CHARACTER OF HORACE WALPOLE.

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the following apostrophe of St. Leon: "Heureux vos larmes, saint Apostre, qui, pour effacer le péché que vous commistes en renonceant votre Maître, 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 and well-known 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, with 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, and noticed the strange likeness to Gray in manner and expression, extending even to phrases and idioms. The affectation of both is

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very amusing, Walpole being the more manly. "I went the other day," he wrote, "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. I observe, likewise, in the poet a fondness for banter and smartness on serious subjects, which is extremely disagreeable. He probably caught the disease from Walpole, 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 memory is crowded with rubbish, but he hangs some little genre piece in the corner. No writer of his time presents such curious happiness of phrase. "Pictures are but the scenery of devotion;" Versailles is a lumber of littleness." I admire Walpole, but who can love him? Of the earth, every word and thought smell of it. His irreligion is not extremely obtrusive. He was a well-dressed scoffer of refined manners; a kind of English Voltaire, abridged and lettered, with gilt leaves, and elegantly tooled.

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JUNE 9TH.

STOOD on the root-bridge in the fading lights of evening, and listened with pensive sadness to the chimes from Aberleigh, while the swans,

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, nor 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.

ness.

It is in the nature of bells to bring out this tone of mournfulEvery 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 it is, 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, a month, or a week, with the secret history of every man open in its hand—a diary of the heart, to be read by its own flame! If childhood could be the granary of youth, youth of manhood, manhood of old age-the year gone being continually brought back to cherish, strengthen, and support the year coming-then might the Grecian story of filial piety receive a new and nobler fulfilment, in the wasted virtue of manhood invigorated by the life-giving current of our youth; in the feebleness and exhaustion of the parent, renewed by the glowing bosom of the child!

The steeple of Aberleigh teaches me a great lesson-to strengthen a good disposition into a habit. The relationship between the two is close and beautiful. Habits are the daughters of action, but they nurse their mother, and give birth to daughters after her image, more lovely and fruitful. The saying is Jeremy Taylor's. The use of our time is the criterion of our state, and our wages will be paid by the clock. Sterne, whose life was only a journey of sentiment, has nevertheless made

a wise remark in one of his gossiping letters: "If you adopt the rule of writing every evening your remarks on the past day, it will be a kind of tête-à-tête between you and yourself, wherein you may sometimes become your own monitor."

This "gradual dusky veil" of evening reminds me that the road of time has taken a new turn. Let me recollect the admonition of a famous man, that the humblest persons are bound to give an account of their leisure; and, in the midst of solitude, to be of some use to society. Very grand and true are the lines of Herrick :

Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell,

Lives not those years, but he that lives them well.
One man has reach'd his sixty years; but he
Of all those three-score has not lived half three.
He lives, who lives to virtue; men, who cast
Their ends for pleasure, do not live, but last.

This meditation on a woodland bridge ought not to be fruitless. The spare minutes of a year are mighty architects, if kept to their work. They overthrow, and build up; dig, or empty. There is a tradition in Barbary that the sea was once absorbed by ants.

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No pyramid may rise under the busy labour of our swarming thoughts. Be not cast down. We read of those who had toiled. all night, that, as soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread." It was a lone and dreary shore; yet an unexpected flame cheered, and a strange Visitor walked along it. The chimes of ages promise the same food and light to me. In this dark, troubled sea of life, I may row up and down all night and catch nothing; but at last the net will be let down for a great draught. A clear fire burns, and a rich supper is spread upon the calm shore of the future. The haven shines in the distance. Happy! if I leave behind me the short epitaph

Proved by the ends of being, to have been!