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The bliss of that revival, by a feign'd

Or half-feign'd show of conflict still sustain'd.

At last, she look'd!-They looked!-Eye met with eye!
The whole was told! The lover and the loved,
The adored, and the adorer, ecstasy

Never till then experienced-swiftly proved!-
Thanks for his aid were a mean courtesy !

They were forgotten! Transport unreproved,
This was his guerdon; this his rich reward!
An hour's oblivion with Sophronia shared !

Then all the world was lost to them, in one
Fulness of unimaginable bliss!-
Infinity was with them! and the zone

Unbound whence Venus sheds upon a kiss
Nectareous essences, and raptures known
Ne'er save to moments unprepared as this!
And in that earnest impulse did they find
Peace and intensity, alike combined!

To frame such joy, these things are requisite ;
A lofty nature; the exalting stress
Of stimulating trials, which requite,

And antecedent sorrows doubly bless;
Consummate sympathies, which souls unite;
And a conjuncture, whence no longer press
Impulses-long as these delights we prove-
From one thing foreign to the world of love.

This could not last! Not merely would a word ;-
A gesture would, a look, dissolve the charm!-
Could home be mention'd nor the thought restored,
To her remembrance of Gisippus' warm
And manly love? Bless'd be ye with your hour
Of transient bliss, and be ye safe from harm,
Ye fond, fond pair! But think not joys so high
Can be inwoven with reality!

At last a swift revulsion through her frame
And o'er her countenance stole : a sudden pause}
Her eyes which had imbibed a piercing flame,
Fell at once rayless; and her bosom draws
One in-pent sigh; one look imploring came

O'er her fine face! Titus knew well the cause
Of this so sudden change: he dared not speak;
He dared not move; dared not its reasons seek!

Some minutes they were silent. Night advanced;
Titus towards himself Sophronia press'd,
But dumb he stood; upwards she faintly glanced
A look upbraiding, and upon his breast-
Gently reclining-lay like one entranced!

No longer was happiness her guest.
She starts! She cries "Gisippus !" all is told!
Cold fell the word, on bosoms still more cold!

They rose and crept along in silentness

Sophronia reach'd her home, but nothing said, E'en to her mother, of her past distress.

Her threshold past not Titus-Thence he fled, Soon as in safety he the maid did guess,

Like to a madman madden'd more with dread! Nor ever of this night, or of its spell

Of mighty love, did he breathe a syllable!

We now take leave of Mr. Lloyd with peculiar gratitude for the rich materials for thought with which a perusal of his poems has endowed us. We shall look for his next appearance before the public with anxiety;-assured that his powers are not even yet fully developed to the world, and that he is destined to occupy a high station among the finest spirits of his age.

MR. OLDAKER ON MODERN IMPROVEMENTS.

[NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.]

MR. EDITOR-I trust that even in this age of improvement you will suffer one of the oldest of the old school to occupy a small space in your pages. A few words respecting myself will, however, be necessary to apologize for my opinions. Once I was among the gayest and sprightliest of youthful aspirants for fame and fortune. Being a second son, I was bred to the bar, and pursued my studies with great vigour and eager hope, in the Middle Temple. I loved, too, one of the fairest of her sex, and was beloved in return. My toils were sweetened by the delightful hope that they would procure me an income sufficient for the creditable support of the mistress of my soul. Alas! at the very moment when the unlooked-for devise of a large estate from a distant relative gave me affluence, she for whom alone I desired wealth, sunk under the attack of a fever into the grave. Religion enabled me to bear her loss with firmness, but I determined, for her sake, ever to remain a bachelor. Although composed and tranquil, I felt myself unable to endure the forms, or to taste the pleasures of London. I retired to my estate in the country, where I have lived for almost forty years in

the society of a maiden sister, happy if an old friend came for a few days to visit me, but chiefly delighting to cherish in silence the remembrance of my only love, and to anticipate the time when I shall be laid beside her. At last, a wish to settle an orphan nephew in my own profession, has compelled me to visit the scenes of my early days, and to mingle, for a short time, with the world. My resolution once taken, I felt a melancholy pleasure in the expectation of seeing the places with which I was once familiar, and which were ever linked in my mind with sweet and blighted hope. Every change has been to me as a shock.` I have looked at large on society too, and there I see little in brilliant innovation to admire. Returned at last to my own fire-side, I sit down to throw together a few thoughts on the new and boasted Improvements, over which I mourn. If I should seem too querulous, let it be remembered, that my own happy days are long past, and that recollection is the sole earthly joy which is left me.

My old haunts have indeed suffered comparatively small mutation. The princely hall of the Middle Temple has the same venerable as

chuckling over the fall of a brother into a trap set artfully for him in the fair guise of liberal pleading-now whispering a joy past joy in a stumble of the Lord Chief Justice himself, among the filmy cords drawn about his path! When the first bottle was despatched, arrived the time for his wary host to produce his papers in succession, to be drawn or settled by the joyous pleader. The well-lauded inspi

with which he then was gifted. All his nice discernment-all his vast memory-all his skill in drawing analogies and discerning principles in the "great obscurity" of the Year Books-were set in rapid and unerring action. On he went-covering page after page, his pen "in giddy mazes running," and his mind growing subtler and more acute with every glass. How dextrously did he then glide through all the strange windings of the case, with a sagacity which never failed, while he garnished his discourse with many a legal

pect as when, in my boyish days, I felt my heart beating with a strange feeling of mingled pride and reverence on becoming one of its members. The fountain yet plays among the old trees, which used to gladden my eye in spring for a few days with their tender green, to become so prematurely desolate. But the front of the Inner Temple hall, upon the terrace, is sadly altered for the worse. When I first knew it, the noble solidity of its appear-ration of a poet is not more genuine than that ance, especially of the figure over the gateway, cut massively in the stone, carried the mind back into the deep antiquity of the scene. Now the whole building is white-washed and plastered over, the majestic entrance supplied by an arch of pseudo-gothic, and a new library added, at vast cost, in the worst taste of the modern antique. The view from the garden is spoiled by that splendid nuisance, the Waterloo Bridge. Formerly we used to enjoy the enormous bend of the river, far fairer than the most marvellous work of art; and while our eyes dwelt on the placid mirror of water, our imagi-pun and learned conceit, which was as the nation went over it, through calm and majestic windings, into sweet rural scenes, and far inland bowers. Now the river appears only an oblong lake, and the feeling of the country once let into the town by that glorious avenue of crystal, is shut out by a noble piece of mere human workmanship! But nature never changes, and some of her humble works are ever found to renew old feelings within us, notwithstanding the sportive changes of mortal fancy. The short grass of the Temple garden is the same as when forty years ago I was accus-may be traced not so much to philanthropy as tomed to refresh my weary eyes with its greenness. There I have strolled again; and while I bent my head downwards and fixed my eyes on the thin blades and the soft daisies, I felt as I had felt when last I walked there-all between was as nothing, or a feverish dreamand I once more dreamed of the Seals, and of the living Sophia!-I felt-but I dare not trust myself on this subject farther.

The profession of the law is strangely altered since the days of my youth. It was then surely more liberal, as well as more rational, than I now find it. The business and pleasure of a lawyer were not entirely separated, as at present, when the first is mere toil, and the second lighter than vanity. The old stout-hearted pleaders threw a jovial life into their tremendous drudgeries, which almost rendered them delightful. Wine did but open to them the most curious intricacies of their art: they rose from it, like giants refreshed, to grapple with the sternest difficulties, and rejoiced in the encounter. Their powers caught a glow in the severity of the struggle, almost like that arising from strong exertion of the bodily frame. Nor did they disdain to enjoy the quaint jest, the far-fetched allusion, or the antique fancy, which sometimes craftily peeped out on them amidst their laborious researches. Poor T-Wwas one of the last of the race. He was the heartiest and most romantic of special pleaders. Thrice happy was the attorney who could engage him to a steak or broiled fowl in the old coffee room in Fleet-street, were I have often met him. How would he then dilate, in the warmth of his heart, on all his professional triumphs-now

light bubble on the deep stream of his knowledge! He is gone!-and I find none to resemble him in this generation-none who thus can put a spirit into their work, which may make cobweb-sophistries look golden, and change a laborious life into one long holiday!

In the greater world, I have observed, with sorrow, a prevailing disregard of the past, and a desire to extol the present, or to expatiate in visionary prospects of the future. I fear this

to self-love, which inspires men with the wish personally to distinguish themselves as the teachers and benefactors of their species, instead of resting contented to share in the vast stock of recollections and sympathies which is common to all. They would fain persuade us that mankind, created "a little lower than the angels," is now for the first time "crowned with glory and honour;" and they exultingly point to institutions of yesterday for the means to regenerate the earth. Some, for example, pronounce the great mass of the people, through all ages, as scarcely elevated above the brutes which perish, because the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, were not commonly diffused among them; and on the diffusion of these they ground their predictions of a golden age. And were there then no virtuous hardihood, no guileless innocence, no affections stronger than the grave, in that mighty lapse of years which we contemptuously stigmatize as dark? Are disinterested patriotism, conjugal love, open-handed hospitality, meek selfsacrifice, and chivalrous contempt of danger and of death, modern inventions? Has man's great birth-right been in abeyance even until now? Oh, no! The Chaldæan shepherd did not cast his quiet gaze through weeks and years in vain to the silent skies. He knew not, indeed, the discoveries of science, which have substituted an immense variety of figures on space and distance, for the sweet influences of the stars; yet did the heavens tell to him the glory of God, and angel faces smile on him from the golden clouds. Book-learning is, perhaps, the least part of the education of

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tant farms, cheered in their long walks by thoughts not of this world, to converse for a short hour with patriarchs, saints, and apostles! How did they devour the venerable and wellworn page with tearful eyes, or listen delighted to the voice of one gifted above his fellows, who read aloud the oracles of celestial wisdom! What ideas of the Bible must they have en

the species. Nature is the mightiest and the | such a change as shall make the printed Bible kindliest of teachers. The rocks and unchang-alone the means of regenerating the species. ing hills give to the heart the sense of a dura-"An age of Bibles" may not be an age of tion beyond that of the perishable body. The Christian charity and hope. The word of God flowing stream images to the soul an everlast- may not be revered the more by becoming a ing continuity of tranquil existence. "The common book in every cottage, and a drug in brave o'er-hanging firmament," even to the the shop of every pawnbroker. It was surely most rugged swain, imparts some conscious- neither known nor revered the less when it ness of the universal brotherhood of those over was a rare treasure, when it was proscribed whom it hangs. The affections ask no leave by those who sat in high places, and its torn of the understanding to "glow and spread and leaves and fragments were cherished even kindle," to shoot through all the frame a tre- unto death. In those days, when a single mulous joy, or animate to holiest constancy. copy chained to the desk of the church was We taste the dearest blessedness of earth in alone in extensive parishes, did it diffuse less our childhood, before we have learned to ex-sweetness through rustic hearts than now, press it in mortal language. Life has its uni- when the poor are almost compelled to possess versal lessons far beyond human lore. Kind-it? How then did the villagers flock from disness is as cheering, sorrow as purifying, and the aspect of death as softening to the ignorant in this world's wisdom, as to the scholar. The purest delights grow beneath our feet, and all who will stoop may gather them. While sages lose the idea of the Universal Parent in their subtleties, the lowly "FEEL after Him and find Him." Sentiment precedes reason in point of time, and is a surer guide to the noblest reali-joyed, who came many a joyful pilgrimage to ties. Thus man hopes, loves, reveres, and enjoys, without the aid of writing or of the press to inspire or direct him. Many of his feelings are even heartier and more genuine before he has learned to describe them. He does not perpetually mistake words for things, nor cultivate his faculties and affections for a dis-dearer to them than house, land, or the "ruddy cerning public. His aspirations "are raised, not marked." If he is gifted with divine imagination, he may "walk in glory and in joy beside his plough upon the mountain side," without the chilling idea that he must make the most of his sensations to secure the ap-Testament and the parables of the New. They plause of gay saloons or crowded theatres. heard with revering sympathy of Abraham reThe deepest impressions are worn out by the ceiving seraphs unawares-of Isaac walking multiplication of their copies. Talking has out at eventide to meditate, and meeting the almost usurped the place of acting and of feel-holy partner of his days-of Jacob's dream, and ing; and the world of authors seem as though their hearts were but paper scrolls, and ink, instead of blood, were flowing in their veins. "The great events with which old story rings, seem vain and hollow." If all these evils will not be extended by what is falsely termed the Education of the Poor, let us at least be on our guard lest we transform our peasantry from men into critics, teach them scorn instead of humble hope, and leave them nothing to love, to revere, or to enjoy!

hear or to read it! Yet even more precious was the enjoyment of those who, in times of persecution, snatched glances in secret at its pages, and thus entered, as by stealth, into the paradisiacal region, to gather immortal fruits and listen to angel voices. The word of God was

drops which warmed their hearts." Instead of the lamentable weariness and disgust with which the young now too often turn from the perusal of the Scriptures, they heard with mute attention and serious joy the histories of the Old

"Heaven lay

of that immortal Syrian Shepherdess, for whose love he served a hard master fourteen years, which seemed to him but a few days-of Joseph the beloved, the exile, the tempted, and the forgiver-of all the wonders of the Jewish story-and of the character and sufferings of the Messiah. These things were to them at once august realities, and surrounded with a dream-like glory from afar. about them in their infancy." They preserved the purity-the spirit of meek submission-the The Bible Society, founded and supported, patient confiding love of their childhood in no doubt, from the noblest motives, also puts their maturest years. They, in their turn, inforth pretensions which are sickening. Its ad- stilled the sweetness of Christian charity, drop vocates frequently represent it as destined to by drop, into the hearts of their offspring, and change all earth into a paradise. That a com-left their example as a deathless legacy. plete triumph of the principles of the Bible would bring in the happy state which they look for can never be disputed; but the history of our religion affords no ground for anticipating such a result from the unaided perusal of its pages. Deep and extensive impressions of the truths of the gospel have never been made by mere reading, but always by the exertions of living enthusiasm in the holy cause. Providence may, indeed, in its inscrutable wisdom, impart new energy to particular instruments; but there appears no sufficient indication of

Surely this was better than the dignified patronage now courted for the Scriptures, or the pompous eulogies pronounced on them by rival orators! The reports of anniversaries of the Bible Society are often, to me, inexpressibly nauseous. The word of God is praised in the style of eulogy employed on a common book by a friendly reviewer. It is evidently used as a theme to declaim on. But the praise of the Bible is almost overshadowed by the flatteries lavished on the nobleman or county member who has condescended to preside, and

which it is the highest ambition of the speak- from entirely forming an ossified crust about ers ingeniously to introduce and to vary. Happy the soul. We see them too with gentle interest, is he who can give a new turn to the compli- because we have always seen them, and were ment, or invent a new alliteration or antithesis accustomed to relieve them in the spring-time for the occasion! The copious nonsense of the of our days. And if some of them are what successful orators is even more painful than the world calls imposters, and literally “do bethe failures of the novices. After a string of guile us of our tears," and our alms, those false metaphors and poor conceits, applauded tears are not shed, nor those alms given, in to the echo, the meeting are perhaps called on vain. If they have even their occasional reto sympathize with some unhappy debutant, vellings and hidden luxuries, we should rather whose sense of the virtues of the chairman rejoice to believe that happiness has everyproves too vast for his powers of expression; where its nooks and corners which we do not and with Miss Peachum in the Beggars' Opera, see; that there is more gladness in the earth to lament "that so noble a youth should come than meets the politician's gaze; and that forto an untimely end." Alas! these exhibitions tune has her favours, "secret, sweet, and prehave little connection with a deep love of the cious," even for those on whom she seems Bible, or with real pity for the sufferings of man. most bitterly to frown. Well may that divinest Were religious tyranny to render the Scriptures of philosophers, Shakspeare, make Lear reply scarce, and to forbid their circulation, they to his daughters, who had been speaking in the would speedily be better prized and honoured true spirit of modern improvements: than when scattered with gorgeous profusion, and lauded by nobles and princes.

The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity is another boasted institution of these coldhearted days. It would annihilate the race of beggars, and remove from the delicate eye the very form and aspect of misery. Strange in fatuation! as if an old class of the great family of man might be cut off without harm! "All are but parts of one stupendous whole," bound together by ties of antique sympathy, of which the lowest and most despised are not without their uses. In striking from society a race whom we have, from childhood, been accustomed to observe, a vast body of old associations and gentle thoughts must necessarily be lost for ever. The poor mendicants whom we would banish from the earth, are the best sinecurists to whose sustenance we contribute. In the great science-the science of humanity -they not rarely are our first teachers: they affectingly remind us of our own state of mutual dependance; bring sorrow palpably before the eyes of the prosperous and the vain; and prevent the hearts of many from utterly" losing their nature." They give, at least, a salutary disturbance to gross selfishness, and hinder it |

"O reason not the need: our basest beggars
Ar in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beasts!"

There are many other painful instances in these times of that "restless wisdom" which "has a broom for ever in its hand to rid the world of nuisances." There are, for example, the plans of Mr. Owen, with his infallible recipes for the formation of character. Virtue is not to be forced in artificial hot-beds, as he proposes. Rather let it spring up where it will from the seed scattered throughout the earth, and rise hardly in sun and shower, while the "free mountain winds have leave to blow against it." But I feel that I have already broken too violently on my habits of dreamy thought, by the asperity into which I now and then have fallen. Let me then break off at once, with the single expression of a hope, that this "bright and breathing world" may not be changed into a Penitentiary by the efforts of modern reformers.

I am, Sir,

Your hearty well-wisher,
FRANCIS OLDAKER.

A CHAPTER ON "TIME."

BEING AN ATTEMPT TO THROW NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SUBJECT.

[NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.]

- We know what we are," said poor Ophelia, | the past and future in each fragment of the inbut we know not what we may be." Perhaps stant, even as the flavour of every drop of she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy had she said, "we know what we have been." Of our present state we can, strictly speaking, now nothing. The act of meditation on our selves, however quick and subtle, must refer to the past, in which alone we can truly be said to live. Even in the moments of intensest enjoyment, our pleasures are multiplied by the quick-revolving images of thought; we feel

some delicious liquid is heightened and prolonged on the lips. It is the past only which we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible of duration. Each bygone instant of delight becomes rapidly present to us, and "bears a glass which shows us many more." This is the great privilege of a meditative being-never properly to have any sense of the present, but to feel the great realities as they pass away,

casting their delicate shadows on the fu

ture.

of a being which should have no end. When this sense has been weakened, as it was amidst all the exquisite forms of Grecian mythology, the brevity of life has been forgotten. There is scarcely an allusion to this general sentiment, so deep a spring of the pathetic, throughout all the Greek tragedies. It will be found also to prevail in individuals in proportion as they meditate on themselves, or as they nurse in solitude and silence the instinct of the Eternal.

Time, then, is only a notion-unfelt in its passage a mere measure given by the mind to its own past emotions. Is there, then, any abstract common measure by which the infinite variety of intellectual acts can be meted any real passage of years which is the same to all-any periodical revolution, in which all who have lived, have lived out equal hours? Is chronology any other than a fable, a "tale that is told?" Certain outward visible actions have passed, and certain seasons have rolled over them; but has the common idea of time, as applicable to these, any truth higher or surer than those infinite varieties of duration which have been felt by each single heart? Who shall truly count the measure of his own days-much more scan the real life of the mil-dering how speedily hours, filled with pleasure lions around him?

The ordinary language of moralists respecting time shows that we really know nothing respecting it. They say that life is fleeting and short; why, humanly speaking, may they not as well affirm that it is extended and lasting? The words "short" and "long" have only meaning when used comparatively; and to what can we compare or liken this our human existence? The images of fragility-thin vapours, delicate flowers, and shadows cast from the most fleeting things-which we employ as emblems of its transitoriness, really serve to exhibit its durability as great in comparison with their own. If life is short, compared with the age of some fine animals, how much longer is it than that of many, some of whom pass through all the varieties of youth, maturity, and age, during a few hours, according to man's reckoning, and, if they are endowed with memory, look back on their early minutes through the long vista of a summer's day! An antediluvian shepherd might complain with as much apparent reason of the brevity of his nine hundred years, as we of our threescore and ten. He would find as little to confute or to establish his theory. There is nothing visible by which we can fairly reckon the measure of our lives. It is not just to compare them with the duration of rocks and hills, which have withstood "a thousand storms, a thousand thunders;" because where there is no consciousness, there is really no time. The power of imagination supplies to us the place of ages. We have thoughts which "date beyond the pyramids." Antiquity spreads around us her mighty wings. We live centuries in contemplation, and have all the sentiment of six thousand years in our memories:

"The wars we too remember of King Nine, And old Assaracus and lbycus divine."

Whence, then, the prevalent feeling of the brevity of our life? Not, assuredly, from its comparison with any thing which is presented to our senses. It is only because the mind is formed for eternity that it feels the shortness of its earthly sojourn. Seventy years, or seventy thousand, or seven, shared as the common lot of a species, would seem alike sufficient to those who had no sense within them

The doctrine that Time exists only in remembrance, may serve to explain some apparent inconsistencies in the language which we use respecting our sense of its passage. We hear persons complaining of the slow passage of time, when they have spent a single night of unbroken wearisomeness, and won

or engrossing occupations, have flown; and yet we all know how long any period seems which has been crowded with events or feelings leaving a strong impression behind them. In thinking on seasons of ennui we have nothing but a sense of length-we merely remember that we felt the tedium of existence; but there is really no space in the imagination filled up by the period. Mere time, unpeopled with diversified emotions or circumstances, is but one idea, and that idea is nothing more than the remembrance of a listless sensation. A night of dull pain and months of lingering weakness are, in the retrospect, nearly the same thing. When our hands or our hearts are busy, we know nothing of time-it does not exist for us; but as soon as we pause to meditate on that which is gone, we seem to have lived long because we look back through a long series of events, or feel them at once peering one above the other like ranges of distant hills. Actions or feelings, not hours, mark all the backward course of our being. Our sense of the nearness to us of any circumstance in our life is determined on the same principles-not by the revolution of the seasons, but by the relation which the event bears in importance to all that has happened to us since. To him who has thought, or done, or suffered much, the level days of his childhood seem at an immeasurable distance, far off as the age of chivalry, or as the line of Sesostris. There are some recollections of such overpowering vastness, that their objects seem ever near; their size reduces all intermediate events to nothing; and they peer upon us like "a forked mountain, or blue promontory," which, being far off, is yet nigh. How different from these appears some inconsiderable occurrence of more recent date, which a flash of thought redeems for a moment from long oblivion ;-which is seen amidst the dim confusion of half-forgotten things, like a little rock lighted up by a chance gleam of sunshine afar in the mighty waters!

What immense difference is there, then, in the real duration of men's lives! He lives longest of all who looks back oftenest, whose life is most populous of thought or action, and on every retrospect makes the vastest picture. The man who does not meditate has no real consciousness of being. Such a one gen 10

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