yearnings towards that simple architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained for his

more cautious neighbour: I grudged at the warrants; the security, which a word out of hard censure pronounced upon the quiet season ratifies. And take my word for this, soul that kept his talent; and-prizing their reader, and say a fool told it you, if you simplicity beyond the more provident, and, please, that he who hath not a dram of folly to my apprehension, somewhat unfeminine in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse wariness of their competitors-I felt a kind-matter in his composition. It is observed, liness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for that "the foolisher the fowl or fish,-woodthose five thoughtless virgins.—I have never cocks,-dotterels-cods'-heads, &c., the finer made an acquaintance since, that lasted: or the flesh thereof," and what are commonly a friendship, that answered; with any that the world's received fools, but such whereof had not some tincture of the absurd in their the world is not worthy? and what have characters. I venerate an honest obliquity been some of the kindliest patterns of our of understanding. The more laughable species, but so many darlings of absurdity, blunders a man shall commit in your com- minions of the goddess, and her white boys? pany, the more tests he giveth you, that he-Reader, if you wrest my words beyond will not betray or overreach you. I love their fair construction, it is you, and not I, the safety, which a palpable hallucination that are the April Fool.

Still-born Silence! thou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart!
Offspring of a heavenly kind!

A QUAKERS' MEETING.

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind!
Secrecy's confidant, and he

Who makes religion mystery!
Admiration's speaking'st tongue!

Leave, thy desert shades among,

Reverend hermits' hallow'd cells,
Where retired devotion dwells!
With thy enthusiasms come,

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb!

READER, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would'st thou be alone and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite :-come with me into a Quakers' Meeting.

Dost thou love silence deep as that "before the winds were made?" go not out into the wilderness, descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faith'd self-mistrusting From "Poems of all sorts," by Richard Fleckno,

1653.

Ulysses.-Retire with me into a Quakers'
Meeting.

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold his peace, it is commendable; but for a multitude it is great mastery.

66

What is the stillness of the desert compared with this place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes ?-here the goddess reigns and revels. - Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud," do not with their interconfounding uproars more augment the brawl-nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds-than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight.

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quakers' Meeting.-Those first hermits did certainly understand this principle, when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's I want of conversation. The Carthusian is

bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by-say, a wife-he, or she, too, (if that be probable,) reading another, without interruption, or oral communication ?-can there be no sympathy without the gabble of words?-away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master Zimmermann, a sympathetic solitude.

molest you-for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, the outcast and off-scouring of church and presbytery.—I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remember Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and "the Judge and the Jury became as dead

To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles men under his feet." of some cathedral, time-stricken;

Or under hanging mountains,

Or by the fall of fountains;

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recommend to you, above all churchnarratives, to read Sewel's History of the Quakers. It is in folio, and is the abis but a vulgar luxury compared with that stract of the journals of Fox and the primiwhich those enjoy who come together for tive Friends. It is far more edifying and the purposes of more complete, abstracted affecting than anything you will read of solitude. This is the loneliness "to be felt." Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing -The Abbey Church of Westminster hath to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the naked walls and benches of a Quakers' Meet-worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here ing. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions.

-Sands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings—

read the true story of that much-injured, ridiculed man (who perhaps hath been a byword in your mouth)-James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience, he but here is something which throws Anti- endured, even to the boring through of his quity herself into the foreground-SILENCE- tongue with red-hot irons, without a mureldest of things-language of old Night-mur; and with what strength of mind, when primitive discourser to which the insolent the delusion he had fallen into, which they decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!

Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischievous synod! convocation without intrigue! parliament without debate! what a lesson dost thou read to council, and to consistory!-if my pen treat of you lightlyas haply it will wander-yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, which some out-welling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewesbury.-I have witnessed that which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to

stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still! -so different from the practice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough from the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, not implicated.

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart; and love the early Quakers.

How far the followers of these good men in our days have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others, again, I have watched, when my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which I could possibly detect

nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial workings. If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom, indeed, that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, generally ancient, voice is heard -you cannot guess from what part of the meeting it proceeds-with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few words which "she thought might suit the condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves no possibility of supposing that anything of female vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness, and a restraining modesty.-The men, for what I have observed, speak seldomer.

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might have danced "from head to foot equipt in iron mail." His frame was of iron, too. But he was malleable. I saw him shake all over with the spirit-I dare not say of delusion. The strivings of the outer man were unutterable -he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken from. I saw the strong man bowed down, and his knees to fail-his joints all seemed loosening-it was a figure to set off against Paul preaching-the words he uttered were few, and sound-he was evidently resisting his will-keeping down his own word-wisdom with more mighty effort than the world's orators strain for theirs. "He had been a WIT in his youth," he told us, with expressions of a sober remorse. And it was not

till long after the impression had begun to wear away that I was enabled, with something like a smile, to recal the striking incongruity of the confession-understanding the term in its worldly acceptation-with the frame and physiognomy of the person before me. His brow would have scared away the Levities-the Jocos Risus-que— faster than the Loves fled the face of Dis at Enna.-By wit, even in his youth, I will be sworn he understood something far within the limits of an allowable liberty.

More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius ; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the TONGUE, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness.-O, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is to go and seat yourself for a quiet half hour upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers!

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like -as in the pasture-"forty feeding like one.”

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones.

THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.

My reading has been lamentably desultory cut a figure among the franklins, or country and immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old gentlemen, in king John's days. I know less English plays, and treatises, have supplied geography than a school-boy of six weeks' me with most of my notions, and ways of standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as feeling. In every thing that relates to authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know science, I am a whole Encyclopædia behind whereabout Africa merges into Asia; whether the rest of the world. I should have scarcely Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great

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