by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading? Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here the recognizable face -the "sweet assurance of a look "—? 5 In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying to give it its mildest name-does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand 10 and bourgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial wait upon that masterfeeling cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, 15 with its shadowy and spectral appearances that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced in the Canticles:-I am none of her minions -I hold with the Persian. Whatsoever thwarts or puts me out of my way brings 20 death into my mind. All partial evils, like humors, run into that capital plague-sore.-I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge; and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed 25 death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought 30 to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding Positive! Those antidotes prescribed against the fear of thee are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and 35 emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows?-or, forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear"?-why, to comfort me, must Alice W-n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism that 5" such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine—and while 10 that turncoat bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, "THE NEW YEAR. "Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star Tells us the day himself 's not far; And see where, breaking from the night, And all the moments open are Yet more and more he smiles upon How say you, reader-do not these verses smack of the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not 30 fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected? -Passed like a cloud-absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry-clean washed away by a wave of genuine Heli-35 con, your only Spa for these hypochondries. And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters! A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. (From the same.) Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this 5 day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Chofang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I 10 take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing 15 with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think 20 it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of newfarrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of 25 the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches and the labor of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely 30 sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from?— not from the burnt cottage he had smelt that smell beforeindeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to 5 cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tastedcrackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did 10 not burn him so much now; still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole 15 handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and, finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders as thick 20 as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig 25 till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued: "You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses 30 with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what-what have you got there, I say?" “O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats." The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 35 |