250 On different quarter of the city from that in which he made the former purchase, he was struck with surprise to see his own agate, as he supposed, exhibited at a window. When he examined it, he was not undeceived, but as might be expected, was puzzled to discover how it had escaped from his possession. To make sure, he purchased it, and thought that he had paid twice for the same thing, till he returned home, and was not a little gratified to find that he had acquired the very fellow from which his own agate had been cut, and had been separated, at least twenty years. 3. Irish bulls, not peculiar to Ireland. Miss Edgeworth, in her amusing Essay on Irish bulls, in which she combats the opinion, and pretty successfully, that bulls are the sole growth of Ireland, might perhaps think the following useful to her argument. A young student who had just left the Logic class, but who seems to have paid more attention to sounding words than to accurate thinking, wrote in the following strain to a friend, giving an account of a summer excursion: "All was calm and serene, not a breath of air stirred; the lofty woods waved over our heads; and the river before us, now destitute of water, flowed over its dry channel." I recollect a painter who had finished a picture in which a sea storm was represented, and a vessel was introduced with her sails hanging loose on the yards. Passing through a village not far distant from Edinburgh, I witnessed one of those scolding matches between two females, which sometimes disturbed the hamlet's repose, when one of the wordy combatants, perhaps the Meg Merrilees of the rustic society, called out from the middle of the street, to the enemy, strongly posted on the top of an ad joining stair: " Come down, you slut, come down if you dare; if I had you here in the street, I would send you down stairs with your head foremost. 4. Habits of exaggeration not easily checked. Magnanimity in Prosperity and Adversity. [March 7, 1818. Among other remarkable things which | ans of old, that every thing is the rehe had seen, he often mentioned the sult of chance; or agree with the stoics extraordinary length of the tail of a that revolutions of the planetary sysparticular species of monkey; and it was tem govern the minds, or regulate the observed with some pain by his more cor- actions of mankind; yet, however we rect friends, that every time the mon- may differ and dispute as to the cause, key was described, the tail encreased it is evident that the result remains the greatly in length. They took the liber- same. Sorrow and pain, privation and ty of stating the circumstance, and he suffering, conjoined with hope and enpromised to be more correct in future joyment, and happiness, chequer the but conscious of his own weakness or course of every one, and are the neverof the exuberance of his fancy, he ar- failing attendants of all who live and ranged matters with his servant John breathe; indeed, they are so connectwho stood behind his chair at table, that ed with our nature, that they appear he should give a hem! when he thought as it were to become a part of it; we his master was exceeding the bounds of are sad and soothed by turns; so we can probability in his story, and this was to not do better than imbibe those princibe the signal to correct himself. The ples, which, though they cannot avert story of the monkey's long tail was in- the gatheriug of the storm, or prevent troduced at dinner, along with the it from bursting, yet may shield the second course; and while he made the mind from the violence of its impulse, assertion that he had seen a monkey and deprive it of the power of doing with a tail twelve feet in length, | evil. John gave a hem! Well, says the master, who took the hint, I may be wrong, but I am sure it could not be less than nine feet. Hem! says John. Now let me think a moment, says the master, I may not be perfectly correct; but I am quite certain it was six feet long. Hem! hem! says John. The master whose patience was now exhausted at so many interruptions, turned round, to the astonishment of his visitors, and exclaimed, What do you mean, John, will you allow the monkey to have no tail at all? 5. Button of a vest which belonged to Every thing connected with this ce- A gentleman who had spent part of his life in tropical climates, used to entertain his friends with the wonders he had seen in those regions; but, it was alleged, studied embellishment, more than On the degree of Magnanimity displayed in Prosperity and Adversity. accuracy in his narratives, and hesitated little in making a pretty liberal sacrifice Though we do not now a days co Every one has an unaccountable propensity to be displeased with the situation which providence has assigned for him. Such is the corruption of our nature, that every one has a tendency quickly to lose the remembrance of a favour conferred or a benefit received, but to retain a long time the memory of a calamity which has befal len him. The search of all is after happiness, and we are more apt to remember the barriers that have impeded our access, and checked our progress, than the obstacles we have overcome, or the difficulties we have surmounted. We are too ready to judge from adventitious circumstances, and from external appearances; we are too apt to account the portions of others more happy and prosperous than our own, only because we know them less; and we too often forget, that the smile of the cheek may only hide the anguish of the heart, And mock the woe that lurks beneath, Yet, as Socrates observes, were all men to bring their misfortunes together, and let them be dealt out in equal shares, then would it be seen that many who thought themselves overburthened and oppressed would gladly have back their own portions, and learn to be contented. Yet if there be a great difference in the allotment of misfortunes, there is a still more striking difference in our methods of sustaining them; many of truth to the effect of a good story. incide in the opinion of the Epicure-more of us are inclined to beat our March 7, 1818.] On Magnanimity in Prosperity and Adversity. heads in spite, than to wipe our brows with the curate. In what follows, I will endeavour to show the difficulty of bearing prosperity; first, as illustrated by the history of nations; and secondly, from the con duct and character of individuals. They, whose ambitious spirits bade them be It was even so with the Greeks; they forgot the precepts of Solon, and the laws of Lycurgus. Forsaking the rigid When we look into the page of his- morality of their ancestors, they became tory, we constantly and unalterably lax in principle, and unsteady in confind, that the nations most renowned duct. They indulged in intemperance, and became the prey of vice; they lolfor their progress in arts and arms are those that were most remarkable for led in indolence, and were overtaken the rigidness of their morality, and the by disgrace; they revelled in profligaausterity of their discipline. While cy, and were overwhelmed in ruin. these are in action, we find them over- The memory of their predecessors, the coming every difficulty, rising into e-recollection of their ancient greatness, could not reclaim them; the patriotism of Leonidas was no more; and at this day, 66 251 of his disposition. When he was banbut the whole world was his country. ished, he said, that not only Athens, He changed not, when he heard the sentence of death pronounced against him. He changed not, but drank the poisoned cup that was administered to him; and he changed not, when he beheld that sun setting over Athens, which for him was to rise no more! So conscious have been the most illustrious of all ages and nations, of the extreme difficulty of bearing success with humility, that we are warned to caution by legislators, philosophers, and poets. Solon, to moderate our attachment to earthly pursuits, has left this adage to posterity, Keep thine eye fixed on the end of life;" and Philip of Macedon was so conscious of this propensity in our nature to be corrupted by success, that after having gained the battle of Chersonesus, which obtained for him the empire of Greece, he commanded a page to call to him It would be easy to expatiate on the thrice a day, "Remember, Philip, thou same picture, as illustrated by Jerusa-art a man.' We also read of an eastern prince, who kept an officer in his household, whose duty it was to call to him every morning," Remember, prince, that thou shalt die." And Marcus Au relius, after having overcome the Parthians, observed to his friend, "I tell thee of a truth, that I stand in greater fear of fortune at present than I did before the battle; for she careth not so much to overtake the conquered, as to subdue the conqueror." Though Alexander, Cæsar, Pompey, Antony, and modern times,) bore their bad fortunes many others, (without adverting to with resignation, not one of them bore prosperity with humility. The hearts within her vallies bred, Exalted Socrates, divinely brave, Injur'd he liv`d, and dying he forgave; minence, and crowned with success; their debasement, and the a Socrates has been denominated, and perhaps justly, the wisest of mankind; not only because disaster could not shake, but because prosperity could not elate him. We read of him, that the same countenance was observed all the days of his life; and that no external occurrence ever ruffled the placidness Where then is the pattern of true magnanimity to be found? It is in the man whom all the favours of fortune cannot tempt to any thing that is dishonourable; it is he who is indifferent to adulation, and is ever the first to discover, and to triumph over his own weakness. It is he, who, having every thing in his power, bridles his passions, and brings them under the dominion of reason. In a word, it is the man, who, though happy himself, is unceasingly anxious for the welfare and comfort of others; whose soul wealth cannot corrupt, ambition dim, or power inspire with arrogance,-who, in the midst of good fortune, retains serenity of mind and humility of spirit, is conscious of his own imperfections, and perseveres in the practice of his duty. 252 Effects of Attention. unconsci al Effects of Attention.-The Ladies. The Ladies. First tried on man, And then she made the lasses. [March 7, 1818. of an ague, and check the operation of to see distinguished with equal breadth an emetic. The practice of taking a--each gains by the contrast, and to According to Mr Park, the pheno-way the hiccough, or preventing a per- destroy this and melt the opposition inmena commonly called sympathetic, son from sneezing, by strongly fixing to unity, is to overthrow the order of such as yawning or coughing when we the attention, is familiar to every one; ature, and to disorganize harmony. see others yawn or cough, are merely and let a cough be never so trouble-Contrast is the essence of harmonyDay and the effect of attention, unconsciously some, it is commonly suspended while the pervading source of beauty and directed to particular parts, varying we are eating, the impression in the grace throughout nature. the degree of mental energy exerted mouth and fauces suspending the influ-night, hill and dale, light and shade, ence of that in the larynx. The bene- summer and winter-how admirably, upon, or the nervous influence sent to them, thereby altering their action, and ficial effect of sucking lozenges appears how harmoniously are they relieved and producing a transient change of func-referable to their power of abstracting contrasted by each other! And without tion, how much would each be impaired tion. Hearing another cough vehe- the attention from one impression by this close collision and mutual opposiin individual beauty! So it is with the mently and frequently, fixes the mind substituting another. paragons of the world, man and woman, so strongly upon the feelings in the mutually reflecting brilliance on each throat, as to produce at length a change other. The perfection of woman is to be of circulation, and occasion a sense of The paragon of animals. tickling and propensity to cough likeMuch has been said, and full as little purely and exclusively feminine. Any inyawn, wise. Seeing another ously fixes the attention so as to awa-proved or believed, of the perfectibility vasions on the province of man, are not so as our fair friends would sometimes per.. ken a sense of weariness in the jaws, of man, but of women we think it may much encroachments on our self-lovenow in some sense be asserted. It is that disposes the observer to yawn 80. Thinking of grateful food, on the true that one poet calls woman a "fairsuade us---as they are terrible destructhe distinctions of nature; or if our same principle, alters the action of the imperfection," "but another states that, tions of their own fascination, and of self-love is at all annoyed, it is through secreting vessels, and increases the flow Nature our tenderness for the fair objects themof saliva into the mouth. The flow of and selves, of which it is an ingredient. milk is increased in the same way, Women are as nicely sensible of the oboften commences before the infant acservance due from the other sex to their tually touches the breast of the mother. A blush may be excited by looking stedfastly and suspectingly in a person's face. The attention thus strongly directed to the feelings of the face, alters the action of its vessels and produces the change in question. The senses of hunger and thirst may be brought on or accelerated by thinking of them. Bodily fatigue comes on much sooner when the sameness and dreariness of the road continually reminds us of the What an unheard-of prodigy of patchSoftness alone is grace in wodistance we have already gone, and awakens a sense of the disparity between work has this poet here sketched out! our strength and the effort still to be Heaven forbid that we should pay so ill man, and manliness, however uncouth, is a compliment to Nature, and to the grace in man, because these qualities made. The sense of drowsiness, or mental weariness, is liable to be brought fairest of her works, as to adopt the are of the essence and the fitness of on the same way by the prospect of a standard of the perfection of female their natures; and we apprehend that long story, and the anticipation of the character. No-the identity of female those unaccountable charms which the fatiguing effort required to listen to it. mind and constitution is much too in-one sex sometimes discovers in the o In short, it is needless to multiply ins- trinsically lovely not to be deteriorated ther, to the marvel of the world, in the tances which will spontaneously occur to by this infusion of extraneous qualities. absence of all beauty or comeliness, every one's recollection. On the other It would be like ingrafting the oak on may be generally traced to some latent hand, every one must have experienced the woodbine. We have no taste for indications of these qualities. Desde"she saw Othello's how much uneasy sensations are allevi- such a confinement on nature. We mona saw grace in a dusky Moor, for ated by any thing that engages the are not so fastidious as to wish to see though she says mind and withdraws the attention. curious composites constructed out of visage in his mind," there is no know Head-ache and tooth-ache have been the beautiful, single, and primary essen-ing how it might have been if his peraften removed by the receipt of agree- ces with which nature has adorned crea- son had erred on the side of effeminacy ness and rugged dignity. But, at all able news or welcome arrival of an un- tion We would have man be as une- and insignificance, instead of uncouthexpected friend. The chess-board has quivocally masculine, and woman as been found to alleviate the pains of unalloyedly feminine, as possible. Na- events, the property of his mind was gout; and an attack of spasmodic asth-ture has formed their minds in as dis- manly vigour. Diminutive size is not ma has been suspended by strongly en- tinct a mould as their persons and half so frequently associated with ingaging the attention. Sudden alarm their cultivations, their accomplish-significance in a woman as in a man; has been known to stop the paroxysm ments, their occupations, we would wish aquiline features are a beauty in both In this view, however, we have nothing to do with the question, as our idea of their perfectibility entirely rests established precincts as we can be ; not with their toilette, which in these days of what is due to us, but of what is due is perfection itself. Pope's idea of fe-to the grace of their characters. They male perfection is Heaven when it strives to polish all it can, have Tom Touches and Jemmy Jessamys, and a hundred other names for the male stragglers in their province, who the first punished petimaitre Acteon. sometimes almost meet with the fate of Feminine softness, in short, "femality," as uncle Selby says, and manliness, are the most attractive qualities in the two sexes. March 7. 1818.] Epitaphs. "Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare, sexes, but they are of much more im- airy elasticity of spirits and of senti- Dip in the rainbow-trick her off in air.” EPITAPHS. To the Editor. 253 nement of clay, it seems to mingle with its own eternity, -are enjoyments of no common stamp. But, independent of these sublimest feelings of our nature, a churchyard presents a scene of a most attractive kind. Its motley group of inhabitants-the unlettered effusions of the lowly survivors-the rude efforts of the rustic Muse-and the transient sparks of lingering va nity, all combine to excite the blended sensations of regret and chastened mirth. We can indeed scarcely refrain from shedding the tear of mortality at the recollection of the undistinguished and undisguising group before our eyes. The aged veteran in the contests of life, now gathered to his fa thers, like a shock of corn in full ripeness, and smiling, as it were, in the tranquillity of the tomb ;-the little infant, 64 'Strangled in life's porch!" and the blooming maiden, Whose lonely unappropriated sweets here sleep side by side, and commingle Weep not for me, I am not dead, I'm but undress'd and gone to bed;† the fantastic figures of little cherubs pointing to their holy tents,-the grim representation of a Death's head reposing in sullen scowl on two crossbones, or the grotesque sculpture of the honest man's flight to heaven in the shape of a plump-cheeked puffing angel, INTO whatever place I go, my first and ideas so irresistibly ludicrous, that -presents an assemblage of relievos and dearest pleasure is to stray through we half forget the place where they its churchyard. The solemn and hal-are, and are tempted to deem them the lowing reflections which such a spot offspring and invention of some comic cannot fail to excite;-the high truths satire. Let them, however, have their that spring from every stone;-the communion one holds, as it were, with ** Physic did me no good,"-part of an epithe grave; and the approximation our taph in Minchin-Hampton Church-yard, Glousoul more especially feels to its God, + I have read the above lines in some church when, spurning the shackles of its te-yard in Cumberland. cestershire. 254 merit; they come, "warm from the heart," and are at the same time totally free from those indelicate and disgusting figures which, in olden time,' and, to the disgrace of our good forefathers, used to contaminate the walls and every corner of our churches, and which took their rise from the malevolent spirit of opposition of the secular clergy to the friars of former days *. We are enabled to trace the antiquity of epitaphs to an early date. Many instances of epitaphs in prose and verse may be collected from the old Greek poets and historians, who were yet but children to the Chaldeans and Egyptians. But the oldest precedent of epitaphs must be that recorded in the oldest history, viz. the Old Testament, 1 Sam. vi. 16. where it is recorded that the great stone erected as a memorial unto Abel, by his father Adam, remained unto that day in being, and its name was called the Stone of Abel," and its elegy was, "Here was shed the blood of righteous Abel," as it is also called 4000 years after, Matt. xxiii. 35. and this is the original of monumental memorials and elegies +. Epitaphs. [March 7, 1818 scholar. the inexpressible beauty of ma- ty that the poet has contrived that the ny a Latin epitaph must plead hard for | principal emphasis in the last line should a more extensive use, and, indeed, who be laid upon " away,"-it almost gives can read the beautiful lines of that emi-life to the picture. There is also great nent scholar Bishop Lowth, on his ingenuity in bringing something to our daughter, who fell dead into his arms, imagination; we are not told "whi without readily yielding the palm to ther she went," and our interest is thus that language, which contains so much kept alive by hopes and fears respecting sweetness and pathos ? her ultimate destination. One of its Cara, vale, ingenio praestans, pietate. pudore, An inscription on a monumental tablet in Ire Nivose, 6 heures du Matin, 22 Xtre, 1802. Agee de 25 ans, Victime de la mode meurtriere. Vertu, grace, beaute, modestie, ame bonne et La firent estimer et cherir. Repose en paix o ma LOUISE, Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses. Of a different description altogether, yet equally simple and grand, is the one In Radcliffe upon Soar, on Robert Smith on Sir Christopher Wren, in St Paul's church: Si monumentum quaeras, circumspice.— There is scarcely any species of composition so difficult as the epitaph, and yet so beautiful when attained. It ought to unite the terse brevity of the epigram Having given two such beautiful spewith the pathos of the elegy; dignified, cimens of Latin epitaphs, I would now yet at the same time familiar; sublime, plead hard for the insertion of an Engyet striking the chords of every bosom; lish one, which, in every point of view, an union so high and so difficult, that it whether as poetry in general, or that is no wonder many have failed in its ex-more particular species, the epitaph, ecution. Dr Johnson has censured the seems to me to merit a degree of praise. motley mixture of Latin and English in It is the perfection of poetry to render inscriptions of this nature, and with description as equal as possible to life, justice, for it presents too harlequin an and to place the particular object imappearance for so solemn a subject as mediately before our eyes. With rea last tribute to the dead. The nerve spect to inscriptions in general, Boileau and conciseness of the Latin is perhaps gives this rule, "Que les inscriptions better calculated for the epitaph than doivent etre simples, courtes et familiour own more paraphrastic language; ares," and in all do I contend for the though, as it is a subject which ought pre-eminence of my epitaph. Behold it to speak aloud to all, it is in most cases better to clothe it in the garb of our own "honest kersey" language, than enrobe it in the ornaments of a foreign style. Still, to the man of taste and the then, Here lies the body of Elizabeth Dent, * Mr J, Duncombe has versified it, but his attempt has been what Dryden calls Natus Eleventh of - One Thousand, &c. Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry." 1782, is inscribed- At Penryn, in Cornwall. rarish, J.J. He was born, bred, and hang'd in this parish! So each perspiring aether will joy:ully rise |