網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

2

vily on the delicate mind, and yet submitting with cheerfulness to every privation, save the loss of friends and the absence of congenial society: but, peace to her gentle spirit! the exquisite pen of Mrs. Barbauld has consecrated to remembrance her talents and virtues. Among the unmarried ladies of the last century, Miss Carter, by seniority and learning, is justly entitled to precedence; and were we to decide on the comparative happiness of married or single authoresses, from the individual examples of this lady, and her excellent friend Catharine Talbot, we should have no hesitation in pronouncing for the spinster's choice. Without rank or affluence, the translatress of Epictetus appears to have constantly revolved in the orbit of peace and equanimity; alternately the pupil of her father, and the preceptress of her brothers, she enjoyed the privileges of home without its restrictions, tasted all the sweets of friendship unembittered by jealousy, and, what is more extraordinary, attracted the homage of the great, without submitting to humiliation, or incurring reproach. Among the causes of this rare felicity, something may be ascribed to a philosophic temperament, and still more to strict moral discipline, eminently distinguished by directness and steadiness of purpose. Her feelings were uniformly submitted to her judgment, and those habits of application and correctness she had acquired in the pursuit of knowledge, she successfully applied to the current purposes of life. To the latest period of existence she retained her aptitudes to study, and even persevered in the laudable habit of yielding a portion of every day to classical literature. Nor did she ever cease to cherish that spirit of independence that taught her to value the privileges of home. In her annual visits to the metropolis, she resisted every solicitation to domesticate in the mansions of the great, choosing rather to return to her lodging in Berkeley-street, where she enjoyed in its full extent the privileges of her own fireside. It would not be easy to find a female character exactly corresponding with that of Miss Carter; perhaps the portrait of the Princess Palatine, the friend of Penn and Descartes, offers the closest resemblance; and, like Madame Dacier, her prevailing quality was modesty. To her learning, Ancient Greece had, perhaps, raised a votive statue; in Rome her accomplishments would have been eulogized in a funeral oration; in Modern Italy her rare attainments might have secured her progress to academic honours. In England not even a funereal tribute was offered to her memory; no enthusiasm is here inspired for a female scholar. The purity of her character, her moral worth, her benevolence and dignity, are justly valued. But as the translatress of Epictetus, she is certainly less popularly admired, than as the correspondent of Miss Talbot and Mrs. Montague; and the charm of this epistolary collection consists in the living sketches which it offers of those who have gone before us, and who in many respects are essentially different from the present age. Curiosity is at once stimulated and gratified by the careless, yet faithful portraiture which these volumes present to us, of bishops' and generals, and scholars; fine gentlemen and elegant ladies, strikingly different from those we are now accustomed to meet in parallel lines of society. It is not, however, to be denied that this circumstance, which enhances the value, diminishes the interest of the correspondence. To Miss Carter we listen with respectful deference, whilst our sympathies

are yielded to the blooming Minerva of our own times; the meritorious Elizabeth Smith, whose epistolary fragments, if they add nothing to our stock of information, are refreshing to the sensibilities, and interest the best and purest affections of our nature. To these simple effusions there is, however, one drawback in the substitution of blanks and initials for proper names;-a barbarous affectation admitted also in the correspondence of the excellent Elizabeth Hamilton, and in every collection that has been published under the suspicious superintendence of relatives. In spite of this defect we are irresistibly attracted to this little volume and its biographical elucidations. Elizabeth Smith was not merely an accomplished linguist, she drew with the spirit of an artist, and was not unacquainted with mathematical science. Nor is it merely by this rare combination of accomplishments that she extorts admiration; her magnanimous resignation, her unaffected piety inspire reverential sentiments; there is even something in local associations to endear her to remembrance. Participating with her family in the misfortunes by which she saw her prospects blighted in the bud of life, she gladly retired from the world to live in a picturesque, a beautiful district of our island, where the peasantry possess habits of simplicity and retain feelings of independence, unknown to any other portion of the British people. Amid those smiling lakes and majestic mountains, Elizabeth Smith attached herself with youthful enthusiasm to the visions of perfectibility which floated on her mind. The lowroofed cottage at Coniston, in which during so many years she remained with her family in contented seclusion, is become a classic spot to rambling tourists; the little fairy boat, which with nymph-like grace she so often navigated under the romantic cliffs, is now a sacred relic. The thyme-covered mountain, poetically and familiarly denominated the Old Man, which had been her favourite haunt, is cherished for her sake. And it is pleasing so to recall the image of a lovely woman in the spring of youth, withdrawing without regret from the world she was formed to embellish, and the brilliant pleasures of which she deemed well exchanged for the smiles of home, the pursuits of study, and the contemplation of nature. Hitherto the humble habitation in which her family then lived has been permitted to remain unspoiled by fantastic improvement, and its plainness is well calculated to inspire in the young enthusiasm, and in the aged respect. And let her whose heart beats high with the consciousness that attends the possession of beauty, talent, and sensibility, in crossing the bumble threshold, breathe devout aspiration for prudence to resist the allurements of pleasure, for firmness to repress the excitement of feeling, and for magnanimity to endure the stings of disappointment.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

That the camel that bathes with two humps,
Very often comes out with but one.
And it's O! &c.

And here is my little boy Jacky,
Whose godfather gave me a hint,

That by salt-water baths in a crack he
Would cure his unfortunate squint.

Mr. Yellowly's looking but poorly,
It isn't the jaundice, I hope;

[ocr errors]

Would you recommend bathing? O surely,
And let him take plenty of soap.
And it's O! &c.

Your children torment you to jog 'em
On donkeys that stand in a row,
But the more you belabour and flog 'em,
The more the cross creatures won't go :
Tother day, ma'am, I thump'd and I cried,
And my darling roar'd louder than me,'
But the beast wouldn't budge till the tide
Had bedraggled me up to the knee!
And it's O! &c.

At Ireland's I just took a twirl in

The swing, and walk'd into the Maze,
And, lauk! in that arm-chair of Merlin
I tumbled all manner of ways.
T'other night Mr. Briggs and his nevy
To Tupper's and Walker's would go,
But I never beheld such a levee,
So monstrously vulgar and low!
And it's O! &c.

On the Downs you are like an old jacket,
Hung up in the sunshine to dry;
In the town you are all in a racket,
With donkey-cart, whiskey, and fly.
Q

VOL. XI. NO. XLV.

[ocr errors]

.1

" ค

[ocr errors]

1

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

We have seen the Chain Pier, Devil's Dyke,
The Chalybeate Spring, Rottingdean,
And the Royal Pagoda, how like

Those bedaub'd on a tea-board or screen!
And it's O! &c.

We have pored on the sea till we're weary,
And lounged up and down on the shore
Till we find all its gaiety dreary,

And taking our pleasure a bore.
There's nothing so charming as Brighton,
We cry as we're scampering down,
But we look with still greater delight on
The day that we go back to town.

For it's O! what will become of us,
Dear! the Vapours and Blue-
Devils will seize upon some of us
If we have nothing to do.

H.

LIFE IN LONDON.
Non est vivere sed valere vita.

To be worth much is to live.

"THERE is no living in London," quoth I, buttoning up the pockets of my pantaloons, in which the smoothness of a "soldier's thigh" was disturbed by few folds save those of the tailor's manufacture. "There's no living out of London," replied my wife as she placed the fourth card of invitation for the current evening on the chimney-piece. As is very often the case in disputes (matrimonial or non-matrimonial) both parties were right in their own sense; for if London is the place to get money's worth for money, there is no place in the world where it is more impossible to enjoy life without a due intimacy with Plutus. London is, indeed, the paradise of the rich, in which respect it far exceeds Paris (with all its despotism): but then, as it is the purgatory of hackney coach-horses, so it is the hell of a poor man, with its eternal excitements to expense and its everlasting drains upon the purse. Entering the great city from Westminster bridge, and leaving it by the Regent's Park, you pass through a line of streets the opulence of which is disfigured by no note of abject and squalid misery entering it through Tooley-street, you might imagine it a vast lazar house. How different are the aspects of "Life in London," presented under these various points of view! On the one hand, pleasure in all its endless varieties, ease, comfort, order, propriety; on the other, close, filthy, foggy tenements, excluding light and air, and a dense population of dirty and unhealthy wretches, bespeaking a state of existence many degrees below the most abject penury of a country cottage, from which the beauty and the healthfulness of nature cannot be excluded. Yet for all this there is scarcely a workman who has drawn his first breath within the sound of Bow-bell, who does not pride himself upon being "born a native of London," and look down with infinite pity and contempt upon the stray country put, who, as he passes along the street is not like Brigetina Bother'em, above turning his eyes upon the shoe

* In "Modern Philosophers."

227

buckles and tea-urns, in the shop-windows. It is in vain that languor and disease prey on his being, that rheumatism gnaws, or palsy withers his limbs, or that coming age beckons him on to his destined hospital or workhouse still he looks upon the hale countenance and sturdy sinews of the man of fields with indifference, and cries to the peasant as Pan to Jupiter

:

He's a fool if he thinks
He's half as happy as I.

Not only the rich, but those who are tormented with the desire to be rich, flock up to London; and unquestionably there are modes of exercising industry and of practising economy unknown to the village, or the inhabitant of a country town. advantages notwithstanding, the labour of existence in the metropolis The truth however is, that all such is beyond comparison more severe than in smaller communities. The struggle to grapple with fortune, and to extort the wretched meal which is grasped at by hundreds of competitors, is so arduous among those who are placed in immediate dependence upon their labour for subsistence, as to render living in London any thing but life. The small London tradesman, in particular, feels this pressure more even than those immediately below him. The exterior of this class in society may in some instances be imposing; they may perhaps occupy handsome houses; but then all the better apartments are let to lodgers, whose weekly payments just serve to stop the mouths of the landlord and the tax-gatherer.

But if the poor tradesman's lot in the metropolis is hard to bear, that of the struggling professional man is scarcely less oppressive. The necessity for making an appearance in the hope of making money, and the obligation of dissipating those sums in equipage and show, which taste and good feeling would consecrate to the comfort of the domestic hearth, are bitter aggravations of the ordinary ills of poverty. Pride and vanity also find frequent sources of mortification in the contrast arising from the close juxtaposition of professional men to the really opulent, with whom their education and habits of life intimately connect them; and their self-love is perpetually wounded by the ostentation of upstart nouveaux riches their contemporaries, who in the more money-getting branches of industry have thriven, precisely because they have wanted the higher order of intellect on which professional men found their hopes of success. "Let him draw a bill in Greek or in Latin, and see if it will be honoured," says an old hunks in one of our farces; and the thought illustrates the habitual sentiments of the mere plodding money-makers for those talents, which, not possessing themselves, they are not able to appreciate in others. the life of the professional man and his family is no object of envy. Even when success begins to repay his exertions, If the practising barrister be traced from his early attendance at Westminster Hall till dinner, and again at his chambers from seven in the evening till bed-time, it is scarcely possible to conceive an existence of more uninterrupted and harassing toil. The practising physician in like manner knows no repose from his labour, and the hours which others devote to rest, are not with him exempt from the calls of duty. With the women also the matter is not mended; for hours employed in active occupations, are at least freed from the curse of ennui; and the business of making money is more invigorating and refreshing than the

Q 2

« 上一頁繼續 »