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Editor: Robert Chambers and William Chambers

CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

THE MUSICAL SEASON.

'The English are not a musical people.' The dictum long stood unquestioned, and, in general estimation, unquestionable. All the world had agreed upon it. There could be no two opinions: we had no national airs; no national taste; no national appreciation of sweet sounds; musically, we were blocks! At length, however, the creed began to be called in question--were we so very insensible? If so, considering the amount of music actually listened to every year in London and the provinces, we were strangely given to an amusement which yielded us no pleasure; we were continually imposing on ourselves the direst and dreariest of tasks; we were tormenting ourselves with symphonies, and lacerating our patience with sonatas and rondos. What was the motive? Hypocrisy was very generally assigned. We only affected to love music. It was intellectual, spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs, and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion is the affair of a season; a mania goes as it came; but regularly and steadily, for many years back, has musical appreciation been progressing, and as regularly have the opportunities for hearing good music of all kinds been extending.

Another species of classic concert is to be found in the quartett-meetings. These take place in some small concert-room, such as that I have described, or at the houses of the executants; and the audience comprehends a far larger proportion of gentlemen than the last-mentioned entertainments. The performers are four--pretty sure to be gentlemen of the highest professional abilities. The instruments are first and second violin, viola, and violoncello; and three or four quartetts by the great masters, or, very probably, as many compositions, marking the different stages of Beethoven's imagination, are played with the most consummate skill and the tenderest regard for light and shade. People not deep in the sympathies and tastes of the musical world, have no idea how these compositions are loved and studied by the real disciples of Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn; how particular passages are watched for; and how old gentlemen nod their heads, or shake them at each other, according as they agree or disagree in the manner of the interpretation. Half the audience probably know every bar of the music by heart, and no inconsiderable number could perhaps perform it very decently themselves. It is indeed at these quartett and quintett meetings, that you see genuine specimens of musical knowledge and musical enthusiasm. They take place by half-dozens during the season; and you always find the same class of audience, often the same individuals, regularly ranged before the executants.

A. B. R.

THE TALLOW-TREE OF CHINA.

Many of the important economical productions of China are little known in this country; we are, however, daily gaining additions to our knowledge of them; and within the last few years, much valuable information has been obtained respecting the productive resources of the Eastern Empire. The grass-cloth of China only became known in Europe a few years ago, but it now ranks as one of the important fabrics of British manufacture. Daily discoveries seem to shew that there are Chinese products of equal importance, as yet unknown to us. On the present occasion, we call the attention of our readers to a substance which has been long known, as well as the plant which produces it, but neither of which has hitherto been prominently brought into general notice in Britain. For our information respecting the uses of the tallow-tree, we express our chief obligations to a paper by Dr D. J. Macgowan, published in the Journal of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India.

There is a separate process for pressing the oil, which is carried on at the same time. The kernels yield about 30 per cent. of oil, which answers well for lamps. It is also employed for various purposes in the arts, and has a place in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, because of its quality of changing gray hair to black, and other imaginary virtues.

The husks are used to feed the furnaces; the residuary tallow-cakes are also employed for fuel--a small quantity remaining ignited a whole day. The oil-cake forms a valuable manure, and is of course carefully used for this purpose in China, where so very great regard is paid to the collecting of manures. This kind is particularly used for enriching tobacco-fields, its powerful qualities recommending it for such a scourging crop.

With regard to the uses of the vegetable tallow, Dr Macgowan observes: 'Artificial illumination in China is generally procured by vegetable oils, but candles are also employed.... In religious ceremonies, no other material is used. As no one ventures out after dark without a lantern, and as the gods cannot be acceptably worshipped without candles, the quantity consumed is very great. With an unimportant exception, the candles are always made of what I beg to designate as vegetable stearine. When the candles, which are made by dipping, are of the required diameter, they receive a final dip into a mixture of the same material and insect-wax, by which their consistency is preserved in the hottest weather. They are generally coloured red, which is done by throwing a minute quantity of alkanet-root , brought from Shan-tung, into the mixture. Verdigris is sometimes employed to dye them green.' We are not aware that the vegetable tallow has as yet been imported into Britain to any extent.

FOOTNOTES:

THE TOLLMAN'S STORY.

Some local travellers of about twenty-five years' practice, may still remember the keeper of a toll-bar on one of the western approaches to Glasgow, known in his neighbourhood as English John. The prefix was given, I believe, in honour of his dialect, which was remarkably pure and polished for one of his station in those days; and the solution of that problem was, that he had been from childhood, till the gray was thickening on his hair, in the service of an English family, who had come into possession, and constantly resided on, a handsome estate in his native parish in Dumbartonshire.

Years had passed; my professional studies were finished, and I had occasion to visit a Fife laird near the East Neuk. The gentleman was notable for his taste in kitchen-gardening; and having a particularly fine bed of Jerusalem artichokes which I must see, he conducted me to the scene of his triumphs, when, hard at work with the rake and hoe, whom should I find as the much esteemed gardener, but my old friend English John! His hair had grown quite gray, and his look strangely grave, since last I saw him: time had altered me still more; nevertheless, John knew me at once--he had always a keen eye--but I perceived it was his wish not to be recognised at all in presence of the laird. That worthy was one of those active spirits who extend their superintendence to every department. He commanded in the pantry as well as on the farm; and while expatiating over the artichokes, a private message from his lady summoned him back to the house, as I sincerely believe, on some matter connected with the dinner; and he left me, with an understood permission to admire the artichokes, and the garden in general, as long as I pleased. Scarcely was he fairly out of sight, till I was at the gardener's side. 'John, my old fellow,' cried I, grasping his hand, 'I'm glad to see you once again. How has the world behaved to you these many years?'

'Pretty well, Master Willie,' said John, heartily returning my shake; 'and I'm glad to see you too; but your memory must be uncommon good, for many a one of the boys has passed me by on street and highway. How have they all turned out?' And he commenced a series of inquiries after schoolmates and old neighbours, to which my answers were as usual in such cases--some were dead, some were married, and some gone far away.

'But, John,' said I at last, determined to make out the mystery which had so long puzzled me and the entire parish--'in exchange for all my news, tell me why you left the toll-house? It was surely a better place than this?'

'You know what the old proverb says, Master Willie: "Change is lightsome,"' said John, beginning to dig, as if he would fain stave off the explanation.

'Ha, John, that wont do!' said I; 'your mind was never so unsteady. Tell me the truth, for old times' sake; and if there is anything in the story that should not be made public, you know I was always a capital secret-keeper. Maybe it was a love-matter, John: are you married yet?'

'No, Master Willie,' cried my old friend, with a look of the most sincere self-gratulation I ever saw. 'But it's a queer story, and one I shouldn't care for telling; only, you were always a discreet boy, and it rather presses on my mind at times. The master won't be back for awhile; he'll have the roast to try, and the pudding to taste--not to talk of seeing the table laid out, for there are to be some half-dozen besides yourself to-day at dinner. That's his way, you see. And I'll tell you what took me from the toll-house--but mind, never mention it, as you would keep peace in the west country.'

This is John's story, as nearly in his own words as I can call them to mind:--

They said her ladyship had been reckoned a beauty in London drawing-rooms, and our parish thought her wonderfully grand for the gay dresses and rich jewellery she wore. Doubtless, these were but the cast-offs of the season, for regularly every spring she and the family went up to London, where they kept a fine house, and what is called the best society. How much the gay dresses had to do with the beauty is not for me to say, but Lady Catherine was a large, stately woman, with a dark complexion, and very brilliant red, which the servants whispered was laid on in old court fashion. Her manner to her equals was graceful, and to her inferiors, gracious; but there was a look of pride in her dark gray eyes, and a stern resolution about the compressed lips, which struck my childish mind with strange fear, and kept older hearts in awe. Her daughters, Florence and Agnes, were pictures of their mother--proud, gay ladies, but thought the flower of the county. Their portions were good, and they would have been co-heiresses but for their brother Arthur. He was the youngest, but so different from his mother and sisters, that you wouldn't have thought him of the same family. His fair face and clear blue eyes, his curly brown hair and merry look, had no likeness to them, though he was not a whit behind them in air or stature. At eighteen, there was not a finer lad in the shire; and he had a frank, kindly nature, which made the tenantry rejoice in the prospect of his being their future landlord.

Near the castle there stood a farmhouse, occupied by an old man whose great-grandfather had cultivated the same fields. He was not rich, but much respected by his neighbours for an honest, upright life. His wife was as old as himself. They had been always easy-living people, and had no child but one only daughter. Menie was a delicately pretty girl, a little spoiled, perhaps, in her station, for both father and mother made a queen of her at home. She was never allowed to do any rough work, was always dressed, and her neighbours said, kept in the parlour. Menie had a great many admirers, but her parents thought her too good for everybody, and had a wonderful belief of their own, that she was somehow to get a great match, and be made a lady. There was a strange truth in that notion, as things turned out, for we servants at the castle began to remark how often the young master was seen going and coming about the farmhouse. Maybe the old farmer and his wife encouraged him, for they had a story concerning their own descent from some great chief of the western Highlands, and a family of wild proud cousins, who lived up among the hills; but of this I know nothing more, only that the farmer's daughter was the prettiest girl in the parish. Master Arthur was beginning his nineteenth year, and there was a storm up stairs, such as had never been heard before in the castle, when Lady Catherine found out what was going on, as I think through our minister, who considered it his duty to let her know what every one talked of, but nobody else would dare to mention in her presence. Whether the tempest was more than Master Arthur could stand, or whether Lady Catherine, in her fury--for she had no joke of a tongue and temper--said something of Menie which drove the boy to finish the business in his own way, was long a disputed point in the servants' hall; but next morning he was missed in the castle, and in the course of my duties the same forenoon, I brought a letter from the village post-office, the reading of which sent the young ladies off in hysterics, and made Lady Catherine retire to her room--for it announced that her heir of entail and the farmer's daughter were gone to get married in Glasgow.

The young ladies recovered in about two hours, and her ladyship came out, but only to prepare for a journey to Paris; and quick work she made of it. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of that letter, she and her daughters were off in the family carriage; the best part of the servants despatched to live at their town-house on board-wages; all the good rooms locked up, and nobody but the gardener, a kitchen-girl, and myself left with the old housekeeper at the castle. The next news we heard was, that the old farmer and his wife had set out to bring home their daughter and son-in-law, saying--poor people, in their pride or folly--that Menie and her husband could live with them till Providence cleared their way to the estate, which nobody could keep from them. I believe it was that speech, coming to her ears by some busy tongue or other, that made Lady Catherine so bitter afterwards; but Master Arthur and his bride came home to the farmhouse, where the parlour and the best bedroom were set apart for their use; and the poor old father and mother were proud to serve and entertain them. They were a young pair; for, as I have said, he was in his nineteenth, and she in her seventeenth year--a handsome pair, too, and more alike than one would have supposed from the difference of their birth. Menie had a genteel, quiet carriage, and really looked like a lady in the church-pew beside our young master, whom we seldom saw but at a distance--for his spirit was too high to come near the castle--and though it wasn't just told us, we all knew that going to the farmhouse would be reckoned the full value of our places.

It was the fall of the year when Lady Catherine left us--all that winter she spent in Paris; and when the spring again came round, we heard of her opening house with even more than usual gaiety in London. That was a great season with her ladyship. In its course, she got her daughters both married to her mind. The one wedded a baronet, and the other a right honourable; but scarcely had the newspapers fully announced his sisters' wedding-breakfasts, and how the happy pairs set out, when Master Arthur was seized with sudden sickness. He had been fishing in a mountain-lake, and got drenched to the skin by the rain of a thunder-storm, overexerted himself in walking home, and caught a pleurisy. The whole parish felt for the poor young man, who had been so hardly used by his mother, and many were the inquiries made for him at the farmhouse. There was wild wo there, for every day he got worse; and within the week, Menie was left a widow. Lady Catherine had gone back to Paris at the close of the season; one of her married daughters was in Italy, and the other in Switzerland; but two cousins of their father were to be found in England; and Master Arthur was laid in the family vault, under our old parish church, before the intelligence reached them. Lady Catherine came back in deep mourning, and alone, but not a whit subdued in spirit: she had been heard to say, that her son was better dead than disgraced; and her estate was at least safe from being shared by peasants. Of her daughter-in-law, she never took the slightest notice. People said, the poor young widow's heart was broken, for she had thought more of Arthur than of his rank and property, and kept well out of the proud, hard woman's way. Her ladyship did not seem to like living at the castle; she stayed only to regulate matters with the factor at Martinmas, and went back again to London. Before she went, a report began to rise, that poor Menie had drooped and pined into a real sickness. They said it was a rapid decline, and a dog would have pitied the father and mother's grief. How strangely they strove to keep that only child, asking the prayers of the congregation, and sending for the best doctors; but all was in vain, for Menie died some days before Christmas. The girl had a simple wish to rest beside Arthur. It was the last words she spoke; and her relations believed that, being his wife, she had a right to a place in the vault without asking anybody's leave. So they laid her quietly beside her husband, no one about the castle caring to interfere, except the factor, who thought it incumbent on him to let her ladyship know.

The married sisters, now heiresses of entail, never visited the castle again in my time. Lady Catherine came regularly at the terms from London, where she lived constantly; but her stay was no longer than the rent-roll required, and her maid said she rested but badly at night. So years passed on, and I rose in the service. On one of her visits, Lady Catherine thought I would do for a footman, which she happened to want, and sent me to be trained at the house in London. What great and gay doings I saw there needn't be told just now. Lady Catherine kept the best and most fashionable company, and she was never at home an evening that the house was not full. There was money to be made, and plenty of all things; but I did not like it; and having saved a trifle, one of her ladyship's sons-in-law--he was the best of the two--got me the place at the toll-bar.

You remember me there, Master Willie, and what great times we had on Saturday afternoons. You may recollect, too, how many foot-passengers used to come and go. It was my amusement to watch them when I had nothing better to do; but of all who passed my window, there were none took my attention so completely as two young men, who always walked arm-in-arm, and seemed to be brothers. I thought I had seen their strongly-marked Highland faces before, and by degrees learned that they were none other than the old man's two sons, who had been at poor Menie's last funeral, but were now grown up, and studying for the medical profession at the college in Glasgow. Their father evidently kept them on short allowance, judging from their coarse tartan clothes, and continual munching of oaten cakes: but I was told they were hard students, and particularly clever in the anatomy class. One dark, dreary morning, about the Christmas-time, I noted that Lady Catherine and her family had been in my dreams all night--their grand house, and gay goings-on in London, mingling strangely with the old story of Master Arthur and the farmer's daughter. When the newspaper, which I shared with the schoolmaster, came, judge of my astonishment to read that her ladyship had died suddenly in a fit of apoplexy, which came upon her at the whist-table, and her remains had been conveyed to the family vault in Dumbartonshire. There was a lesson on the uncertainty of life! and it is my trust that I found in it a use of warning; but the continual news and strangers at the toll-bar, the exact gathering in of the dues, which was not always an easy task, and your own merry schoolmates, Master Willie, had in a manner shuffled it out of my mind before the second evening.

It had been a dark, foggy day, and I went early to sleep, there being few travellers; but in the dead of night, between twelve and one, I was roused by a thundering summons at the toll-bar. The night was calm and starless, a mass of heavy clouds covered the sky, broken at times by gusts of moaning wind from the west, and broad bursts of moonlight. I threw on my coat, lit my lantern, and hurried out. There stood a large gig with three persons. They must have been tightly packed in it, and I never saw a more impatient horse. There was some delay in getting out the silver, and I had time to see that the two men who sat, one on each side, were the Highland brothers. There was a woman between them, in a dingy cloak and bonnet, with a thick black veil. She neither moved nor spoke, though the toll somehow puzzled the students. I was determined to have it any way, and one of them saying something to his companion in Gaelic, reached a half-crown to me. I knew I had no change, and told him so. 'I'll call in the morning,' said he; but the horse gave a bound, and the silver flew out of his fingers. Both the brothers looked down after it. I had a strange curiosity about their companion, and that instant a gust of wind blew back the veil, and the moonlight shone clear and full upon the face: it was the dead visage of Lady Catherine! I saw but one glance of it; the next moment the heavy veil had fallen. 'Get the silver yourself, and keep it all,' cried the two men, as I opened for them without a word: and from that day to this, no one has ever heard the story from me. I put the half-crown in the poor's-box next Sabbath. But, Master Willie, after that night I never cared for keeping the toll-bar. The sound of wheels coming after dark had always a strange effect on me, and I could never see a gig pass without shivering. So I gave up my situation, and took to the old trade of gardening again. The pleasant plants and flowers bring no dark stories to one's mind. But yonder's the laird: dinner will be ready by this time.

And John was right; for it was ready, with a jovial party to despatch it. But I never saw my old friend after. He emigrated to Canada with his managing master in the following spring; and, having at least kept the real names with enjoined secrecy, it seems at this distance of time no breach of trust to repeat the toll-keeper's story.

Among the lions of Rome during the last twenty years, not the least attractive, especially for literary visitors, was the celebrated Cardinal Mezzofanti. Easy of access to foreigners of every condition, simple, unpretending, cheerful, courteous even to familiarity, he never failed to make a most favourable impression upon his visitors; and marvellous as were the tales in circulation concerning him, the opportunity of witnessing more closely the exercise of his almost preternatural powers of language, served but to deepen the wonder with which he was regarded. The extent, the variety, and the solidity of his attainments, and, still more, his complete and ready command, for the purposes of conversation, of all the motley stores which he had laid up, were so far beyond all example, whether in ancient or modern times, as not only to place him in the very first rank of the celebrities of our generation, but to mark him out as one of the most extraordinary personages recorded in history.

Giuseppe Mezzofanti was born at Bologna in 1774, of an extremely humble family. His father was a poor carpenter; and the eminence to which, by his own unassisted exertions, Mezzofanti, without once leaving his native city, attained in the exercise of the faculty of language--which is ordinarily cultivated only by the arduous and expensive process of visiting and travelling in the different countries in which each separate language is spoken--is not the least remarkable of the many examples of successful 'pursuit of knowledge under difficulties,' which literary history supplies. He was educated in one of the poor schools of his native city, which was under the care of the fathers of the celebrated Congregation of the Oratory; and the evidence of more than ordinary talent which he exhibited, early attracted the notice of one of the members of the order, to whose kind instruction and patronage Mezzofanti was indebted for almost all the advantages which he afterwards enjoyed. This good man--whose name was Respighi, and to whose judicious patronage of struggling genius science is also indebted for the eminent success of the distinguished naturalist Ranzani, the son of a Bolognese barber, and a fellow-pupil of Mezzofanti--procured for his young prot?g? the instruction of the best masters he could discover among his friends. He himself, it is believed, taught him Latin; Greek fell to the share of Father Emmanuel da Ponte, a Spanish ex-Jesuit--the order had at this time been suppressed; and the boy received his first initiation into the great Eastern family of languages from an old Dominican, Father Ceruti, who, at the instance of his friend Respighi, undertook to teach him Hebrew. Beyond this point, Mezzofanti's knowledge of languages was almost exclusively the result of his own unassisted study.

From a very early age, he was destined for the church, and he received holy orders about the year 1797. During the period of his probationary studies, however, he obtained, through the kindness of his friend F. Respighi, the place of tutor in the family of the Marescalchi, one of the most distinguished among the nobility of Bologna; and the opportunities for his peculiar studies afforded by the curious and valuable library to which he thus enjoyed free access, may probably have exercised a decisive influence upon his whole career.

During his occupancy of this office, too, he continued to hold his professorship of Oriental languages, and, for a considerable part of the time, that of Greek literature in addition. Nor was he exempt from those domestic cares and anxieties which are often the most painful drawback upon literary activity. The death of a brother, which threw upon him the care of an unprovided family of eleven children, was the severest trial sustained in Mezzofanti's otherwise comparatively quiet career; and by driving him to the ordinary expedient of distressed scholars--that of giving private lectures--it tended more than all his public occupations to trench upon his time, and to abridge his opportunities of application to his favourite study.

It is true that at the period of which we speak, Bologna lay upon the high-road to Rome, and that travellers more frequently rested for a space upon their journey, than in these days of steam-boat and railway communication. But, even then, the opportunities of intercourse with foreign-speaking visitors in Bologna were few and inconsiderable compared with the prodigious advances which, under all his disadvantages, Mezzofanti contrived to make. The ordinary European languages presented but little difficulty; the frequent passings and repassings of the allied forces during the later years of the war, afforded him a full opportunity of acquiring Russian; and the occasional establishment of Austrian troops in Bologna, brought him into contact with the motley tongues of that vast empire--the Magyar, the Czechish, the Servian, the Walachian, and the Romani; but beyond this, even his spirit of enterprise had no vent in his native city; and all his further conquests were exclusively the result due to his own private and unassisted study.

From this period, Mezzofanti continued to reside at Rome. Far, however, from relaxing in the pursuit of his favourite study after his elevation, he only used the opportunities thus afforded for the purpose of cultivating it with more effect. When the writer of these pages first had the honour of being presented to him, he was in the full flush of the excitement of a new study--that of the language of the California Indians, two of whom had recently come as pupils to the College of the Propaganda; and up to his very last year, the same zeal continued unabated. His death occurred March 16, 1849, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, and was most probably hastened by the excitement and distress caused by the political troubles of the period.

It would be easy to multiply anecdotes, shewing the enthusiasm with which Mezzofanti entered on the study of language after language. He sought out new tongues with an insatiable passion, and may be said to have never been happy but when engaged in the mastering of words and grammars. No degree of bad health interrupted his pursuit. Till the day of his death, he was engaged in his darling task: lifein return detested him cordially. He knew and revered, "in unison with the rest of the world," Miss Hannah More. He corresponded at great length with lesser lights,--with Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. Hartley, and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall. He wrote endless commentaries on Homer and Virgil to young Franks, and reams of good advice to his little son at Eton. There is something pathetic in his regret that the limitations of life will not permit him to be as verbose as he would like. "I could write for an hour," he assures poor Franks, "upon that most delightful of all passages, the Lion deprived of its Young; but the few minutes one can catch amidst the Noise, hurry and confusion of an Assize town will not admit of any Classical discussions. But was I in the calm retirement of your Study at Acton, I have much to say to you, to which I can only allude."

The publication of scores and scores of such letters, all written to one unresponsive young man at Cambridge , makes us wonder afresh who kept the correspondence; and the problem is deepened by the appearance of Sir William's letters to his son. This is the way the first one begins:--

"MY DEAR BOY,--I cannot let a Post escape me without giving you the Pleasure of knowing how much you have gladdened the Hearts of two as affectionate Parents as ever lived; when you tell us that the Principles of Religion begin already to exert their efficacy in making you look down with contempt on the wretched grovelling Vices with which you are surrounded, you make the most delightful Return you can ever make for our Parental Care and Affection; you make Us at Peace with Ourselves; and enable us to hope that our dear Boy will Persevere in that Path which will ensure the greatest Share of Comfort here, and a certainty of everlasting Happiness hereafter."

I am disposed to think that Sir William made a fair copy of this letter and of others like it, and laid them aside as models of parental exhortation. Whether young Pepys was a little prig, or a particularly accomplished little scamp , it seems equally unlikely that an Eton boy's desk would have proved a safe repository for such ample and admirable discourses.

The publication of Cowper's letters in 1803 and 1804 struck a chill into the hearts of accomplished and erudite correspondents. Poor Miss Seward never rallied from the shock of their "commonness," and of their popularity. Here was a man who wrote about beggars and postmen, about cats and kittens, about buttered toast and the kitchen table. Here was a man who actually looked at things before he described them ; who called the wind the wind, and buttercups buttercups, and a hedgehog a hedgehog. Miss Seward honestly despised Cowper's letters. She said they were without "imagination or eloquence," without "discriminative criticism," without "characteristic investigation." Investigating the relations between the family cat and an intrusive viper was, from her point of view, unworthy the dignity of an author. Cowper's love of detail, his terrestrial turn of mind, his humour, and his veracity were disconcerting in an artificial age. When Miss Carter took a country walk, she did not stoop to observe the trivial things she saw. Apparently she never saw anything. What she described were the sentiments and emotions awakened in her by a featureless principle called Nature. Even the ocean--which is too big to be overlooked--started her on a train of moral reflections, in which she passed easily from the grandeur of the elements to the brevity of life, and the paltriness of earthly ambitions. "How vast are the capacities of the soul, and how little and contemptible its aims and pursuits." With this original remark, the editor of the letters was so delighted that he added a pious comment of his own.

"If such be the case, how strong and conclusive is the argument deduced from it, that the soul must be destined to another state more suitable to its views and powers. It is much to be lamented that Mrs. Carter did not pursue this line of thought any further."

People who bought nine volumes of a correspondence like this were expected, as the editor warns them, to derive from it "moral, literary, and religious improvement." It was in every way worthy of a lady who had translated Epictetus, and who had the "great" Mrs. Montagu for a friend. But, as Miss Seward pathetically remarked, "any well-educated person, with talents not above the common level, produces every day letters as well worth attention as most of Cowper's, especially as to diction." The perverseness of the public in buying, in reading, in praising these letters, filled her with pained bewilderment. Not even the writer's sincere and sad piety, his tendency to moralize, and the transparent innocence of his life could reconcile her to plain transcripts from nature, or to such an unaffecting incident as this:--

"A neighbour of mine in Silver End keeps an ass; the ass lives on the other side of the garden wall, and I am writing in the greenhouse. It happens that he is this morning most musically disposed; either cheered by the fine weather, or by some new tune which he has just acquired, or by finding his voice more harmonious than usual. It would be cruel to mortify so fine a singer, therefore I do not tell him that he interrupts and hinders me; but I venture to tell you so, and to plead his performance in excuse of my abrupt conclusion."

Here is not only the "common" diction which Miss Seward condemned, but a very common casualty, which she would have naturally deemed beneath notice. Cowper wrote a great deal about animals, and always with fine and humorous appreciation. He sought relief from the hidden torment of his soul in the contemplation of creatures who fill their place in life without morals, and without misgivings. We know what safe companions they were for him when we read his account of his hares, of his kitten dancing on her hind legs,--"an exercise which she performs with all the grace imaginable,"--and of his goldfinches amorously kissing each other between the cage wires. When Miss Seward bent her mind to "the lower orders of creation," she did not describe them at all; she gave them the benefit of that "discriminative criticism" which she felt that Cowper lacked. Here, for example, is her thoughtful analysis of man's loyal servitor, the dog:--

"That a dog is a noble, grateful, faithful animal we must all be conscious, and deserves a portion of man's tenderness and care;--yet, from its utter incapacity of more than glimpses of rationality, there is a degree of insanity, as well as of impoliteness to his acquaintance, and of unkindness to his friends, in lavishing so much more of his attention in the first instance, and of affection in the latter, upon it than upon them."

"My dog is a spaniel. Till Miss Gunning begged him, he was the property of a farmer, and had been accustomed to lie in the chimney corner among the embers till the hair was singed from his back, and nothing was left of his tail but the gristle. Allowing for these disadvantages, he is really handsome; and when nature shall have furnished him with a new coat, a gift which, in consideration of the ragged condition of his old one, it is hoped she will not long delay, he will then be unrivalled in personal endowments by any dog in this country."

No wonder the Lichfield Swan was daunted by the inconceivable popularity of such letters. No wonder Miss Hannah More preferred Akenside to Cowper. What had these eloquent ladies to do with quiet observation, with sober felicity of phrase, with "the style of honest men"!

THE NOVELIST

Soft Sensibility, sweet Beauty's soul! Keeps her coy state, and animates the whole.

HAYLEY.

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