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pocket; his waistcoat red and angry, his motion with him-observed, "it was a
coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy must
and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances
gold. And so he paced the terrace.
of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was
By his side a milder form was sometimes thought by some of the greatest men of his
to be seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel time a fit person to be consulted, not alone
Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing in matters pertaining to the law, but in the
but that and their benchership in common. ordinary niceties and embarrassments of
In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry a conduct from force of manner entirely.
staunch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did
the latter cast out-for Coventry had a
rough spinous humour-at the political con-
federates of his associate, which rebounded
from the gentle bosom of the latter like
cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle
Samuel Salt.

He never laughed. He had the same good |
fortune among the female world,—was a
known toast with the ladies, and one or two
are said to have died for love of him—I sup-
pose, because he never trifled or talked gal-
lantry with them, or paid them, indeed,
hardly common attentions. He had a fine
face and person, but wanted, methought, the
spirit that should have shown them off with
advantage to the women. His eye lacked
lustre.-Not so, thought Susan P— ; who,
at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in
the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wet-
ing the pavement of Bd Row, with tears
that fell in drops which might be heard, be-
cause her friend had died that day-he,
whom she had pursued with a hopeless pas-
sion for the last forty years-a passion,

nor the long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, puttings-off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P—, thou hast now thy friend in heaven!

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over, with a few instructions, to his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute for which years could not extinguish or abate ; talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man; a child might pose him in a minute-indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast application, in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble himself with impunity. He never dressed family of that name. He passed his youth for a dinner party but he forgot his sword- in contracted circumstances, which gave him they wore swords then-or some other neces- early those parsimonious habits which in sary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye after life never forsook him; so that with upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily one windfall or another, about the time I gave him his cue. If there was anything knew him he was master of four or five which he could speak unseasonably, he was hundred thousand pounds; nor did he look sure to do it.-He was to dine at a relative's or walk worth a moidore less. He lived in of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day a gloomy house opposite the pump in Serof her execution ;--and L., who had a wary jeant's-inn, Fleet-street. J., the counsel, is foresight of his probable hallucinations, be- doing self-imposed penance in it, for what fore he set out schooled him, with great reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an anxiety, not in any possible manner to allude agreeable seat at North Cray, where he to her story that day. S. promised faithfully seldom spent above a day or two at a time to observe the injunction. He had not been in the summer; but preferred, during the seated in the parlour, where the company hot months, standing at his window in this was expecting the dinner summons, four damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as minutes, when, a pause in the conversation he said, "the maids drawing water all day ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, long." I suspect he had his within-door and pulling down his ruffles-an ordinary reasons for the preference. Hic currus et

little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous

arma fuêre. He might think his treasures more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong-box. C. was a close hunks-a hoarder rather than a miser-or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought dis-poetry-next to Swift and Prior-moulded credit upon a character which cannot exist without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the pence he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000l. at once in his life-time to a blind charity. His housekeeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentleman. He would know who came in and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to freeze.

heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely ; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility; made punch better than any man of his degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits; and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human Salt was his opposite in this, as in all-weakness-" a remnant most forlorn of what never knew what he was worth in the world; he was,"-yet even then his eye would light and having but a competency for his rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of everything. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stopwatch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a moment that he was a ser

vant.

up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes

66

was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln, to go to service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned, after some few years' absence, in his smart new livery, to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it was "her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood might have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the common mother of us all in no long time after received him gently into hers.

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and "would strike." In the With Coventry, and with Salt, in their cause of the oppressed he never considered walks upon the terrace, most commonly inequalities, or calculated the number of his Peter Pierson would join to make up a opponents. He once wrested a sword out of third. They did not walk linked arm-inthe hand of a man of quality that had drawn arm in those days-"as now our stout upon him, and pommelled him severely with triumvirs sweep the streets," but generally the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered with both hands folded behind them for insult to a female-an occasion upon which state, or with one at least behind, the other no odds against him could have prevented carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but the interference of Lovel. He would stand not a prepossessing man. He had that in next day bareheaded to the same person his face which you could not term unhappimodestly to excuse his interference-for L. ness; it rather implied an incapacity of never forgot rank where something better being happy. His cheeks were colourless, was not concerned. L. was the liveliest even to whiteness. His look was uninviting,

resembling (but without his sourness) that write down edge bone of beef in his bill of of our great philanthropist. I know that he commons. He was supposed to know, if any did good acts, but I could never make out man in the world did. He decided the orthowhat he was. Contemporary with these, graphy to be-as I have given it-fortibut subordinate, was Daines Barrington-fying his authority with such anatomical another oddity-he walked burly and square reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the —in imitation, I think, of Coventry-how-time) learned and happy. Some do spell it beit he attained not to the dignity of his yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, resemblance between its shape and that of upon the strength of being a tolerable anti- the aspirate so denominated. I had almost quarian, and having a brother a bishop. forgotten Mingay with the iron hand-but When the account of his year's treasurership he was somewhat later. He had lost his came to be audited the following singular right hand by some accident, and supplied it charge was unanimously disallowed by the with a grappling-hook, which he wielded bench: "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gar- with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the dener, twenty shillings for stuff to poison the substitute before I was old enough to reason sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was whether it were artificial or not. I rememold Barton-a jolly negation, who took upon ber the astonishment it raised in me. He him the ordering of the bills of fare for the was a blustering, loud-talking person; and I parliament chamber, where the benchers reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as dine-answering to the combination rooms an emblem of power-somewhat like the at College-much to the easement of his less horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's epicurean brethren. I know nothing more Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did of him. Then Read, and Twopeny-Read, till very lately) in the costume of the reign good-humoured and personable-Twopeny, of George the Second, closes my imperfect good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous in recollections of the old benchers of the Inner jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Temple. Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was performed by three steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any better than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely when anything had offended him. Jackson-the omniscient Jackson he was called-was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage of the cook applying to him, with much formality of apology, for instructions how to

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me-to my childish eyes-the mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish,-extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of childhood there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition-the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital-from every-day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon.

In that little Goshen there will be light when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth.

P.S.-I have done injustice to the soft

shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to their existence beyond the Gentleman's—his trust to imperfect memory, and the erring furthest monthly excursions in this nature notices of childhood! Yet I protest I always having been long confined to the holy ground thought that he had been a bachelor! This of honest Urban's obituary. May it be long gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, before his own name shall help to swell those and losing his lady in childbed, within the columns of unenvied flattery!- Meantime, first year of their union, fell into a deep O ye New Benchers of the Inner Temple, melancholy, from the effects of which, pro- cherish him kindly, for he is himself the bably, he never thoroughly recovered. In kindliest of human creatures. Should infirwhat a new light does this place his rejection mities overtake him-he is yet in green and (O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan | vigorous senility—make allowances for them, P—, unravelling into beauty certain pecu- remembering that "ye yourselves are old." liarities of this very shy and retiring character! Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact—verisimilitudes, not verities—or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He is no such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have done better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman before he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer-who respects his old and his new masters-would but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the licence which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of

So may the Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still flourish! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks; so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! so may the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnised the parade before ye!

GRACE BEFORE MEAT.

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a

THE custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, when dinners were precarious things, and a full meal was something more than a common moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or blessing! when a belly-full was a wind-fall, a solved problem. Why have we none for and looked like a special providence. In the books, those spiritual repasts-a grace before shouts and triumphal songs with which, after Milton-a grace before Shakspeare—a devoa season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty tional exercise proper to be said before of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be reading the Fairy Queen?—but the received ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of ritual having prescribed these forms to the the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall to be understood, why the blessing of food- confine my observations to the experience the act of eating—should have had a parti- which I have had of the grace, properly so cular expression of thanksgiving annexed to called; commending my new scheme for it, distinct from that implied and silent grati-extension to a niche in the grand philosophitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence.

cal, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug con

gregation of Utopian Rabelæsian Christians, hallow the blessing. After a devotional tone no matter where assembled.

The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprovocative repast of children. It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The proper end of food-the animal sustenance-is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are perennial.

Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich men's tables, with the savoury soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is pagan, and the bellygod intercepts it for his own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all sense of proportion between the end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks-for what ?-for having too much, while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss.

put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice! helping himself or his neighbour, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in the discharge of the duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.

I hear somebody exclaim,-Would you have Christians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remembering the Giver ?-no—I would have them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for which east and west are rapsacked, I would have them postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid; when the still small voice can be heard, and the reason of the grace returnswith temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil | knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of Celano anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude: but the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes; daily bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great Hall-feast, when he knows that his last concluding pious word—and that in all probability, the sacred name which he preaches-is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotious a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice.

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously perhaps, by the good man The severest satire upon full tables and who says the grace. I have seen it in clergy-surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the men and others—a sort of shame-a sense of "Paradise Regained," provides for a tempta the co-presence of circumstances which un- tion in the wilderness:

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