Chapter 5

“God Almighty!There is a soul of goodness in things evil,Would men observingly distil it out!”Shakspere.

“God Almighty!There is a soul of goodness in things evil,Would men observingly distil it out!”Shakspere.

“God Almighty!There is a soul of goodness in things evil,Would men observingly distil it out!”Shakspere.

“Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth,By those undreamt of who have only trodLife’s valley smooth; and if the rolling earthTo their nice ear have many a painful tone,They know man does not live by joy alone,But by the presence of the power of God.”Milnes.

“Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth,By those undreamt of who have only trodLife’s valley smooth; and if the rolling earthTo their nice ear have many a painful tone,They know man does not live by joy alone,But by the presence of the power of God.”Milnes.

“Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth,By those undreamt of who have only trodLife’s valley smooth; and if the rolling earthTo their nice ear have many a painful tone,They know man does not live by joy alone,But by the presence of the power of God.”Milnes.

“But here we are;—that is a great fact; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is here; and art and nature, hope and dread, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”Emerson.

“But here we are;—that is a great fact; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is here; and art and nature, hope and dread, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”Emerson.

———

Itis harder to be brief about our gains and privileges than about our peculiar troubles: but I must try to be so; for the discoveries we make, though to us all glowing with freshness and beauty, are, to those who merely receive them, as trite as any old moralities whatever.

One great and strange blessing to us is, the abolition of the future—of our own future in this life.

It is commonly thought a chief privilege of childhood, that it is passed without thought of the future—that the present is all in all. I doubtthe truth of this. My own experience in childhood was of a painful and incessant longing for the future—a longing which enhanced all its innumerable pains, and embittered many of its pleasures—a longing for strength of body and of mind, for independence of action—for an escape, in short, from the conditions of childhood. The privilege which I then missed I have found now. Let it be a comfort to all sorrowing friends of those who are under any sort of doom without an assigned period to know, that in such cases the sense of doom vanishes. When the future becomes a blank to us, it becomes presently invisible. And when we sustain this change we do not contract in our desires and interests, but, I humbly hope, the contrary. The thoughts which stretched forwards, with eagerness and anxiety, now spread themselves abroad, more calmly and with more disinterestedness. There is danger of our losing sympathy with the young, the healthy, the ambitious; for we soon require to be reminded of those states of mind, and those classes of interests which involve ambition, or any kind of personal regard to the future: but, if we can preserve these sympathies, it does appear to me that the changeis, to ourselves, pure gain. The image of five, ten, twenty years of our present life, or decline into deeper suffering, ending in death, makes absolutely no impression upon us. We have not the slightest movement of a wish that it were otherwise;—we do not turn our heads half round to see if there be no way of escape: and this is because our interests are all occupied with immediate and pressing objects, in which we have ascertained our true life to consist. Of these objects we would not surrender one for the permission to go back to the most brilliant point of our lives. Wealth would be a trouble to us—a responsibility we would rather decline; and it is astonishing to us that any man can wish for more than is needed to furnish his children well for the probation of life. Ambition and its objects (of course, not including usefulness) appear to us so much voluntarily incurred bondage and fatigue. Subjection to the opinions of men—a dependence on their suffrages for any heartfelt object—seems a slavery so humbling and so unnecessary, that we could hardly wonder sufficiently at it, but for the recollection that all human desires and passions are the instruments by which the work of the raceis done, and that ambition is far from being among the lowest of these instruments. Those of us who had known formerly, for a sufficient length of time, what it was to have fame, did not need to be laid by to discover how soon and how thoroughly it becomes disregarded (except for its collateral privileges), and left behind among our forgotten objects of desire: but our present position is the best for following out its true history—for tracing that path a reach beyond the point where moralists commonly leave it. The young aspirant is warned betimes, without practical effect, that the privileges of obscurity are irrecoverable: that, when he has become famous, he may long in vain for the quiet shelter of privacy, that he has left. He feels this, with a sense of panic, when he has gained the celebrity he longs for, and is undergoing his first agonies from adverse opinion. If he would but believe us, we watchers could tell him that, though he can never retreat into his original privacy, there is a yet more complete shelter before him, if he does not linger, or take up his rest short of his journey’s end. This shelter is not to be found in indifference, in contempt for human opinion—that ugly mask behind which some striveto hide the workings of an agonised countenance, while the scorchings of scorn beat fiercely on their brains, and the jeerings of ridicule torture their ears. There is no rest, no shelter, in contempt: and human opinion can never be naturally despised, though it has no claim to any man’s allegiance. The true and welcome ultimate shelter of the celebrated is in great interests—great objects. If they use the power their fame puts into their hands for the furtherance of any of the great ends for which Providence is operating, they find themselves by degrees in possession once more of the external freedom, the internal quiet, the genuine privacy of soul, which they believed forfeited for ever, while the consciousness of the gaze of the world was upon them. They read what is said of themselves in print just as if it was said of any other person, if it be laudatory; and with a quieter feeling still if it be adverse, as I shall presently describe.

It is sometimes said, that it is a pity when great men do not happen to die on the completion of the one grand achievement of their lives, instead of taming down the effect by living on afterwards like common men;—that Clarkson should havedied on the abolition of the slave-trade,—Howard after his first or second journey,—Scott on the publication of his best romance,—and so on. But there is a melo-dramatic air about such a wish, which appears childish to moral speculators. We are glad to have Clarkson still, to honour freshly in his old age. We see more glory about the head of John Quincy Adams contending, as a Representative in Congress, for popular rights, than he ever wore as President of the United States. We should be glad that Rowland Hill should live and work as a common man for a quarter of a century after the complete realisation of his magnificent boon to society. In truth, we behold great men entering early upon their heaven, when we see them tranquilly retired, or engaged in common labours, after their most memorable task is accomplished. The worthiest of celebrated men would, I believe, be found, if their meditations could be read, anticipating with the highest satisfaction, as the happiest part of their prospect beyond the grave, their finding a level condition once more—being encompassed by equals—or, as the popular preacher puts it, starting fair from the new post. Such beingthe natural desire of simple hearts, there is a pleasure to spectators in seeing them, while still here, encompassed with fellowship—not set above, nor apart, though enjoying the natural recompenses of their deeds.

The words “natural recompenses” remind me of another gain conferred on us by our condition—scarcely separable, perhaps, from those I have mentioned—from the extinction of all concern about our future in this world, and the ordinary objects of pursuit; but yet to us so conspicuous, so heartfelt, as to demand record as a blessing by itself. I mean the conviction of the hollowness of all talk ofrewardfor conduct;—the conviction of the essential blessedness of goodness. What can appear more trite? Where is the church or chapel in which it is not preached every Sunday? Yet we, who heard and believed through all the Sundays and week-days of many years, seem but now to haveknownthis truth. Our knowledge is now tested by the indifference with which we behold men struggling for other objects, under a sort of insanity, as it appears to us, while the interests which animate us to sympathy are those of the pure in heart, seeingGod before they die; and the dread which chills our souls is for the multitude who live in passion and die in moral insensibility. To us it appears so obviously the supreme good to have a healthy soul serenely reposing in innocence, and spontaneously working for God and man, that all divergence of aims from this end seems madness, and all imagery of rewards for moral desert the most profane of mockeries. It is a matter of wonder to us, that we ever conceived of royalty otherwise than as a title to compassion; of hereditary honours, as desirable; of fame, as an end; and we are apt to wonder at others, in their turn, that they do not perceive the most blessed of our race to be the moral reformers of each age, passing “from strength to strength,” although wearing out in their enterprise, and the placid well-doers, whether high or lowly in their service. The appendages themselves of such a state—the esteem, honour, and love which wait upon moral desert—almost vanish from our notice when we are contemplating the infinite blessedness of the peace of a holy heart.

Then we have (not to dwell on a matter already spoken of) a peculiar privilege in the peculiarloveliness which the image of Death assumes to us. In our long leisure, all sweet and soothing associations of rest,—of relief from anxiety and wearing thought,—of re-entrance upon society,—(a society how sanctified!)—of the realisation of our best conceptions of what is holy, noble, and perfect,—all affections, all aspirations gather round the idea of Death, till it recurs at all our best moments, and becomes an abiding thought of peace and joy. When we hear or read of the departure of any one we knew,—of the death even of the youngest or the most active,—a throb of congratulatory feeling is our first emotion, rather than the shock which we used to experience, and which we now see sustained by those around us. Reflection, or tidings of survivors may change our view; but so does the image of Death become naturally endeared to us, that our first spontaneous thought is of favour to those who are selected for it. I am not recommending this impression as rational, but intimating it as characteristic of a peculiar condition. It is no slight privilege, however, to have that great idea which necessarily confronts every one of us all clothed with loveliness instead of horror, or mere mystery. Till now, we neverknew how any anticipation may be incessantly filling with sweetness.

It may be doubted whether there is a more heartfelt peace experienced at any point of our moral progress than in the right reception of calumnious injury. In the immediate return from the first recoil into the mood of forgiveness, there is something heavenly even to the novice. In the compassion for one’s calumniator there is pain; and it is a pain which increases with experience of life, and with our insight into the peril and misery of an unjust and malicious habit of mind; but in the act of pitying forgiveness, there is a solace so sweet as to make one wonder how long men will be in adopting this remedy for their injuries. Any one who has been ambitious, and with success, will, if he be wise, be ready to declare that not the first breath of fame was to him so sweet as the first emotions of forgiveness, the first stirrings of the love of enemies, after his earliest experience of the calumny by which all public effort is sure to be assailed. I am not supposing cowardly acquiescence in insult and injury. I am supposing the due self-assertion made, or defence found not to be practicable. This is all that others have todo with. A man’s self-communion on the matter is his own private affair: and little know the systematic calumniators, who for party’s or prejudice’s sake, assail those who can only return silence, how they really work in some hearts they seek to wound. In some they may excite rage or bitter anguish; but there are others,—probably many,—in which they cause no severer pain than a pitying sorrow for themselves, while they kindle a glow of courage, patience, and benignity,—they cause a more exquisite mingling of sweet emotions,—than were ever aroused by praise. The more defenceless the injured, the more private and the more heavenly are these passages of his soul; and none are more defenceless than sick prisoners. If subject to such injuries in the world, where they could by their presence perpetually live down false aspersions, (aspersions on their opinions as well as on their conduct,) helpless indeed are they when living out of sight, dumb in regard to society and through the press. Then, if their party foes take the opportunity to assail and misrepresent their opinions and their acts, those foes can have all their own way abroad in the world; but the very air of our sick-room turnsthem from foes into best friends. After one moment’s sickening at the poor malice and cowardice, our thoughts fix on the high and holy truths to which they direct us,—on the transience of error,—the nothingness of fame, in the serious passages of life,—the powerlessness of assaults from without while we possess ourselves,—till we end in a calm and sweet mood of contentedness for ourselves and affectionate intercession for the victims of angry passion or of sordid interests. It does not move us painfully to think of our helplessness,—to contemplate leaving life without explaining our opinions, or justifying our views and enterprises. What is just and true will abide and prevail; and as for our claims to a share in the reputation, they seem in the sick-room worthy of only a smile. If we wrought for reputation, we must suffer, sooner or later, for the lowness of the aim; and now may be our time for taking a new growth through pain. But if we wrought for truth and good, we are not susceptible of the venom of the party slanderer. His sting proves no sting, but a beneficial touch rousing in us many tender, and resolute, and benignant feelings. These may be awakened wherever such a touchreaches us; but nowhere perhaps so sensibly as in the privacy and lowliness of the sick-room. I need say nothing of the benefit brought to us, by the same act, in the sympathy of generous minds. Of the blessing of sympathy I have already said so much that I dare scarcely approach the subject again. And never, as all know, does ministering affection so abound as towards the injured. When injury and helplessness unite their claims, there is no end to the multitude of hearts that throng to defend and aid. They are far more than are needed; for few—extremely few—are those who venture or who like to send the enmity of public life into the retreats of privacy. Very rare, I believe, is the species of men who insult when all the world knows there can be no reply. Still, such cases are witnessed; and of their operation I have spoken.

The greater number of invalids are under no such liability; but all may be subject to some injustice,—some misrepresentation which may reach their knowledge; and their emotions, both of recoil and of renovation, may be like in kind, and even equal in degree, to those I have intimated. If occasions for forgiveness should arise,—(and to whom do they not?)—may its relish be as sweet to them as it assuredly is to some more extensively tried!

An inestimable gain from the longest sickness is the outgrowth of the scruples and other conflicts which constitute the chief evil of merely long sickness. Of some perils and pains of our condition I have spoken, and I must therefore declare that there is a remedial influence in the very infirmity which appeared to create them. If it be but continued long enough,—if the struggle be not broken off before it is fairly exhausted,—victory will declare itself on the side of peace. We may be long in passing through the experience of weakness, humiliation and submission; but up, through acquiescence, we must rise, sooner or later,—true things separating themselves infallibly from the transient, and all that is important revealing itself in its due proportions, till our vision is cleared and our hearts are at rest. If the invalid of five years can smile at some of the anxieties and scrupulosities of his first season of retreat, much more clear-sighted must the ten years’ thinker be in regard to the snares and troubles of his early or midway term. If, amidstthe gain, as little as possible be lost, the privileges of our state may be such,—not as, indeed, to compare with those of health and a natural mode of life,—but as may satisfy a humble and rational hope that our season of probation is not lost, nor materially wasted.

The sick-room is a sanctuary of confidence. It is a natural confessional, where the spontaneous revelations are perhaps as ample as any enforced disclosures from disciple to priest, and without any of the mischiefs of enforcement. We may be excluded from much observation of the outer life of men; but of the inner life, which originates and interprets the outer, it is scarcely possible that in any other circumstances we could have known so much. Into what depths of opinion are we not let down! To what soaring heights of speculation are we not borne up! What is there of joy or sorrow, of mystery and marvel, in human experience that is not communicated to us! And all this not as if read in print,—not half-revealed, in the form of hints to such as can understand,—not in general terms, as addressed to the general,—but spoken fully and freely, with that particularity which fastens words upon the soul for ever,—with those living tones of emotion which make the hearer a partner in all that is and has been felt. Here, we learn that the whole experience of humanity may be contained in one bosom, through such participation as we ourselves entertain; and even that all opinions, the most various and the most incompatible, may be deposited in one intellect, for gradual review, without inducing scepticism, and possibly to the strengthening of the powers and privileges of Faith.

Göthe, the seer of humanity, formed in himself the habit of agreeing with all the opinions uttered to him, alleging as his ground that there is always a sense in which everything is true, and that it is a good to encourage, and an evil to discourage, any belief arrived at in natural course. There are men with minds of a far lower order, but still somewhat superior to the average, who do precisely the reverse,—they see far enough to be aware that there is always something to be said to the contrary of what they hear uttered; and they cannot help saying it. They fall into a habit of invariable opposition, justifying the practice to themselves by the plea of impartiality,—of resistance to dogmatism,—of love of truth, and the like. I disapprove of both habits. Both practically injure belief, and damage the interests of truth. The natural operation of Göthe’s method was to encourage in many indolence in the pursuit of truth and carelessness about opinions;—in some, doubts of the very existence of truth; and in all reflective persons, a keen sense of the insult conveyed, however unintentionally, by such treatment. Far worse, however, is the influence of the antagonist order of minds,—not only from their comparative numbers, for there is not a Göthe in five hundred years,—but from the direct operation of their method and their example. A man who forms a habit of intellectual antagonism destroys more than can ever be repaired, both in his own mind and in those which he influences. He allows no rest in any supposition even to those who have not power or leisure to follow out the research. He cuts their own ground from under them, and does not establish them on any other, for he himself appears to be established on none. Men of this order are, above all others, fickle in their opinions. Complacently supposing themselves impartial investigators into truth, they are,in fact, the sport of any one who, discerning and playing with their weakness, can put them up to the assertion and defence of any opinions whatever, and lead them into daily self-contradiction. What ensues is seen at a glance:—they tamper with truth till the structure of their own intellect becomes fatally impaired:—they denounce, as bigots, all men of every order of mind who remain steady in any opinions, and especially such as continue to hold opinions which they have themselves quitted:—they never doubt of their own fluctuations being progression, and that they are leaving all stable believers behind:—they learn no caution in the publication of their so-called opinions from their own incessant changes, but rather pique themselves on their eagerness to exhibit and insist upon each new view, and enjoy the occasion it affords for complacent amazement at all who hold the positions which they have themselves abandoned.

It may be said, that such men lose their influence, and with it their power for mischief. It is true that, by degrees, more and more decline argument with them, and they cease to have any convincing power, because it is seen that they themselves donot rest in permanent convictions; but their disturbing power remains. They can destroy, though they cannot build up. They can unsettle minds which yet they cannot lead. They can distress and perplex the humble and narrowly-informed;—they can startle, not only the slothful, (who will turn to sleep again, on the plea of the foible of the awakener) but the nervous and feeble who need repose; and, worse than all, they can irreparably injure the young, by spreading before them wide fields of inquiry, and then hunting them out of every corner in which they would be disposed to stay, and rest, and think. Men of this kind of mind have a certain power of sympathy with every species of opinion; and this good and attractive quality it is which mainly causes their self-deception, and aggravates their power of injury. They mistake it for candour, at the very moment that they overflow with intolerance towards holders of opinions which they have relinquished. The result in such cases is always the same,—intellectual ruin, throughout the department of the understanding, however eminent the dialectical powers may appear, through the constant practice which has increased their originalstrength; and with the intellectual damage must be combined great moral injury. Göthe’s method appears to be dangerous; but the opposite one is fatal.

To us, the depositories of vast confidences on these matters, it appears that there is no manner of necessity for either practice. We can avouch, from what we witness, that there may be sympathy with every order of understanding and every phase of opinion, without either hypocrisy, or tendency to disputation, or a surrender of differing views. We see how there may be an intrepid and continuous avowal of opinions, without disturbance to the unlearned and the feeble. We can fully agree with Göthe as to the unequalled mischief of endangering belief in that vast majority of minds which have other work to do than to investigate matters of opinion, without seeing it to be at all necessary to countenance what we know or believe to be error. We can fully agree with his practical antagonists as to the nobleness of candour, and the evils which ensue from dogmatism; while, at the same time, we would sooner die than dare to tempt one intellect to follow us, after one self-conviction of such aninstability as theirs. Where there is a habit of mutability, there is intellectual infirmity, as is shown, with indescribable clearness, to us gazers into the mirror of events. It is a singular privilege granted to us, to witness the workings of the best method,—of that “simplicity and godly sincerity” which is unconsciously adopted by the wise to whom Truth is neither the spirit of rashness, nor “of fear, but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.”

It has occurred to me, at times, that a second volume,—“On the Formation and Publication of Opinions,”—less popularly useful perhaps than the existing one, but deeper and more comprehensive, might be an invaluable gift from the hands of some one in a retreat, (in a sick retreat, as illness invites confidence,)—from the hands of some one who would know how to use with equal discretion and intrepidity his singular opportunities.

One of our most valuable discoveries is often made elsewhere, but is not sufficiently acknowledged and acted upon. We find, after a trial of many methods, that we learn to endure and achieve less by direct effort than by putting ourselves under influences favourable to the state ofmind we seek. We have discovered the same thing before, in regard to mending our faults. We have found that childhood and youth were the seasons of resolution, and that, perhaps, we have not since cured ourselves of a single fault by direct effort. I am persuaded that instances are extremely rare of rectification by such means. I have myself amended only one bad habit—and that a very trifling one—by express effort, since I was twenty; and I could point out only two or three, of all my acquaintance, that I know to be capable of self-improvement in that direct manner; and I cannot but honour them in proportion to my sense of the difficulty and rarity of this exercise of moral power. Yet, how people go on expecting reformation in sinners from a mere conviction of the reason actuating the will, as they suppose, infallibly! the consequence of which foolish expectation is, that the true appliances are neglected. Wordsworth has it—

“‘Resolve!’ the haughty moralist would say:‘This single act is all that we demand.’Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly,Whose very sorrow is that Time hath shornHis natural wings!”

“‘Resolve!’ the haughty moralist would say:‘This single act is all that we demand.’Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly,Whose very sorrow is that Time hath shornHis natural wings!”

“‘Resolve!’ the haughty moralist would say:‘This single act is all that we demand.’Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly,Whose very sorrow is that Time hath shornHis natural wings!”

Instead of losing time, and practically invokingdespair, by exhorting to impossible flights, wise guardians will rather remove the sufferer into an element of new enterprise, or one which may gradually exhaust and destroy his parasitical foes of habit. We sufferers experimentally ascertain this very soon. We find how little reason we have to trust to efforts of resolution under circumstances which tend to enfeeble resolution. We might be capable, as so many others are, of any amount of effort on a single emergency; but when we have to deal with a permanent infliction—to make the best of a difficult mode of life—we find that we must put our trust in abiding influences, and not in a succession of efforts. We therefore lay aside defiance; we submit ourselves—not to our troubles—but to every kind of natural preventive, remedy, and solace. We arrange our personal habits so as to husband our ease, and to conceal our pain; and we place our minds under such influences, intellectual and spiritual, as may best nourish our higher powers, and occupy our energies, to the alleviation, if it may not be to the exclusion, of the suffering, whose challenge we will neither entertain nor defy.

Among other merits of this method, may bereckoned this—that it helps to introduce us to a privilege which may be disregarded by many, but which to us is inestimable—that of causing pleasure, rather than pain, to those connected with us. It is the prerogative of the healthy and happy to give pleasure wherever they go; it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering. To the far-seeing invalid, who is aware not only of this immediate effect, but of its remote consequences, this is the most afflicting feature of his condition. If we can, by any management, evade this liability, we have cause to be grateful indeed. If, by submitting ourselves to all softening and ennobling influences, we can so nourish and educe the immortal part of ourselves as to subdue our own conflicts, and present our active and enjoying aspect to those who visit us, we are absolved from the worst penalties of our state. If, as years pass on, we find ourselves sought from the impulse of inclination, as well as from the stringency of duty—if we are permitted to see faces light up from ours, and hear the music of mirth succeed to the low serious tones of sympathetic greeting—we may let our hearts bound with the assurance that all is well with us. Whenwe cannot refuse to see that children come to us eagerly, and that our riper companions stay late by our sofa, and come again and again, till nothing short of duty calls them away, any one might envy us the feelings with which we lie down again in our solitude. We are not proud, like the young beauty with her conquest over hearts, or like the political or literary hero with his sway over the passions or the reason; but we are elate—and not without cause—elate in our privilege of annihilating the constraint and distaste inspired by our condition, and of finding ourselves restored to something like an equality of intercourse with the healthy in soul. The best and highest must ever be selected from among the healthy and the happy—from among those whose conditions of being are the most perfectly fulfilled; but, without aspiring to their consummate privileges, we feel ourselves abundantly blessed in such a partial emancipation as permits us, on occasion, and without shame, to join their “glorious company.”

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HAYDN’S DICTIONARY OF DATES, andUniversal Reference, relating to all Ages and Nations; comprehending every Remarkable Occurrence, Ancient and Modern—the Foundation, Laws, and Governments of Countries—their Progress in Civilisation, Industry, and Science—their Achievements in Arms; the Political and Social Transactions of the British Empire—its Civil, Military, and Religious Institutions—the Origin and Advance of Human Arts and Inventions, with copious details of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The whole comprehending a body of information, Classical, Political, and Domestic, from the earliest accounts to the present time.Second Edition.In one volume, 8vo, price 18s.cloth.

II.

KNOWLES’S (JAMES) PRONOUNCING and EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE.Founded on a correct development of the Nature, the Number, and the Various Properties of all its Simple and Compound Sounds, as combined into Syllables and Words.A New Edition.In medium 8vo, price 10s.6d.cloth.

III.

By theAuthor of “Two Years Before the Mast.”

DANA’S SEAMAN’S MANUAL; containing a Treatise on Practical Seamanship, with Plates; a Dictionary of Sea Terms; Customs and Usages of the Merchant Service; Laws relating to the Practical Duties of Master and Mariners.Second Edition.Price 5s.cloth.

IV.

HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP, to aNephewandNiece; or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding. By ColonelGeorge Greenwood, late of the Second Life Guards; Price 2s.6d.

V.

CICERO’S LIFE AND LETTERS. The Life by Dr.Middleton; The Letters translated byWm. Melmothand Dr.Heberden. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette, price 16s.cloth.

VI.

ELLEN MIDDLETON.A Tale. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. Second Edition.In three volumes price 31s.6d.cloth.

VII.

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL’S FRAGMENTS of VOYAGES and TRAVELS. A New Edition.In one volume, 8vo, price 12s.cloth.

VIII.

DEERBROOK.A Novel.ByHarriet Martineau. A New Edition.In one pocket volume, price 6s.cloth.

IX.

THE HOUR AND THE MAN. A Historical Romance. ByHarriet Martineau. A New Edition.In one pocket volume, price 6s.cloth.

X.

TALFOURD’S (MR. SERJEANT) VACATION RAMBLES AND THOUGHTS; comprising the Recollections of three Continental Tours in the Vacations of 1841, 42, and 43.Second Edition.Price 10s.6d.cloth.

XI.

DYCE’S REMARKS on Mr. C. KNIGHT’S and Mr. J. P. COLLIER’S editions of SHAKSPEARE.In 8vo, price 9s.cloth.

XII.

LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM: Essays.ByAn Invalid. Second Edition.Price 8s.boards.

XIII.

HISTOIRE DE FRANCE DU PETIT LOUIS. ParLady Callcott.Price 2s.6d.half-bound.

XIV.

SHELLEY’S (MRS.) RAMBLES in GERMANY AND ITALYin 1840, 1842, and 1843. In 2 vols. post 8vo. Price 21s.cloth.

POETRY.

TENNYSON’S POEMS. 2 vols. Price 12s.boards.MILNES’S POEMS. 4 vols. Price 20s.boards.TRENCH’S JUSTIN MARTYR, and other Poems. 6s.bds.————— POEMSfrom Eastern Sources. Price 6s.bds.STERLING’S POEMS. Price 6s.boards.—————— STRAFFORD. Price 5s.boards.BROWNING’S PARACELSUS. Price 6s.boards.—————— SORDELLO. Price 6s.6d.boards.PATMORE’S (COVENTRY) POEMS. Price 5s.bds.BARRETT’S (MISS) POEMS. 2 vols. Price 12s.bds.

(In 24mo.)

TALFOURD’S (SERJEANT) TRAGEDIES. Price 2s.6d.TAYLOR’S PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE. Price 2s.6d.————— EDWIN THE FAIR, &c. Price 2s.6d.BARRY CORNWALL’S SONGS. Price 2s.6d.LEIGH HUNT’S POETICAL WORKS. Price 2s.6d.PERCY’S RELIQUES. 3 vols. Price 7s.6d.LAMB’S DRAMATIC SPECIMENS. 2 vols. Price 5s.

CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR WORKS

SHELLEY’S ESSAYS AND LETTERS. Price 5s.

SEDGWICK’S LETTERS FROM ABROAD. Price 2s.6d.

DANA’S TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST. 2s.6d.

CLEVELAND’S VOYAGES AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES. Price 2s.6d.

ELLIS’S EMBASSY TO CHINA. Price 2s.6d.

PRINGLE’S RESIDENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA. 3s.6d.

THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. Price 5s.

HUNT’S INDICATOR, AND COMPANION. Price 5s.

———THE SEER; or, COMMON-PLACES REFRESHED.Price 5s.

SHERIDAN’S DRAMATIC WORKS. With an INTRODUCTION. By LEIGH HUNT. Price 5s.

LAMB’S LIFE AND LETTERS. Price 5s.

——— ROSAMUND GRAY, &c. Price 2s.6d.

——— TALES FROM SHAKSPEARE. Price 2s.6d.

——— ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.To which is added, MRS. LEICESTER’S SCHOOL. Price 2s.

HALL’S VOYAGE TO LOO-CHOO. Price 2s.6d.

——— TRAVELS IN SOUTH AMERICA. Price 5s.

———FRAGMENTS OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.First, Second, and Third Series.Price 5s.each.

CAMPBELL’S POETICAL WORKS. Price 2s.6d.

LAMB’S POETICAL WORKS. Price 1s.6d.

BAILLIE’S (JOANNA) FUGITIVE VERSES. Price 1s.

SHAKSPEARE’S POEMS. Price 1s.

Bradbury & Evans, Printers, Whitefriars.

April, 1844

MR. MOXON

HAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED:—

I.


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