Chapter 9

“Somebody has been at my porridge!”

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice. And when the Middle Bear looked at his, he saw that the spoon was standing in it too. They were wooden spoons; if they had been silver ones, the naughty old Woman would have put them in her pocket.

“Somebody has been at my porridge!”

said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice.

Then the Little, Small, Wee Bear, looked at his, and there was the spoon in the porridge-pot, but the porridge was all gone.

“Somebody has been at my porridge, and has eaten it all up!”

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.

Upon this the Three Bears, seeing that some one had entered their house, and eaten up the Little, Small, Wee Bear's breakfast, began to look about them. Now the little old Woman had not put the hard cushion straight when she rose from the chair of the Great, Huge Bear.

“Somebody has been sitting in my chair!”

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And the little old Woman had squatted down the soft cushion of the Middle Bear.

“Somebody has been sitting in my chair!”

said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice.

And you know what the little old Woman had done to the third chair.

“Somebody has been sitting in my chair, and has sate the bottom of it out!”

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.

Then the Three Bears thought it necessary that they should make farther search; so they went up stairs into their bed-chamber. Now the little old Woman had pulled the pillow of the Great, Huge Bear, out of its place.

“Somebody has been lying in my bed!”

said the Great, Huge Bear, in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And the little old Woman had pulled the bolster of the Middle Bear out of its place.

“Somebody has been lying in my bed!”

said the Middle Bear, in his middle voice.

And when the Little, Small, Wee Bear, came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place; and the pillow in its place upon the bolster; and upon the pillow was the little old Woman's ugly, dirty head,—which was not in its place, for she had no business there.

“Somebody has been lying in my bed,—and here she is!”

said the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small, wee voice.

The little old Woman had heard in her sleep the great, rough, gruff voice, of the Great, Huge Bear; but she was so fast asleep that it was no more to her than the roaring of wind, or the rumbling of thunder. And she had heard the middle voice of the Middle Bear, but it was only as if she had heard some one speaking in a dream. But when she heard the little, small, wee voice, of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, it was so sharp, and so shrill, that it awakened her at once. Up she started; and when she saw the Three Bears on one side of the bed, she tumbled herself out at the other, and ran to the window. Now the window was open, because the Bears, like good, tidy Bears, as they were, always opened their bed-chamber window when they got up in the morning. Out the little old Woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw any thing more of her.

CHILDREN AND KITTENS. APHORISMS ASCRIBED TO THE LAUREATE, DR. SOUTHEY. MORE COLUMBIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Oh! if in after life we could but gatherThe very refuse of our youthful hours!CHARLESLLOYD.

O dear little children, you who are in the happiest season of human life, how will you delight in the Story of the Three Bears, when Mamma reads it to you out of this nice book, or Papa, or some fond Uncle, kind Aunt, or doting Sister! Papa and Uncle, will do the Great, Huge Bear, best; but Sister, and Aunt, and Mamma, will excel them in the Little, Small, Wee Bear, with his little, small, wee voice. And O Papa and Uncle, if you are like such a Father and such an Uncle as are at this moment in my mind's eye, how will you delight in it, both for the sake of that small, but “fit audience,” and because you will perceive how justly it may be said to be

—a well-writ story,Where each word stands so well placed that it passesInquisitive detraction to correct.1

1DAVENPORT.

It is said to be a saying of Dr. Southey's, that “a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks.”

Observe, reader; this is repeated uponOn-dit'sauthority, which is never to be taken for more than it is worth. I do not affirm that Dr. Southey has said this, but he is likely enough to have said it; for I know that he sometimes dates his letters from Cat's Eden. And if he did say so, I agree with him, and so did the Doctor; hespecialiteras regards the child, Ispecialiteras regards the kitten.

Kitten is in the animal world what the rosebud is in the garden; the one the most beautiful of all young creatures, the other the loveliest of all opening flowers. The rose loses only something in delicacy by its developement,—enough to make it a serious emblem to a pensive mind; but if a cat could remember kittenhood, as we remember our youth, it were enough to break a cat's heart, even if it had nine times nine heart strings.

Do not the flowers spring fresh and gay,Pleasant and sweet, in the month of May;And when their time cometh they fade away.2

2LUSTYJUVENTUS.

It is another saying of the Laureate's, according toOn-dit, that, “live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.” They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back upon them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.

But in how strong a light has this been placed by the American teacher Jacob Abbott whose writings have obtained so wide a circulation in England. “Life, he says, if you understand by it the season of preparation for eternity, is more than half gone;—life so far as it presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon,—so far as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as a period of probation,—is unquestionably more than half gone, to those who are between fifteen and twenty. In a vast number of cases it is more than half gone, even induration:and if we consider the thousand influences which crowd around the years of childhood and youth, winning us to religion, and making a surrender of ourselves to Jehovah easy and pleasant,—and, on the other hand, look forward beyond the years of maturity, and see these influences losing all their power, and the heart becoming harder and harder under the deadening effects of continuance in sin,—we shall not doubt a moment that the years of immaturity make a far more important part of our time of probation than all those that follow.”

That pious man, who, while he lived, was the Honourable Charles How, and might properly now be called the honoured, says, that, “twenty years might be deducted for education, from the three score and ten, which are the allotted sum of human life; this portion,” he observes, “is a time of discipline and restraint, and young people are never easy till they are got over it.”

There is, indeed, during those years, much of restraint, of wearisomeness, of hope, and of impatience; all which feelings lengthen the apparent duration of time. Suffering, I have not included here; but with a large portion of the human race, in all Christian countries, (to our shame be it spoken!) it makes a large item in the account: there is no other stage of life in which so much gratuitous suffering is endured,—so much that might have been spared,—so much that is a mere wanton, wicked addition, to the sum of human misery,—arising solely and directly from want of feeling in others, their obduracy, their caprice, their stupidity, their malignity, their cupidity and their cruelty.

Algunos sabios han dicho que para lo que el hombre tiene aprender es muy corta la vida; mas yo añado que es muy larga para los que hemos de padecer.“Some wise men,” writes Capmany, “have said that life is very short for what man has to learn,—but I (he says) must add, that it is very long for what we have to suffer.” Too surely this is but too true; and yet a more consolatory view may be taken of human existence. The shortest life is long enough for those who are more sinned against than sinning; whose good instincts have not been corrupted, and whose evil propensities have either not been called into action, or have been successfully resisted and overcome.

The Philosopher of Doncaster found, in his theory of progressive existence, an easy solution for some of those questions on which it is more presumptuous than edifying to speculate, yet whereon that restless curiosity which man derives from the leaven of the forbidden fruit, makes it difficult for a busy mind to refrain from speculating. The horrid opinion which certain Fathers entertained concerning the souls of unbaptized infants, he never characterized by any lighter epithet thandamnable, for he used to say, “it would be wicked to use a weaker expression:” and the more charitable notion of the Limbo he regarded as a cold fancy, neither consonant to the heart of man, nor consistent with the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. He thought that when the ascent of being has been from good to better through all its stages, in moral qualities as well as in physical developement, the immortal spirit might reach its human stage in such a state that it required nothing more than the vehicle of humanity, and might be spared its probation. As Enoch had been translated without passing through death, so he thought such happy spirits might be admitted into a higher sphere of existence without passing through the trials of sin and the discipline of sorrow.

THE DOCTOR ABSTAINS FROM SPECULATING ON PERILOUS SUBJECTS. A STORY OF ST. ANSELM.

This field is so spacious, that it were easy for a man to lose himself in it; and if I should spend all my pilgrimage in this walk, my time would sooner end than my way.

BISHOPHALL.

The Doctor, though he played with many of his theories as if they were rather mushrooms of the fancy than fruits of the understanding, never expressed himself sportively upon this. He thought that it rested upon something more solid than the inductions of a speculative imagination, because there is a feeling in human nature which answers to it, acknowledges, and confirms it. Often and often, in the course of his painful practice, he had seen bereaved parents seek for consolation in the same conclusion, to which faith and instinctive reason led them, though no such hypothesis as his had prepared them for it. They believed it simply and sincerely; and it is a belief, according to his philosophy, which nature has implanted in the heart for consolation, under one of the griefs that affect it most.

He had not the same confidence in another view of the same branch of his hypothesis, relating to the early death of less hopeful subjects. Their term, he supposed, might be cut short in mercy, if the predisposing qualities which they had contracted on their ascent were such as would have rendered their tendency toward evil fatally predominant. But this, as he clearly saw, led to the brink of a bottomless question; and when he was asked after what manner he could explain why so many in whom this tendency predominates, are, to their own destruction, permitted to live out their term, he confessed himself at fault. It was among the things, he said, which are inexplicable by our limited powers of mind. When we attain a higher sphere of existence, all things will be made clear. Meantime, believing in the infinite goodness of God, it is enough for us to confide in His infinite mercy, and in that confidence to rest.

When St. Anselm, at the age of seventy-six, lay down in his last illness, and one of the Priests who stood around his bed said to him, it being then Palm Sunday, “Lord Father, it appears to us, that, leaving this world, you are about to keep the Passover in the Palace of your Lord!” the ambitious old theologue made answer,—“et quidem, si voluntas ejus in hoc est, voluntati ejus non contradico. Verum si mallet me adhuc inter vos saltem tamdiu manere, donec quæstionem quam de animæ origine mente revolvo, absolvere possem, gratiosus acciperem, eo quod nescio, utrum aliquis eam, me defuncto, sit absoluturus.If indeed this be his will, I gainsay it not. But if He should chuse rather that I should yet remain among you at least long enough to settle the question which I am revolving in my mind concerning the origin of the Soul, I should take it gratefully; because I do not know whether any one will be able to determine it, after I am dead.” He added, “ego quippe, si comedere possem, spero convalescere; nam nihil doloris in aliqua parte sentio, nisi quod lassescente stomacho, ob cibum quem capere nequit, totus deficio.1—If I could but eat, I might hope to recover, for I feel no pain in any part, except that as my stomach sinks for lack of food, which it is unable to take, I am failing all over.”

1EADMER.

The Saint must have been in a most satisfactory state of self-sufficiency when he thus reckoned upon his own ability for disposing of a question which he thought it doubtful whether any one who came after him would be able to solve. All other appetite had forsaken him; but that for unprofitable speculation and impossible knowledge clung to him to the last; so strong a relish had he retained of the forbidden fruit;

Letting down buckets into empty wells,And growing old in drawing nothing up2

So had the Saint lived beyond the allotted term of three-score years and ten, and his hand was still upon the windlass when the hand of death was upon him. One of our old Dramatists3represented a seven years apprenticeship to such a craft as sufficient for bringing a man to a just estimate of it:—

I was a scholar; seven useful springsDid I deflower in quotationsOf cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man;The more I learnt, the more I learnt to doubt.DELIGHT, my spaniel, slept, whilst I baused leaves,Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old printOf titled words; and still my spaniel slept.Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh,Shrunk up my veins: and still my spaniel slept.And still I held converse with Zabarell,Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty sawOf antick Donate; still my spaniel slept.Still on went I; first,an sit anima?Then an it were mortal? O hold, hold; at thatThey're at brain-buffets, fell by the ears amainPell-mell together: still my spaniel slept.Then whether 'twere corporeal, local, fixt,Ex traduce, but whether't had free willOr no, hot PhilosophersStood banding factions, all so strongly propt,I staggered, knew not which was firmer part,But thought, quoted, read, observed and pryed,Stufft noting-books; and still my spaniel slept.At length he waked and yawn'd; and by yon sky,For aught I know he knew as much as I.

In a more serious mood than that of this scholar, and in a humbler and holier state of mind than belonged to the Saint, our philosopher used to say, “little indeed does it concern us, in this our mortal stage, to enquire whence the spirit hath come,—but of what infinite concern is the consideration whither is it going!”

2COWPER.

2MARSTON.

DR. CADOGAN. A REMARKABLE CASE OF HEREDITARY LONGEVITY. REMARKS ON THE ORDINARY TERM OF HUMAN LIFE.

Live well, and then how soon so e'er thou die,Thou art of age to claim eternity.RANDOLPH.

Dr. Cadogan used to say that the life of man is properly ninety years instead of three-score and ten; thirty to go up, thirty to stand still, and thirty to go down.

Who told him so? said Dr. Dove; and who made him better informed upon that point than the Psalmist?

Any one who far exceeded the ordinary term, beyond which “our strength is but labour and sorrow,” was supposed by our philosopher, to have contracted an obstinate habit of longevity in some previous stage of existence. Centenaries he thought must have been ravens and tortoises; and Henry Jenkins, like Old Parr, could have been nothing in his preceding state, but a toad in a block of stone or in the heart of a tree.

Cardinal D'Armagnac, when on a visitation in the Cevennes, noticed a fine old man sitting upon the threshold of his own door and weeping; and as, like the Poet, he had

—not often seenA healthy man, a man full-grownWeep in the public roads, alone,

he went up to him, and asked wherefore he was weeping? The old man replied he wept because his father had just beaten him. The Cardinal who was amazed to hear that so old a man had a father still living, was curious enough to enquire what he had beaten him for: “because,” said the old man, “I past by my grandfather without paying my respects to him.” The Cardinal then entered the house that he might see this extraordinary family, and there indeed he saw both father and grandfather, the former still a hale though averyaged man; the latter unable to move because of his extreme age, but regarded by all about him with the greatest reverence.

That the habit in this instance, as in most others of the kind, should have been hereditary, was what the Doctor would have expected: good constitutions and ill habits of body are both so;—two things which seldom co-exist, but this obstinate longevity, as he called it, was proof both of the one and the other. A remarkable instance of hereditary longevity is noticed in the Statistical Account of Arklow. A woman who died at the age of an hundred and ten, speaking of her children said that her youngest boy was eighty; and that old boy was living several years afterwards, when the account was drawn up. The habit, however, he thought, was likely in such cases to correct itself, and become weaker in every generation. An ill habit he deemed it, because no circumstances can render extreme old age desirable: it cannot be so in a good man, for his own sake; nor in a bad one for the sake of every body connected with him. On all accounts the appointed term is best, and the wise and pious Mr. How has given us one cogent reason why it is so.

“The viciousness of mankind,” that excellent person says, “occasioned the flood; and very probably God thought fit to drown the world for these two reasons; first to punish the then living offenders; and next to prevent mens plunging into those prodigious depths of impiety, for all future ages. For if in the short term of life, which is now allotted to mankind, men are capable of being puffed up to such an insolent degree of pride and folly, as to forget God and their own mortality, his power and their own weakness; if a prosperity bounded by three-score and ten years, (and what mortal's prosperity, since the deluge, ever lasted so long?) can swell the mind of so frail a creature to such a prodigious size of vanity, what boundaries could be set to his arrogance, if his life and prosperity, like that of the Patriarch's were likely to continue eight or nine hundred years together? If under the existing circumstances of life, mens passions can rise so high; if the present short and uncertain enjoyments of the world, are able to occasion such an extravagant pride, such unmeasurable ambition, such sordid avarice, such barbarous rapine and injustice, such malice and envy, and so many other detestable things, which compose the numerous train of vice,—how then would the passions have flamed, and to what a monstrous stature would every vice have grown, if those enjoyments which provoked and increased them, were of eight or nine hundred years duration? If eternal happiness and eternal punishment are able to make no stronger impressions upon men's minds, so near at hand, it may well be imagined that at so great a distance, they would have made no impression at all; that eternal happiness would have been entirely divested of its allurements, and eternal misery of its terrors; and the Great Creator would have been deprived of that obedience and adoration, which are so justly due to him from his creatures. Thus, the inundation of vice has in some measure, by the goodness of God, been prevented by an inundation of water. That which was the punishment of one generation, may be said to have been the preservation of all those which have succeeded. For if life had not been thus clipped, one Tiberius, one Caligula, one Nero, one Louis XIV. had been sufficient to have destroyed the whole race of mankind; each of whose lives had they been ten times as long, and the mischiefs they occasioned multiplied by that number, it might easily be computed how great a plague one such long-lived monster would have been to the world.”

Reflect, reader upon this extract. The reasoning is neither fantastic, nor far-fetched; but it will probably be as new to you as it was to me, when I met with it in Mr. How's Devout Meditations. The republication of that book is one of those good works for which this country is beholden to the late excellent Bishop Jebb. Mr. Hetherington in his very original and able treatise upon the Fullness of Time, has seen this subject in the same point of view. He says “Even our three-score and ten years, broken and uncertain as that little span is, can delude us into the folly of putting death and its dread reckoning far from us, as if we were never to die, and might therefore neglect any preparation for the after judgement. But if we were to see before us the prospect of a life of one thousand years, we should doubtless regard death as a bug-bear indeed, and throw off all the salutary restraint which the fear of it now exercises. Suppose our tendencies to every kind of sinful indulgence as strong as at present, with the prospect of such lengthened enjoyment and immunity from danger, and we may easily imagine with what hundred-fold eagerness we should plunge into all kinds of enormity, and revel in the wildest licentiousness. But this is the very consummation to which the race of Adam had reached, when ‘God looked on the earth, and behold it was corrupt and filled with violence;’ and God determined to destroy the earth with its inhabitants.”

A remark of Brantome's may be quoted as the curious confirmation of a pious man's opinion by a thoroughly corrupt one. It occurs in his Discourse upon the Emperor Charles the fifth. “Il faut certes confesser,” he says, “comme j'ouy dire une fois à un vieux Capitaine Espagnol, que si ce grand Empereur eust été immortel, ou seulement de cent ans bien sain et dispos, il auroit esté par guerre le vray Fleau du Monde, tant il estoit frappé d'ambition, si jamais Empereur le fut.”

MORE THOUGHTS CONCERNING LIFE, DEATH AND IMMORTALITY.

Clericus es? legito hæc. Laicus? legito ista libenter.Crede mihi, invenies hic quod uterque voles.D. DU.-TR. MED.

If we look to the better part of the human race as well as the worse, with regard to them also the ordinary term of human life will be found the best that could have been appointed both for themselves and for the purposes of society, the wisdom and the goodness of the ways of Providence becoming evident in this, as in all other things upon which our limited faculties are capable of forming a comprehensive judgement.

The term is long enough for all we have to learn. Madame de Sevigné said sportively, that she should be a very wise person if she could but live about two hundred years:je tâche tous les jours à profiter de mes reflexions; et si je pouvois vivre seulement deux cents ans, il me semble que je serois une personne bien admirable.This the Doctor thought might hold good in the case of Madame de Sevigné herself, and of all other persons who regarded the acquirement of information as an amusement, or at most an accomplishment; “One small head might carry all they knew,” though their lives should be prolonged to the length of antediluvian old age. But in his opinion it would be otherwise with those who devoted themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, for the purpose of storing their own minds, and enabling themselves to instruct their fellow creatures. For although the mind would retain its faculties unimpaired for a length of time in proportion to the greater length of life, it by no means follows that its capacity would be enlarged. Horace Walpole lived forty years after he had said “my mould has taken all its impressions, and can receive no more. I must grow old upon the stock I have.” It is indeed highly probable that the most industrious students for some time before they reach the confines of senility forget as much as they learn. A short life is long enough for making us wise to salvation, if we will but give our hearts to the wisdom which is from above: and this is the one thing needful.

There are some however who in their eulogistic and extravagant lamentations seem to have thought no lease long enough for the objects of their admiration. A certain John Fellows published an elegy on the death of the Reverend John Gill, D.D. This learned Doctor in Dissent died at a good old age; nevertheless the passionate mourner in rhyme considered his death as a special mark of the Almighty's displeasure, and exclaimed

How are the mighty fallen! Lord when willThine anger cease? The great the learned GillNow pale and breathless lies!

Upon which a reviewer not improperly remarked that without dwelling upon thepresumptionof the writer he could not but notice thefollyof thus lamenting as though it were an untimely stroke, the natural departure of a venerable old man of near eighty. “Was this,” said he, “sufficient cause for raising such an outcry in Zion, and calling on her sons and daughters to weep and wail as if the Day of Judgement were come.”

Nothing however in former times excited so great a sensation in the small world of Noncons as the death of one of their Divines. Their favorite poet Dr. Watts, wished when the Reverend Mr. Gouge died that he could make the stones hear and the rocks weep,

And teach the Seas and teach the SkiesWailings and sobs and sympathies.Heaven was impatient of our crimes,And sent his minister of deathTo scourge the bold rebellion of the times,And to demand our prophet's breath.He came commissioned for the fatesOf awful Mead and charming Bates:There he essay'd the vengeance first,Then took a dismal aim, and broughtGREATGOUGEto dust.GREATGOUGEto dust! how doleful is the sound!How vast the stroke is! and how wide the wound!—Sion grows weak and England poor;Nature herself with all her storeCan furnish such a pomp for death no more.

This was pretty well for a threnodial flight. But Dr. Watts went farther. When Mr. Howe should die, (and Howe was then seventy years of age,) he thought it would be time that the world should be at an end,—and prayed that it might be so.

Eternal God! command his stay!Stretch the dear months of his delay;—O we could wish his age were one immortal day!But when the flaming chariot's comeAnd shining guards to attend thy Prophet home,Amidst a thousand weeping eyes,Send an Elisha down, a soul of equal size;Or burn this worthless globe, and take us to the skies!

What would the Dissenters have said if a clerical poet had written in such a strain upon the decease of a Bishop or Archbishop?

We pray in the Litany to be delivered from sudden death. Any death is to be deprecated which should find us unprepared: but as a temporal calamity with more reason might we pray to be spared from the misery of an infirm old age. It was once my fortune to see a frightful instance of extreme longevity,—a woman who was nearly in her hundredth year. Her sight was greatly decayed, though not lost; it was very difficult to make her hear, and not easy then to make her understand what was said, though when her torpid intellect was awakened she was, legally, of sane mind. She was unable to walk, or to assist herself in any way. Her neck hung in such wrinkles that it might almost be likened to a turkey's; and the skin of her face and of her arms was cleft like the bark of an oak, as rough, and almost of as dark a colour. In this condition, without any apparent suffering, she passed her time in a state between sleeping and waking, fortunate that she could thus beguile the wearisomeness of such an existence.

Instances of this kind are much rarer in Europe than in tropical climates. Negresses in the West Indies sometimes attain an age which is seldom ascertained because it is far beyond living memory. They outlive all voluntary power, and their descendants of the third or fourth generation carry them out of their cabins into the open air, and lay them, like logs, as the season may require, in the sunshine, or in the shade. Methinks if Mecænas had seen such an object, he would have composed a palinode to those verses in which he has perpetuated his most pitiable love for life. A woman in New Hampshire, North America, had reached the miserable age of 102, when one day as some people were visiting her, the bell tolled for a funeral; she burst into tears and said “Oh when will the bell toll for me! It seems as if it never would toll for me! I am afraid that I shall never die!” This reminds me that I have either read, or heard, an affecting story of a poor old woman in England,—very old, and very poor,—who retained her senses long after the body had become a weary burden; she too when she heard the bell toll for a funeral used to weep, and say she was afraid God had forgotten her! Poor creature, ignorantly as she spake, she had not forgotten Him; and such impatience will not be accounted to her for a sin.

These are extreme cases, as rare as they are mournful. Life indeed is long enough for what we have to suffer, as well as what we have to learn; but it was wisely said by an old Scottish Minister (I wish I knew his name, for this saying ought to have immortalized it,) “Time is short; and if your cross is heavy you have not far to carry it.”

Chi ha travaglio, in pace il porti:Dolce è Dio, se il mondo è amaro.Sappia l'uom, che al Cielo è caro;Abbia fede, è aura conforti.1

Were the term shorter it would not suffice for the developement of those moral qualities which belong peculiarly to the latter stage of life; nor could the wholesome influence which age exercises over the young in every country where manners are not so thoroughly corrupted as to threaten the dissolution of society, be in any other manner supplied.

1MAGGI.

“Il me semble que le mal physique attendrit autant que le mal moral endurcit le cœur,” said Lord Chesterfield, when he was growing old, and suffering under the infirmities of a broken constitution. Affliction in its lightest form, with the aid of time, had brought his heart into this wholesome state.

O figliuol' d'Adam, grida Natura,Onde i tormenti? Io vi farà tranquilli,Se voi non rebellate alla mia legge.2

There is indeed a tranquillity which Nature brings with it as duly toward the close of life, as it induces sleep at the close of day. We may resist the salutary influence in both cases, and too often it is resisted, at the cost of health in the one, and at a still dearer cost in the other: but if we do this, we do it wilfully, the resistance is our own act and deed,—it is our own error, our own fault, our sin, and we must abide the consequences.

2CHIABRERA.

The greatest happiness to which we can attain in this world is the peace of God. Ask those who have attained the height of their ambition, whether in the pursuit of wealth, or power, or fame, if it be not so? ask them in their sane mind and serious hours, and they will confess that all else is vanity.

Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,And here long seeks what here is never found!3

This His own peace, which is his last and crowning gift, our Heavenly Father reserves for us in declining life, when we have earned our discharge from its business and its cares; and He prepares us for it by the course of nature which he has appointed.

O all the good we hope, and all we see,That Thee we know and love, comes from Thy love and Thee.3

Hear reader the eloquent language of Adam Littleton when speaking of one who has received this gift:—it occurs in a funeral sermon, and the preacher's heart went with his words. After describing the state of a justified Christian, he rises into the following strain: “And now what has this happy person to do in this world any longer, having his debts paid and his sins pardoned, his God reconciled, his conscience quieted and assured, his accusers silenced, his enemies vanquished, the law satisfied, and himself justified, and his Saviour glorified, and a crown of Immortality, and a robe of righteousness prepared for him? What has he to do here more, than to get him up to the top of Pisgah and take a view of his heavenly Canaan; to stand upon the Confines of Eternity, and in the contemplation of those joys and glories, despise and slight the vanities and troubles of this sinful and miserable world; and to breathe after his better life, and be preparing himself for his change; when he shall be called off to weigh anchor, and hoist sail for another world, where he is to make discoveries of unutterable felicities, and inconceivable pleasures?

“Oh what a happy and blest condition is it to live, or to die in the midst of such gracious deliverances and glorious assurances; with this fastening consideration to boot, that ‘neither life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any creature is able to separate him from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ his Lord!’”

3PHINEASFLETCHER.

A TRANSITION, AN ANECDOTE, AN APOSTROPHE, AND A PUN, PUNNET, OR PUNDIGRION.

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu seImpediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures;Et sermone opus est, modo tristi, sæpe jocoso.HORACE.

The Reader is now so far acquainted with the Doctor and his bride elect, (for we are still in the Interim,)—he knows so much of the birth, parentage and education of both, so much of their respective characters, his way of thinking and her way of life, that we may pass to another of those questions propounded in the second post-initial chapter.

The minister of a very heterodox congregation in a certain large city, accosted one of his friends one day in the street with these words, which were so characteristic and remarkable that it was impossible not to remember and repeat them,—“I am considering whether I shall marry or keep a horse.” He was an eccentric person, as this anecdote may show; and his inspirited sermons (I must not call them inspired,) were thought in their style of eloquence and sublimity to resemble Klopstock's Odes.

No such dubitation could ever have entered the Doctor's head. Happy man, he had already one of the best horses in the world: (Forgive me, O Shade of Nobs in thine Elysian pastures, that I have so long delayed thy eulogy!)—and in Deborah he was about to have one of the best of wives.

If he had hesitated between a horse and a wife, he would have deserved to meet with a Grey Mare.

REGINALD HEBER. A MISTAKE OBVIATED, WHICH MIGHT OTHERWISE EASILY BE MADE.

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