purpose, on my opening it. I had failed to notice the "Poet's Corner," as I remember the old newspapers, in Yorkshire, used to have it. The successive pieces have been unequal, but for the greater part, sparkling and mischievous enough. Capitally fantastic, witty, and brilliant, that about Jupiter's breakfast. There is the very viper's tooth in the two pieces about the Chimpanzee. How one should like to have seen its effect on that coxcomb Do you ever happen to hear how these detonating balls are actually taken by those they are thrown at? The thorough veterans, one has always heard, maintain their philosophy perfectly well under such assailments; but to the greener sort one would fancy they may be rather annoying.

The graver people (of whom I am one) have their objection, and may have it without being at all ultra-puritanical, to that tinge of profaneness which the satirist infuses into some of his pieces. Perhaps Jupiter and Hebe might be very well allowed to consign themselves to the Devil, but they had better not have done it in the hearing of the many decorous and even religious people who may be supposed to read the Morning Chronicle. It is really not well-judged, even on the score of good taste, and what I may call literary dignity, to make no higher reference, in the most witty as well as most ingenious and elegant poet now alive, to indulge himself in diction and allusions accommodated to the appetite of men who trifle with the most serious subjects-an appetite which he probably does in his own mind hold in condemnation and contempt. The wit and the penal justice of satire should eschew such an unworthy association.

CXCVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, the longest day, 1836. MY DEAR SIR,—. . . . The thing most on my mind just at this instant is—chagrin, vexation, mortification, self-accusation, for a chief folly of my life—having bought so many books; which are looking insultingly at me from their crowded shelves all round the room; and I seem to hear a note of scorn from within sundry boxes, in which are immured a score or two of the splendid and costly ones-in which score or two are sunk a sum which would have furnished a very decent whole library for a dissenting, or even a Methodist preacher.

I am the more irritably sensitive to this mockery of theirs from the condition of my eyes, which, during all the summer part of the year (and this year especially), cannot endure the business of reading without a very painful force put on them.

When to this disablement of the reading organ, I add the consideration that, however good that organ were, a whole century of years from this time would not suffice to read once through all these volumes—and then the other circumstance, that I forget everything I read or have read -and then cap this accumulation of considerations with one more, or

rather the double, consideration of what has been expended, rot only of income, but of hundreds of pounds of principal sunk-and the difference between what they cost and what the very same books might be had for now—when I put all these items of mortification together, the result is a very hot caustic on my conscience as well as on other parts of the mental sensorium.

. . . To be sure, some of these things may have been of some little value, for pleasure or perhaps a certain kind of instruction, in the meantime, but nothing like enough to compensate the difference. A rich man would not need to care, but when I consider how straitened, during a whole quarter of a century, my limited means have been, by the indulgence in the fine sort of literature, I cannot help feeling mortification and self-reproach. Especially I feel so at the thought how much better it would have been for a considerable part of this expenditure, if I could really spare it, to have gone to the service of charitable and religious objects. Not that I have not managed to do my share in that way also; perhaps beyond some of my better endowed neighbors; but I should most willingly have done more in that way but for the unfortunate drain aforesaid. And so too would my late beloved associate, one of the most liberal-minded of human beings. It is, indeed, one of my regrets in the remembrance of her, that this imprudent expenditure imposed too hard an economy on her benevolence. . . . . But for a very unexpensive manner of life (the preclusion of luxury, travelling, &c.) the expenditure in question would have been impossible. I am reminded of "Whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" The book-and-print fineries will most likely, as in all other cases, go to the auction room one day or other, and will bring for-who can tell whom? perhaps a fourth part of what they cost. As to the crowd of the common order of books, I should willingly make presents of some hundreds of volumes; but I find that, excepting such as I am still unwilling to dislodge from the shelves, they are, for the most part, not of a kind to be of any use to persons I would give them to. Sundry useful and some valuable ones I have, for several years past, given to some of the most meritorious of the students in the Academy; and a number (such as the late Anderson judged to be necessary and useful) have gone to its library.

Do you stand quite aloof from the grand dissenting commotion? They-(I say not we, for I should not have been a concurring particle in the dust the dissenters have raised,—I mean as to the extent of their demands) . . . have mistaken their policy in calling out (at present) for the “separation,” a thing most palpably impracticable, till a few more Olympiads have passed over us.

CXCVII. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, Aug. 19, 1836.

With about, perhaps, one-tenth part of your experience of local

removals, I can yet well understand what an annoyance it is. Have you any particular feeling about becoming attached to a spot, simply as a place of residence? I have always felt an indisposition to contract such an attachment, independently of not having had any strong local cause for it, and from a kind of feeling of incongruity between such adhesions and our grand destiny to leave, ere long, all earthly localities—to abɑndon the globe itself. I have mused sometimes in wonder, when I have seen persons, perhaps far forward beyond the youthful age, building houses, laying out grounds, contriving, and assiduous in making, what are called "improvements;" delighted with the spot, pulling their friends about through walk after walk, and from point to point, to show them how beautiful, how commodious, how improved from its original condition; how, perhaps, picturesque; "Isn't it a pleasant spot to set one's self down in ?" One's silent reflection was-"Yes; and for how long?" Some of them will say, it is in consideration of their families, of “my son;"--but the truth is almost always, it is chiefly their own passion for the thing, in forgetfulness of the funeral that will, one no immensely distant day, be seen passing from this pleasant abode to one narrow, cold, and dark enough. I have always thought, that were I a man of fortune, and located in what is called a "seat," I should take no kind of interest about its adjustments and "improvements," beyond some matter of mere immediate convenience.

....

. I felt no very strong excitement (too old and too cold) among he wonders and the grandeurs of the great Babylon, but in returning into the stillness of this obscure den, I felt, for a week or more, as if I could do nothing but sleep. . . . . In looking from the top of the colosseum, over the city, the first on our planet beyond all doubt or comparison, one could not help the invading thought, What an awful, what a direful spectacle it was in one view,--the stupendous amount of sin in it. Oh, when will the predicted better age arrive?

Thanks for the Watchman; but you will not send the other number; nobody in this world is willing to let one know the whole truth of things...

....

CXCVIII. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ.

Stapleton, August 26, 1836. MY DEAR SIR, . . . I am very much gratified by the information, that you have resumed your proper position, as adherent and assistant to the Baptist interest in Dublin. No man can have a higher respect than I (as far as my knowledge goes) for the Moravians. But I confess I was sorry for your (apparent) secession from what I will call "the good old cause," in the long protracted day of its adversity.

A good while since I heard of the relinquishment of Swift's Alley. I am now gratified by Mr. Bliss's information, that a substitute is rising, or on the point of rising, in so vastly different a locality as Stephen's

Green. If the change in the condition of what we name the interest, shall at all correspond to such a change of place, a happy seasoħ will come at last. . . . . What a long history of depression! dating from and including my own temporary occupation there. I am too conscious of my own great deficiency in my duty there, to have anything to say of my many successors; in all reason and candor, I ought, and am most ready, to believe that none of them has been equally deficient.

This self-accusatory recollection put aside, how many images belonging to those times arise in my memory! Your estimable parents it were superfluous even to name, or your sister. . . . . There was Meathdwelling, Montpelier, the scenes of the vicinity, the park, the barracks, the school-room on (was it not?) Arran Quay; the numberless talks among us on numberless subjects, yourself a prompt and very shrewd interlocutor. There were the "Sons of Brutus," watched, they were told after they had ceased to meet, by Major Sirr, and among them the intelligent Green, master of some parish school (on second thought, I am not sure he was one of them, or, I should say, us).

... . Perhaps it is probable that I, having an insulated remembrance -a retrospect enclosed and secluded as it were, within a section of time severed from the before and after-may have a more marked and distinct ideal vision than you; since, living on, permanently, the same ground, you would partly lose the things of that time in their sequel, seeing many of them gradually and insensibly changing and passing away, by a process that had no one great chasm to separate off the former stage, as one scene remaining alone in your memory. As to some other things (localities and objects not subject to change), having continued habitually familiar to you, they are, to you, simply, if I may so express it, what they are, and not what they stand pictured exclusively in the remembrance— remembrance that lays the scene in a far-off time.

I have still to confess, and am somewhat vexed at it, the total want of power in my mind to make one person of you two, the boy whom I so vividly remember, and the middle-aged man, whom I had the surprise and pleasure of seeing one day here. I even doubt whether, if I were to pass weeks and months daily with you, I should be able to make anything like a complete personal identification. I do believe the John Purser, of far towards forty years since, would be continually coming in upon me as if he must be, or have been, somebody else than the person I was actually seeing and conversing with. It would, no doubt, be partly the same with respect to Mrs. Purser, of whom I retain a distinct image, though my being so much less familiar with her at that time, might somewhat lessen this insuperable sense of doubleness. The experiment, at any rate, would, to me, be very curious and interesting.

My dear friend, the retrospect over which I have been glancing, pensively as a prevailing sentiment, seems to carry us rather afar on a track which we can tread no more; but how reduced to nothing is the distance in comparison of the stupendous prospect! While called to be

grateful for all that a good Providence has done for us in the past, and to implore pardon in the name of our Lord, for everything which we had cause to wish had been differently done on our part, we are solemnly admonished to be looking forward, with increasing seriousness, to the grand Futurity. Whatever may be our appointed remaining time on earth, we are sure it is little enough for a due preparation to go safely and happily forward into that eternal Hereafter.

CXCIX. TO MRS. STOKES.

Bourton, Oct. 7, 1836.

MY DEAR MADAM, . . . In this house and vicinity there are many things to remind me of the past. I have not in my mind a strongly associating principle. There are certain temporary, involuntary, and apparently casual moods of feeling, which, in whatever place they may occur, revive the images and sentiments of the past more vividly than they would be brought back by the mere force of objects and places associated with those retrospective interests. Still, there are here objects, apartments, garden-walks, with which an interesting and pensive memory is inseparably connected. They tell me of one inestimable being, united with me here, here separated from me, and now, here or elsewhere, with me no more on earth. I often imagine what it would have been, and would be, to have her with me still. But when I consider what a drooping, suffering life was appointed to her, during the latter part of her presence with me, and what I am confident she has gained by the change, the regret for my loss is greatly countervailed by the delight of thinking of her felicity; of the surpassing superiority of what she has enjoyed, and is enjoying, over all she could have experienced in this mortal state, even had it been much more propitious to her than it could have been, under the circumstances of frail and shattered health, and a painful oversusceptibility of mind. To rejoin her at length is my earnest desire for her daughters and myself. As to them, I am exceedingly far from indulging any gratifying anticipations with respect to this life. I have uniformly a melancholy idea of the destiny of women, considering how many kinds of danger, and how much of the grievances and sufferings of life there are often in their allotment. How I marvel at the thoughtless pleasure of parents, in seeing their children grow up, and dreaming about their future prospects! I often say, what is become of their eyes or any of their senses, while there is the actual world around them, to tell them what is the very possible destiny in this life, to say nothing of another, of the young creatures, about whom they have so many thoughtlessly sanguine fancies! I will hope better things for these girls; but I never dream such dreams, and never did.

Worcester, also, had its reminiscences. What a lapse of years since the first time that I experienced there the cordial friendship, of which I