Chapter 7

THE AUTHOR DISCOVERS CERTAIN MUSICAL CORRESPONDENCIES TO THESE HIS LUCUBRATIONS.

And music mild I learn'd that tellsTune, time and measure of the song.HIGGINS.

A Tattle-de-Moy, reader, was “a new-fashioned thing” in the year of our Lord 1676, “much like a Seraband, only it had in it more of conceit and of humour: and it might supply the place of a seraband at the end of a suit of lessons at any time.” That simple-hearted, and therefore happy old man, Thomas Mace, invented it himself, because he would be a little modish, he said; and he called it a Tattle-de-Moy, “because it tattles, and seems to speak those very words or syllables. Its humour,” said he, “is toyish, jocund, harmless and pleasant; and as if it were one playing with, or tossing, a ball up and down: yet it seems to have a very solemn countenance, and like unto one of a sober and innocent condition, or disposition; not antic, apish, or wild.”

If indeed the gift of prophecy were imparted, or imputed to musicians as it has sometimes been to poets, Thomas Mace might be thought to have unwittingly foreshewn certain characteristics of the unique opus which is now before the reader: so nearly has he described them when instructing his pupils how to give right and proper names to all lessons they might meet with.

“There are, first, Preludes; then, secondly, Fancies and Voluntaries; thirdly, Pavines; fourthly, Allmaines; fifthly, Airs; sixthly, Galliards; seventhly, Corantoes; eighthly, Serabands; ninthly, Tattle-de-Moys; tenthly, Chichonas; eleventhly, Toys or Jiggs; twelfthly, Common Tunes; and, lastly, Grounds, with Divisions upon them.

“The Prelude is commonly a piece of confused, wild, shapeless kind of intricate play, (as most use it) in which no perfect form, shape, or uniformity can be perceived; but a random business, pottering and grooping, up and down, from one stop, or key, to another; and generally so performed, to make trial, whether the instrument be well in tune or not; by which doing after they have completed their tuning, they will (if they be masters) fall into some kind of voluntary or fancical play more intelligible; which (if he be a master able) is a way whereby he may more fully and plainly shew his excellency and ability, than by any other kind of undertaking; and has an unlimited and unbounded liberty, in which he may make use of the forms and shapes of all the rest.”

Here the quasi-prophetic lutanist may seem to have described the ante-initial chapters of this opus, and those other pieces which precede the beginning thereof, and resemble

A lively prelude, fashioning the wayIn which the voice shall wander.1

For though a censorious reader will pick out such expressions only as may be applied with a malign meaning; yet in what he may consider confused and shapeless, and call pottering and grooping, the competent observer will recognize the hand of a master, trying his instrument and tuning it; and then passing into a voluntary whereby he approves his skill, and foreshows the spirit of his performance.

1KEATS.

The Pavines, Master Mace tells us, are lessons of two, three, or four strains, very grave and solemn; full of art and profundity, but seldom used in “these our light days,” as in many respects he might well call the days of King Charles the Second. Here he characterises our graver Chapters, which are in strains so deep, so soothing, and so solemn withal, that if such a Pavine had been played in the hall of the palace at Aix, when King Charlemagne asked the Archbishop to dance, the invitation could not have been deemed indecorous.

Allmaines are very airy and lively, and generally in common or plain time. Airs differ from them only in being usually shorter, and of a more rapid and nimble performance.—With many of these have the readers of the Doctor been amused.

Galliards, being grave and sober, are performed in a slow and large triple time. Some of the chapters relating to the history of Doncaster come under this description: especially that concerning its Corporation, which may be called a Galliardpar excellence.

The Corantoes are of a shorter cut, and of a quicker triple time, full of sprightfulness and vigour, lively, brisk and cheerful: the Serabands of the shortest triple time, and more toyish and light than the Corantoes. There are of both kinds in these volumes, and skilfully are they alternated with the Pavines:

Now the musicianHovers with nimble stick o'er squeaking crowdTickling the dried guts of a mewing cat—2

and anon a strain is heard—

Not wanting power to mitigate and swage,With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chaseAnguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and painFrom mortal or immortal minds.3

And there are Chichonas also, which consist of a few conceited notes in a grave kind of humour; these are the Chapters which the Honourable Fastidious Feeblewit condemns as being in bad taste, and which Lord Makemotion Ganderman pronounces poor stuff; but at which Yorickson smiles, Macswift's countenance brightens, and Fitzrabelais laughs outright.

2MARSTON.

3MILTON.

No prophecies can be expected to go upon all fours; and nothing in this opus corresponds to Master Mace's Toys, or Jiggs, which are “light, squibbish things, only fit for fantastical and easy light-headed people;” nor to his common Tunes.

Last in his enumeration is the Ground: this, he says, is “a set number of slow notes, very grave and stately; which, after it is expressed once or twice very plainly, then he that hath good brains and a good hand, undertakes to play several divisions upon it, time after time, till he has shewed his bravery, both of invention and execution.” My worthy friend Dr. Dense can need no hint to make him perceive how happily this applies to the ground of the present work, and the manner of treating it. And if Mr. Dulman disputes the application, it can only be because he is determined not to see it. All his family are remarkable for obstinacy.

And here taking leave for awhile of the good old lutanist, I invite the serious and the curious to another Pavine among the stars.

WHEREIN MENTION IS MADE OF LORD BYRON, RONSARD, RABBI KAPOL AND CO. IT IS SUGGESTED THAT A MODE OF READING THE STARS HAS BEEN APPLIED TO THE RECOVERY OF OBLITERATED ROMAN INSCRIPTIONS; AND IT IS SHOWN THAT A MATHEMATICIAN MAY REASON MATHEMATICALLY, AND YET LIKE A FOOL.

Thus may ye beholdThis man is very bold,And in his learning oldIntendeth for to sit.I blame him not a whit;For it would vex his wit,And clean against his earningTo follow such learningAs now a-days is taught.DOCTOURDOUBLE-ALE.

Lord Byron calls the Stars the poetry of heaven, haying perhaps in mind, Ben Jonson's expression concerning bell-ringing. Ronsard calls them the characters of the sky:

—Alors que Vesper vient embrunir nos yeux,Attaché dans le ciel je contemple les cieux,En qui Dieu nous escrit, en notes non obscures,Les sorts et les destins de toutes creatures.Car luy, en desdaignant (comme font les humains)D'avoir encre et papier et plume entre les mains,Par les astres du ciel, qui sont ses caracteres,Les choses nous predit et bonnes et contraires.Mais les hommes, chargez de terres et du trespas,Meprisent tel escrit, et ne le lisent pas.

The great French poet of his age probably did not know that what he thus said was actually believed by the Cabalists. According to them the ancient Hebrews represented the stars, severally and collectively, by the letters of their alphabet; to read the stars, therefore, was more than a metaphorical expression with them. And an astral alphabet for genethliacal purposes was published near the close of the fifteenth century, at Cracow, by Rabbi Kapol Ben Samuel, in a work entitled “The Profundity of Profundities.”

But as this would rest upon an insecure foundation,—for who could be assured that the alphabet had been accurately made out?—it has been argued that the Heavens are repeatedly in the Scriptures called a Book, whence it is to be inferred that they contain legible characters: that the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis ought to be translated, “In the beginning God created the letter, or character of the Heavens;” and that in the nineteenth Psalm we should read “their line,” instead of “their sound has gone forth into all lands,” this referring to their arrangement in the firmament like letters upon a roll of parchment. Jews, Platonists and Fathers of the Church, are shewn to have believed in this celestial writing. And there can be no question but that both the language and the characters must be Hebrew, that being the original speech, and those the original characters, and both divinely communicated to man, not of human invention. But single stars are not to be read as letters, as in the Astral Alphabet. This may be a convenient mode of noting them in astronomical observations; the elements of this celestial science are more recondite in proportion as the science itself is more mysterious. An understanding eye may distinguish that the stars in their groups form Hebrew letters, instead of those imaginary shapes which are called the signs of the Zodiac.

But as the Stars appear to us only as dots of light, much skill and sagacity are required for discovering how they combine into the complex forms of the Hebrew alphabet. The astral scholar reads them as antiquaries have made out inscriptions upon Roman buildings by the marks of the nails, when the letters themselves had been torn away by rapacious hands for the sake of the metal. Indeed it is not unlikely that the Abbé Barthelemi took the hint from the curiously credulous work of his countryman, Gaffarel, who has given examples of this celestial writing from the Rabbis Kapol, Chomer and Abiudan. In these examples the stars are represented by white spots upon the black lines of the Hebrew letter. The Abbé, when he writes upon this subject to Count Caylus, seems not to have known that Peiresc had restored ancient inscriptions by the same means; if, however, he followed the example of Peiresc without chusing to mention his name, that omni-erudite man himself is likely to have seen the books from whence Gaffarel derived his knowledge.

There is yet another difficulty; even the book of Heaven is not stereotyped; its types are continually changing with the motion of the heavenly bodies, and changes of still greater importance are made by the appearance of new stars.

One important rule is to be observed in perusing this great stelliscript. He who desires to learn what good they prefigure, must read them from West to East; but if he would be forewarned of evil, he must read from North to West; in either case beginning with the stars that are most vertical to him. For the first part of this rule, no better reason has been assigned than the conjectural one, that there is a propriety in it, the free and natural motion of the stars being from West to East; but for the latter part a sufficient cause is found in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah:septentrione pandetur malum. “Out of the North evil shall break forth.”

Dionyse Settle was persuaded that Martin Frobisher, being a Yorkshire-man, had, by his voyage in search of a north-west passage, repelled the rehearsal of those opprobrious words; not only he, but many worthy subjects more, as well as the said Dionyse, who was in the voyage himself, being “Yorkshire too.”

But why should evil come from the North? “I conceive,” says Gaffarel, “it would stand with sound philosophy to answer, by reason of the darkness and gloominess of the air of those parts, caused by the great distance of the Sun; and also by reason of the Evil Spirits which inhabit dark places.” This reason becomes stronger when it is considered that the word which in the Vulgate is renderedpandetur, may also be rendereddepingetur, so that the verse might be translated, “all evils shall be described (or written), from the North;” and if written, then certainly to be read from that direction.

This theory of what Southey has called “the language of the lights of Heaven,” is Jewish. Abu Almasar (nominally well known as Albumazar, by which name the knaves called him who knew nothing of him or his history), derived all religions from the Planets. The Chaldean, he said, was produced by the conjunction of Jupiter with Mars; the Egyptian, by Jupiter with the Sun; Judaism, by Jupiter with Saturn; Christianity, by Jupiter with Mercury; Mahommedanism, by Jupiter with Venus. And in the year 1460, when, according to his calculation, the conjunction of Jupiter and Mercury would again occur, he predicted that the Christian religion would receive its death blow, and the religion of Antichrist begin. Pursuing these fancies, others have asserted that the reason why the Jewish nation always has been miserable, and always must be so, is because their religion was formed under the influences of Saturn:—

Spiteful and cold, an old man melancholy,With bent and yellow forehead, he is Saturn.1

A malevolent planet he is, and also an unfortunate one, and it was he that

With lead-coloured shine lighting it into life,1

threw a tincture of severity and moroseness over the religion of the Jews; he it was that made them obstinate and covetous, and their Sabbath accordingly is his day. In like manner the character of the Turks and their day of rest have been determined by the planet Venus, which is the star of their religion. And as Christianity began under the influence of the Sun, Sunday is the Christian Sabbath; and the visible head of the Christian Church has his seat in Rome, which is a solar city, its foundations having been laid when the Sun was in Leo, his proper House. Farther proof of this influence is, that the Cardinals wear red, which is a solar colour.

1WALLENSTEIN.

Dr. Jenkin, in his Discourses upon the Reasonableness and certainty of the Christian Religion, takes into his consideration the opinion of those persons who thought that the stars would shine to little purpose unless there were other habitable worlds besides this earth whereon we dwell. One of the uses for which they serve he supposes to be this, that in all ages the wits of many men whose curiosity might otherwise be very ill employed, have been busied in considering their end and nature, and calculating their distances and motions:—a whimsical argument, in advancing which he seems to have forgotten the mischievous purposes to which so much of the wit which had taken this direction had been applied.

Yet these fancies of the wildest astrologers are not more absurd than the grave proposition of John Craig, whose “Theologiæ Christianæ Principia Mathematica” were published in London at the close of the 17th century. He asserted, and pretended to show by mathematical calculations, that the probability of the truth of the Gospel history was as strong at that time, as it would have been in the days of our Saviour himself, to a person who should have heard it related by twenty-eight disciples; but that, upon the same mathematical grounds, the probability will entirely cease by the year 3150; there would then be no more faith on earth, and, consequently, according to St. Luke, the world would then be at an end, and the Son of Man would come to judge the quick and the dead.

Bayle always ridiculed that sort of evidence which is called mathematical demonstration.

A MUSICIAN'S WISH EXCITED BY HERSCHEL'S TELESCOPE. SYMPATHY BETWEEN PETER HOPKINS AND HIS PUPIL. INDIFFERENTISM USEFUL IN ORDINARY POLITICS, BUT DANGEROUS IN RELIGION.

Noi intendiamo parlare alle cose che utili sono alla umana vita, quanto per nostro intendimento si potrà in questa parte comprendere; e sopra quelle particelle che detto avemo di comporre.

BUSONE DAGUBBIO.

When Miller talked of his friend Herschel's good fortune, and of his astronomical discoveries, and of his sister, Miss Caroline Herschel, who, while in his absence she could get possession of his twenty-feet reflector, amused herself with sweeping the sky, and searching for comets in the neighbourhood of the sun, the warm-hearted and musical-minded man used to wish that the science of acoustics had been advanced in the same degree as that of optics, and that his old friend, when he gave up music as a profession, had still retained it as a pursuit; for, had he constructed auditory tubes of proportionate power and magnitude to his great telescope, “who knows,” said Miller, “but we might have been enabled to hear the music of the spheres!” Pythagoras used to listen to that music, when he retired into the depths of his own being; and, according to his disciples, to him alone of all mortals has it been audible. But philosophers in modern times have thought that the existence of this music is more than an enthusiast's dream, a poet's fiction, or an impostor's fable. They say it may be inferred as probable from some of Newton's discoveries; and as a consequence of that principle of harmony which in some parts of the system of nature is so clearly shown, and in others so mysteriously indicated.

As for the Doctor, when Miller talked to him of Miss Herschel's performances in sky-sweeping and comet-hunting, it reminded him of the nursery song, and he quoted the lines,

Old woman, old woman whither so high?I'm going to sweep cobwebs off the sky,And I shall be back again by and bye:

not meaning, however, any disrespect to the lady, nor knowing any thing of her age.

Herschel would have opened no new field of speculation for Peter Hopkins, if Hopkins had lived till that day; but he would have eradicated the last remains of his lurking belief in astrology, by showing how little those who pretended to read the stars, had seen or known of them. The old man would have parted with it easily, though he delighted in obsolete knowledge, and took as much interest in making himself acquainted with the freaks of the human mind, as with the maladies of the human frame. He thought that they belonged to the same study; and the affection which he had so soon contracted for his pupil, was in no small degree occasioned by his perceiving in him a kindred disposition. Mr. Danby says, “there is perhaps more of instinct in our feelings than we are aware of, even in our esteem of each other;” it is one of the many wise remarks of a thoughtful man.

This intellectual sympathy contributed much to the happiness of both, and no little to the intellectual progress of the younger party. But Hopkins's peculiar humour had rendered him indifferent upon some points of great moment. It had served as a prophylactic against all political endemics, and this had been a comfortable security for him in times when such disorders were frequent and violent; and when though far less malignant than those of the present age, they were far more dangerous, in individual cases. The reader may perhaps remember (and if not, he is now reminded of it), how, when he was first introduced to Peter Hopkins, it was said that any king would have had in him a quiet subject, and any church a contented conformist. He troubled himself with no disputations in religion, and was troubled with no doubts, but believed what he was taught to believe, because he had been taught to believe it; and owing to the same facility of mind, under any change of dynasty, or revolution of government that could have befallen, he would have obeyed the ruling power. Such would always be the politics of the many, if they were let alone; and such would always be their religion. As regards the civil point this is the best condition in which a people can be, both for themselves and their rulers; and if the laws be good and well administered, the form of government is good so far as it is causative of those effects, and so far as it is not causative, it is a trifle for which none but fools would contest. The proper end of all government being the general good, provided that good be attained it is infinitesimally insignificant by what means. That it can be equally attained under any form, is not asserted here. The argument from the analogy of nature which might seem to favour such an assertion cannot be maintained. The Bees have their monarchy, and the Ants their republic; but when we are told to go to the Ant and the Bee, and consider their ways, it is not that we should borrow from them formic laws or apiarian policy. Under the worst scheme of government the desired end would be in a great degree attainable, if the people were trained up as they ought to be in the knowledge of their Christian duties; and unless they are so trained, it must ever be very imperfectly attained under the best.

Forms of government alone deserving to be so called of whatever kind, are here intended, not those of savage or barbarous times and countries. Indeed it is only in advanced stages of society that men are left sufficiently to themselves to become reasonably contented; and then they may be expected, like our friend Peter Hopkins, to be better subjects than patriots. It is desirable that they should be so. For good subjects promote the public good at all times, and it is only in evil times that patriots are wanted,—such times as are usually brought on by rash, or profligate and wicked men, who assume the name.

From this political plasticity, in his days and in his station, no harm could arise either to himself or others. But the same temperament in religion, though doubtless it may reach the degree of saving faith, can hardly consist with an active and imaginative mind. It was fortunate therefore for the Doctor, that he found a religious friend in Mr. Bacon. While he was at Leyden his position in this respect had not been favorable. Between the Dutch language and the Burgemeester's daughter, St. Peter's Kirk had not been a scene of much devotion for him. Perhaps many Churches in his own Country might have produced no better effect upon him at that time of life; but the loose opinions which Bayle had scattered were then afloat in Holland, and even these were less dangerous to a disposition such as his, than the fierce Calvinistic tenets by which they were opposed. The former might have beguiled him into scepticism, the latter might have driven him into unbelief, if the necessary attention to his professional studies, and an appetite for general knowledge, which found full employment for all leisure hours, had not happily prevented him from entering without a guide upon a field of enquiry, where he would either have been entangled among thorns, or beset with snares and pitfalls.

True indeed it is that nothing but the most injurious and inevitable circumstances could have corrupted his natural piety, for it had been fostered in him by his father's example, and by those domestic lessons which make upon us the deepest and most enduring impressions. But he was not armed, as it behoved him to be, against the errors of the age, neither those which like the pestilence walked in noon day, nor those which did their work insidiously and in darkness.

Methodism was then in its rampant stage; the founders themselves had not yet sobered down; and their followers, though more decent than the primitive Quakers, and far less offensive in their operations, ran, nevertheless, into extravagancies which made ill-judging magistrates slow in protecting them against the insults and outrages of the rabble. The Dissenters were more engaged in controversy amongst themselves than with the Establishment; their old leaven had at that time no mass whereon to work, but it was carefully preserved. The Nonjurors, of all sects (if they may be called a sect), the most respectable in their origin, were almost extinct. The Roman Catholics were quiet, in fear of the laws,—no toleration being then professed for a Church which proclaimed, and every where acted upon, the principle of absolute intolerance; but there were few populous parts of the kingdom in which there was not some secular priest, or some regular, not indeed

Black, white and grey with all their trumpery,

for neither the uniform nor the trumpery were allowed,—but Monk, or Friar or Jesuit in lay-clothing, employed in secretly administering to the then decreasing numbers of their own communion, and recruiting them whenever they safely could; but more generally venturing no farther than to insinuate doubts, and unsettle the belief, of unwary and unlearned members of the established religion, for this could always be done with impunity. And in this they aided, and were aided by, those who in that age were known by the name, which they had arrogated to themselves, of Free-thinkers.

There was among the higher classes in those days a fashion of infidelity, imported from France; Shaftesbury and “the cankered Bolingbroke” (as Sir Robert Walpole used justly to call that profligate statesman), were beholden for their reputation more to this, than to any solidity of talents, or grace of style. It had made much less way in middle life than in the higher and lower ranks; for men in middle life, being generally trained up when children in the way they should go, were less likely to depart from it than those who were either above or below them in station; indeed they were not exposed to the same dangers. The principles which were veiled, but not disguised, by Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, and exposed in their nakedness by Wilkes and his blasphemous associates at their orgies, were discussed in the Robin Hood Society, by men who were upon the same level with the holders-forth at the Rotunda in our own times, but who differed from them in these respects, that they neither made a trading profession of impiety, nor ventured into the treason-line.

Any man may graduate in the schools of Irreligion and Mispolicy, if he have a glib tongue and a brazen forehead; with these qualities, and a small portion of that talent which is producible on demand, he may take a wrangler's degree. Such men were often met with in the common walks of society, before they became audacious enough to show themselves upon the public theatre, and aspire to form a party in the state. Peter Hopkins could listen to them just with as much indifference as he did to a Jacobite, a Nonjuror, or one to whom the memory of Oliver and the Saints in buff was precious. The Doctor, before he happily became acquainted with Mr. Bacon, held his peace when in the presence of such people, but from a different cause: for though his heart rose against their discourse, and he had an instinctive assurance that it was equally pernicious and false, he had not so stored himself with needful knowledge as to be able to confute the common places of an infidel propagandist. But it has an ill effect upon others, when a person of sounder judgment and more acquirements than themselves, remains silent in the company of such talkers; for, from whatever motive his silence may proceed, it is likely to be considered, both by the assailants of the truth, and by the listeners, as an admission of his inability to maintain the better cause. Great evil has arisen to individuals, and to the community, from allowing scoffers to go unrebuked in private life; and fallacies and falsehoods to pass uncontradicted and unexposed in those channels through which poison is conveyed to the public mind.

MR. BACON'S PARSONAGE. CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. TIME AND CHANGE. WILKIE AND THE MONK IN THE ESCURIAL.

The idea of her life shall sweetly creepInto his study of imagination;And every lovely organ of her lifeShall come apparell'd in more precious habit,More moving delicate, and full of life,Into the eye and prospect of his soul,Than when she lived indeed.SHAKESPEARE.

In a Scotch village the Manse is sometimes the only good house, and generally it is the best; almost, indeed, what in old times the Mansion used to be in an English one. In Mr. Bacon's parish, the vicarage, though humble as the benefice itself, was the neatest. The cottage in which he and Margaret passed their childhood had been remarkable for that comfort which is the result and the reward of order and neatness: and when the reunion which blessed them both, rendered the remembrance of those years delightful, they returned in this respect to the way in which they had been trained up, practised the economy which they had learnt there, and loved to think how entirely their course of life, in all its circumstances, would be after the heart of that person, if she could behold it, whose memory they both with equal affection cherished. After his bereavement it was one of the widower's pensive pleasures to keep every thing in the same state as when Margaret was living. Nothing was neglected that she used to do, or that she would have done. The flowers were tended as carefully as if she were still to enjoy their fragrance and their beauty; and the birds who came in winter for their crumbs, were fed as duly for her sake, as they had formerly been by her hands.

There was no superstition in this, nor weakness. Immoderate grief, if it does not exhaust itself by indulgence, easily assumes the one character, or the other, or takes a type of insanity. But he had looked for consolation, where, when sincerely sought, it is always to be found; and he had experienced that religion effects in a true believer all that philosophy professes, and more than all that mere philosophy can perform. The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, religion heals.

There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most of us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and submit to what cannot be resisted, is no more than what the unregenerate heart is taught by the instinct of animal nature. But to acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations of Providence,—to make one's own will conform in all things to that of our Heavenly Father,—to say to Him in the sincerity of faith, when we drink of the bitter cup, “Thy will be done!”—to bless the name of the Lord as much from the heart when He takes away, as when He gives, and with a depth of feeling of which perhaps none but the afflicted heart is capable,—this is the resignation which religion teaches, this the sacrifice which it requires. This sacrifice Leonard had made, and he felt that it was accepted.

Severe, therefore, as his loss had been, and lasting as its effects were, it produced in him nothing like a settled sorrow, nor even that melancholy which sorrow leaves behind. Gibbon has said of himself, that as a mere philosopher he could not agree with the Greeks, in thinking that those who die in their youth are favored by the Gods: ὅν ὅι θεοι φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνησκε νεός. It was because he was “a mere philosopher,” that he failed to perceive a truth which the religious heathen acknowledged, and which is so trivial, and of such practical value, that it may now be seen inscribed upon village tombstones. The Christian knows that “blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit.” And the heart of the Christian mourner, in its deepest distress, hath the witness of the Spirit to that consolatory assurance.

In this faith Leonard regarded his bereavement. His loss, he knew, had been Margaret's gain. What if she had been summoned in the flower of her years, and from a state of connubial happiness which there had been nothing to disturb or to alloy? How soon might that flower have been blighted,—how surely must it have faded! how easily might that happiness have been interrupted by some of those evils which flesh is heir to! And as the separation was to take place, how mercifully had it been appointed that he, who was the stronger vessel, should be the survivor! Even for their child this was best, greatly as she needed, and would need, a mother's care. His paternal solicitude would supply that care, as far as it was possible to supply it; but had he been removed, mother and child must have been left to the mercy of Providence, without any earthly protector, or any means of support.

For her to die was gain; in him, therefore, it were sinful as well as selfish to repine, and of such selfishness and sin his heart acquitted him. If a wish could have recalled her to life, no such wish would ever have by him been uttered, nor ever have by him been felt; certain he was that he loved her too well to bring her again into this world of instability and trial. Upon earth there can be no safe happiness.

Ah! male FORTUNÆdevota est araMANENTI!Fallit, et hæc nullas accipit ara preces.1

1WALLIUS.

All things here are subject to Time and Mutability:

Quod tibi largâ dedit Hora dextrâ,Hora furaci rapiet sinistrâ.2

2CASIMIR.

We must be in Eternity before we can be secure against change. “The world,” says Cowper, “upon which we close our eyes at night, is never the same with that on which we open them in the morning.”

It was to the perfect Order he should find in that state upon which he was about to enter, that the judicious Hooker looked forward at his death with placid and profound contentment. Because he had been employed in contending against a spirit of insubordination and schism which soon proved fatal to his country; and because his life had been passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, the happiness of Heaven seemed, in his estimation, to consist primarily in Order, as indeed in all human societies this is the first thing needful. The discipline which Mr. Bacon had undergone was very different in kind: what he delighted to think, was, that the souls of those whom death and redemption have made perfect, are in a world where there is no change, nor parting, where nothing fades, nothing passes away and is no more seen, but the good and the beautiful are permanent.

Miser, chi speme in cosa mortal pone;Ma, chi non ve la pone?3

3PETRARCH.

When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronimite said to him, “I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly three-score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one after another,—all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows!”

I wish I could record the name of the Monk by whom that natural feeling was so feelingly and strikingly expressed.

“The shows of things are better than themselves,”

says the author of the Tragedy of Nero, whose name also, I could wish had been forthcoming; and the classical reader will remember the lines of Sophocles:—

Ὁρῶ γὰρ ἡμᾶς οὐδὲν ὄντας ἄλλο, πλἡνἜιδωλ᾽, ὅσοιπερ ζῶμεν, ἤ κούφην σκιάν.4

4SOPHOCLES.

These are reflections which should make us think

Of that same time when no more change shall be,But stedfast rest of all things, firmly staydUpon the pillars of Eternity,That is contraire to mutability;For all that moveth doth in change delight:But thenceforth all shall rest eternallyWith Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight,O that great Sabaoth God grant me that sabbath's sight!5

5SPENCER.

CHRISTIAN CONSOLATION. OPINIONS CONCERNING THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD.

The voice which I did more esteemThan music in her sweetest key;Those eyes which unto me did seemMore comfortable than the day;Those now by me, as they have been,Shall never more be heard, or seen;But what I once enjoyed in them,Shall seem hereafter as a dream.All earthly comforts vanish thus;So little hold of them have we,That we from them, or they from us,May in a moment ravished be.Yet we are neither just nor wise,If present mercies we despise;Or mind not how there may be madeA thankful use of what we had.WITHER.

There is a book written in Latin by the Flemish Jesuit Sarasa, upon the Art of rejoicing always in obedience to the Apostle's precept,—‘Ars semper gaudendi, demonstrata ex solâ consideratione Divinæ Providentiæ.’ Leibnitz and Wolf have commended it; and a French Protestant minister abridged it under the better title ofL'Art de se tranquiliser dans tous les evenemens de la vie. “I remember,” says Cowper, “reading many years ago, a long treatise on the subject of consolation, written in French; the author's name I have forgotten; but I wrote these words in the margin,—‘special consolation!’ at least for a Frenchman, who is a creature the most easily comforted of any in the world!” It is not likely that this should have been the book which Leibnitz praised; nor would Cowper have thus condemned one which recommends the mourner to seek for comfort, where alone it is to be found, in resignation to God's will, and in the prospect of the life to come. The remedy is infallible for those, who, like Mr. Bacon, faithfully pursue the course that the only true philosophy prescribes.

At first, indeed, he had felt like the bereaved maiden in Schiller's tragedy, and could almost have prayed like her, for a speedy deliverance,—

Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer,Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr.Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück!Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.

But even at first the sense of parental duty withheld him from such a prayer. The grief, though “fine, full, perfect,” was not a grief that

violenteth in a sense as strongAs that which causeth it.1

1SHAKESPEARE.

There was this to compress, as it were, and perhaps to mitigate it, that it was wholly confined to himself, not multiplied among others, and reflected from them. In great public calamities when fortunes are wrecked in revolutionary storms, or families thinned or swept off by pestilence, there may be too many who look upon it as

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