understood not its import-but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awestruck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. -Harlequin's invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost-a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead-but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud-the father of a line of Harlequins transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven other years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all Was nourished, I could not tell how I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reference, was gone !-The green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages to present a "royal ghost,”—but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell-which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and My third play followed in quick succession. women painted. I thought the fault was in It was the Way of the World. I think them; but it was in myself, and the alteraI must have sat at it as grave as a judge; tion which those many centuries, - of six for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of short twelvemonths-had wrought in me. good Lady Wishfort affected me like some-Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round Church (my church) of the Templars. play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of recreations. MODERN GALLANTRY. In comparing modern with ancient man- you have not seen a politer-bred man in ners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves Lothbury. upon the point of gallantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females, as females. I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders. I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasionallyhanged. I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife across the kennel; or assists the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated. Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be performed by women. Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account equally. I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer: — when the phrases "antiquated virginity," and such a one has "overstood her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken. I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not known, or think themselves not observed when I shall see the traveller for some rich Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, mertradesman part with his admired box-coat, chant, and one of the Directors of the Southto spread it over the defenceless shoulders of Sea company-the same to whom Edwards, the poor woman, who is passing to her parish the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed on the roof of the same stage-coach with a fine sonnet-was the only pattern of conhim, drenched in the rain-when I shall no sistent gallantry I have met with. He took longer see a woman standing up in the pit of me under his shelter at an early age, and a London theatre, till she is sick and faint bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his with the exertion, with men about her, precepts and example whatever there is of seated at their ease, and jeering at her dis- the man of business (and that is not much) tress; till one, that seems to have more in my composition. It was not his fault manners or conscience than the rest, signi- that I did not profit more. Though bred a ficantly declares "she should be welcome to Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, his seat, if she were a little younger and he was the finest gentleman of his time. handsomer." Place this dapper warehouse- He had not one system of attention to man, or that rider, in a circle of their own females in the drawing-room, and another in female acquaintance, and you shall confess the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost she could digest a dose of adulation, short sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casual- of insincerity, with as little injury to her ties of a disadvantageous situation. I have humility as most young women: but that— seen him stand bareheaded-smile if you a little before he had commenced his compliplease-to a poor servant girl, while she has ments-she had overheard him by accident, been inquiring of him the way to some in rather rough language, rating a young street-in such a posture of unforced civility, woman, who had not brought home his as neither to embarrass her in the accept-cravats quite to the appointed time, and she ance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan no dangler, in the common acceptation of Winstanley, and a young lady-a reputed the word, after women: but he reverenced beauty, and known to be a fortune,—I can and upheld, in every form in which it came have my choice of the finest speeches from before him, womanhood. I have seen him- the mouth of this very fine gentleman who nay, smile not-tenderly escorting a market- is courting me- but if I had been poor woman, whom he had encountered in a Mary Such-a-one (naming the milliner),— shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor and had failed of bringing home the cravats basket of fruit, that it might receive no to the appointed hour-though perhaps I had damage, with as much carefulness as if she sat up half the night to forward them—what had been a Countess. To the reverend form sort of compliments should I have received of Female Eld he would yield the wall then ?-And my woman's pride came to my (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) assistance; and I thought, that if it were with more ceremony than we can afford to only to do me honour, a female, like myself, show our grandams. He was the Preux might have received handsomer usage: and Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore, or I was determined not to accept any fine Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that belonging to which was after all my strongest had long faded thence, still bloomed for him claim and title to them." in those withered and yellow cheeks. I think the lady discovered both geneHe was never married, but in his youth rosity, and a just way of thinking, in this he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan rebuke which she gave her lover; and I have Winstanley-old Winstanley's daughter of sometimes imagined, that the uncommon Clapton who dying in the early days of strain of courtesy, which through life regutheir courtship, confirmed in him the reso-lated the actions and behaviour of my friend lution of perpetual bachelorship. It was towards all of womankind indiscriminately, during their short courtship, he told me, owed its happy origin to this seasonable that he had been one day treating his mis- lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. tress with a profusion of civil speeches-the I wish the whole female world would encommon gallantries-to which kind of thing tertain the same notion of these things that she had hitherto manifested no repugnance Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should -but in this instance with no effect. He see something of the spirit of consistent could not obtain from her a decent acknow- gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly ledgment in return. She rather seemed to of the same man-a pattern of true politeresent his compliments. He could not set it ness to a wife of cold contempt, or rudeness, down to caprice, for the lady had always to a sister-the idolator of his female misshown herself above that littleness. When tress - the disparager and despiser of his he ventured on the following day, finding no less female aunt, or unfortunate — still her a little better humoured, to expostulate female-maiden cousin. Just so much rewith her on her coldness of yesterday, she spect as a woman derogates from her own confessed, with her usual frankness, that she sex, in whatever condition placed-her handhad no sort of dislike to his attentions; maid, or dependant-she deserves to have that she could even endure some high-flown diminished from herself on that score; and compliments; that a young woman placed probably will feel the diminution, when youth, in her situation had a right to expect all sort and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable of civil things said to her; that she hoped from sex, shall lose of their attraction. -- What a woman should demand of a man attentions, incident to individual preference, in courtship, or after it, is first- respect be so many pretty additaments and ornafor her as she is a woman ;-and next to ments- -as many, and as fanciful, as you that to be respected by him above all other please to that main structure. Let her women. But let her stand upon her female first lesson be with sweet Susan Winstanley character as upon a foundation; and let the -to reverence her sex. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. I was born, and passed the first seven astoundment of the young urchins, my conyears of my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said-for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places? -these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot. temporaries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time-the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleetstreet, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden; that goodly pile to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep! Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial hand Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived! What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its conconfronting with massy contrast, the lighter, tinuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of older, more fantastically shrouded one, pleasures not protracted after sun-set, of named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown temperance, and good hours. It was the Office-row (place of my kindly engendure), primitive clock, the horologe of the first right opposite the stately stream, which world. Adam could scarce have missed it washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades! a man would give something to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many times! to the for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd "carved it out quaintly in the sun;" and, turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tomb stones. It was a pretty device of the gar- What wondrous life is this I lead! The mind, that ocean, where each kind To a green thought in a green shade. My soul into the boughs does glide; How could such sweet and wholesome hours Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments? The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric onehalf so refreshing and innocent as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered? They have lately gothicised the entrance to the Inner Temple-hall, and the library front; to assimilate them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood over the former? a stately arms! and who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianised the end of the Paper-buildings ?-my first hint of allegory! They must account to me for these things, which I miss so greatly. The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the parade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps which made its pave.. ment awful! It is become common and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you when you passed them. We walk on even terms with their successors. The roguish eye of J-11, ever ready to be delivered of The artificial fountains of the metropolis a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of repartee with it. But what insolent familiar them are dried up or bricked over. Yet, durst have mated Thomas Coventry ?— where one is left, as in that little green nook whose person was a quadrate, his step massy behind the South-Sea House, what a fresh- and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, ness it gives to the dreary pile! Four little his gait peremptory and path-keeping, indiwinged marble boys used to play their virgin vertible from his way as a moving column, fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from the scarecrow of his inferiors, the browtheir innocent-wanton lips in the square of beater of equals and superiors, who made a Lincoln's Inn, when I was no bigger than solitude of children wherever he came, for they were figured. They are gone, and the they fled his insufferable presence, as they spring choked up. The fashion, they tell would have shunned an Elisha bear. His me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed growl was as thunder in their ears, whether childish. Why not, then, gratify children, he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke; his by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the were children once. They are awakening images to them at least. Why must everything smack of man and mannish? Is the world all grown up? Is childhood dead From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once,-diving for it under the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat BB |