century, rich as usual in conceits, controversy, grandeur, and Greek: As a watch, though tossed up and down by the agitation of him who carries it, does not, on that account, undergo any perturbation or disorder in the working of the spring and wheels within, so the true Christian heart, however shaken by the joltings it meets with in the pressure and tumult of the world, suffers no derangement in the adjustment and action of its machinery. The hand still points to eternity.

JUNE 5th. There is one passage in Langhorne so immeasurably superior to any other in his works, that the reader is disposed to transfer Gray's doubt, whether "Nugent wrote his own ode." It occurs in the Country Justice, at the close of an appeal on behalf of unfortunate vagrants:

Perhaps on some inhospitable shore,

The houseless wretch a widow'd parent bore,
Who then no more by golden prospects led,
Of the poor Indian begg'd a leafy bed.
Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolv'd in dew;
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,

The child of misery baptized in tears.

The last line is one of the most pathetic in poetry. In the Jesuit Bonhour's collection of Thoughts from the Fathers, I found the following apostrophe of St. Leon: "Heureux vos larmes, saint Apostre, qui, pour effacer le peché que vous commistes en renonceant votre Maitre, eurent la vertu d'un sacre baptisme." Donne (Serm. cxxxi.) has the same image: "The tears themselves shall be the sign; the tears shall be ambassadours of joy; a present gladness shall consecrate your sorrow, and tears shall baptize and give a new name to your passion." The coincidence deserves notice.

A pleasant literary anecdote is connected with these verses. On one occasion Walter Scott, a lad of fifteen, was in the company of Burns, at Edinburgh. There happened to be in the room a print by Bunbury, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting on one side, and his widow, a child in her arms, on the other. The lines of Langhorne were written beneath. Burns shed tears at the print, and inquired after the author of the inscription. Scott was the only person who knew his name; he whispered it to a friend, who told it to Burns; and he rewarded the future minstrel of Scotland "with a

look and a word," which in days of glory and fame were remembered with pride.

The name of Langhorne was faintly revived by the publication of Hannah More's Memoirs; but he is chiefly known in connexion with those mightier spirits, to whose youthful ears his musical rhymes were pleasing. His flute had two or three harmonious notes; and he was one of the earliest embellishers of "the short and simple annals of the poor."

JUNE 7th. Glanced at the new letters of Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory. Notice the strange likeness to Gray in manner and expression, extending even to phrases and idioms. The affectation of both is very amusing, Walpole being the more manly. "I went the other day," he wrote, 66 to Scarlet's, to buy green spectacles; he was mighty assiduous to give me a pair that would not tumble my hair. Lord, sir," said I, "when one is come to wear spectacles, what signifies how one looks!" Gray underwent great annoyance on this very account. A concealed double eyeglass was the nearest approach to spectacles that his delicacy could endure. One of the most disagreeable features of the poet

is a bantering confusion of serious and trifling things. He probably caught the disease from his friend, who told Cole that he would not give threepence for Newton's work on the Prophecies.

The literary character of Walpole has been drawn by himself in a few words: "I am a composition of Anthony Wood, and Madame Danoi the fairy-tale writer." This is true. He had much of the minute learning, but none of the dust of the antiquary. He always appears to us intellectually, as he did to Hannah More bodily, in a primrose suit and silk stockings. His apartments are crowded with rubbish, but he hangs some little genre piece in the corner. No writer of his time presents such curious happinesses of phrase. "Pictures are but the scenery of devotion;" Versailles is "a lumber of littleness." I admire, but cannot love him. Himself of the earth, every word and thought smell of it. His irreligion is not very obtrusive. He was a welldressed infidel, of refined manners; a kind of English Voltaire, abridged and lettered, with gilt leaves, and elegantly tooled.

JUNE 9th.-Stood on the root-bridge in the fading lights of evening, and listened with feelings of pensive sadness to the chimes from Aber

leigh. Just one year ago, in the "leafy month of June," I heard the same sounds of mirth and melancholy, and said then, as now—

How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear

In cadence sweet.

There is solemn and touching truth in the remark of Pope, that every year carries away something beloved and precious; not destroying or effacing, but removing it into a soft and visionary twilight. Poussin's picture of a tomb in Arcadia is the last year in a parable.

It is in the nature of bells to bring out this tone of mournfulness. Every chime has its connecting toll. Each week locks the gate of its predecessor, and keeps the key. Thus it becomes a monument which the old sexton Time watches over. Beautiful, indeed, when studded with the rich jewels of wise hours and holy minutes! Most magnificent of sepulchres! The dust of our own creations-our hopes, thoughts, virtues, and sins-is to us the costliest deposit in the burial ground of the world. How appalling would be the resurrection of a year, month, or week, with the secret history of every man open in its hand—a diary of flame, to be read by its own glare! If childhood could be the granary