it to market in the green ear. They delight see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their full development. They are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different da Vinci, which I was showing off to plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You Mr. **** After he had examined it miare never admitted to see his ideas in their nutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked growth-if, indeed, they do grow, and are MY BEAUTY (a foolish name it goes by among not rather put together upon principles of my friends)—when he very gravely assured clock-work. You never catch his mind in an me, that "he had considerable respect for undress. He never hints or suggests any- my character and talents" (so he was pleased thing, but unlades his stock of ideas in to say), "but had not given himself much perfect order and completeness. He brings thought about the degree of my personal his total wealth into company, and gravely pretensions." The misconception staggered unpacks it. His riches are always about me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. He never stoops to catch a glittering him.-Persons of this nation are particularly something in your presence to share it with fond of affirming a truth-which nobody you, before he quite knows whether it be doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to annunciate it. They do indeed appear to anything that he finds. He does not find, have such a love of truth (as if, like virtue, but bring. You never witness his first it were valuable for itself) that all truth apprehension of a thing. His understanding becomes equally valuable, whether the prois always at its meridian-you never see the position that contains it be new or old, disfirst dawn, the early streaks.-He has no puted, or such as is impossible to become a falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, subject of disputation. I was present not misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-conscious- long since at a party of North Britons, nesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, where a son of Burns was expected; and embryo conceptions, have no place in his happened to drop a silly expression (in my brain, or vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety South British way), that I wished it were never falls upon him. Is he orthodox-he the father instead of the son-when four of has no doubts. Is he an infidel-he has them started up at once to inform me, that none either. Between the affirmative and "that was impossible, because he was dead.” the negative there is no border-land with An impracticable wish, it seems, was more him. You cannot hover with him upon the than they could conceive. Swift has hit off confines of truth, or wander in the maze of this part of their character, namely their a probable argument. He always keeps the love of truth, in his biting way, but with an path. You cannot make excursions with illiberality that necessarily confines the him-for he sets you right. His taste never passage to the margin.* The tediousness of fluctuates. His morality never abates. He these people is certainly provoking. I wonder cannot compromise, or understand middle if they ever tire one another!-In my early actions. There can be but a right and a life I had a passionate fondness for the wrong. His conversation is as a book. His poetry of Burns. I have sometimes foolishly affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. "A healthy book!" -said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle,-" Did I catch rightly what you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not * There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the peculiar to that country, would be hardly tolerable.— Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture, hoped to ingratiate myself with his country--Christians judaizing-puzzle me. I like men by expressing it. But I have always fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more found that a true Scot resents your admira- confounding piece of anomaly than a wet tion of his compatriot, even more than he Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is would your contempt of him. The latter he essentially separative. B would have imputes to your "imperfect acquaintance been more in keeping if he had abided by with many of the words which he uses;" the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine and the same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that you can admire him.-Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduction to our metropolis. -Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his Continuation of it. What if the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker? scorn in his face, which nature meant to be of -Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings, "The Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea !" The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. B― has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is confirmed by his singI have, in the abstract, no disrespect for ing. The foundation of his vocal excellence Jews. They are a piece of stubborn anti- is sense. He sings with understanding, as quity, compared with which Stonehenge is Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing in its nonage. They date beyond the pyra- the Commandments, and give an appropriate mids. But I should not care to be in habits character to each prohibition. His nation, of familiar intercourse with any of that in general, have not over-sensible countenation. I confess that I have not the nerves nances. How should they ?—but you seldom to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices see a silly expression among them.-Gain, cling about me. I cannot shake off the story and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, visage. I never heard of an idiot being born contempt, and hate, on the one side,-of among them. Some admire the Jewish cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on female-physiognomy. I admire it—but with the other, between our and their fathers, trembling. Jael had those full dark inscrumust and ought to affect the blood of the table eyes. children. I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet; or that a few fine words, such as candour, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He is least dis-ters in the streets and highways. I love tasteful on 'Change-for the mercantile spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I venerate the Quaker principles. It does I do not like to see the Church and Syna- me good for the rest of the day when I meet gogue kissing and congeeing in awkward any of their people in my path. When I am postures of an affected civility. If they are ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the converted, why do they not come over to us sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon altogether? Why keep up a form of sepa- me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and ration, when the life of it is fled? If they taking off a load from the bosom. But can sit with us at table, why do they keck I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona at our cookery? I do not understand would say) "to live with them." I am all these half convertites. Jews christianizing over sophisticated-with humours, fancies, In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces. - or rather masks-that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encoun what Fuller beautifully calls-these "images of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my good-nights with them—because they are black. craving hourly sympathy. I must have He knows that his syllables are weighedbooks, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whimwhams, which their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. and how far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified, by a more sacred example than is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable presence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self-watchThe indirect answers which Quakers are fulness-if it did not seem rather an humble often found to return to a question put to and secular scion of that old stock of relithem may be explained, I think, without the gious constancy, which never bent or falvulgar assumption, that they are more given tered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to evasion and equivocating than other to the winds of persecution, to the violence people. They naturally look to their words of judge or accuser, under trials and racking more carefully, and are more cautious of examinations. "You will never be the committing themselves. They have a pecu- wiser, if I sit here answering your questions liar character to keep up on this head. They till midnight," said one of those upright stand in a manner upon their veracity. Justicers to Penn, who had been putting A Quaker is by law exempted from taking law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. "Therean oath. The custom of resorting to an after as the answers may be," retorted the oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by Quaker. The astonishing composure of this all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of lighter instances. I was travelling in a minds the notion of two kinds of truth-the stage-coach with three male Quakers, butone applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, toned up in the straitest non-conformity of and the other to the common proceedings of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly conscience by an oath can be but truth, so supper, was set before us. My friends conin the common affirmations of the shop and fined themselves to the tea-table. I in my the market-place a latitude is expected, and way took supper. When the landlady conceded upon questions wanting this solemn brought in the bill, the eldest of my comcovenant. Something less than truth satis-panions discovered that she had charged fies. It is common to hear a person say, "You do not expect me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth- oath-truth, by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received, upon the most sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it—so much for tea-I, in humble imitation, tendering mine-for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pro- not a syllable was dropped on the subject. nounced, became after a time inaudible-and They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length now my conscience, which the whimsical the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring scene had for a while suspended, beginning of his next neighbour, "Hast thee heard how to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope indigos go at the India House?" and the that some justification would be offered by question operated as a soporific on my moral these serious persons for the seeming injus- feeling as far as Exeter. tice of their conduct. To my great surprise WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. this nature more than another on the score of absurdity. There is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a dream may be criticised. I have sometimes thought that I could not have existed in the days of received witchcraft; that I could not have slept in a village where one of those reputed hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder, or more obtuse. Amidst the universal belief that these wretches were in league with the author of all evil, holding hell tributary to their muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough serving, a warrant upon them-as if they should subpoena Satan!-Prospero in his boat, with his books and wand about him, suffers himself to be conveyed away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown island. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy to the non-resistance of witches to the constituted powers.-What stops the Fiend in Spenser from tearing Guyon to pieces-or who had made it a condition of his prey that Guyon must take assay of the glorious bait-we have no guess. We do not know the laws of that country. WE are too hasty when we set down our ancestors in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies (as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witchcraft. In the relations of this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd-could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony ?-That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen images consumed before a fire-that corn was lodged, and cattle lamed-that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic revelry the oaks of the forest-or that spits and kettles only danced a fearful innocent vagary about some rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring -were all equally probable where no law of agency was understood. That the prince of the powers of darkness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of indigent eld-has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood à priori to us, who have no measure to guess From my childhood I was extremely inat his policy, or standard to estimate what quisitive about witches and witch-stories. rate those anile souls may fetch in the devil's My maid, and more legendary aunt, supplied market. Nor, when the wicked are ex- me with good store. But I shall mention pressly symbolised by a goat, was it to be the accident which directed my curiosity wondered at so much, that he should come originally into this channel. In my father's sometimes in that body, and assert his meta-book-closet, the History of the Bible by phor. That the intercourse was opened at Stackhouse occupied a distinguished station. all between both worlds was perhaps the mistake-but that once assumed, I see no reason for disbelieving one attested story of The pictures with which it abounds-one of the ark, in particular, and another of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity A A of ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had Turning over the picture of the ark with been upon the spot-attracted my childish too much haste, I unhappily made a breach attention. There was a picture, too, of the in its ingenious fabric-driving my inconWitch raising up Samuel, which I wish that siderate fingers right through the two larger I had never seen. We shall come to that quadrupeds-the elephant and the camelhereafter. Stackhouse is in two huge tomes that stare (as well they might) out of the -and there was a pleasure in removing two last windows next the steerage in that folios of that magnitude, which, with infinite unique piece of naval architecture. Stackstraining, was as much as I could manage, house was henceforth locked up, and became from the situation which they occupied upon an interdicted treasure. With the book, the an upper shelf. I have not met with the objections and solutions gradually cleared out work from that time to this, but I remember of my head, and have seldom returned since it consisted of Old Testament stories, orderly in any force to trouble me.-But there was set down, with the objection appended to each one impression which I had imbibed from story, and the solution of the objection regu- Stackhouse which no lock or bar could shut larly tacked to that. The objection was a out, and which was destined to try my summary of whatever difficulties had been childish nerves rather more seriously.-That opposed to the credibility of the history, by detestable picture! the shrewdness of ancient or modern in- I was dreadfully alive to nervous terrors, fidelity, drawn up with an almost compli- The night-time, solitude, and the dark, were mentary excess of candour. The solution my hell. The sufferings I endured in this was brief, modest, and satisfactory. The nature would justify the expression. I never bane and antidote were both before you. To laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from doubts so put, and so quashed, there seemed the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of to be an end for ever. The dragon lay dead, my life-so far as memory serves in things for the foot of the veriest babe to trample on. so long ago-without an assurance, which But-like as was rather feared than realised realised its own prophecy, of seeing some from that slain monster in Spenser-from frightful spectre. Be old Stackhouse then the womb of those crushed errors young acquitted in part, if I say, that to his picture dragonets would creep, exceeding the prowess of the Witch raising up Samuel-(0 that of so tender a Saint George as myself to van-old man covered with a mantle !)—I owe— quish. The habit of expecting objections to not my midnight terrors, the hell of my inevery passage set me upon starting more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, a sceptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so many historic or chronologic theses to be defended against whatever impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but-the next thing to that -I was to be quite sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved them. Next to making a child an infidel is the letting him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength. O, how ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe and a suckling!I should have lost myself in these mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate piece of illfortune which about this time befel me. 1 fancy-but the shape and manner of their |