"Years!" you will say; "what is this superannuated simpleton calculating upon? He has already told us he is past fifty." I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum. Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting House. I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely associated being suddenly removed from them - they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death: "Twas but just now he went away; To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them once or twice since; to visit my old desk-fellows-my cobrethren of the quill-that I had left below in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D-1 take me if I did not feel some remorse-beast if I had at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six-and-thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then, not after all? or was I a coward simply? Well it is too late to repent; and I also know that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch, dry, sarcastic, and friendly! Do, mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly! Pl, officious to do, and to volunteer, good services-and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately house of Merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one-half the year supplied the place of the sun's light; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my "works!" There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful! My mantle I bequeath among ye. A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed_my_old_chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthu sian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than my own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bondstreet, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the morning. Was it ever other wise? What is become of Fish-street Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Mincing-lane, which I have worn with my 1 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. I verily believe, is out of his element as long As low as to the fiends. daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, to invitation to take a day's pleasure with me the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is your everlasting flints now vocal? I indent Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change whom I have left behind in the world, carktime, and am strangely among the Elgin ing and caring; like horses in a mill, drudgmarbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- ing on in the same eternal round-and what tured compare the change in my condition is it all for? A man can never have too to a passing into another world. Time stands much Time to himself, nor too little to do. I have lost all dis- Had I a little son, I would christen him still in a manner to me. tinction of season. I do not know the day NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, of the week or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary as a load upon my five to follow, sate poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself that unfortunate failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my | about; not to and from. They tell me, a sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get certain cum dignitate air, that has been the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it buried so long with my other good parts, is melted down into a week day. I can spare has begun to shoot forth in my person. to go to church now, without grudging the grow into gentility perceptibly. When I huge cantle which it used to seem to cut take up a newspapers, it is to read the state out of the holiday. I have Time for every- of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have thing. I can visit a sick friend. I can done all that I came into this world to do. interrupt the man of much occupation when I have worked task-work, and have the rest he is busiest. I can insult over him with an of the day to myself. * * * * * *, clerk to the I am no longer Firm of, &c. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed I walk settled purpose. with any pace, nor I THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. What can be Ir is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord | elbow-chair and undress. Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are more pleasant than the way in which the models of the genteel style in writing. We retired statesman peeps out in his essays, should prefer saying-of the lordly, and the penned by the latter in his delightful retreat gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen and the Scarce an authority is quoted under than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaf- Hague. tesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a Temple. The man of rank is discernible in "Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it both writers; but in the one it is only in- was frequent in his country for men, spent sinuated gracefully, in the other it stands with age and other decays, so as they could to have not hope for above a year or two of life, to out offensively. The peer seems written with his coronet on, and his Earl's ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and mantle before him; the commoner in his after their arrival there to go on a great length, sometimes of twenty or thirty years, tion of what we esteem the best, he can truly or more, by the force of that vigour they say, that the French, who have eaten his recovered with that remove. "Whether peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) year, have generally concluded that the last might grow from the air, or the fruits of are as good as any they have eaten in France that climate, or by approaching nearer the on this side Fontainebleau; and the first as sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, good as any they have eat in Gascony. when their natural heat was so far decayed: Italians have agreed his white figs to be as or whether the piecing out of an old man's good as any of that sort in Italy, which is life were worth the pains; I cannot tell; the earlier kind of white fig there; for in perhaps the play is not worth the candle." the later kind and the blue, we cannot come Monsieur Pompone, "French Ambassador near the warm climates, no more than in the in his (Sir William's) time at the Hague," Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orangecertifies him, that in his life he had never trees, too, are as large as any he saw when heard of any man in France that arrived at he was young in France, except those of a hundred years of age; a limitation of life Fontainebleau; or what he has seen since in which the old gentleman imputes to the ex- the Low Countries, except some very old cellence of their climate, giving them such a ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes liveliness of temper and humour, as disposes he had the honour of bringing over four them to more pleasures of all kinds than in sorts into England, which he enumerates, other countries; and moralises upon the and supposes that they are all by this time matter very sensibly. The "late Robert pretty common among some gardeners in Earl of Leicester" furnishes him with a his neighbourhood, as well as several perstory of a countess of Desmond, married sons of quality; for he ever thought all out of England in Edward the Fourth's time, and who lived far in King James's reign. The "same noble person" gives him an account, how such a year, in the same reign, there went about the country a set of morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid Marian, and a tabor and pipe; and how these twelve, one with another, made up twelve hundred years. "It was not so much (says Temple) that so many in one small county (Hertfordshire) should live to that age, as that they should be in vigour and in humour to travel and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his "colleagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the gout; which is confirmed by another "Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had tried it. Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recommends to him the use of hammocks in that complaint; having been allured to sleep, while suffering under it himself, by the "constant motion or swinging of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who "was killed last summer before Maestricht," impart to him their experiences. But the rank of the writer is never more innocently disclosed, than where he takes for granted the compliments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfec things of this kind "the commoner they are made the better." The garden pedantry with which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the furthest northwards; and praises the "Bishop of Munster at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that cold climate; is equally pleasant and in character. "I may perhaps" (he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley) "be allowed to know something of this trade, since I have so long allowed myself to be good for nothing else, which few men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often looking abroad to see how other matters play, what motions in the state, and what invitations they may hope for into other scenes. For my own part, as the country life, and this part of it more particularly, were the inclination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age; and I can truly say that, among many great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any of them, but have often endeavoured to escape from them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths and circles of life. The measure of choosing well is him little leisure to look into modern prowhether a man likes what he has chosen, ductions, while his retirement gave him which, I thank God, has befallen me; and occasion to look back upon the classic studies though among the follies of my life, building of his youth-decided in favour of the latter. and planting have not been the least, and "Certain it is," he says, "that whether the have cost me more than I have the confi- fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of dence to own; yet they have been fully re- their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or compensed by the sweetness and satisfaction that the unequal mixture of the modern of this retreat, where, since my resolution languages would not bear it-the great taken of never entering again into any public employments, I have passed five years without ever once going to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a house there always ready to receive me. Nor has this been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, but a mere want of desire or humour to make so small a remove; for when I am in this corner, I can truly say with Horace, Me quoties reficit, &c. heights and excellency both of poetry and music fell with the Roman learning and empire, and have never since recovered the admiration and applauses that before attended them. Yet, such as they are amongst us, they must be confessed to be the softest and the sweetest, the most general and most innocent amusements of common time and life. They still find room in the courts of princes, and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead "Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives, What does my friend believe I think or ask? calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or Let me yet less possess, so I may live, divert the violent passions and perturbations Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. of the greatest and the busiest men. And May I have books enough; and one year's store, Not to depend upon each doubtful hour: both these effects are of equal use to human This is enough of mighty Jove to pray, life; for the mind of man is like the sea, Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away." which is neither agreeable to the beholder The writings of Temple are, in general, nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but after this easy copy. On one occasion, is so to both when a little agitated by gentle indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordi- gales; and so the mind, when moved by soft nate to nature and tenderness, has seduced and easy passions or affections. I know very him into a string of felicitous antitheses; well that many who pretend to be wise by which, it is obvious to remark, have been the forms of being grave, are apt to despise a model to Addison and succeeding essay- both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too ists. "Who would not be covetous, and light for the use or entertainment of serious with reason," he says, "if health could be men. But whoever find themselves wholly purchased with gold? who not ambitious, if insensible to their charms, would, I think, it were at the command of power, or restored do well to keep their own counsel, for fear by honour? but, alas! a white staff will not of reproaching their own temper, and bringhelp gouty feet to walk better than a common ing the goodness of their natures, if not of cane; nor a blue riband bind up a wound their understandings, into question. While so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold, or of this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of and request of these two entertainments will curing them; and an aching head will be no do so too; and happy those that content more eased by wearing a crown than a themselves with these, or any other so easy common night-cap." In a far better style, and so innocent, and do not trouble the and more accordant with his own humour of world or other men, because they cannot plainness, are the concluding sentences of be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts his "Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took them." "When all is done (he concludes), a part in the controversy about the ancient and the modern learning; and, with that partiality so natural and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements had left human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is over." BARBARA S——.' On the noon of the 14th of November, | all; and in the zenith of her after reputation 1743 or 4, I forget which it was, just as the it was a delightful sight to behold them clock had struck one, Barbara S, with her accustomed punctuality, ascended the long rambling staircase, with awkward interposed landing-places, which led to the office, or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may remember) the Old Bath Theatre. All over the island it was the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, for the players to receive their weekly stipend on the Saturday. It was not much that Barbara had to claim. This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You would have taken her to have been at least five years older. bound up in costliest morocco, each single- Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer experiences during acting. I ventured Till latterly she had merely been employed to think, that though in the first instance in choruses, or where children were wanted such players must have possessed the feelto fill up the scene. But the manager, ings which they so powerfully called up in observing a diligence and adroitness in her others, yet by frequent repetition those feelabove her age, had for some few months past ings must become deadened in great measure, intrusted to her the performance of whole and the performer trust to the memory of parts. You may guess the self-consequence past emotion, rather than express a present of the promoted Barbara. She had already one. She indignantly repelled the notion, drawn tears in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with infantine petulance in the Duke of York; and in her turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic afterpiece to the life; but as yet the "Children in the Wood" was not. Long after this little girl was grown au aged woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them that with a truly great tragedian the operation, by which such effects were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself into what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her self-experience, she told me, that so long ago as when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, (I think it was,) when that impressive actress has been bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which, (to use her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded her back. I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it was some great actress of that day. The name is indifferent; but |