OUR WINTER QUARTERS.

"Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,The pealing anthem swells the note of praise!"

How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale, pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with here and there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to the memory of the pious—the immortal dead. Some great clock is striking from one of many domes—from the majestic Tower of St Mary Magdalen—and in the deepened hush that follows the solemn sound, the mingling waters of the Cherwell and the Isis soften the severe silence of the holy night.

Remote from kindred, and from all the friendships that were the native growth of the fair fields where our boyhood and our youth had roamed and meditated and dreamed, those were indeed years of high and lofty mood which held us in converse with the shades of great Poets and Sages of old in Rhedicyna's hallowed groves, still, serene, and solemn, as that Attic Academe where divine Plato, with all Hybla on his lips, discoursed such excellent music that his life seemed to the imagination spiritualised—a dim reminiscence of some former state of being. How sank then the Christmas Service of that beautiful Liturgy into our hearts! Not faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers had loved; but Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings that rose within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir of youthful voices so sweetly to join the diapason,—our eyes fixed all the while on that divine Picture over the Altar, of our Saviour

"Bearing his cross up rueful Calvary."

The City of Palaces disappears—and in the setting sunlight we behold mountains of soft crimson snow! The sun hath set, and even more beautiful are the bright-starred nights of winter, than summer in all its glories beneath the broad moons of June. Through the woods of Windermere, from cottage to cottage, by coppice-pathways winding up to dwellings among the hill-rocks where the birch-trees cease to grow—

"Nodding their heads, before us go,The merry minstrelsy."

They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young by their Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales to the hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of the dancers ever and anon crossing the light of the star-like window, and the merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. Across those humble thresholds often did we on Christmas-week nights of yore—wandering through our solitary sylvan haunts, under the branches of trees within whose hollow trunk the squirrel slept—venture in, unasked perhaps, but not unwelcome, and, in the kindly spirit of the season, did our best to merrify the Festival by tale or song. And now that we behold them not, are all those woods, and cliffs, and rivers, and tarns, and lakes, as beautiful as when they softened and brightened beneath our living eyes, half-creating, as they gazed, the very world they worshipped? And are all those hearths as bright as of yore, without the shadow of our figure? And the roofs, do they ring as mirthfully, though our voice be forgotten? We hang over Westmoreland, an unobserved—but observant star. Mountains, hills, rocks, knolls, vales, woods, groves, single trees, dwellings—all asleep! O Lakes! but ye are, indeed, by far too beautiful! O fortunate Isles! too fair for human habitation, fit abode for the Blest! It will not hide itself—it will not sink into the earth—it will rise; and risen, it will stand steady with its shadow in the overpowering moonlight, thatOne Tree! that$1!—and well might the sight of ye two together—were it harder—break our heart. But hard at all it is not—therefore it is but crushed.

Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higher than the Andes in heaven—but sole-sitting at midnight in a small chamber—a melancholy man are we—and there seems a smile of consolation, O Wordsworth! on thy sacred Bust.

Alas! how many heavenly days, "seeming immortal in their depth of rest," have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memory even of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Our spirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in her records—blanks are there that ought to have been painted with imperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning on life's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensation—for who can bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on the ghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come when we call on them to comfortus, are too often at our side when in our anguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion. Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary—they come and go like forms and shapes still imbued with life. Shall we vainly stretch out our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek to intrench ourselves by thoughts of this world against their visitation? The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love to resign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, they being dead! Shall we the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and show to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed by remorse and penitence!

Sometimes we have fears about our memory—that it is decaying; for, lately, many ordinary yet interesting occurrences and events, which we regarded at the time with pain or pleasure, have been slipping away almost into oblivion, and have often alarmed us of a sudden by their return, not to any act of recollection, but of themselves, sometimes wretchedly out of place and season, the mournful obtruding upon the merry, and worse, the merry upon the mournful—confusion, by no fault of ours, of piteous and of gladsome faces—tears where smiles were a duty as well as a delight, and smiles where nature demanded, and religion hallowed, a sacrifice of tears.

For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters as fine as frostwork filigree, which we could not break without destroying a whole world of endearment. That seems an obscure image; but it means what the Germans would call in English—our winter environment. We are imprisoned in a net of our own weaving—an invisible net; yet we can see it when we choose—just as a bird can see, when he chooses, the wires of his cage, that are invisible in his happiness, as he keeps hopping and fluttering about all day long, or haply dreaming on his perch with his poll under his plumes—as free in confinement as if let loose into the boundless sky. That seems an obscure image too; but we mean, in truth, the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is; and we have improved on that idea, for we have built our own—and are prisoner, turnkey, and jailer all in one, and 'tisnoiseless as the house of sleep. Or what if we declare that Christopher North is a king in his palace, with no subjects but his own thoughts—his rule peaceful over those lights and shadows—and undisputed to reign over them his right divine.

The opening year in a town, now, answers in all things to our heart's desire. How beautiful the smoky air! The clouds have a homely look as they hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they loved their birthplace; all unlike those heartless clouds that keepstravaigingover mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the sky! Poets speak of living rocks, but what is their life to that of houses? Who ever saw a rock with eyes—that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, and stone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house without eyes—that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the good old Conservative grudges not the assessed taxes—his optics are as cheerful as the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the setting sun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A grove in winter, bole and branch—leaves it has none—is as dry as a volume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparks of heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the heart's blood circulates through the system like rosy wine.

But a truce to comparisons; for we are beginning to feel contrition for our crime against the country, and, with humbled head and heart, we beseech you to pardon us—ye rocks of Pavey-Ark, the pillared palaces of the storms—ye clouds, now wreathing a diadem for the forehead of Helvellyn—ye trees, that hang the shadows of your undying beauty over the "one perfect chrysolite" of blessed Windermere!

Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an apparition waving peace and goodwill to all dwellers in the land of dreams. In plainer but not simpler words (for words are like flowers, often rich in their simplicity—witness the Lily, and Solomon's Song)—Christian people all, we wish you a MerryChristmas and Happy New-Year, in town or in country—or in ships at sea.

A Happy New-Year!—Ah! ere thisAria, sungsotto voce, reach your ears (eyes are ears, and ears eyes), the week of all weeks will be over and gone, and the New-Year will seem growing out of the old year's ashes!—for the year is your only Phœnix. But what with time to do has a wish—a hope—a prayer! Their power is in the Spirit that gives them birth. And what is Spirit but the well-head of thoughts and feelings flowing and overflowing all life, yet leaving the well-head full of water as ever—so lucid, that on your gazing intently into its depths, it seems to become a large soft spiritual eye, reflecting the heavens and the earth; and no one knows what the heavens and the earth are, till he has seen them there—for that God made the heavens and the earth we feel from that beautiful revelation—and where feeling is not, knowledge is dead, and a blank the universe. Love is life. The unloving merely breathe. A single sweet beat of the heart is token of something spiritual that will be with us again in Paradise. "O, bliss and beauty! are these our feelings"—thought we once in a dream—"all circling in the sunshine—fair-plumed in a flight of doves!" The vision kept sailing on the sky—"to and fro for our delight"—no sound on their wings more than on their breasts; and they melted away in light as if they were composed of light—and in the hush we heard high-up and far-off music—as of an angel's song.

That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broad awake—and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of the common day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof—and it inspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the whole world, then, promise henceforth to love us?—and we promise henceforth to love the whole world.

It seems the easiest of all easy things to be kind and good—and then it is so pleasant! "Self-love and social are the same," beyond all question; and in that lies the nobility of our nature. The intensest feeling of self is that of belonging to a brotherhood. All selves then know they have duties which are in truth loves—and loves are joys—whether breathed in silence, or uttered in words, or embodied in actions; and if they filled all life, then all life would be good—and heavenwould be no more than a better earth. And how may all men go to heaven? By making themselves a heaven on earth, and thus preparing their spirits to breathe empyreal air when they have dropped the dust. And how may they make for themselves a heaven on earth? By building up a happyHOME FOR THE HEART. Much, but not all—oh! not nearly all—is in the site. But it must be within the precincts of the holy ground—and within hearing of the waters of life.

Pleasures of Imagination! Pleasures of Memory! Pleasures of Hope! All three most delightful poems; yet all the thoughts and all the feelings that inspired them—etherealised—will not make—FAITH! "The day-spring from on high hath visited us!" Blessed is he who feels that line—nor need his heart die within him, were a voice to be heard at midnight saying—"This New-Year's day shall be thy last!"

One voice—one young voice—all by its sweet, sad, solitary self, singing to us a Christmas Hymn! Listening to that music is like looking at the sky with all its stars.

Was it a spirit?

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk unseen,Sole or responsive to each other's voice,Hymning their great Creator."

No, the singer, like ourselves, is mortal; and in that thought, to our hearts, lies the pathos of her prayers. The angels, veiling their faces with their wings, sing in their bliss hallelujahs round the throne of heaven; but she—a poor child of clay, with her face veiled but with the shades of humility and contrition, while

"Some natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon,"—

sings, in her sorrow, supplications to be suffered to see afar-off its everlasting gates—opening not surely for her own sake—for all of woman born are sinful—and even she in what love calls her innocence feels that her fallen being does of itself deserve but to die. The hymn is fading away, liker and liker an echo, and our spirit having lost it in the distance, returns back holier to the heart-hush of home.

The million hunger and thirst after the stronger and darker passions; nothing will go down with them butthe intense. They are intolerant—or careless—or even ashamed of thoseemotions and affections that compose the blessing of our daily life, and give its lustre to the fire on the hearth of every Christian household. Yet, for all that, they are inexperienced in those same stronger and darker passions of which they prate, and know nothing of the import of those pictures of them painted, with background of gloom and foreground of fire, in the works of the truly great masters. The disturbed spirit of such delineations is far beyond the reaches of their souls; and they mistake their own senseless stupor for solemn awe—or their own mere physical excitement for the enthusiasm of imagination soaring through the storm on the wings of intellect. There are such things in "Satan's Invisible World Displayed" in poetry, as strong and dark passions; and they who are acquainted with their origin and end call thembadpassions; but the good passions are not dark, but bright—and they are strong too, stronger than death or the grave.

All human beings who know how to reap

"The harvest of a quiet eye,That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"

feel, by the touch, the flowers of affection in every handful of beauty they gather up from those fortunate fields on which shines, for ever through all seasons, the sun of life. How soft the leaves! and, as they meet the eye, how fair! Framed, so might it seem, of green dew consolidated into fragrance. Nor do they fade when gently taken from their stalk on its native bed. They flourish for ever if you bruise them not—sensitive indeed; and, if you are so forgetful as to treat them rashly, like those of the plant that bears that name, they shrink, and seem to shrivel for a time—growing pale, as if upbraiding your harshness; but cherished, they are seen to be all of

"Immortal amaranth, the tree that growsFast by the throne of God;"

for the seeds have fallen from heaven to earth, and for eighteen hundred years have been spreading themselves over all soils fit for their reception—and what soil is not fit? Even fit are stony places, and places full of thorns. For they will live and grow there in spite of such obstruction—and among rank and matted weeds will often be seen peering out like primroses gladdening the desert.

That voice again—"One of old Scotland's songs, so sad and slow!" Her heart is now blamelessly with things of earth. "Sad and slow!" and most purely sweet. Almost mournful although it be, it breathes of happiness—for the joy dearest to the soul has ever a faint tinge of grief. O innocent enchantress! thou encirclest us with a wavering haze of beautiful imagery, by the spell of that voice awakening after a mood of awe, but for thy own delight. From the long dim tracts of the past come strangely blended recognitions of woe and bliss, undistinguishable now to our own heart—nor knows that heart if it be a dream of imagination or of memory. Yet why should we wonder? In our happiest hours there may have been something in common with our most sorrowful—some shade of sadness cast over them by a passing cloud, that now allies them in retrospect with the sombre spirit of grief; and in our unhappiest hours there may have been gleams of gladness, that seem now to give the return the calm character of peace. Do not all thoughts and feelings, almost all events, seem to resemble each other—when they are dreamt of as all past? All receive a sort of sanctification in the stillness of the time that has gone by—just like the human being whom they adorned or degraded—when they, too, are at last buried together in the bosom of the same earth.

Perhaps none among us ever wrote verses of any worth, who had not been, more or less, readers of our old ballads. All our poets have been so—and even Wordsworth would not have been the veritable and only Wordsworth, had he not in boyhood pored—oh, the miser!—over Percy's "Reliques." From the highest to the humblest, they have all drunk from those silver springs. Shepherds and herdsmen and woodsmen have been the masters of the mighty—their strains have, like the voice of a solitary lute, inspired a power of sadness into the hearts of great poets that gave their genius to be prevalent over all tears, or with a power of sublimity that gave it dominion over all terror, like the sound of a trumpet. "The Babes in the Wood!" "Chevy Chace!" Men become women while they weep—

"Or start up heroes from the glorious strain."

Sing then "The Dirge," my Margaret, to the Old Man, "so tender and so true" to the spirit of those old ballads, which we might think were written by Pity's self.

"O dig a grave, and dig it deep,Where I and my true love may sleep!We'll dig a grave, and dig it deep,Where thou and thy true love shall sleep!And let it be five fathom low,Where winter winds may never blow!—And it shall be five fathom low,Where winter winds shall never blow!And let it be on yonder hill,Where grows the mountain daffodil!—And it shall be on yonder hill,Where grows the mountain daffodil!And plant it round with holy briers,To fright away the fairy fires!—We'll plant it round with holy briers!To fright away the fairy fires!And set it round with celandine,And nodding heads of columbine!—We'll set it round with celandine,And nodding heads of columbine!And let the ruddock build his nestJust above my true love's breast!—The ruddock he shall build his nestJust above thy true love's breast!And warble his sweet wintry songO'er our dwelling all day long!And he shall warble his sweet songO'er your dwelling all day long.Now, tender friends, my garments take,And lay me out for Jesus' sake!And we will now thy garments take,And lay thee out for Jesus' sake!And lay me by my true love's side,That I may be a faithful bride!—We'll lay thee by thy true love's side,That thou may'st be a faithful bride!"

"O dig a grave, and dig it deep,Where I and my true love may sleep!We'll dig a grave, and dig it deep,Where thou and thy true love shall sleep!

And let it be five fathom low,Where winter winds may never blow!—And it shall be five fathom low,Where winter winds shall never blow!

And let it be on yonder hill,Where grows the mountain daffodil!—And it shall be on yonder hill,Where grows the mountain daffodil!

And plant it round with holy briers,To fright away the fairy fires!—We'll plant it round with holy briers!To fright away the fairy fires!

And set it round with celandine,And nodding heads of columbine!—We'll set it round with celandine,And nodding heads of columbine!

And let the ruddock build his nestJust above my true love's breast!—The ruddock he shall build his nestJust above thy true love's breast!

And warble his sweet wintry songO'er our dwelling all day long!And he shall warble his sweet songO'er your dwelling all day long.

Now, tender friends, my garments take,And lay me out for Jesus' sake!And we will now thy garments take,And lay thee out for Jesus' sake!

And lay me by my true love's side,That I may be a faithful bride!—We'll lay thee by thy true love's side,That thou may'st be a faithful bride!"

Ay—ay—thou too art gone,William Stanley Roscoe! What years have flown since we walked among the "alleys green" of Allerton with thee and thy illustrious father! and who ever conversed with him for a few hours in and about his own home—where the stream of life flowed on so full and clear—without carrying away impressions that never seemed to be remembrances—so vivid have they remained amidst the obscurations and obliterations of Time, that sweeps with his wings all that lies on the surface, but has no power to disturb, much less destroy, the record printed on the heart.

We are all of us getting old—or older; nor would we, for our own part—if we could—renew our youth. Methinks the river of life is nobler as it nears the sea. The young are dancing in their skiffs on the pellucid shallows near the source on the Sacred Mountains of the Golden East. They whose lot it is to be in their prime, are dropping down the longer and wider reaches, that seem wheeling by with their sylvan amphitheatres, as if the beauty were moving morn-wards, while the voyagers are stationary among the shadows, or slowly descending the stream to meet the meridian day. Many forget

"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,"

and are lost in the roaring whirlpool. Under Providence, we see ourselves on the river expanded into a sea-like lake, or arm of the sea; and for all our soul has escaped and suffered, we look up to the stars in gratitude—and down to the stars—for the water too is full of stars as well as the sky—faint and dim indeed—but blended by the pervading spirit of beauty, with the brighter and bolder luminaries reposing on infinitude.

Buchanan Lodge—for a few months—farewell! 'Tis the Twelfth of November; and for the City we leave thee not without reluctance, early in March by the blessing of Heaven again to creep into thy blooming bourne. Yet now and then we shall take a drive down, to while away a sunny forenoon among thy undecaying evergreens, to breathe the balm of thy Christmas roses, and for oneGentlebosom to cull the earliest crocuses that may be yellowing through the thin snows of Spring.

In truth, we know not well why we should ever leave thee, for thou art the Darling of all the Seasons; and Winter, so churlish elsewhere, is ever bland to thee, and, daily alighting in these gardens, loves to fold and unfold, in the cool sunshine, the stainless splendour of his pale-plumaged wings. But we are no hermit. Dear to us though Nature be, here, hand-in-hand with Art walking through our peaceful but not unpeopledPolicy, a voice comes to us from the city-heart—winning us away from the stillness of solitude into the stir of life. Milton speaks of a region

"Above the stir and smoke of this dim spot,Which men call earth;"

and oft have we visited it; but while yet we pursue the ends of this our mortal being, in the mystery of the brain whence ideas arise, and in the mystery of the heart whence emotions flow—kindred and congenial all—thought ever blending with feeling, reason with imagination, and conscience with passion—'tis our duty to draw our delight from intercommunion with the spirit of our kind. Weakest or wickedest of mortals are your soul-sick, life-loathing, world-wearied men. In solitudewe are prone to be swallowed up in selfishness; and out of selfishness what sins and crimes may not grow! At the best, moral stagnation ensues—and the spirit becomes, like "a green-mantled pool," the abode of reptiles. Then ever welcome to us be living faces, and living voices, the light and the music of reality—dearer far than any mere ideas or emotions hanging or floating aloof by themselves in the atmosphere of imagination. Blest be the cordial grasp of the hand of friendship—blest the tender embrace of the arms of love! Nay, smile not, fair reader, at an old man's fervour; for Love is a gracious spirit, who deserteth not declining age.

TheDroskyis at the door—and, my eye! what a figure is Peter! There he sits, like a bear, with the ribbons in his paws—no part visible of his human face or form divine, but his small red eyes—and his ruby nose, whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, the knife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of a Christian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedish turnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside him like a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highland tour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail—and the hair on his ears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely reminds us of Hogg's Bonassus. Ay, bless these patent steps—on the same principle as those by which we ascend our nightly couch—we are self-deposited in our Drosky. Oh! the lazy luxury of an air-seat! We seem to be sitting on nothing but a voluptuous warmth, restorative as a bath. And then what furry softness envelopes our feet! Yes—Mrs Gentle—Mrs Gentle—thy Cashmere shawl, twined round our bust, feels almost as silken-smooth as thine own, and scented is it with the balm of thy own lips. Boreas blows on it tenderly as a zephyr—and the wintry sunshine seems summery as it plays on the celestial colours. Thy pelisse, too, over our old happy shoulders, purple as the neck of the dove when careering round his mate. Thy comforter, too, in our bosom—till the dear, delightful, delicious, wicked worsted thrills through skin and flesh to our very heart. It dirls. Drive away, Peter. Farewell Lodge—and welcome, in a jiffy, Moray Place.

And now, doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven by Peter, proud as Punch to tool along thestaring streets the great-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet—yet—couldst thou lead the field, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day be not quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, a little further on in the solemn vista, the darkness of night; and therefore, like wise children of nature, not unproud of the past, not ungrateful for the present, and unfearful of the future, thus do we now skim along the road of life, broad and smooth to our heart's content, able to pay the turnpikes, and willing, when we shall have reached the end of our journey, to lie down, in hope, at the goal.

What pretty, little, low lines of garden-fronted cottages! leading us along out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, and past the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into the full view ofPittStreet (what a glorious name!) steep as some straight cliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic—yea, call it at once magnificent—right up to the great city's heart. "There goes Old Christopher North!" the bright boys in the playground of the New Academy exclaim. God bless you, you little rascals!—We could almost find it in our heart to ask the Rector for a holiday. But, under him, all your days are holidays—for when the precious hours of study are enlightened by a classic spirit, how naturally do they melt into those of play!

"Gay hope is yours, by fancy fed,Less pleasing when possest;The tear forgot as soon as shed,The sunshine of the breast;Yours buxom health, of rosy hue,Wild wit, invention ever new,And lively cheer, of vigour born;The thoughtless day, the easy night,The spirits pure, the slumbers light,That fly th' approach of morn."

Descending from our Drosky, we find No. 99 Moray Place, exhibiting throughout all its calm interior the self-same expression it wore the day we left it for the Lodge, eight months ago. There is our venerable winter Hat—as like Ourselves, it is said, as he can stare—sitting on the Circular in the Entrance-hall. Everything has been tenderly dustedas if by hands that touched with a Sabbath feeling; and though the furniture cannot be said to be new, yet while it is in all sobered, it is in nothing faded. You are at first unaware of its richness on account of its simplicity—its grace is felt gradually to grow out of its comfort—and that which you thought but ease lightens into elegance, while there is but one image in nature which can adequately express its repose—that of a hill-sheltered field by sunset, under a fresh-fallen vest of virgin snow. For then snow blushes with a faint crimson—nay, sometimes when Sol is extraordinarily splendid, not faint, but with a gorgeousness of colouring that fears not to face in rivalry the western clouds.

Let no man have two houses with one set of furniture. Home's deepest delight is undisturbance. Some people think no articles fixtures—not even grates. But sofas and ottomans, and chairs and footstools, and screens—and above all, beds—all are fixtures in the dwelling of a wise man, cognoscitive and sensitive of the blessings of this life. Each has its own place assigned to it by the taste, tact, and feeling of the master of the mansion, where order and elegance minister to comfort, and comfort is but a homely word for happiness. In various moods we vary their arrangement—nor is even the easiest of all Easy-chairs secure for life against being gently pushed on his wheels from chimney-nook to window-corner, when the sunshine may have extinguished the fire, and the blue sky tempts thePaterfamilias, or him who is but an uncle, to lie back with half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like a shepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements serve but to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which the very virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against the Lares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret to cellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, a Turkey or a Persian, or even a Wilton or a Kidderminster carpet, is as much the garb of the wooden floor inside, as the grass is of the earthen floor outside of your house. Would you lift and lay down the greensward? But without further illustration—be assured the cases are kindred—and so, too, with sofas and shrubs, tent-beds and trees. Independently, however, of these analogies, not fanciful, but lying deep in the nature of things, the inside of one's tabernacle, intown and country, ought ever to be sacred from all radical revolutionary movements, and to lie for ever in a waking dream of graceful repose. All our affections towards lifeless things become tenderer and deeper in the continuous and unbroken flow of domestic habit. The eye gets lovingly familiarised with each object occupying its own peculiar and appropriate place, and feels in a moment when the most insignificant is missing or removed. We say not a word about children, for fortunately, since we are yet unmarried, we have none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissenters from this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-kept parlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice do they glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as aflittingever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a long huge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors, moving along the dust-driving or mire-choked streets with furniture from a gutted town-house towards one standing in the rural shades with an empty stomach! All is dimmed or destroyed—chairs crushed on the table-land, and four-posted beds lying helplessly with their astonished feet up to heaven—a sight that might make the angels weep!

People have wondered why we, an old barren bachelor, should live in such a large house. It is a palace; but never was there a greater mistake than to seek the solution in our pride. Silence can be had but in a large house. And silence is the chief condition of home happiness. We could now hear a leaf fall—a leaf of the finest wire-wove. Peter and Betty, Polly and the rest, inhabit the second sunk story—and it is delightful to know that they may be kicking up the most infernal disturbance at this blessed moment, and tearing out each other's hair in handfuls, without the faintest whisper of the uproar reaching us in our altitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there is regularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondly imagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years on the shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrown up both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew that he had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk story, immediately belowthat, having been for a season consumptive, we kept a Jennyass and her daughter—and though we believe it was not unheard around Moray and Ainslie Places, and even in Charlotte Square, we cannot charge our memory with an audit of their bray. In the sunk story immediately below that again, that distinguished officer on half-pay, Captain Campbell of the Highlanders—when on a visit to us for a year or two—though we seldom saw him—got up aSma' still—and though a more harmless creature could not be, there he used to sit for hours together, with the worm that never dies. On one occasion, it having been supposed by Peter that the Captain had gone to the East Neuk of Fife, weeks elapsed, we remember, ere he was found sitting dead, just as if he had been alive, in his usual attitude in his arm-chair, commanding a view of the precipice of the back court.

Just as quiet are the Attics. They, too, are furnished; for the feeling of there being one unfurnished room, however small, in the largest house, disturbs the entire state of mind of such an occupant, and when cherished and dwelt on, which it must not unfrequently be, inspires a cold air of desolation throughout the domicile, till "thoughts of flitting rise." There is no lumber-room. The room containing Blue-Beard's murdered wives might in idea be entered without distraction by a bold mind.—But oh! the lumber-room, into which, on an early walk through the house of a friend on whom we had been sorning, all unprepared did we once set our foot! From the moment—and it was but for a moment, and about six o'clock—far away in the country—that appalling vision met our eyes—till we found ourselves, about another six o'clock, in Moray Place, we have no memory of the flight of time. Part of the journey—or voyage—we suspect, was performed in a steamer. The noise of knocking, and puffing, and splashing seems to be in our inner ears; but after all it may have been a sail-boat, possibly a yacht!—In the Attics an Aviary open to the sky. And to us below, the many voices, softened into one sometimes in the pauses of severer thought, are sometimes very affecting, so serenely sweet it seems, as the laverock's in our youth at the gates of heaven.

At our door stand the Guardian Genii, Sleep and Silence. We had an ear to them in the building of our house, and planned it after a long summer day's perusal of the "Castle of Indolence." O Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy Thomson!—O thatthou and we had been rowers in the same boat on the silent river! Rowers, indeed! Short the spells and far between that we should have taken—the one would not have turned round the other, but when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand—and the canoe would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove—the cloud-mountains, immovable as those of earth, and in spirit one world.

Ay! Great noise as we have made in the world—our heart's desire is for silence—its delight is in peace. And is it not so with all men, turbulent as may have been their lives, who have ever looked into their own being? The soul longs for peace in itself; therefore, wherever it discerns it, it rejoices in the image of which it seeks the reality. The serene human countenance, the wide water sleeping in the moonlight, the stainless marble-depth of the immeasurable heavens, reflect to it that tranquillity which it imagines within itself, though it never long dwelt there, restless as a dove on a dark tree that cannot be happy but in the sunshine. It loves to look on what it loves, even though it cannot possess it; and hence its feeling, on contemplating such calm, is not of simple repose, but desire stirs in it, as if it would fain blend itself more deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would not so affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference—that attracts spirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised—but matter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imagination between earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there is apprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spirit throughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, the moon, the deep bright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower—none of them ever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical and unconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are; but we could have no pleasure in them, if we knew them as such. There is illusion, then, of some sort, and to what does it amount? We cannot well tell. But if there is really a love in human hearts to these distant orbs—if there is an emotion of tenderness to the fair, opening, breathing blossom that we would not crush it—"in gentleness of heart touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves"—it must be that wedo not see them as they are, but "create a soul under the ribs of death." We could not be touched, or care for what has no affinity to ourselves—we make the affinity—we animate, we vivify them, and thenceforward,

"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet."

Now you do believe that we do love Silence—and every other thing worthy to be loved—you and yours—and even that romp, your shock-headed Coz, to whom Priscilla Tomboy was an Imogen.

All our ceilings are deadened—we walk ankle-deep in carpeting—nobody is suffered to open a door but ourselves—and they are so constructed, that it is out of their power toslam. Our winter furniture is all massy—deepening the repose. In all the large rooms two fireplaces—and fires are kept perpetually burning day and night, in them all, which, reflected from spacious mirrors, give the mansion quite the appearance of a Pandemonium.Not gas always.Palm-oil burns scentless as moonlight; and when motion, not rest, in a place is signified, we accompany ourselves with a wax candle, or taper from time immemorial green. Yet think not that there is a blaze of light. We have seen the midnight heaven and earth nearly as bright, with but one moon and a small scatter of stars. And places of glimmer—and places of gloom—and places "deaf to sound and blind to light" there are in this our mansion, known but to ourselves—cells—penitentiaries—where an old man may sit sighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery—or at times almost happy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortal tribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, by its own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best."

And thus is our domicile a domain—a kingdom. We should not care to be confined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave our own door—yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirping like a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole range of the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch. Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad step not above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-places illumined by the dimreligious light of stained windows, on which pilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, are travelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores—or shepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles of Neæra's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrow bounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendid segments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of them ourselves—now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, now a Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise.

Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point of sleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through; and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;" such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over weary mortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do we observe towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No one dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. They are all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; in number, nine—each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms—those on the same story communicating with one another, and with the parlours, drawing-rooms, and libraries—"a mighty maze, but not without a plan," and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit of quietude by day and by night, awake or asleep—the chairs being couch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy, enveloped in a drapery of dreams.

We go to bed at no stated hour—but when we are tired of sitting up, then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise, neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock, nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, nor Aurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, or crimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of a certainty thattheseare real web-and-woof damask curtains,thatflock palpable on substantial walls.

True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntaryor inevitable change—but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however sudden and strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all its familiar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Place for a week—nay, not for two days and nights—till you might swear we had been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air of the Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan. You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that the eyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and who preserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress and demeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and his character. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish days served under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sable silvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten to our study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at our protracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes are old," we feel as if we had belonged tothishouse alone, and it to us, from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, far away! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating upon the cheerful present—like birds of fairest plumage floating far inland from the main. But there is no idle longing—no vain regret. This, we say, is true wisdom. For each scene and season—each pleasure and place—ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, and to be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in the country are often restless to return to town—and people in town unhappy till they rush away into the country—thus cheating their entire existence out of its natural calm and satisfaction. Not so we. We give both their due—and that due is an almost undivided delight in each while we live under its reign. For Nature, believe us, is no jealous mistress. She is an affectionate wife, who, being assured of his fidelity, is not afraid to trust her husband out of her sight,

Back to Index Next