}
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 v. *
 
 is.
 
 SANCHO, 
 
 OR 
 
 THE PROVERBIALIST.
 
 SANCHO, 
 
 OR 
 
 Z\>t tfrototrtiialtgt* 
 
 Decipimur specie recti. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY fcLT.ER.rON AND HENDERSON, 
 joiinson's court, 
 
 FOR T. CADELI, AND W. DAVIES, STRAND; 
 AND J. HATCIIARD, PICCADILLY. 
 
 HS1G.
 
 
 TO 
 
 ^// the Lovers of those 
 
 Short, pithy, pointed, popular Maxims, 
 
 called "Proverbs." 
 
 Conceiving that many of the rules by 
 which you live are false and dangerous, 
 and that rules of life both safe and 
 true are to be found, I have thought 
 it my duty to illustrate these positions 
 by recording some of the events of my 
 life, and, with much humility, to present 
 the Memoir to you. 
 
 I am, &c. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 May, 1816. 
 
 4 ' .' . ' ,.i>L l.v
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAP. I A Family Picture 1 
 
 II. Another Family Picture 10 
 
 III. Preparation for School 13 
 
 IV. The History of " Number One." 28 
 V. The Way to treat an humbled 
 
 Adversary 37 
 
 VI. Another Head of the Hydra 44 
 
 VII. The History of a Conformist ... 53 
 
 VIII. Training for College 72 
 
 IX. A Morning in College 85 
 
 X. A mere " honest Man" is not 
 
 " the noblest Work of God"... 98 
 
 XL The Way to be no Christian ... 114 
 XII. An Event about which no Sceptic 
 
 ever doubted 120 
 
 XIII. Journal of a selfish and disap- 
 pointed Man 138 
 
 XIV. The dying Cottager 140 
 
 XV. An almost incurable Man re- 
 stored without sending him to 
 
 a .Mad-house , 108
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 A FAMILY PICTURE. 
 
 UF my parents I can say very little, 
 for they died before I was two years old. 
 But of my aunt Winifred, to whom my 
 father committed me on his dying bed, 
 as she is likely to act a very prominent 
 part in this history, I feel it right to say 
 a great deal. She was, then, a little, 
 round, well-conditioned person, with 
 a remarkable air of self-complacency. 
 Her eye was rather dull ; her mouth 
 had that sort of gentle elevation of the 
 corners, which is not an unusual symbol 
 of satisfaction with ourselves, and of a 
 kind of quiet contempt for others. She 
 was neatness itself; so that if the Ilin- 
 B doos,
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 doos, who have, it is said, at least thirty 
 thousand divinities, and therefore must 
 have a god or goddess for almost every 
 thing, should ever determine to erect a 
 pagoda to the Goddess of Neatness, they 
 would, I am persuaded, feel a very se- 
 rious loss indeed in my aunt, as the 
 priestess of it. She was, moreover, so 
 remarkably punctual as to render any 
 clock or watch almost unnecessary in 
 the place where she lived. A modern 
 philosophical writer, in illustrating the 
 force of habit, mentions an instance of 
 an ideot, who lived for many years in 
 the same room with a clock, by which 
 he was much interested. It was at last 
 removed ; but the poor creature, faithful 
 to his loquacious friend, continued for 
 many years to cluck for sixty minutes, 
 and then to strike, in regular succession, 
 the hours with his hand upon the table. 
 Now, I do not mean to say that my 
 aunt either clucked or struck for the 
 benefit of the neighbourhood ; but she 
 
 did
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
 did what was quite as much to the pur- 
 pose. When, from Lady-day to Mi- 
 chaelmas, she appeared in fine weather 
 at the sheep-fold (for she was scrupu- 
 lously attentive to her health) to catch 
 the morning breath of the sheep, it 
 was precisely eight o'clock. When she 
 stooped in the broad, suuny, gravel walk, 
 to gather agrimony or rosemary for her 
 breakfast, it was precisely nine. At five 
 minutes after nine her bell rang not 
 for family prayers I wish it had but 
 for Harry to bring Pug and two cats 
 their breakfast. Exactly ten minutes 
 after this, the first hissings of her own 
 urn were heard ; and, at precisely ten, 
 this great business in the life of an idle 
 person being accomplished, the break- 
 fast vanished crumbs and all. 
 
 My aunt was constitutionally cau- 
 tious. The high sense she had learned 
 to entertain of her own value to the 
 community, had so strengthened this in- 
 bred tendency, that the greatest part of 
 B c 2 every
 
 ( 4 ) 
 
 every day was spent in considering how 
 the rest of it might be spent in safety. 
 Some of her neighbours were even scan- 
 dalous enough to say, that, if she took a 
 long journey, she was always " booked." 
 And, as to weather, she was at once 
 the barometer and thermometer of the 
 neighbourhood in her own person. The 
 minutest variations of cold and heat, of 
 damp and dry, might be traced, with the 
 greatest accuracy, in the colour and con- 
 sistency of her shawl and gloves. 
 
 Having thus noticed her physical pro- 
 perties, I must now proceed to her moral 
 qualifications. She was a person, then, 
 as somebody says, " of more temper than 
 passions.'" The first discovered itself so 
 strongly in the circle of the family, that, 
 whoever else might question its energy, 
 the footman, the housemaid, and the 
 cook were never heard (though the sub- 
 ject was most dutifully made the perpe- 
 tual topic of cuisinery discussion), to 
 express a doubt upon the subject. As 
 
 to
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 to her passions, I really believe that the 
 strongest was the love of herself, and of 
 myself. I speak of this love of the two 
 as a single passion, because, I think, she 
 chiefly loved me as her own property 
 as the child of her own creation as a 
 piece of living clay, which her own 
 plastic hands were in the act of mould- 
 ing into man. I would not be ungrate- 
 ful to her nor would I for the world 
 undervalue the labours and watchings 
 of those who, through the years of in- 
 fancy, warm us in their bosom, and 
 gently lead us up to manhood. He is 
 not a man, but a monster, who does not 
 do justice to the tenderness of a mother, 
 or of those aunts who have every thing 
 of a mother but the name. But my 
 aunt was so singularly selfish ; her 
 faults have inflicted such a succession of 
 evils upon myself - 3 and so entirely does 
 my confident expectation of immensely 
 benefiting the world by the relation of 
 my own history, turn upon the develope- 
 B 3 ment
 
 ( 6 ) 
 
 ment of them, that I am compelled to 
 state them, even at the risk of being 
 deemed a very undutiful nephew. I 
 ought, moreover, to say, that I do think, 
 if my aunt herself were alive, she would, 
 in pity to the countless generations of 
 aunts and nephews hereafter to be born, 
 desire me to proceed. 
 
 Accordingly, I go on to state that pe- 
 culiarity in the moral constitution of the 
 old lady, which has given a complexion 
 and shape to most of the events of my 
 own life which has been, in fact, a sort 
 of destiny, lashing me through a series 
 of large and little occurrences, follies, 
 and distresses; a very small portion of 
 which are to be faithfully set forth in the 
 following pages. She was, then, passion- 
 ately addicted to proverbs. Her whole 
 life, and therefore my whole life, was 
 governed by those maxims of life and 
 manners which are in such general cir- 
 culation, and are of such immeasurable 
 weight in certain classes of society. 
 
 " What !"
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 t{ What!" it will at once be asked by 
 a thousand profound moralists ; u and is 
 " a reverence for proverbs imputed to 
 " this truly venerable person as a crime? 
 " Are they not the ' treasured wisdom 
 " of acres ?' Do not the Greeks call them 
 " 'the physic of the soul r' Is not tire 
 " reputation of Phocylides,andDiogenes, 
 <r and Isocrates, and Solon, and Thales, 
 " and a long list of worthies, chiefly 
 " built upon their proverbs? Nay, was 
 " not Solomon himself a writer of Pro- 
 " verbs?" 
 
 Very true; but the " physic" of the 
 Greeks may not be suited to the con- 
 stitution of the English. Wise heathens 
 make very unwise Christians. And as 
 for the " Proverbs of Solomon," I have 
 observed that the lovers of other pro- 
 verbs are very often the most ignorant of 
 these. Tims, most certainly, was it with 
 my aunt. She had no acquaintance with 
 Solomon; but with every uninspired 
 
 oracle
 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 oracle of this kind she had an almost in- 
 credible familiarity. She ate, she drank, 
 she walked, she lived, and, what was 
 worse, as I had no choice in the matter, 
 she constrained me to eat, to drink, to 
 walk, to live, by proverbs. 
 
 Now, as I owe much to my country, 
 under the shadow of whose vine I have 
 sat in safety for seventy years; and as, 
 moreover, I am about soon to ask of her 
 the additional boon of a space of earth 
 in which I may lay my aged bones, I am 
 anxious to do something for her benefit. 
 And as although the history of Achilles, 
 who was fed upon the marrow of lions; 
 and of Romulus, who was suckled by a 
 wolf, have been written ; but the history 
 of a person fed, nourished, and educated 
 upon proverbs, has not been written; I 
 think it my bounden duty to lay this 
 narrative at the feet of my country, 
 persuaded that she, who has not spurned 
 a fallen usurper from them, but has 
 
 mildly
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
 mildly bid him " go, and sin no more," 
 will not despise this simple gift of one of 
 the humblest and most affectionate of 
 her children. 
 
 u 5 CHAP.
 
 ( io ) 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 ANOTHER FAMILY PICTURE. 
 
 XI E is a very unfortunate man indeed, 
 who has but one aunt, if she is not more 
 amiable than my aunt Winifred. But it 
 was my happiness to have another, who, 
 for her size, which was remarkably di- 
 minutive, was, I do think, one of the best 
 creatures in the kingdom; and the ex- 
 traordinary candour with which I have 
 presented to the reader one family pic- 
 ture, of which the features are certainly 
 not very creditable to the race and name, 
 will, I trust, induce him to acquit me of 
 all partiality in my sketch of the second. 
 My aunt Rachel then, was, by the 
 church register, though not by the cal- 
 culation of my aunt Winifred, at least 
 twenty years younger than her sister. 
 
 It
 
 ( II ) 
 
 It is remarkable, in how many instances 
 the eldest child is neither the wisest nor 
 the best. Perhaps, indeed, one solution 
 of the fact is, that, just about the time at 
 which parents become possessed of a se- 
 cond child, they begin to discover the im- 
 measurable mischief of spoiling the first. 
 But I leave solutions to philosophers, 
 and simply state the fact, that such was 
 the case with my two aunts. Indeed, I 
 might briefly describe the younger as 
 having all the excellencies, and none, or 
 very few, of the defects of her sister. 
 She was quite as neat, and nearly as 
 punctual. Her temper was so sweet, 
 that she was always known, among the 
 unprejudiced members of'the family, by 
 the name of " Harmony." But what is 
 most worthy of notice, as it respects the 
 following history, is, that her repugnance 
 to a proverb, or maxim, or any thing 
 approaching to a neat, pointed, pithy, 
 oracular, sententious saying, bore a 
 pretty exact proportion to her sister's 
 
 unbounded
 
 ( 12 ) 
 
 unbounded reverence for them. Not 
 that she instinctively abhorred them ; 
 for, by nature, I believe, every person 
 loves a short sentence better than a long 
 one; just as we should naturally prefer 
 a bank-note to the same sum in Spartan 
 money. But, to pursue the metaphor, 
 she had so often suffered by the forgery 
 of the notes, that she had learnt to prefer 
 the cumbrous coin, with all its disad- 
 vantages, to its fictitious though plau- 
 sible representative. Be that as it may, 
 I can, even to this day, remember the 
 sort of doubting, scrupulous, inquisitive 
 countenance with which she was always 
 accustomed to receive these dicta of her 
 sister. She had too intimate an ac- 
 quaintance with her sister's mind, and 
 with the means of promoting truth and 
 peace in the family circle, flatly to con- 
 trovert these sayings. But I often ob- 
 served, that, about five minutes after the 
 oracle had delivered its sentence, aunt 
 Rachel quietly slipped out some scrip- 
 tural
 
 ( 13 ) 
 
 tural quotation which bore no incon- 
 siderable resemblance to the proverb, 
 and which she endeavoured, almost im- 
 perceptibly, to substitute for it. 
 
 Now the rationale of this conduct of 
 my aunt was, as 1 conceive, as follows. 
 Proverbs, for the most part, either con- 
 tain a portion of truth, or are true in 
 some circumstances, and under particular 
 modifications. The portion of truth con- 
 veyed in them is generally conveyed or 
 implied in some passage of Scripture. 
 My aunt Rachel then, by dexterously 
 seizing upon the proper passage of Holy 
 Writ, at once corrected the proverb, 
 half satisfied her sister, established the 
 truth, and set at case (which was no easy 
 matter) her own conscience. 
 
 I must add, however, that partly the 
 constitutional mildness of Rachel partly 
 the irascibility of Winifred partly the 
 sordid fact that I depended for my fortune 
 upon the elder sister gave such au- 
 thority to the tones of the one, and such 
 
 insignificance
 
 ( H ) 
 
 insignificance to those of the other, that 
 I, and others who were foolish enough to 
 mistake confidence for sagacity, were 
 accustomed to think Winifred a very 
 wise aunt, and Rachel rather a weak one. 
 Nor is this a very uncommon case. 
 " Why," said a Prussian ecclesiastic of 
 high rank to a celebrated actor " Why, 
 " when I and my brethren speak the truth, 
 " does no one believe us ; but, when you 
 " speak falsehood, every one believes 
 " you?" " Because," he replied, " we 
 " deliver falsehood as if it were truth ; 
 " and you, truth as if it were falsehood." 
 1 heartily wish that my aunt Rachel 
 had lived to enjoy the benefit of this 
 anecdote. 
 
 But, to proceed. These complicated 
 circumstances produced a remarkable 
 state of things in the family. The point 
 to be ascertained in any given case was, 
 not what was best to be done, but what 
 my aunt Winifred thought it best to do 
 or, in other words, as she rarely acted 
 
 but
 
 ( 15 ) 
 
 but on the authority of a proverb, what 
 she could find proverbial authority for 
 doing. This being once discovered, I 
 no more thought of resisting the will of 
 my aunt, backed by a proverb, than a 
 stone, when left to the influence of gra- 
 vity, thinks of hesitating to descend. I 
 spoke, thought, wept, laughed; and more- 
 over refrained from speech, thought, 
 weeping, laughter all at her mighty 
 bidding. Rachel, indeed, often whis- 
 pered, nodded, sighed, or quoted, but 
 generally in vain. I really loved her 
 the best of the two; but all her dumb- 
 shevv, sighs, whispers, and nods, had no 
 point had not the sanction of a pro- 
 verb and, moreover, had never the sin- 
 gular good fortune to be backed by a 
 crown piece ; and, therefore, had little 
 or no authority for me. 
 
 Thus have I discharged the duty of 
 introducing my two aunts to the public 
 a duty, indeed, from which I might 
 have easily delivered myself, by suffer- 
 ing
 
 ( 16 ) 
 
 ing them, in good time, to introduce 
 themselves. But had I so done, it is 
 very possible that some, at least, of my 
 readers, might have mistaken their real 
 characters : for each of them wore a 
 veil one of confidence, and the other of 
 bashfulness ; neither of which is it easy 
 to penetrate. Besides, in this philoso- 
 phical age, when every man who sees 
 an effect is looking for a cause, 1 
 thought I should be yielding much 
 gratification to the thinking part of 
 the community, by developing the secret 
 springs of my own character. There is 
 many a strange creature at large in so- 
 ciety, of whose follies and infirmities it 
 is almost impossible to give even a plau- 
 sible account. We look at him as we 
 do at the stones conjectured, by some 
 naturalists, to fall from the moon. Now 
 I was precisely one of those anomalous 
 personages ; and lest any philosopher, for 
 want of a better hypothesis, should be 
 betrayed into so rash a conjecture, as 
 
 that
 
 ( 17 ) 
 
 that I also came from the moon, I think 
 it just and charitable to state the truth 
 in the succeeding pages. 
 
 There is one observation which it is 
 desirable to premise. My readers may 
 feel alarmed lest it should be my inten- 
 tion to detail to them many of the wise 
 sayings of my aunt Winifred. Now, 
 however worthy multitudes might think 
 them of record, I certainly do not design 
 to force them upon the rest of a thank- 
 less world. I shall therefore state only 
 such as both gave the peculiar com- 
 plexion to my own life, and are likely 
 to influence the life of others. All her 
 other maxims may be found in the works 
 of Cervantes, or of Poor Richard, or in 
 any other repertory for those sayings of 
 which no one knows the author, but nine- 
 tenths of the world acknowledge the 
 indisputable authority and boundless 
 value. 
 
 chap,
 
 ( 18 ) 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 PREPARATION TOR SCHOOL. 
 
 I WAS born in the year 1755, in the 
 manor-house of a sweet little country 
 village, almost every cottage of which 
 might be seen reflected in a small lake 
 that spread itself over the valley beneath. 
 I seem at this moment to see my aunt 
 Winifred as she used to stand, as sad 
 as one of the willows which wept over 
 the water, and, pointing to the shadowy 
 mansion beneath, to say, " Aye, child, 
 all is not gold that glitters." 
 
 But though I perfectly remember the 
 mansion in which I continued to live for 
 a large part of my life, I can call to 
 mind scarcely any of the occurrences of 
 the first half of this time. I remember 
 only, that at about twelve years old, I 
 
 used
 
 ( 19 ) 
 
 used to hear the housemaid complain 
 that I was " of a very fretful temper ;" 
 and that mv aunt Winifred took no less 
 pains to assure me that I " was of a very 
 delicate constitution." Of which last 
 piece of information, one of the greatest 
 mischiefs was, that it was considered as 
 furnishing a complete apology for the 
 fault hinted at in the first. I, moreover, 
 found myself possessed of the name of 
 Sancho; the singularity of which title 
 never struck me, till I found at leasl half 
 a dozen pointers in the neighbourhood 
 in the enjoyment of the same distinction. 
 Upon inquiring into the origin of my 
 name, however, I discovered that my 
 aunt had vowed, early in life, that 
 should she ever be possessed of a human 
 being on whom she might be privileged 
 to bestow a name, he should be enriched 
 by at least one half of the title of the 
 illustrious squire of Don Quixote, he 
 being, next to the oracle of Delphos, the 
 greatest originator and promulgator of 
 
 those
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 those sententious sayings in which her 
 heart delighted. 
 
 The first incident, of my life of which 
 I have a very distinct recollection, shall 
 now be recorded. One morning in the 
 middle of July, when I was about twelve 
 years of age, I was suddenly summoned 
 into the drawing-room, to hold a confer- 
 ence with my two aunts ; or rather to 
 look at the one, and to listen to the 
 other. When I entered, the elder was 
 seated, unemployed as to her hands, but 
 with something of the expression upon 
 her countenance usually given by pain- 
 ters to the philosopher who had made 
 the long-desired discovery of the secret 
 about Hiero's crown, and who exult- 
 ingly ran about the city, crying, " 1 
 have discovered it, I have discovered 
 it." Rachel was calmly knitting a pair of 
 stockings for an old woman in the vil- 
 lage. My aunt Winifred called me to 
 her took me by the hand and would 
 have kissed me, but that, alas ! she per- 
 ceived
 
 ( 21 ) 
 
 ceived my face begrimed to the very 
 eyes with half the contents of a pot of 
 black-currant jelly, which she had, upon 
 pain of her mortal displeasure, prohibit- 
 ed me from touching about an hour 
 before. But being on the eve of pro- 
 mulgating one of those maxims, on 
 which she deemed that my future wel- 
 fare in life depended, she thought it, I 
 suppose, impolitic to rouse any passions 
 in my breast unfavourable to the lec- 
 ture. Accordingly, with much sagacity, 
 she left the currant jelly to soften the 
 way for her lesson, and thus proceeded. 
 " My dear Sancho, I, and your aunt 
 Rachel" (for this was the order in which 
 she always introduced the two names) 
 " have been determining to send you 
 to school. You know my deep anxiety 
 for your welfare, and therefore I need 
 not insist upon the point. In order, 
 then, to promote it, 1 have been con- 
 sulting my memory for some single sen- 
 tence in which I may treasure up all 
 
 the
 
 ( 22 ) 
 
 the advice which it is most desirable for 
 me to give you on the present occasion; 
 nor have I consulted in vain: there is 
 one rule, my dear boy, which will carry 
 you with safety, honour, and splendour 
 through life it is this, ' Take care of 
 Number One I ' " 
 
 Rachel, who, I suppose, comprehended 
 the full meaning of the proverb, almost 
 groaned. 
 
 " Sister Rachel," said my aunt Wini- 
 fred (whose ears on occasions such as 
 these were prodigiously quick), " I know 
 the expression is homely; but what of 
 that ? ' Truth is truth, though never so 
 homely.' ' Handsome is he that hand- 
 some does.' " 
 
 Aunt Rachel answered nothing ; but I 
 was far from being so silent on the oc- 
 casion. I have not yet informed the 
 reader (and it is a fact which I perceive 
 writers in general have a prodigious ob- 
 jection, however well founded, to state 
 to their readers) that I was always a per- 
 son
 
 ( 23 ) 
 
 son of rather dull understanding. The 
 reader may possibly, if charitable, think 
 me a little improved by this time. I 
 nevertheless beg to assure him, that of 
 my dulness, at twelve years old, there 
 never was the smallest question amongst 
 those who knew me best. And of all 
 things difficult to my apprehension, 
 unfortunately for my aunt, and as she 
 thought for myself, proverbs were the 
 most difficult. Accordingly, I rarely 
 failed, when my aunt first promulgated 
 a sentiment of this kind, to her un- 
 bounded mortification, entirely to mis- 
 apprehend it; and thus it was now. 
 When my aunt, therefore, authoritative- 
 ly and solemnly pronounced the words 
 " Take care of Number One," it by no 
 means occurred tome that "Number 
 One" was the representative ofso dignified 
 a person as myself; but, thinking exclu- 
 sively of a very splendid set of numbered 
 counters which she had given me a few 
 days before, I very simply asked, " And, 
 
 aunt,
 
 ( U ) 
 
 aunt, must not I take care of Number 
 Two also ?" 
 
 " Child," said my aunt, " you are little 
 better than an ideot. Number One 
 means }our foolish self; and, therefore, if 
 I must put into common English what is 
 so briefly and forcibly expressed by the 
 proverb, ' Take care of Number One,' 
 means * Take care of vourself alone.' " 
 
 "Oh," said I, "aunt, now I do un- 
 derstand you ; and I am sure you will 
 think me a very good boy, for I have 
 just been * taking care of Number One ' 
 in the very way you mean, by eating up 
 all the currant jelly which you left upon 
 the table." 
 
 My aunt Rachel a little archly smiled. 
 But not so her sister. Her perplexity 
 was extreme. For what dilemma could 
 be more complete : Either she was 
 wrong in ordering me not to eat the 
 currant jelly ; or the proverb was inac- 
 curate. One of the two must be sacri- 
 ficed and nothing in the world was so 
 
 dear
 
 ( 25 ) 
 
 dear to her as the reputation and honour 
 of both. The only expedient which 
 occurred to her was the searching for 
 some other proverb which might supply 
 some sort of qualification for this. She 
 would at the moment, I firmly believe, 
 have given fifty pounds for a maxim so 
 constructed as to say at once, " Take 
 care of Number One, and of y oar mint." 
 But no such proverb occurred to her. 
 She called to mind indeed, for she was a 
 tolerable Latin scholar, the proverb in 
 that language, " proximus sum egomet 
 mihi," and that of the Italians, " Fa 
 bone a te e tuoi, e poi a gli altri se tu 
 puoi." Then, for as far as proverbs 
 went she was also familiar with the 
 Greek, she recollected that Athenian 
 
 Saying, M17JJ co^i^v $;is ay. duruj <ro$<i;. But 
 
 unhappily one and all breathed the 
 same spirit one and all taught that 
 self-love is the best principle, and self- 
 indulgence the first duty of lite. One 
 and all of these maxims, uucontrouled 
 C hv
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 hy any higher principle, would evidently 
 lead a boy to disobey his aunt, and eat 
 the currant jelly. What then could 
 be done? Fortune sometimes assists 
 those whom wisdom and literature re- 
 fuse to help. And thus it happened 
 now. For at this critical moment a car- 
 riage drove up to the frontdoor, and 
 the conference was suspended to wait 
 upon the company. Before, however, 
 they had time to enter the room, I heard 
 my aunt Rachel very gently say, " I 
 think that Roman Emperor was a very 
 wise man, who wrote upon the walls of 
 his palace in letters of gold, ' Do unto 
 others as you would they should do 
 unto you.' " I thought, moreover, that I 
 heard her sister answer, " Pshaw !" And 
 that I was not altogether mistaken in 
 this supposition appears to be probable 
 from this circumstance, that when I 
 opened my box at school, ten days af- 
 terwards, I found, wrapt up in a triple 
 paper, with a guinea to accompany it, 
 
 the
 
 ( 27 ) 
 
 the identical maxim, unqualified and 
 unmitigated, in all its own native sim- 
 plicity and majesty, " Take care of 
 Number One." 
 
 With such a recommendation, it could 
 scarcely fail to be remembered and va- 
 lued. Accordingly, thus armed and ac- 
 coutred for the warfare of life, I entered 
 upon my school career; and whoever 
 wishes to know the feats which I there 
 performed has only to read the next 
 chapter. 
 
 c 2 CHAP
 
 ( 28 ) 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 THE HISTORY OF NUMBER ONE." 
 
 UN the twenty- fifth of July, with a 
 whole guinea in my pocket, the con- 
 tents of a pastry-cook's window in my 
 trunk, and my aunt's precious maxim 
 in my heart, I descended the steps of a 
 post-chaise to enter for the first time 
 upon all the distinctions and trials of a 
 school-boy. The house was unusually 
 high, covered with narrow windows, 
 protected each, like those of a mad- 
 house, by iron bars. The title, both of 
 the mansion and of its owner, were in- 
 scribed, in Patagonian characters, upon 
 its front. But, if it had been watched 
 by Patagonians themselves, I should not, 
 at that moment, have heeded them. Al- 
 most every person, knowing the evils of 
 
 his
 
 ( 29 ) 
 
 his present situation, and uncertain 
 about the future, expects to be benefited 
 by a change of circumstances. Besides, 
 wiser people than myself have been se- 
 duced by novelty. Moreover, there 
 were two monstrous dragons, as yet 
 barely introduced to my readers, which 
 lay perpetually at the door of my aunt's 
 house, namely, her Selfishness and Irrita- 
 bility; from which it was not in human 
 nature, not to rejoice to escape. And 
 still more, I had become sole proprietor, 
 occupier, and administrator of the afore- 
 mentioned accumulation of cakes and 
 sweetmeats, on which, by a reasonable 
 calculation, I might hope to live, if they 
 themselves did not kill me, for at least a 
 week. What more could the most am- 
 bitious school-boy covet? 
 
 The master having, by means of a 
 slight trial, plumbed the depth of my 
 ignorance, I was turned loose upon the 
 school. Almost at the moment of my 
 first entrance, a crowd of boys came 
 C 3 round
 
 ( 30 ) 
 
 round me, not merely to ascertain who 
 I was, but also what I had got ; it being 
 the practice of that particular school a 
 practice, by the bye, much contemned 
 in loftier seminaries for every new 
 comer to purchase his freedom by a li- 
 beral distribution of the gifts of his pro- 
 vident friends. Now it instantly occur- 
 red to me that I could not be dutiful too 
 soon ; and that it would be terrible, in- 
 deed,to violate one of my aunt's maxims, 
 before the tear she had shed on our se- 
 paration was dry upon my cheek. And, 
 therefore, I heroically resolved, in a mo- 
 ment, to shew the school that my first 
 principle was to " take care of Number 
 One." Accordingly, I calmly took my 
 sweets from their depository, and, as 
 calmly, one by one, began to devour 
 them. It is said, that one of the French 
 monarchs, when in a very infirm state 
 of health, in order to deceive the English 
 ambassador, ate an enormous dinner in 
 public, of which he died in a few days; 
 
 and
 
 ( 31 ) 
 
 and, though a private person might not 
 presume to scale the heights of regal 
 ambition and magnanimity, certain it is, 
 that, in support of my own dignity, and 
 of my aunt's proverb, I devoured three 
 times as much as I should have done in 
 less arduous circumstances. 
 
 During this process, I was every in- 
 stant expecting to receive some public 
 acknowledgment of my superiority to 
 vulgar prejudices and practices from the 
 assembled school. But, what was my 
 surprise, instead of this, to find a storm 
 gathering around me to see a general 
 muster of the boys to hear, as a sort 
 of watch-word, the inelegant phrase of 
 " greedy brute" vociferated from every 
 quarter ! And, at length, after the way 
 of some bigger folks, the boys, resolving 
 to seize as a right what they could not 
 obtain as a gift, literally hustled me 
 from my seat, rolled me on the ground, 
 pounced like harpies upon the cakes, 
 and hurried away into the play-ground, 
 C4 to
 
 ( M ) 
 
 to enjoy the fruits of their triumph and 
 of my discomfiture. Nor was this the 
 whole of my calamity. The attack had, 
 unfortunately, not been made before 
 I had swallowed enough for several 
 people of my personal dimensions. Ac- 
 cordingly, the apothecary was sent for; 
 and, between each of the successive 
 phials, the contents of which he deemed 
 it expedient, either for himself or for 
 me, to force down my throat, I could 
 not help sometimes moralizing a little 
 upon this first result of my conformity 
 to my aunt's maxim, and saying to my- 
 self, " It seems to me as if one of the 
 best ways to 'take care of Number One' 
 was to take care of all the rest of the 
 numbers." 
 
 At last, however, the doctor left me, 
 and I soon recovered. And, with my 
 strength, my faith in my aunt's opinion 
 returned ; nor was I long, as my reader 
 shall now learn, without reaping some 
 additional fruits of it. Living under the 
 
 influence
 
 ( 33 ) 
 
 influence of a principle which cherished 
 such devoted zeal for my own interest 
 and convenience, 1 was not likely soon 
 to forget the injury which had been in- 
 flicted upon me. Accordingly, I most 
 anxiously watched for an opportunity 
 of finding alone a puny little urchin, who 
 had been remarkably active in the as- 
 sault upon me, and dealt him some such 
 blows upon the precise spot of his 
 dwarfish person which might be sup- 
 posed to be particularly gratified by the 
 theft from me, as sent him howling with 
 agony into the school. But, what was 
 my horror, to see the whole body of 
 cannibals pour out in close squadron, 
 and, without condescending to hold a 
 moment's parley, began to pay me, in 
 kind, and even with accumulated in- 
 terest, for my attack upon one of their 
 associates. And, as naturally no one 
 of them could endure to be outdone by 
 the rest in the demonstration of his loy- 
 alty and fidelity to so good a cause, so 
 C 5 thoroughly
 
 ( 34 ) 
 
 thoroughly was I beaten, that the mar- 
 vel is I am alive this day to record the 
 history of my persecutions. At last, 
 however, they left me, black and blue, 
 in a corner of the play-ground : and 
 here, once more, I had abundant leisure 
 to philosophise; and I could scarcely 
 avoid questioning, pretty resolutely, at 
 the moment, both the truth and the ex- 
 pediency of my aunt's maxim. 
 
 Still, however, a principle planted by 
 her hand, and highly congenial to our 
 sordid nature, was not soon to be rooted 
 out. And, accordingly, I was doomed, 
 besides enduring a thousand petty mor- 
 tifications, besides incurring the hatred 
 of the bulk of my school-fellows, to suf- 
 fer a still heavier penalty of my loveof self. 
 
 Self, -as might be expected, is not a 
 very accurate distinguisher between mine 
 and thine. The distinctions of property 
 vanish before an eye which sees only 
 one individual in the whole world. Ac- 
 cordingly, in two or three different in- 
 stances,
 
 ( 35 ) 
 
 stances, I had, in compliance with the 
 spirit of my aunt's maxim, laid my hands 
 upon articles belonging to other boys ;. 
 but had adroitly " taken such care of 
 Number One," that no one had discovered 
 the theft. At length, however, I felt an 
 inordinate desire to become possessed of 
 a knife, an article which my aunt, in 
 tender love to my person, had always 
 denied me, and, watching an opportu- 
 nity, I found the desk of its owner open, 
 and carried it off in triumph. But this 
 triumph was short. The knife happened 
 to be no less valuable to its real pro- 
 prietor than to myself; and, being very 
 popular in the school, he had interest to 
 move and carry a resolution that the 
 trunk of every boy should be opened, 
 and examined, in quest of it. What 
 could be done ? I first resisted the mo- 
 tion then vehemently protested that 
 the key was lost then dexterously broke 
 it in the lock. But all obstacles being 
 overcome, the trunk was opened, and 
 
 the
 
 ( 3d ) 
 
 the knife found, carefully wrapped up, 
 together with my aunt's maxim, in the 
 identical triple envelope in which she 
 conveyed it to school. Here was irre- 
 sistible evidence of my guilt ; and the 
 master being called in, and detecting at 
 once the cause and consequence of my 
 crime, out of regard for the rest of his 
 school, dispatched me to my aunt with 
 this laconic note: 
 " Madam, 
 *' You have sent your boy to school 
 " with a principle which has made him 
 " greedy, cruel, and dishonest. It is 
 " but just that you, who have given the 
 " disease, should endeavour to cure it; 
 " and, therefore, T have sent him back 
 " to you." 
 
 " Your's, &c. &c." 
 
 CHAP.
 
 ( 37 ) 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 THE WAY TO TREAT AN HUMBLED 
 ADVERSARY. 
 
 IT would be very difficult, indeed, to 
 paint the storm which raged in my aunt's 
 mind (to say nothing of her counte- 
 nance), upon her receipt of myself and 
 the letter, of which I was the bearer. 
 And as some thousands of writers, in 
 prose and verse, have thought themselves 
 privileged to employ, without any ac- 
 knowledgment, the first iEneid for the 
 description of all scenery of this kind, 
 I shall take the more honest method of 
 at once referring my readers to Virgil 
 for a full and particular account of the 
 whole transaction. Let them but con- 
 ceive, which is by no means difficult, 
 my aunt to be Juno, and her face to be 
 
 the
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 the sea, and the business is accomplished 
 in a moment. 
 
 I had entered the room, not only with- 
 out a blush, but with considerable self- 
 complacency for my very dutiful con- 
 formity to my aunt's wishes. No sooner 
 was the letter read by the two sisters 
 than, as they had not heard the slightest 
 breathing of my adventures at school, 
 they both with eager voice demanded 
 what could have led to so rapid and 
 extraordinary a catastrophe. 1 told my 
 story with much simplicity expressed 
 no little horror and amazement at the 
 villainy of school-boys almost intimat- 
 ed a suspicion of the accuracy of my 
 aunt's maxim and courageously assur- 
 ed her, that if I had attempted to " take 
 care of Number One" much longer, the 
 boys would not have left a sound inch of 
 " Number One" to be taken care of. 
 
 My aunt wrung her hands but 
 whether in dismay at my folly at 
 my sufferings at the wickedness of the 
 
 school
 
 ( 39 ) 
 
 school boys, or of the master or, finally, 
 at the apparent fallibility of her infallible 
 maxim, I am unable to say, as she said 
 nothing herself. She then took a huge 
 pinch of snuff, put the letter into the fire, 
 and hid her face in her hands. Rachel 
 was, as I have before said, a most tender 
 creature ; and, though even a somewhat 
 stern moralist would have scarcely con- 
 demned her for feeling a momentary 
 triumph in this practical refutation of so 
 hateful a principle and of a principle, 
 moreover, to which she had discovered 
 so strong a repugnance she felt no tri- 
 umph at all. In fact, all her sister's 
 sorrows were her own t therefore, taking 
 her gently by the hand, she said " My 
 dear sister, however much we may have 
 differed about the value of this maxim, 
 you, I am persuaded, no more foresaw 
 or designed these consequences than I 
 did. You did not mean Sancho to be 
 greedy, cruel, or dishonest." 
 
 " My aunt," said I j <f for here my 
 
 pride
 
 ( 40 ) 
 
 pride took fire ; " meant me to * take 
 care of Number One,' and this is all I 
 have done." 
 
 " My dear boy," said the good-natured 
 Rachel, " you quite mistake the matter; 
 and as your aunt is too unwell just now 
 to explain herself, I, in my poor way, 
 will do it for her. She could mean no 
 more by ' taking care of Number One,' 
 than that it was every person's duty to 
 take care of himself. But then the best 
 way to take care of yourself, Sancho, is 
 to please God, and to be just and kind 
 to others." 
 
 " But aunt," said I, " there is nothing 
 about pleasing God, and being good and 
 kind to others, in the proverb." 
 
 " No, there is not," she replied ; " but 
 stili my sister meant all this, and a great 
 deal more, as she would soon convince 
 you, Sancho, if she were well. You un- 
 derstood the proverb to mean that you 
 should indulge yourself in all that 
 pleased you best at the moment ; your 
 
 aunt
 
 ( 41 ) 
 
 aunt meant that you should do what was 
 best for yourself upon the whole." 
 
 Now, not a word of this last distinc- 
 tion did I understand. But as I held 
 my tongue which is a rule I earnestly 
 recommend to all persons in similar cir- 
 cumstances my aunt Rachel did not 
 find me out, and accordingly proceeded. 
 
 " My dear Sancho," she said, ' no 
 man ever became good or great who 
 was very fond of himself; good and 
 great men live for others. Look there, 
 my boy;" and I turned my eyes to a 
 fine copy of Ruben's Descent from the 
 Cross, to which she pointed " The 
 Son of God," said she, " came down 
 to live and to die for others." 
 
 This argument I did understand ; and 
 1 can truly say that, through my long 
 life, whenever I have wanted a cure for 
 selfishness, I have found nothing so effi- 
 cacious as following my aunt Rachel's 
 advice. A hundred times at least, when 
 
 self
 
 ( 42 ) 
 
 self has been getting the better of nobler 
 considerations, her " Look there, my 
 boy !" has sounded in my ears. I have 
 looked with my mind's eye at the pic- 
 ture, and said, It is impossible to be a 
 real follower of Christ, and to be selfish. 
 But, to return to our history. While 
 I was looking at the picture, my aunt 
 Winifred rose up. I thought that I saw 
 her gratefully, though rather awkwardly, 
 presspier sister's hand. I am sure that I 
 saw her eyes full of tears. She left the 
 room. Rachel immediately followed her, 
 but not till she had said to me, " Look, 
 Sancho, to-night for a verse which I will 
 mark in the little Bible I gave you, and 
 you may venture to use that verse in 
 future instead of the proverb." I did 
 look, and found my aunt's initials marked 
 opposite the words, " Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbour as thyself;" and I think 
 it right to say, that if I had literally com- 
 plied with this command, either at that 
 
 time,
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 time, or for many years of my life, there 
 are very few people in the world who 
 would have loved their neighbour better. 
 But, of this also, the reader may judge 
 for himself in the following pages. 
 
 CHAP.
 
 { 44 ) 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 ANOTHER HEAD OF THE HYDHA. 
 
 JliE knows little of human nature who 
 fancies that the follies and vices of the 
 world, in general, are, as it were, to be 
 brought down by a single shot. And 
 he knows equally little of the character 
 of my aunt Winifred who imagines her 
 to be an exception to this general rule, 
 and conceives her likely to be cured of 
 her error by the single incident recorded 
 in the last chapter. It is often the pro- 
 perty of those who hold very foolish opi- 
 nions, to be attached to them just in 
 proportion to their folly as idolaters 
 love their idols the better, the more de- 
 formed they are. I do not say that my 
 aunt entertained quite the same profound 
 respect for the particular proverb which 
 
 had
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 had so much dishonoured the family; 
 but she attached just the same value to 
 all other proverbs. Accordingly, having 
 taken time to collect herself, to let the 
 incidents at school in a measure escape 
 from my memory, and to search into the 
 collected principles of ages, for some 
 other equally great, but safer, principle 
 of action, she at length announced to me 
 her intention of sending me to another 
 school ; and having sent for me alone, to 
 avoid the scrutiny of her sister, she thus 
 addressed me : 
 
 " I will own, my dear Sancho, that 
 when I sent you to school with only one 
 single proverb for a guide and protector, 
 I trusted somewhat too much to its 
 solitary efficacy. As every man has two 
 arms, and two legs, and two eyes, and 
 two ears, it is no disparagement of pro- 
 verbs to admit, that two are necessary to 
 guide you aright in the thorny path of 
 life. I have, therefore, deeply investi- 
 gated the influence of the first maxim I 
 
 gave
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 gave you, upon your conduct at school ; 
 and I find that you ate, fought, and stole, 
 in an exceptionable manner, not because 
 you gave heed to one proverb, but be- 
 cause you did not give heed to two. I 
 have had, I will own, some difficulty in 
 discovering what maxim might be best 
 associated with the first; but, at length, 
 my good genius has suggested one, and 
 I now communicate it to you it is this, 
 " Do at Rome as they do at Rome." 
 
 Now, as the master of the school had 
 not allowed me by any means to waste 
 even the few weeks I spent there, and as 
 my reading had been confined, agreeably 
 to the practice of the day, almost entirely 
 to the classics, I had managed, in that short 
 time, to obtain a pretty intimate acquaint- 
 ance with not a few of the worst charac- 
 ters and practices of ancient Rome. I 
 had heard, for instance, with profound 
 admiration, of the " godlike Cato" 
 stabbing himself and of the " immor- 
 tal Brutus" stabbing his friend of the 
 
 " divine
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 tf divine Julius" abandc/ning himself to 
 every possible vice of the <c deified 
 Nero" setting fire to Rome, fiddling while 
 it burned, and, with the most majestic 
 contempt of all those rules of truth so 
 very inconvenient to the lower orders of 
 society, imputing the guilt of the con- 
 flagration to the Christians. My aunt, 
 therefore, had no sooner pronounced the 
 proverb, than a confused prospect of 
 daggers, swords, crowns, fiddles, fires, 
 burst upon my delighted eyes. In a 
 moment I bethought myself how de- 
 lightful it would be on the next fifth of 
 November, disdaining the ancient tardy 
 and niggardly method of celebrating on 
 that day our zeal for Protestantism, and 
 abomination of Popery, by collecting 
 a fc\v stray sticks, and lighting up a pal- 
 try bonfire at once, like Nero, to thrust 
 a burning brand into my aunt's largest 
 hay-stack, and, with Robin the gardener, 
 no mean fiddler, to light up a fire worthy 
 of Rome itself and then to charge the 
 
 conflagration
 
 ( 48 ) 
 
 conflagration upon some boys in the 
 village. But this very idea, I suppose, 
 by bringing the subject near home, con- 
 vinced me that I must have mistaken my 
 aunt's meaning. She, who was so in- 
 variably attentive to her own interest, 
 could scarcely have intended me to burn 
 her hay-ricks. Therefore, that I might 
 fall into no error, I determined to ask, 
 whether she meant that I was " to do as 
 they did in ancient Rome." 
 
 " No, child," said my aunt. 
 
 " What then," said I, " as they do in 
 modern Rome ?" 
 
 " Worse and worse," said my aunt. 
 " When will you understand, boy, the 
 only species of language that is worth un- 
 derstanding? To "do at Rome as they 
 do at Rome," is a sage maxim of anti- 
 quity, which teaches us, that " in what- 
 ever spot of the globe we may chance to 
 be, it is our duty kindly to accommo- 
 date ourselves to the prevailing cus- 
 toms." 
 
 " Indeed !"
 
 ( 49 ) 
 
 " Indeed !" said I, " aunt,'* opening 
 wide my mouth, and both eyes, besides 
 manifesting every other conceivable sign 
 of astonishment. 
 
 " Indeed !" replied my aunt, " and 
 why not ? If you cannot otherwise un- 
 derstand what seems to be so obvious, 
 apply this principle to the very circum- 
 stances in which you have lately been 
 placed, and you will at once see the im- 
 portant effect of it. Had you, for in- 
 stance, acted upon it at school ; foras- 
 much as it was not the custom of the 
 school to eat cakes without also distri- 
 buting them to pommel poor, little, 
 puny, helpless boys in a corner to 
 make free with the property of others, 
 you would botli have escaped a beating, 
 and have been suffered, perhaps, even at 
 this moment, to remain in the school." 
 
 Now, although my aunt was, as I 
 conceive, singularly injudicious in urg- 
 ing the last of these motives in favour of 
 her argument, seeing I hated the school 
 D with
 
 ( 50 ) 
 
 with all my heart, yet the promise of full 
 immunity in future from all corporal 
 chastisement had such charms for me, 
 that I at once yielded myself a convert 
 to my aunt and to her new proverb. 
 
 Let it not, however, be thought that 
 my sage counsellor admitted my pro- 
 fession to be genuine upon too slight 
 a trial. Such suspicion had she of 
 the treachery of my memory and un- 
 derstanding, that she thought it right 
 to ascertain whether I actually knew 
 the words of the proverb ; and her dis- 
 may may be conceived, when she caught 
 me in the very fact of slipping in the 
 monosyllable " not," after the first " do ;" 
 so that I was within a hair of going to 
 school with the following maxim in my 
 mouth, " Do not at Rome as they do at 
 Rome;" a maxim unknown, I humbly 
 conceive, to either " Porch" or " Aca- 
 demy," and so very like the scriptural 
 maxim of" not following a multitude to 
 do evil," as not very easily to insinuate 
 
 itself
 
 ( *1 ) 
 
 itself amidst the fundamentals of large 
 communities. Indeed, the bias I had to 
 insert this " ?wt" was quite whimsical. 
 My aunt's patience was, in fact, near- 
 ly exhausted. At length, however, by 
 dint of daily repetition, and a few well- 
 applied bribes, I was considered as suffi- 
 ciently perfect in my lesson, and conse- 
 quently fit for school. 
 
 I trust my reader has kept in mind 
 that my aunt Rachel had not been con- 
 sidered as worthy of initiation into these 
 mysteries. Accordingly, when the morn- 
 ing arrived for my departure to a new 
 school, it is difficult to say which of the 
 two sisters most rejoiced at the circum- 
 stance. Winifred considered me to be 
 as safe under the guardianship of this 
 new principle, as if tied to her own apron- 
 string : Rachel conceived me to be 
 safer any where than at home. The 
 issue of the last experiment taught her 
 to hope that some practical antidote 
 would be furnished at school, for what- 
 D 2 ever
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 ever other mischievous principle I might 
 have the misfortune to carry along with 
 me. But herein, I presume to think, her 
 disposition to hope the best from every 
 thing betrayed her into a very capital 
 error. Though school-boys, like all other 
 communities, are likely to punish selfish- 
 ness for their own sake ; there are cer- 
 tain other vices so much less trouble- 
 some as to be infinitely more popular. 
 But I shall not anticipate what it is the 
 province of the historian to record in 
 the subsequent chapter. 
 
 CHAP.
 
 ( 53 ) 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 THE HISTORY OF A CONFORMIST. 
 
 1 HE histories of Non-conformists have 
 often employed the pens of the annalist 
 and biographer. In pity, therefore, to 
 an age perpetually demanding a change, 
 it is my intention to present them with 
 the perfectly novel history, of which the 
 motto at the head of this chapter is an 
 appropriate title. 
 
 Having bid adieu to my two aunts, I 
 soon found myself in a large circle of 
 new school-fellows. During my ride, I 
 had seriously reflected on the faults in 
 my conduct in the first school, and re- 
 solved strenuously to avoid them. " If 
 my aunt," said I to myself, "had felt, as 
 I have done, the personal results of 
 * taking care of Number One,' she would 
 D 3 nor 5
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 not, I am persuaded, have continued to 
 urge the proverb inculcating that duty as 
 strongly as she does. At all events, with 
 such experience of the consequences 
 which attend it, I cannot be expected to 
 extend to it the same unbounded reve- 
 rence ; and, accordingly, I utterly for- 
 swear the use of it." 
 
 Now, it is obvious that nothing could 
 be more favourable to my adherence to 
 her second proverb, than this repugnance 
 to the first. As I hated the first for its 
 selfishness, so I valued the other for its 
 apparent good-nature. " ' Do as others 
 do!' Why," said I to myself, "in- 
 stead of hisses, and groans, and blows, I 
 shall be the most popular boy in the 
 school." Under the influence of this 
 spirit of accommodation, I entered the 
 school. 
 
 For a short period, I was satisfied to 
 act upon my new principle in a general 
 manner, merely putting myself into the 
 stream of the school, and contentedly fall- 
 ing
 
 ( 55 ) 
 
 ing down itsbroad and impetuous current. 
 During this time, I was frequently de- 
 lighted to hear the title of " good-na- 
 tured fellow" very liberally bestowed 
 upon me; and the only inconvenience 
 I felt from my spirit of conformity, was 
 the being made the general fag of the 
 school being always thrust from the fire 
 when any other person wanted a place 
 and suffering the penalty of all the faults 
 committed by the boys, though myself, 
 perhaps, wholly unconcerned in the com- 
 mission of them. This penalty, however, 
 became heavier every day; and, be- 
 sides, I began to say to myself, " This 
 is concession, not imitation this is do- 
 ing what others please, not what others 
 do this will never satisfy my aunt." 
 Accordingly, I resolved to act more 
 strictly in the spirit of the proverb. 
 
 The first endeavour, accordingly, was, 
 
 to find out a model for my daily life. 
 
 And it was natural enough to begin 
 
 with those easiest of imitation. There- 
 
 D 4 fore,
 
 ( 56 ) 
 
 fore, as doing nothing was far easier than 
 doing much, and doing wrong far easier 
 than doing right, I as naturally made 
 my selection from some of the idlest and 
 worst boys in the school. With these I 
 strictly allied myself; or, to speak more 
 correctly, I became a sort of " umbra," 
 or shadow, to them ; and after a short 
 time, it must be admitted, that my imi- 
 tation was very successful, and that I 
 did both as little and as wrong as most 
 of them. " Now," said I to myself, " I 
 * do at Rome as they do at Rome.' ' 
 
 Many were the not altogether indis- 
 putable practices which, in the capacity 
 of a conformist, I was obliged to adopt. 
 If an exercise, for instance, was given 
 out; sometimes a most convenient illness 
 seized us at the very moment, and the 
 medicines sent by the doctor were dex- 
 terously thrown out of the window: 
 sometimes an old exercise was vamped 
 up to suit the present exigency : some- 
 times a little boy was thrashed into the 
 
 execution
 
 ( V ) 
 
 execution of the task we were too idle 
 to perform. But these, our literary of- 
 fences, were by no means the greatest* 
 There was, in fact, scarcely any thing 
 right which we allowed ourselves to do; 
 and scarcely any thing wrong which 
 we judged it expedient to leave un- 
 done. This state of things was not, how- 
 ever, likely to last long. Our devices, 
 many of which were not a little inge- 
 nious, deceived the master for a time ; 
 and we escaped, for that period, with the 
 hearty contempt of all the boys of better 
 and higher feeling, of which there were 
 not a few in the school; but at last, by 
 the treachery of one of our body, a full 
 developement was made of all our delin- 
 quencies. 
 
 I will not stop to describe the cata- 
 strophe which followed the expulsion 
 of the worst offenders ; the punishing of 
 others; the eloquent lecture which the 
 master delivered from that line of Horace, 
 iC Imitator cs servum pec us," which he 
 D 5 chose
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 chose to interpret, " Imitators, a drove 
 of slaves ;" and the still more forcible 
 lesson which he founded upon the very 
 text of Scripture formerly quoted, "Thou 
 shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." 
 I must say, I never felt such respect for 
 the master before. I was, happily, too 
 vounsr to be considered and dealt with 
 as one of the ringleaders ; and, conse- 
 quently, remained at school, to ruminate 
 on past events and to resolve for the 
 future. 
 
 Now, it maybe thought, by some of my 
 most precipitate readers, that I at once 
 arrived at the conclusion that the prin- 
 ciple of imitation was false, and that 
 I as rapidly abjured and abandoned it. 
 But he who so reasons has, I am disposed 
 to think, more good-nature than ac- 
 quaintance with me or with human na- 
 ture. It is very easy as the poet, speak- 
 ing of a somewhat similar descent, has 
 long since said to " descend ;" but to 
 " ascend again" is just as difficult. And, 
 
 among:
 
 ( 59 ) 
 
 among the various contrivances adopted 
 by those who pretend to be labouring up 
 the ascent, is that of taking, instead of 
 the direct, straight path, any path, how- 
 ever circuitous or remote, which may be 
 conceived to lead to the same point. It 
 was thus in my case. I determined, not at 
 once to abandon all imitation, not to 
 study my duty in the Bible and honestly 
 endeavour to discharge it, but to imitate 
 only those who were better than myself. 
 And, as the reader, perhaps, may be dis- 
 posed to esteem this a very wise resolu- 
 tion, T will fully and candidly reveal to 
 him the consequences of it. 
 
 In the first place, then, I chose a 
 single boy as a model ; but as he, though 
 possessed of many good qualities, had 
 also one or two bad ones, I naturally 
 took the bad with the good ; and falling, 
 as it was likely, a good deal below my 
 model, I soon became possessed, toge- 
 ther with a part of his excellencies, of 
 
 every
 
 ( 60 ) 
 
 every one of his blemishes and defects, 
 upon an enlarged scale. 
 
 I next tried the plan of choosing 
 more than one model ; but the same 
 process took place, and by degrees I 
 found myself possessed in full of all 
 their faults. If any one had compared 
 me with the persons whom I imitated, 
 I wore something of the air of a ser- 
 vant dressed out in his master's worst 
 clothes. 
 
 But even this was a small part of the 
 evil: I found that every act of imitation 
 tended to degrade the mind. I became 
 a coward ; and, when my safety required 
 it, a liar. Under these circumstances, I 
 was not likely to hold a very high place 
 in the estimation of the boys. I was, 
 in fact, a sort of foot-ball to the whole 
 community. Innumerable were the 
 tricks they pla}'ed upon me. My blood 
 even now runs cold when I call to mind 
 4>ne of them. Boys are remarkably fond, 
 
 without
 
 ( 61 ) 
 
 without precisely going through the rites 
 of baptism, of bestowing a new name, 
 vulgarly called a nick-name, upon all 
 the rest of the world. But, as they had 
 so often presumed upon my conformity 
 as to know that I would patiently suffer 
 every possible indignity, they determin- 
 ed, in my particular case, when they be- 
 stowed this new name, not to dispense 
 with any part of the ceremony ; but, on 
 the contrary, to administer it after the 
 manner of the ancient oriental churches. 
 Accordingly, I was conducted to the 
 river; and having received, from the 
 concurrent voices of about a hundred 
 attendants, the very honourable appel- 
 lation of " Sneak," I was just about to 
 be plunged, in a December morning, 
 into the water, for the necessary ablu- 
 tion, when, happily, one of the ushers 
 came to my rescue. 
 
 I need scarcely add, that, under cir- 
 cumstances such as these, my situation 
 was daily becoming more irksome and 
 
 intolerable,
 
 ( 62 ) 
 
 intolerable. Dejected and ashamed, 
 with no friends but one or two to whom 
 my suppleness was convenient, I dragged 
 on a miserable existence. And such an 
 existence I should probably have conti- 
 nued to dragon and that without even 
 the smallest interruption till this very 
 moment, if I had not unexpectedly one 
 morning received the following letter 
 from my aunt Rachel. 
 
 But, before I give the letter, let me 
 briefly state the history of it. It seems 
 that her sister had for some time pro- 
 foundly kept the secret of my discipline 
 and preparation for school ; but, hear- 
 ing nothing to the contrary, and con" 
 jecturing, according to the well-known 
 and much approved maxim of the world, 
 that " no news is good news," my aunt 
 Winifred could no longer contain her 
 joy, and exultingly instructed her sister 
 by what principle she had qualified me 
 for my new situation. Rachel said no- 
 thing, but shook her head, much in the 
 
 same
 
 ( 63 ) 
 
 same way in which Cassandra, when pre- 
 dicting the tall of Troy, may be supposed 
 to have shaken hers. And she shook it 
 with precisely the same success. Her 
 sister smiled at her incredible simplicity; 
 and, in that exuberance of good-humour 
 which success often inspires even in 
 very cross people, she said gaily, " Well, 
 sister, we shall see." 
 
 But, if my aunt Rachel was not so 
 profuse as to waste her arguments where 
 they were not likely to do any good, 
 she was too conscientious not to try them 
 where there was at least some hope of 
 success ; and, accordingly, that very 
 night, she sat up till twelve o'clock pen- 
 ning the letter to which I have advert- 
 ed, and a small part of which, out of my 
 great love to the public, I shall now 
 copy for their benefit. I extract only 
 a small part of it, because the rest of 
 the foolscap sheet was occupied with 
 details of family occurrences, and, espe- 
 cially
 
 ( 64 ) 
 
 cially, with half a dozen incidents cal- 
 culated to increase my love for my 
 aunt Winifred a point which, I must 
 say, my dear aunt Rachel never neg- 
 lected to labour. After this exercise of 
 her charity and tenderness, the lette-r 
 thus proceeded : 
 
 " I was reading, my dear boy, a few 
 days since, a striking story told by a 
 traveller who had visited the celebrated 
 Falls of Niagara. As he was standing 
 amidst the rocks at the head of this stu- 
 dendous fall, and watching wave after 
 wave, as it reached the point where it 
 was precipitated some hundreds of feet 
 into the gulf beneath, he suddenly saw 
 a canoe with a single Indian approach- 
 ing the awful brink. The poor wretch 
 saw his danger ; struggled against the 
 stream for a few moments; and then, at 
 the very instant when he seemed to be 
 mastering his perils, instead of continu- 
 ing the struggle, with a sort of wild de- 
 spair
 
 ( 65 ) 
 
 spair calmly folded his arms upon his 
 bosom, left his canoe to drive with the 
 torrent, was harried over the edge, and 
 shivered to a thousand pieces in the 
 rocky gulf below. The story is awful. 
 But I could not help saying to myself, 
 when I had read it, Things as awful 
 take place in the world every day. Life, 
 my dear boy, with its customs, habits, 
 and amusements, is also a hurried and 
 tempestuous stream. The young set 
 sail upon it in their little barks; strug- 
 gle, perhaps, for a moment, with the 
 torrent ; then, when every eye is bent 
 upon them and confident of their suc- 
 cess, fold their arms on their bosoms, 
 drive with the stream, reach the fatal 
 brink, and sink to rise no more. Be- 
 ware, my dear Sancho, of getting into 
 the stream; beware of imitation; beware 
 of ' doing as others do.' The only safe 
 rules of conduct are to be found in the 
 Bible: the only safe model of conduct 
 is He who was ' without spot and with- 
 out
 
 ( 66 ) 
 
 out blemish.* Love, my boy, but do 
 not imitate 
 
 " Your affectionate aunt, 
 
 "RACHEL ." 
 
 Now it so happened, that, when I re- 
 ceived this letter, I was lying, very ill 
 at ease indeed, under the shade of an oak 
 near the play-ground. I went imme- 
 diately and fetched a little Bible which 
 my aunt had given me; read several 
 chapters in the history of the life and 
 death of Christ; and was delighted to 
 find something in it so very different 
 from those whom I had hitherto been 
 imitating. Then I prayed to God for 
 the first time in my life, I believe, with 
 sincerity to make me good, to make 
 me independent, to make me a little 
 like my aunt Rachel, and altogether 
 like Him whom she was continually 
 striving and praying to resemble. 
 
 But as I did not persist in petitions 
 such as these, this feeling soon decayed. 
 
 I passed
 
 ( 67 ) 
 
 I passed a few years of misery and in- 
 significance in the school, arid was then 
 
 removed to prepare for college. But 
 
 my very many readers from the two uni- 
 versities will be justly o#encM : if I do not 
 put my university-history into a distinct 
 chapter ; and my profound reverence for 
 those learned bodies will not suffer me 
 willingly to offer them any offence. 
 
 Before, however, I close this chapter, 
 I have a few observations to offer, in 
 extenuation of those faults which I have, 
 in this chapter, so freely imputed to my- 
 self. It is not impossible that some of 
 the least charitable part of the world, 
 in reading the last pages of this history, 
 may have allowed themselves in a feeling 
 in some degree allied to contempt, for 
 the very unfortunate author of them. 
 Now it may, perhaps, tend to mitigate 
 this feeling, if they will call to mind the 
 not improbable fact, that they them- 
 selves perhaps belong no less to the 
 " servum pecus" of imitators than my- 
 self-
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 self. Independence, I am disposed to 
 think, is a plant of very rare growth in- 
 deed. Even that which bears the name, 
 is often little better than mere imitation. 
 The apparent substance is no more than 
 a shadow. In illustration whereof I beg 
 to tell * he following story. 
 
 On the broad breast of a mountain, in 
 a remote part of Hungary, a traveller 
 was confounded to behold an apparition 
 of a most terrific aspect. It was at least 
 four hundred feet high j had all the fea- 
 tures of a man ; carried in its hand a 
 massy club, which " ever and anon," it 
 swung around, to the infinite horror of the 
 spectator. Far from bearing any re- 
 semblance to those quiescent genii some- 
 times said to be imprisoned in a chest, 
 or in the Red Sea, by the hand of necro- 
 mancy, it exhibited the most astonish- 
 ing activity. The traveller, for instance, 
 no sooner moved a step to the right 
 or left, but he saw his tremendous 
 visitor, as it were in resentment of the 
 
 movement,
 
 ( 69 ) 
 
 movement, rush with hurried step across 
 the mountain. If the traveller ap- 
 proached the hill, the giant instantly de- 
 scended it, as though to meet him at its 
 foot. If, on the contrary, he retired from 
 the hill, he had the consolation of seeing 
 thegiant immediately re-ascend it. Many 
 saw the phantom, and all concurred in 
 regarding it as the most tremendous 
 spectre that had ever been suffered to dis- 
 cover itself to the pigmy inhabitants of 
 the world. None for a moment ques- 
 tioned its total independence of every 
 thing below. At last a celebrated philo- 
 sopher visited the mountain. After par- 
 taking, for a time, of the astonishment of 
 the other spectators, he set himself to 
 decipher the mystery, and actually dis- 
 covered that the spectre was the mere 
 image of himself, reflected by the rising 
 sun upon the face of the mountain. 
 How did all reverence for the phantom 
 ubsile ! How di d the credulous specta- 
 tors blush to discover that all its move- 
 ments
 
 ( 70 ) 
 
 ments were merely imitative ! that the 
 awful circles of his club were the re- 
 flected movements of a walking-stick ; 
 and the solemn nodding of his helmet, 
 the obscure image of a hat and wig put 
 in motion by the wind ! And now to 
 apply my story. I venture, then, to as- 
 sure my readers, that very much of what 
 they are pleased to call independence 
 or originality in themselves or others, 
 is precisely akin to this shadowy visitor 
 that it is a mere phantom a " dream 
 of a dream, and shadow of a shade;" 
 that man is but the mere creature of imi- 
 tation that B is too often the mere 
 shadow of A, and C of B, and Z of some 
 or all of the personages who precede 
 or surround him ; and that, after all, 
 nothing is more rare than a person who 
 honestly and independently studies the 
 word of God, to learn his duties as a man 
 and as a Christian ; and then proceeds 
 as honestly and independently, to dis- 
 charge those duties. 
 
 H
 
 ( 71 ) 
 
 If any reader of this volume is able, 
 as I sincerely hope he may, securely, 
 though humbly, to lay his hand upon 
 his heart, and say that he is such a man ; 
 all that I will say, in return, is, " Let 
 me have that man for my bosom friend." 
 
 And now for the promised chapter, or, 
 at least, for the preface to it, 
 
 CHAP.
 
 ( 72 ) 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 TRAINING TOR COLLEGE. 
 
 AS my aunt's last experiment did not is- 
 sue inany violent catastrophe or, in other 
 words, as I was neither beaten nor expel- 
 led for mv rigid adherence to her maxim 
 she saw nothing in the result of her pro- 
 ject which was calculated to undeceive 
 her as to its intrinsic value. Nor was I 
 myself disposed to undeceive her. My 
 long habits of conformity and concession 
 made it much more easy and natural for 
 me to attend to her, than to require her 
 to attend to truth and right reason. 
 Therefore, in spite of what experience 
 might have taught me, 1 adhered to pro- 
 verb's, and to every species of oracular 
 sentence, with almost as much devotion 
 as my aunt herself. If she might be 
 
 esteemed
 
 ( 73 ) 
 
 esteemed a knight-errant in the cause, 
 I might without presumption pretend to 
 the dignity of squire; and was scarcely, 
 I venture to say, less true to my charac- 
 ter than my illustrious namesake and pre- 
 decessor. So that when the time for go- 
 ing to college approached, I cordially 
 concurred with her in thinking that 
 nothing could be more essential to my 
 right conduct there, than the judicious 
 selection of half a dozen of these sage 
 maxims by means of which I, perhaps 
 somewhat ambitiously, hoped to exhibit, 
 in the short space of a three years' resi- 
 dence, the collected wisdom of many 
 centuries. 
 
 My aunt Rachel, indeed, would, if an 
 opportunity had been given her, have 
 made me familiar with a very d liferent 
 kind of wisdom. But then her sister al- 
 ways followed so closely and watchfully 
 upon her heels; she talked with so much 
 more of an oracular tone; and, more- 
 over, perpetually supplied aie with such 
 E salutary
 
 ( 74 ) 
 
 salutary cautions against the fanaticism, 
 &c. of her sister, that the mild, gentle 
 creature, had rarely the least influence 
 with me, except, indeed, when my aunt 
 Winifred was cross. At those moments, 
 it must be confessed, that I used always 
 to hide my cares in her bosom. But, as 
 few persons would be more attractive 
 (a case by no means uncommon with 
 the whole family of scolds, and, in itself, 
 a sufficient demonstration how much 
 better they might be if they would,) than 
 my aunt Winifred when she had a great 
 point to carry, I was not obliged very 
 often, at this period of my history, thus 
 to take refuge in the tenderness of 
 Rachel. And besides, her requisitions 
 were too high for the then forlorn state 
 of my mind. She required me to be 
 " sans pew-," as well as "sans reprockc" 
 which, however possible to a good or a 
 brave man, is quite impossible to a man 
 determined to " do at Rome as they do 
 at Rome." 
 
 But,
 
 ( 75 ) 
 
 But to return. The time was now fixed 
 for my departure. My aunt, by dint of 
 an extra cup of agrimony, a few addi- 
 tional turns on the broad sunny gravel 
 walk, and much mental communion with 
 the sages of antiquity, at length managed 
 to construct the following brief table of 
 maxims which I shall present to my 
 reader in the precise form in which she 
 delivered it to me. 
 
 " MORAL CODE, 
 
 " FOR 
 
 " MY NEPHEW SANCHO AT COLLEGE, 
 
 " COLLECTED 
 
 " FROM THE STORES OF ANCIENT AND MO- 
 " DERN WISDOM, 
 
 ' ; BY WINIFRED . 
 
 " On Religion. 
 " 1. c Many men many minds.' 
 " 2. * Seeing is believing.' 
 ' 3. ' Never too late to repent.' 
 " 4. ' The nearer the church thefar- 
 tlier from God.' 
 
 E 2 " On
 
 ( 76 ) 
 
 " On Character. 
 
 " 1. ' Nullum numen abest si sit pru- 
 dentia;' or, as my aunt translated it, 
 * Where prudence is, no divinity is ab- 
 sent.' 
 
 " 2. ' An honest man's the noblest 
 work of God.' 
 
 " On the Choice of Friends. 
 
 " 1. ' A warm enemy makes a warm 
 friend.' 
 
 " 2. * He is nobody's enemy but his 
 
 My aunt, meaning this code to descend 
 as a sort of heir-loom to our remotest 
 descendants, was at the pains of having 
 it engrossed in double jet ink, upon the 
 cherished skin of a family donkey which 
 had recently died, by the parish school- 
 master; and, having moreover set the 
 family name and seal to it, she consign- 
 ed it with much solemnity to my keep- 
 ing. 
 
 But let it not be thought that this con- 
 signment
 
 ( 77 ) 
 
 signment was made without the addition 
 of that in which my aunt conceived at 
 least one half of the value of the gift to 
 consist. With this code she gave her 
 own comments upon it. And that such 
 an important document should not be 
 trusted in successive ages to the trea- 
 cherous medicum of tradition, I shall 
 now insert it in this imperishable vo- 
 lume presenting to the world, at once, 
 my aunt's lecture, and my occasional 
 observations and interruptions as she 
 recited its several parts. 
 
 " My dear Sancho," she said, " I have, 
 chiefly J will own out of compliment to 
 general opinion, begun with the subject 
 of religion. You know, that I have never 
 maintained any very precise or rigid, 
 opinions upon that subject ; and the 
 maxims J shall give you are meant ra- 
 ther to restrain you from excess on this 
 subject, than to rouse you to any parti- 
 cular warmth of feeling." 
 
 " Then, my dear aunt," said I, "pray 
 E 3 be
 
 ( 78 ) 
 
 be kind enough at once to get rid of thi^ 
 superfluous part of the code. I do as- 
 sure you, that I am in no danger upon 
 this point. Far from having any ten- 
 dency to excess in religion, I scarcely 
 remember ever to have had a religious 
 feeling in the whole course of my life." 
 
 " My boy," she answered, " when 
 will you learn prudence? You may, as 
 yet, have had no such feelings; but, in 
 this highly enthusiastic age, it is by no 
 means improbable that you may be 
 thus tempted ; and, therefore, take these 
 maxims as a sort of dead weight to 
 hang round the neck of rising fanaticism. 
 Their value for this purpose is incalcu- 
 lable. Should von be leaning, for in- 
 stance, to any particular modification of 
 religion what better corrective than 
 the truth ' many men many minds?' 
 Should you, again, be tempted to receive 
 any of the popular doctrines, most mis- 
 chievously countenanced by the Church 
 of England, about ' faith' what more 
 
 powerful
 
 ( 79 ) 
 
 powerful antidote than the maxim see- 
 ing is believing?' If in danger of reli- 
 gious melancholy you ma}' at once de- 
 fer the consideration of all topics, with- 
 out limit, on the authority of the third 
 important saying, that * it is never too 
 late to repent.' And, if seduced into 
 any very puritanical strictness about 
 attending the church, or embracing its 
 bigoted creeds you may at once escape, 
 by remembering, that ' the nearer the 
 church, the farther from God.' 
 
 I confess, that I was not a little start- 
 led at the boldness of some of my aunt's 
 positions. I, moreover, remembered that 
 a part of the pique expressed in them, 
 against the Bible and the Church, might 
 be referred to two causes ; first, to my 
 aunt Rachel's so cordially reverencing 
 the Bible; and, secondly, to the clergy- 
 man of the village, as honest a creature 
 as ever lived, being in the vexatious 
 habit of weekly dealing out such plain, 
 pointed, pithy sermons, that my aunt Wi- 
 E 4 nifred,
 
 ( 80 ) 
 
 nifred, every Sunday evening, warmty 
 protested " every one of them must be 
 preached at her." But, however, all the 
 sentiments stated above were conveyed 
 in maxims of such acknowledged cele- 
 brity, that it was impossible for a mo- 
 ment to dispute them. She, accord- 
 ingly, thus proceeded in her very salu- 
 tary lecture. 
 
 " Sancho," she said, " I have passed 
 on from religion to general character; 
 and have given you, in this department, 
 two maxims which mean much the same 
 thing. But could I have found a volume 
 of maxims, to teach you the paramount 
 value of ' prudence,' I would gladly 
 have introduced them. ' Prudence,' 
 my boy, is the religion of this world. 
 And I am free to say, that having this, 
 I do not see the need of very much be- 
 sides." 
 
 Now, here again I was not, in the 
 smallest degree, disposed to question my 
 aunt's accuracy. If, indeed, she had in 
 
 this.
 
 ( 81 ) 
 
 this place substituted for the word 
 " prudence" what she really meant by- 
 it, namely, " worldly policy," I might, 
 perhaps, have hesitated for a moment. 
 But who could question whether pru- 
 dence, properly so called, was a good 
 thing? And, admitting this, of all peo- 
 ple in the world, my aunt was, perhaps, 
 best entitled to be heard as a lecturer, a 
 final authority, a " suprema lex" upon 
 this particular subject. She herself was 
 that quality embodied I firmly believe 
 that, as far as respected her own in- 
 terest, so inexorably true was she to 
 these darling maxims that she scarcely 
 ever was guilty of an act of imprudence 
 in the whole course of her somewhat 
 protracted life. Again she resumed her 
 discourse. 
 
 " The two last maxims," she said, 
 " respect the choice of friends ; and they 
 need no comment. Strong alliances are 
 best wrought out of strong passions; jus^ 
 as strong chains must be forged in a hot 
 E 5 fire,
 
 ( 82 ) 
 
 lire. And he who is ' no one's enemy 
 but his own,' must be best calculated 
 to become a friend to every other 
 person." 
 
 My aunt said no more, but took 
 (which in her case was always both a 
 cause and a consequence of joy) an 
 enormous pinch of snuff at either nos- 
 tril, gave me her hand with an inde- 
 scribable look of self-complacency, and, 
 majestically quitting the room, left me, 
 I presume, to meditate upon the incal- 
 culable value of such a counsellor, and of 
 such counsels. But, as she gave me no 
 express injunctions as to the nature of 
 my immediate employment, instead of 
 proceeding to meditate, I ventured to 
 follow my own inclinations, and, accord- 
 ingly, hurried away to break in a pointer- 
 puppy for next September. In which 
 occupation, however, I think it but just 
 to acknowledge, that I found several of 
 my aunt's maxims of incredible ad van* 
 tage; and, in the fulness of my satisfac- 
 tion
 
 ( 83 ) 
 
 tion at the moment, I could not help 
 exclaiming, more than once, " If so 
 good for pointers, how very good must 
 they be for men !" 
 
 I have forgotten to say, that for the 
 three months which preceded my re- 
 moval to college, my aunt Rachel had 
 been confined to her room with an at- 
 tack of rheumatism. This circumstance 
 was wonderfully convenient for her sis- 
 ter's plans. For, apprehending many evil 
 consequences from our coming in con- 
 tact, she persisted, in spite of doctor, 
 nurse, and patient, in calling the rheu- 
 matism a species of fever and, of course, 
 out of tender regard to my very delicate 
 constitution, in prohibiting my ap- 
 proach to the scene of a contagious 
 disorder. Accordingly, I left home for 
 the university, without seeing my aunt 
 Rachel. Often has she since told me 
 what a pang this cost her. But her suf- 
 ferings little occupied me at the moment. 
 My habit, at that period of my life, 
 
 thanks
 
 ( 84 ) 
 
 thanks to aunt Winifred's maxims, was 
 to think of no one's pangs or pleasures 
 but my own. 
 
 Early in October, I set off for college, 
 where those, who have no such repug- 
 nance to an university life as to prevent 
 their following me, will find me in the 
 next chapter. 
 
 CHAP,
 
 ( 85 ) 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 A MORNING IN COLLEGE. 
 
 ON as bright a morning as ever shone 
 upon the cloistered windows of an uni- 
 versity quadrangle, I opened my eyes in 
 a cot of six feet by two and a half, where 
 I had slept most profoundly for eight 
 hours. I naturally lay in bed a short 
 time, to meditate upon my new circum- 
 stances. I was possessed of rooms, of a 
 well-replenished purse, and of personal 
 independence, for the first time in my 
 life. Nor was this all. It has been 
 said, that no human figure can, by the 
 utmost exertions of art, be so constructed 
 as to stand without the addition of some 
 sort of fulcrum or prop. How much 
 less, then, can the moral man be ex- 
 pected to stand erect, amidst the storms 
 
 of
 
 ( 86 ) 
 
 of the world, without certain fixed rules 
 or principles of action. But, then, such 
 was my singular good fortune, that I 
 was put in possession also of these. Irv 
 my trunk lay the " code" of my aunt 
 nothing less than the condensed wisdom, 
 not only of her life, but of many lives not 
 less illustrious ; and, according to the 
 strict letter andspirit of which, I proposed 
 to begin, to continue, and to end my 
 university career. Now, all these cir- 
 cumstances presented fruitful topics 
 for meditation. But, however attractive, 
 they had not power long to detain me 
 from rising to put my principles and 
 privileges to the proof. I accordingly 
 dressed, seated myself at my breakfast 
 table, and entered, with much composure 
 and self-gratulation, upon the functions 
 of a college life. And I must say, that 
 the debut was remarkably favourable to 
 all my aunt's schemes. In the general 
 devotion of all around to my particular 
 convenience, appetites, and wishes, ex- 
 pressed
 
 ( 87 ) 
 
 pressed or unexpressed, I found much 
 to encourage me in that intense devo- 
 tion to self which it was the object of 
 her maxims so zealously to inculcate. 
 Perhaps, indeed, there is no situation 
 in life in which a man is more com* 
 pletely at once the centre and circum- 
 ference of his own sphere of being than 
 in college. I would beseech certain 
 comely, sleek, rosy, unruffled persons 
 in jet black, still to be found meander- 
 ing about the courts or walks of our 
 universities, to remember this simple 
 truth. 
 
 After a little more musing, I deter- 
 mined precisely to reverse the order of 
 my aunt's maxims, and to begin by 
 acting upon those which regulated the 
 " choice of friends." Now, Diogenes 
 is said to have wandered about with a 
 lantern, hunting for an honest man. I 
 did not adopt the same expedient in 
 my search for a friend. On the con- 
 trary,
 
 ( 88 ) 
 
 trary, I entered the common hall at the 
 sound of a bell at two o'clock, in the 
 full confidence, that, not merely a din- 
 ner, but a friend would be there pro- 
 vided for me. Nor were my hopes dis- 
 appointed. At one table sat the juniors 
 of the college, and at another, placed 
 transversely, the seniors. I happened 
 to be seated near the last-mentioned 
 body, and soon discovered, if my aunt's 
 theory on the strong passions was accu- 
 rate, abundant ingredients, even in this 
 division of the hall, for all the loftiest 
 desires and purposes of friendship. The 
 dinner, the weather, the state of the 
 world, and especially of that most im- 
 portant part of it the college; the dan- 
 gers of the church, the prevalence of 
 sectarism, the new manufactory for fan- 
 sticks ; one and each of these topics 
 sufficed to call out some of those pe- 
 culiar and somewhat intense order of 
 expressions in which the strong passions 
 
 appear
 
 ( 89 ) 
 
 appear commonly to delight: " Here," 
 said I, " if my aunt's principle be true, 
 is at once a community of friends. Was 
 ever person so fortunate?" 
 
 But it was natural for me to search 
 for my associates among those of my 
 own age. And accordingly I descend- 
 ed from these higher regions to the mi- 
 nores gentes of the lower table. And 
 I beg to certify, that, whether imitative 
 or indigenous, the strong passions pre- 
 vailed sufficiently in every quarter of 
 our table to exclude all necessity of 
 looking higher for friends. 
 
 But here I must pause for a moment, 
 both to explain myself and to vindicate 
 the universities of these favoured realms. 
 If any one expects to find in me a rude> 
 assailant of these learned bodies, or in- 
 deed any thing but their friend and 
 champion, he is egregiously mistaken. 
 J knew them both some half century 
 since I love them both and although 
 I do conceive them even now suscep- 
 tible
 
 ( 90 ) 
 
 tible of much improvement, especially 
 as to the religious and professional edu- 
 cation of their youth, I still consider 
 them as the best guarantees, under Pro- 
 vidence, for the learning, the religion, 
 and the welfare of the country. Far, 
 very far, be it from me, therefore to join 
 hands with those rude innovators who 
 would, in despair of her resuscitation by 
 a gentler process, hew the Alma-mater to 
 pieces, cast her into the fiery kettle of 
 reform, and pronounce over her certain 
 incantations in a broad Scotch dialect of 
 much imagined efficacy in such cases. 
 All intemperate assaults upon our col- 
 leges and halls are to be met by a con- 
 fident appeal to the thousands of good 
 and great men who have issued, and 
 are perpetually issuing, from their gates. 
 All such unmeasured hostility will mere- 
 ly provoke the hallowed indignation of 
 multitudes, who have there first stooped 
 to drink the cool stream of science 
 there first wandered in the groves of philo- 
 sophy
 
 ( 91 ) 
 
 sophy there, especially, first learned 
 to worship the God of their fathers; first 
 learned their guilt, and bowed before the 
 cross of a crucified Saviour ; first learned 
 their weakness, and cast themselves upon 
 the strength and goodness of God. With 
 the enemies, then, concealed or avowed, 
 of these illustrious bodies, Idesire to have 
 neither part nor lot. But if there be any 
 loving these groves of learning and wis- 
 dom like myself, who are disposed gently 
 and reverently to address the sages who 
 watch over them, and to call upon 
 them to add to " their sound learning," 
 somewhat more of" religious education," 
 I join hand and heart with these friendly 
 monitors. I supplicate our instructors 
 to hear and obey these salutary moni- 
 tions; and I call upon God, wherever 
 there is a single spot as yet lighted only 
 by the dim and perishable star of human 
 science, to shed upon it the holier lustre 
 of purity and devotion. Having, in the 
 
 honesty
 
 ( 92 ) 
 
 honesty of my heart, said thus much, I 
 return to my history. 
 
 Finding thestrong passions so predomi- 
 nant in all quarters of the college, as to 
 promise a large harvest of" warm friends," 
 I thought it desirable to search for some 
 person who should combine, with this 
 qualification for friendship, the second 
 property named by my aunt that of 
 " being no one's enemy but his own." 
 Accordingly I began my inquiries with 
 much diligence and circumspection. 
 My aunt abhorred precipitancy, and so 
 did I. 1 determined, therefore, to make 
 no selection till I had collected the most 
 overwhelming evidence upon the point. 
 At length, however, hearing almost the 
 whole college concur in the praise of one 
 individual, in calling him a fine fellow 
 a spirited fellow a real good fellow a 
 good-hearted fellow the best fellow in 
 the world and, finally, in declaring him 
 to be <c nobody's enemy but his own," I 
 
 ventured
 
 ( 93 ) 
 
 ventured to decide, and sought by every 
 possible overture to make this individual 
 my friend. And as he was a social, easy 
 sort of person, and, moreover, a prodigi- 
 ous lover of good eating and drinking, I 
 found less difficulty than I had anticipat- 
 ed in accomplishing so momentous an 
 object. Before a few weeks had elapsed 
 we were sworn intimates, and spent almost 
 the whole of our time together. And 
 as some of my readers may have never 
 had an opportunity of very closely ex- 
 amining the life of a person who is re- 
 puted to be " nobody's enemy but his 
 own," I shall very liberally give them, 
 without the smallest deduction, the full 
 benefit of my own experience. 
 
 In the first place, I soon perceived 
 that he scarcely ever opened a book. 
 Now, in this, he was plainly enough his 
 own enemy. But whether, in so doing, 
 he was not also the enemy of some 
 parent or guardian, who had sent him to 
 the university for the very purpose of 
 
 study j
 
 ( 94 ) 
 
 study ; I could not at that moment decide, 
 as I knew nothing of his peculiar circum- 
 stances. I will own, however, that I 
 could not help, even then, suspecting in 
 my better moments at least that, if no 
 enemy to God or man, he was evidently 
 no friend to either, or he would not have 
 consumed talents and time to no pur- 
 pose, which might have been employed 
 to the honour of God, and to the bene- 
 fit of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 In the next place, I soon discovered 
 him, especially when elated by wine, to 
 be enthusiastically given to every species 
 of riot and disturbance. What is classical- 
 ly termed a "row" was his glory. In this 
 case also, when I heard the casements of 
 a pauper shiver under his fist, or saw the 
 blood of a watchman trickle down his 
 cheeks, I certainly found no small diffi- 
 culty in conceiving him to be " no- 
 body's enemy but his own." 
 
 Moreover, I was not long in ascertain- 
 ing, that he paid no tradesman's bill 
 
 which
 
 ( 95 ) 
 
 which he found it possible to elude. 
 And it must be confessed, that neither 
 the tradesmen thus defrauded (especially 
 when they dated their letters from the 
 town gaol) or their wives and children, 
 ever had the generosity to concur in the 
 declaration that he was" nobody's enemy 
 but his own." 
 
 Finally, I perceived that his various 
 exploits were not accomplished without 
 a most enormous expenditure. And 
 what was my horror to learn, after a 
 short time, that this man of* strong pas- 
 sions" this " good hearted fellow" this 
 " best fellow in the world" this " enemy 
 to none but himself" was, in fact, the 
 only son of a widow living in a garret, 
 who had economised by abstinence, by 
 days and nights of patient toil, by rack- 
 ing and screwing her aged sinews, the 
 sum of money which he in a few months 
 had squandered at college. She was the 
 destitute widow of a clergyman shame 
 to the country there should be any such! 
 
 and
 
 ( 96 ) 
 
 and the wish of her heart had been to 
 
 hear her son proclaim to the world the 
 
 principles by which her husband had 
 
 lived well, and died triumphantly. Such 
 
 was her wish such her endeavour to 
 
 realize it and such the fruits which this 
 
 " real good fellow" paid back into the 
 
 bosom of his aged mother. On a visit 
 
 to London, I accidentally discovered his 
 
 house ; su rprised him in the company of his 
 
 distracted mother; and shall to my dying 
 
 day thrill when I call to mind the tone and 
 
 countenance with which she exclaimed, 
 
 " How keener than a serpent's tooth it is 
 To have a thankless child !" 
 
 I left the house in disgust, resolved 
 that, whatever might be the conse- 
 quence, I would never choose for my 
 friend the man who was said to be " no- 
 body's enemy but his own." And ex- 
 perience has served to confirm me in the 
 resolution. I have generally found such 
 persons " warm enemies" perhaps, but 
 certainly cold friends if men of kt strong 
 
 passions,"
 
 ( 97 ) 
 
 passions," yet of little real sensibility- 
 men, finally, who, with few exceptions, 
 thought, felt, schemed, lived, for them- 
 selves, and themselves alone. In short, 
 I have generally discovered reason in 
 such cases exactly to reverse the esti- 
 mate of the world, and to consider these 
 persons as in fact " every oiie's enemy 
 but their own." And here I shall con- 
 clude the chapter, in order to give the 
 reader time to determine whether he 
 ought not to come to the same conclu- 
 sion with myself. And, having decided 
 upon this point, I would entreat him 
 further to consider, whether he can em- 
 ploy for himself, or impart to his chil- 
 dren, a safer rule for the selection of 
 friends, than the old-fashioned saying of 
 my dear aunt Rachel " Take for your 
 friends those, and those only, who are the 
 friends of God." 
 
 CHAP
 
 ( 9* ) 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 A MERE HONEST MAN' IS NOT ' THE 
 NOBLEST WORK OF GOD.' 
 
 IT was scarcely possible that the events 
 recorded in the last chapter should not 
 have filled me with disgust for extrava- 
 gance, and all its train of associate vices. 
 But this was not their only, nor, as 
 my aunt would have said, their hap- 
 piest result ; they left me in the best 
 possible mood for carrying into effect 
 the prudential maxims contained in the 
 second department of her code. He 
 has a very limited acquaintance with 
 human nature, who does not know our 
 tendency, in avoiding one extreme, to 
 run into the opposite. Accordingly, I 
 sat down to the study of this division of 
 the code with the keenest possible ap- 
 petite,
 
 ( 99 ) 
 
 petite, and rose up determined, what- 
 ever might be my practice as to other 
 points, to become a prudent and an 
 honest man. 
 
 But, having before discovered the use- 
 lessness of all vague and general resolu- 
 tions, I determined to begin by accu- 
 rately ascertaining the meaning of the 
 words " honesty " and " prudence," as 
 employed in my aunt's code. And, after 
 nearly a day's severe study, 1 came to the 
 conclusion, that " prudence" meant " a 
 rigid attention to our own worldly in- 
 terest ;" and " honesty," the " exact pay- 
 ment of our debts." 
 
 As, moreover, I had previously felt 
 the inconvenience of being called into 
 action before I had proved my principles, 
 I resolved, in the present instance, to 
 prepare myself for action by much pri- 
 vate discipline. Accordingly, I accus- 
 tomed myself to hold long mental dia- 
 logues with " Prudence " and, having 
 an excellent portrait of my aunt sus- 
 F 2 peudcd
 
 ( ioo ) 
 
 pended over the fire-place, I used, in 
 order to give these dialogues more effect, 
 to personify Benevolence, or any gentle 
 virtue, myself; and to make her, by 
 means of her picture, personify Pru- 
 dence. Thus circumstanced, I was ac- 
 customed to hold dialogues with the pic- 
 ture, of which, I venture to say, Erasmus 
 himself need scarcely have been ashamed. 
 Such, indeed, was the sort of familiarity 
 I acquired in this sort of silent converse, 
 that at length, whatever might be the 
 occasion, I had nothing to do but to look 
 at the picture, and I seemed to hear all 
 that prudence and my aunt had to say on 
 the occasion. But it is time the reader 
 should be permitted to judge for himself 
 of the effects produced by these dialogues 
 upon my character and conduct. 
 
 In the first place, then, I was soon 
 very sensibly mortified by finding my- 
 self altogether without a friend. For 
 the fact is, that, in the eagerness of my 
 conformity to my aunt's maxim, I had 
 
 become
 
 ( ioi ) 
 
 become either too prudent to choose a 
 friend, or, if shosen, to commit myself to 
 him. Friendship requires unreserve 
 which prudence, in my aunt's sense of 
 the word, sternly prohibits. Friendship 
 must be generous mere prudence is 
 harsh. Friendship must be a little blind 
 and deaf whereas mere prudence is all 
 eye and ear for the faults of others. I re- 
 member, that, once or twice, when I was 
 in danger of being betrayed into some- 
 thing like candour and openness by the 
 frankness of a visitor, my aunt's picture 
 seemed, like the celebrated Madona at 
 Rome, almost to frown upon me for my 
 imbecility. 
 
 In the next place, I soon became such 
 an inveterate enemy to every thing new, 
 as sometimes to involve myself in the 
 most unpleasant consequences. Twice,for 
 instance, I nearly forfeited my life by my 
 pertinacious and romantic adherence to 
 the practices of antiquity first, by my 
 F 3 resolute
 
 ( 102 ) 
 
 resolute rejection, in a violent attack of 
 small-pox, to the then somewhat novel 
 remedy of inoculation; and, secondly, 
 by resolutely excluding, upon the au- 
 thority of the ancients, every breath of 
 air, in a fever, which required me to be 
 kept as cool as possible. I am, more- 
 over, firmly persuaded that I should 
 have been among those who condemned 
 Galileo to expiate upon the scaffold the 
 novel crime of asserting the earth to 
 move round the sun on this great prin- 
 ciple, that " old falsehoods are better 
 than new truths." 
 
 Nor was this all. Prudence, like 
 the lean kine of Egypt, soon devoured 
 every nobler principle. I ceased to 
 sympathise, to pity, to feel. If a case of 
 charity presented itself, I did but look at 
 the picture, and it said, or seemed to say, 
 in language not seldom employed by 
 my aunt, " A fool and his money are 
 soon parted*," " A penny saved is a 
 
 penny
 
 ( 103 ) 
 
 penny got ;" " Money makes the man ;" 
 and who could resist such accumulated 
 authorities ? 
 
 Perhaps, however, the reader may 
 prefer facts to statements on this par- 
 ticular subject. I shall therefore can- 
 didly record an incident in my history, 
 at this period, which fairly exhibits the 
 state of my own mind, and the mortifi- 
 cation to which it sometimes exposed me. 
 
 A society of Churchmen, who had, for 
 the last century, been engaged, among 
 other benevolent designs, in conveying 
 the knowledge of Christianity to the 
 Heathen, convened a meeting near my 
 aunt's mansion-house, to consider the 
 means of extending to about sixty mil- 
 lions of poor idolatrous Hindoos the 
 knowledge of Christianity. Now, what- 
 ever Religion and sound Wisdom might 
 urge upon so plain a point, mere Pru- 
 dence could not but be alarmed at an 
 attempt, however quiet, to disturb the 
 creed of sixty millions of people. Ac- 
 E 4 cordingly,
 
 ( 104 ) 
 
 cordingly, having entered the assembly, 
 I rose, and, to the admiration of my 
 aunt, made the following oration. 
 
 " I rise, Sir, to oppose the motion 
 which has been submitted to this assem- 
 bly, on the following grounds : 
 
 " In the first place, the Hindoos are 
 savages, and Christianity was not de- 
 signed for savages. 
 
 " In the second place, the religion of 
 the Hindoos is a very good religion 
 why, then, should we try to change it ? 
 
 " In the third place, their religion has 
 made them excellent slaves for centuries 
 why, then, teach them a religion which 
 is lit only for freemen ? 
 
 " In the fourth place, they are sunk so 
 very deep in vice and misery that it is 
 impossible to release them from it why, 
 then, attempt it ? 
 
 " In the fifth place, who would think of 
 beginning to convert foreign nations, till 
 we have converted every one of our own 
 people ? 
 
 Sixthlv,
 
 ( 105 ; 
 
 " Sixthly, when the time comes for 
 the general conversion of the world, 
 some sign will be sent from Heaven to 
 tell us of it. 
 
 " Such, Sir, are my reasons for re- 
 sisting the measure; and whoever pro- 
 motes it, and opposes me, is an enthu* 
 siast, and an enemy to the King and to 
 the Church of England." 
 
 Having made my speech, I will own that 
 I expected, as the very smallest return, 
 the loud acclamations of the astonished 
 assembly. But a most profound silence 
 ensued ; till a clergyman, who, as I then 
 thought, looked old enough to know 
 better, arose, and thus addressed the 
 assembly : 
 
 " Instead, Sir, of replying "directly to 
 the reasonings of the speaker who has 
 preceded me, I will simply put another 
 case, and request his decision upon it. 
 Suppose, instead of the present assem- 
 bly, a thousand Peruvians convened on 
 the banks of the Amazon, to take into 
 F 5 consideration
 
 ( 106 ) 
 
 consideration a supplication from the 
 nations of Europe to supply them with 
 that bark of Peru which is the only 
 known antidote for a very large class of 
 our diseases. And conceive, if you will, 
 the preceding speaker, who, I am sure, 
 vould be happy to undertake the em- 
 bassage, to be the advocate for these fe- 
 verish and aguish nations to the only 
 possessors of this antidote. Imagine 
 him to arise amidst the tawny multitude, 
 and, with much feeling and emphasis, to 
 state, that at least sixty millions of peo- 
 ple depended upon their determination 
 for health and life. At once, 1 am per- 
 suaded, the cry of that multitude would 
 interrupt the pleadings of the orator, 
 and one, and all, would exclaim, ' Give 
 them bark! give them bark! and let not 
 an European perish, whom it is possible 
 for a Peruvian to save.' Thus far all 
 would be well. But conceive, instead 
 of the assembly being permitted to act 
 upon this benevolent decision, some Pe- 
 ruvian,
 
 ( 107 ) 
 
 ruvian, of an age in which the preva- 
 lence of policy or mere prudence over 
 justice and benevolence is more intelli- 
 gible and pardonable, to arise, and thus 
 to address his countrymen : 
 
 " ' Peruvians, you are far too precipi- 
 tate. Consider, I beseech you, the cha- 
 racter and circumstances of the persons 
 for whom this privilege is demanded. 
 
 " ' In the first place, they are civilized 
 nations they read and write ; they 
 sleep in beds, and ride in coaches; they 
 wear coats and trowsers who, then, will 
 say that bark is meant for such persons 
 as these ? 
 
 " 'In the second place, their fevers and 
 agues may have many excellencies with 
 which we are unacquainted why, then, 
 attempt to cure them ? 
 
 " ' In the third place, these* fevers and 
 agues assist exceedingly to thin their 
 armies why, then, strengthen them, 
 merely to destroy ourselves ? 
 
 " 'Fourthly, these fevers and agues are 
 
 so
 
 ( 108 ) 
 
 so deep seated and violent, that it is im- 
 possible to cure them why, then, at- 
 tempt it ? 
 
 " ' In the fifth place, who would think 
 of curing foreign nations, till we have 
 cured all the sick in Peru ? 
 
 " * Sixthly, when the time comes for the 
 general cure of fevers and agues, I have 
 no doubt that the Great Spirit will give 
 us some sign from the mountains. 
 
 " ' Such,Peruvians, are my reasons for 
 opposing the wish of the speaker j and 
 whoever promotes it, or opposes me, is 
 a madman, and an enemy both to the 
 Incas and the Great Spirit.' 
 
 " Now, then," continued the old cler- 
 gyman, " supposing the Peruvian ora- 
 tor thus to reason, I should be glad to 
 know by what answer that young gen- 
 tleman would repel his arguments." 
 
 He then, to my infinite horror, sat 
 down, and left me with the eyes of the 
 assembly fixed upon me, as if waiting 
 for my reply ; but not having any pre- 
 cisely
 
 ( 109 ) 
 
 cisely ready, I thought it best to be 
 taken suddenly ill, and to leave the 
 room. 
 
 I was not, however, so easily to get 
 rid of my speech and the reply to it. I 
 scarcely dared shew my face in the 
 county, where I was universally known, 
 for some time, by the name of " the 
 Peruvian." Indeed, almost every body 
 seemed to rejoice in my mortification., 
 except the immediate author of it. He 
 was one of the first persons who visited 
 me in college after my return from this 
 meeting, and, taking me very kindly by 
 the hand, he said, " 1 venture to hope 
 that this slight pang may save you from 
 many worse. And this it will do, if it 
 leads you to examine and reject the 
 principle on which I am <irisposed to 
 think your opinion is founded." 
 
 " That," said I, proudly, " I am by 
 no means likely to do; for it is nothing 
 less than the indisputable maxim, 'Nul- 
 lum numen abest si sit prudent ias' or, as 
 
 my
 
 ( no ) 
 
 my aunt translates it, ' Where prudence 
 is, no divinity is absent.' " 
 
 " With due deference," replied the 
 old gentleman, " both to the author and 
 translator of the maxim, I should rather 
 say, that Where policy is, no virtue is 
 present ; I am sure charity is not." 
 
 " Charity," said I, " you are to re- 
 collect, * begins at home.' " 
 
 " If it does," replied he, " it is not 
 unlikely, I fear, also to end there. Real 
 charity, my young friend, descends from 
 Heaven. Allow me to tell you a story. 
 One of the biographers of Arch- 
 bishop Usher tells us, that this prelate 
 was wrecked upon a very desolate part 
 of the coast. Under these circumstan- 
 ces, and in a most forlorn condition, he 
 applied for assistance to a clergyman of a 
 very prudent cast, stating, among other 
 claims, his sacred profession. The cler- 
 gyman rudely questioned the fact, and 
 told him, peevishly, that he doubted 
 whether he even knew the number of 
 
 the
 
 ( 111 ) 
 
 the Commandments. * Indeed 1 do,' 
 replied the Archbishop, mildly : ' there 
 are eleven.' 'Eleven?' answered the 
 catechist : ' tell me the eleventh, and I 
 will assist you.' 
 
 " ' Obey the eleventh,' said the Arch- 
 bishop, ' and you certainly will assist 
 me A new commandment give I unto 
 you, that ye love one another.' 
 
 " Now," continued my visitor, " this 
 eleventh commandment is worth a vo- 
 lume of mere prudential maxims. Re- 
 member this, and perhaps it will be 
 real prudence to burn all the rest." 
 
 " Perhaps it will," said I For the 
 truth is, he spoke so tenderly, and so very 
 like my aunt Rachel, and I had disco- 
 vered mere prudence and honesty to be 
 such unproductive and uncomfortable 
 qualities, that I was nearly as anxious to 
 try some other source of happiness as 
 my adviser to recommend the trial. 
 " Perhaps it will," then, said I. And, ac- 
 cordingly, no sooner was he gone, than I 
 
 determined
 
 ( 112 ) 
 
 determined upon the formal annihilation 
 of this second part of the code; and, 
 applying a pen-knife pretty resolutely 
 to this portion of the parchment, I had 
 soon the exquisite satisfaction of hearing 
 it hiss in the fire. Moreover, fearing the 
 fascination of my aunt's countenance, I 
 sent the very same evening for a limner 
 of considerable reputation, and engaged 
 him, by a few masterly touches, to get 
 rid of the afore-mentioned prudential, 
 cold, calculating cast which predomi- 
 nated in her portrait. And this being 
 accomplished, I further contracted with 
 him to throw something of an opposite 
 character into the mouth and eyes, by 
 which I might be stimulated, to kind- 
 ness. All which, I must add, he exe- 
 cuted to my perfect satisfaction so 
 that whoever shall compare that pic- 
 ture with any other of my aunt, which 
 still glitters in antiquated majesty upon 
 the walls of the family mansiou, will be 
 delighted to discover how successfully in 
 
 this
 
 ( 113 ) 
 
 this portrait, as in those of some other 
 persons, art has kindly supplied the de- 
 ficiencies, and remedied the defects, of 
 nature. 
 
 I think it well, however, to add, that 
 one of the evils arising out of this very 
 seducing property of the fine arts is, that 
 men are tempted to transfer it to the 
 sketches they make of their own mind 
 and character. But I love my readers 
 too well, not earnestly to beseech them 
 never, in such delineations, to borrow 
 the flattering pencil of the artist. And 
 that they may now, as they always ought 
 before they go to rest, sit to themselves 
 for a few moments, and, in so doing, 
 avail themselves of the above caution, 
 I will at once put an end to the 
 chapter. 
 
 CHAP
 
 '( 114 ) 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 THE WAY TO BE NO CHRISTIAN. 
 
 " JtvEAL charity, then," said I, repeat- 
 ing the old clergyman's words, " accord- 
 ing to this good man, descends - from 
 Heaven." 
 
 Here was thesis enough for a very ex- 
 tensive argument ; and I did not quit 
 the subject till I had come to a fixed re- 
 solution to devote myself to the study of 
 religion a subject which, as it will be 
 remembered, my aunt declared herself 
 to have noticed " only in compliment to 
 general opinion." 
 
 Now, it is but just to myself to con- 
 fess, that my resolution, on this occasion, 
 was not dictated by the same motive 
 with that of my aunt. I was by no 
 means in good humour with the world; 
 
 and,
 
 ( 113 ) 
 
 and, therefore, in no degree disposed to 
 pay any deference to its opinions. But 
 then, I was also violently out of humour 
 with myself and my way of life; and 
 this state of mind naturally prompted me 
 to seek my happiness in any new pursuit. 
 I will acknowledge that my recent dis- 
 appointments had for a moment shaken 
 my confidence in my aunt's opinions so 
 that her contempt for religion, perhaps, a 
 little exalted it in my esteem. But, if 
 these suspicions carried me thus far, they 
 did not lead me on to the desperate 
 length of disputing the worth of the 
 maxims on the subject of religion con- 
 tained in the code. Though I could 
 consent at the moment to abandon my 
 aunt, I could not at once take so tre- 
 mendous a leap as, simultaneously, to 
 abandon her and those proverbs which 
 I had valued perhaps more highly than 
 herself. Indeed, had not my nature 
 in itself abhorred precipitancy, the ac- 
 credited and much-admired maxim of 
 
 " looking
 
 ( 116 ) 
 
 ** looking before we leap," stood in the 
 way of all such sudden apostacy. I 
 adopted, therefore, the half measure of 
 studying the subject denounced by 
 my aunt, but of studying it by the light 
 of the maxims which she herself pre- 
 scribed. Duty to myself seemed to re- 
 quire thus much duty to my aunt to 
 allow no more. 
 
 My reader may now, therefore, if he 
 please, conceive me in my walks, in my 
 chair, in my bed, by day and by night, 
 endeavouring to thread the mazes of re- 
 ligious controversy with these mystical 
 clues in my hand. And possibly he can 
 predict the result of the attempt. But, 
 lest he should fail, I think it right very 
 faithfully to record it. 
 
 Now, in the first place, it is most cer- 
 tain that truth and error are not the 
 same thing that it is not indifferent 
 what opinions we embrace that the 
 high and holy God is not alike satisfied 
 with the mere fancies of man, and the 
 
 dictates
 
 ( H7 ) 
 
 dictates of his own hallowed word. And, 
 under the influence of these very obvious 
 truths, I was actually settling down to a 
 creed very like that which I had every 
 week thoughtlessly or incredulously re- 
 hearsed in church, when, as my aunt had 
 predicted, her first proverb, " Many men 
 many minds," came to the rescue of my 
 incredulity. " If," said I (very sagely, 
 as my aunt would have thought) to my- 
 self, " many men have many minds if 
 there are almost as many opinions as 
 human beings who can have any right 
 to decide between them ?" And although 
 it be true that the variety of opinions 
 cannot change the truth that the sun is 
 equally bright, although every beholder 
 should choose to deny that it shines 
 and that, although men have " many 
 minds," God has but one : as no one of 
 these palpable truths had the good for- 
 tune to be conveyed in a trite popular 
 maxim, they could endure no compe- 
 tition with the brief, pithy, pointed say- 
 ing*
 
 ( H8 ) 
 
 ing, " Many men many minds." In con- 
 clusion, as so many persons doubted, I 
 decided to add myself to the community 
 of doubters. Cheerless, indeed, was 
 the region into which I then entered. 
 "Shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon 
 it," and upon the unfortunate creature 
 who pitches his tent upon its cold and 
 barren mountains. But let us proceed. 
 Doubter as I was, there were moments 
 when the overwhelming evidence of re- 
 ligion when its correspondence with 
 the wants and sufferings of a poor fallen 
 creature when the mild and touching 
 eloquence of the sacred writings when 
 the glowing and awful . pictures of an 
 invisible world a little disturbed my un- 
 belief. But, at these moments, that 
 second brief maxim, " Seeing is believ- 
 ing," never failed to come to the aid of 
 the first, and to sustain its wavering au- 
 thority. " If," said I to myself, " we are 
 to believe only what we see, what can be 
 more evident than that all the scenes of 
 
 an
 
 ( H9 ) 
 
 an invisible world are but * airy no- 
 things," the heated visions of a distemper- 
 ed imagination? It might, indeed, have 
 occurred to me, that if we believe ex- 
 clusively what we see, our belief will be 
 confined to a very few points indeed. 
 The Indian, for instance, must not be- 
 lieve that there are countries where the 
 water hardens into ice the inhabitants 
 of the temperate zone must not ad- 
 mit that the sun continues above 
 the horizon of any country for more 
 than twenty-four hours every man, in 
 short, must peremptorily reject every 
 fact which occurs at a time, hour, or 
 place, that removes it from his ocular 
 observation. But here again, as these 
 plain truths were not so fortunate as 
 to be conveyed in any light, portable, 
 popular saying, they had little chance 
 with those which are thus fortunate; 
 and accordingly, even without eyes in 
 my head, I should have continued, I be- 
 lieve, to exclaim, " Seeing is believing." 
 
 It
 
 ( 120 ) 
 
 It may be thought that, with two such 
 powerful maxims at command, the rest 
 of my aunt's proverbs would be super- 
 fluous. But whoever is of this opinion, 
 is not well acquainted, I apprehend, with 
 the melancholy state of a sceptical mind. 
 Most of those who proclaim religion to 
 be false, have, nevertheless, occasional 
 suspicions of its truth. I have seen many 
 stout declaimers against fanaticism, who, 
 in sickness, or in danger, or even in the 
 dark, have discovered, likeTiberius in a 
 thunder-storm, very unequivocal sym- 
 ptoms of orthodoxy ; and I will freely 
 own myself to have been of this num- 
 ber. Sometimes, moreover, a pointed 
 sermon, cut a little deeper than it was 
 to the credit of my consistency to ad- 
 mit. It was in such circumstances that 
 I found a never-failing refuge in that 
 third maxim of my aunt, " It is never 
 too late to repent." " If," said I to my- 
 self, " I should chance to be wrong, I 
 may at least mend whenever I please." 
 
 Nor
 
 ( 121 ) 
 
 Nor must it be thought that the in- 
 sertion of ray aunt's fourth maxim in the 
 code was a mere work of supereroga- 
 tion. Scarcely any thing more endan- 
 gered my credulity than the services of 
 the Church of England. Their mild and 
 catholic spirit, their cheerful and affec- 
 tionate language, their lofty and al- 
 most awful simplicity, at times so laid 
 hold of the softer parts of my nature, 
 that I found myself insensibly bowing 
 my knees among her worshippers, and 
 addressing the God of my fathers in 
 the language they delighted to employ. 
 And what might have been the final in- 
 fluence of these formularies upon me it 
 is impossible to say, had not my very 
 dutiful memory continually suggested 
 to me the sentiment, " The nearer the 
 church the farther from God." By dint 
 of which very powerful maxim I easily 
 arrived at the conclusion, That all 
 churchmanship was hypocrisy; and that 
 the nobler the prayers the greater the 
 G certainty
 
 ( 122 ) 
 
 certainty of their being neither sin- 
 cerely offered, nor mercifully accepted 
 in Heaven. 
 
 And here let me do the Church of 
 my country the justice to say, that her 
 piety and her services are grievously 
 disparaged, and that, by many excellent 
 men. I know of no body of Christians 
 where, on the whole, more piety is to be 
 found. I know of none where the piety 
 is of a nobler cast. I know of no ser- 
 vices better calculated to chastise the 
 excesses, without chaining down the 
 free spirit, of devotion. One of the ex- 
 cellencies of the Church is, that the mo- 
 derate generally love her. Another is 
 this, that the immoderate usually con- 
 demn her. And a third, that her for- 
 mularies contain a body of truths nearer 
 to the opinions of all contending parties 
 than the opinions of those parties are to 
 each other ; and that, consequently, they 
 in a measure present a common centre 
 to the disputants of all ages and coun- 
 tries.
 
 ( 123 ) 
 
 tries. And when, to cheer my aged 
 eyes, I conjure up those visions of uni- 
 versal harmony in the Church of Christ 
 which many of my ancestors delighted 
 to contemplate, I can fancy no hands 
 which are better calculated to tie the 
 holy bands of universal union and love 
 than those of our mother the Church. 
 It is true that her venerable garment is 
 not without a few spots spots, I grieve 
 to say, inflicted by some of her un- 
 worthy children. But let them, in the 
 strength of their God, arise j let them 
 cleanse her from the smallest stain of a 
 secular spirit, of bigotry, or of indiffer- 
 ence which may cleave to her ; let her 
 be " brought to the King" in her own 
 spotless and holy robe; and many " vir- 
 gins" many a community of pure and 
 simple Christians, hitherto alienated 
 from her community, partly by preju- 
 dice, partly by the misconduct of her 
 professed friends shall "become her 
 G 2 companions,"
 
 ( 124 ) 
 
 companions," and shall " enter" with 
 her " into the King's palace." I may 
 not live to see the union; but my old 
 veins seem to beat with new life, when I 
 allow myself to contemplate, even at a 
 distance, the day in which my honoured 
 countrymen will all remember they are 
 " brethren," and no longer " fall out 
 by the way." 
 
 But I have digressed from the history 
 of what I was at that time to describe, 
 my present feelings. At the point of my 
 story where this digression took place, 
 nothing could be farther from my mind 
 than any such thoughts or desires. I 
 disliked Religion, and in the same degree 
 disliked the Church. 
 
 And here I close this chapter, in order to 
 give the reader an opportunity of asking 
 himself one of the two following questions; 
 
 1st, Whether his own religion does 
 not consist chiefly in bitter hostility to 
 the forms of the Church of England? 
 
 2d,
 
 ( 125 ) 
 
 2d, Whether it does not consist chiefly 
 in empty reverence for those forms ? 
 
 If the reader plead guilty to the charge 
 involved in the last of these questions, I 
 most affectionately beg to remind him 
 how studiously theChurch herself exposes 
 this error, and how zealously she repels 
 such heartless and unmeaning homage. 
 If, on the contrary, he plead guilty to 
 the former, 1 beg him to recollect, that 
 a hatred of form is just as much bigotry, 
 and just as little religion, as a mere at- 
 tachment to it.- And if, unhappily, he 
 should be displeased with this informa- 
 tion, all the revenge I will take is, to wish, 
 and to pray, that he may become as good 
 and as happy as the combined spirit and 
 form of the Church of England have a 
 tendency to render him. And happier 
 or better than this, I expect to see no 
 man on this side the grave. 
 
 G J CHAP
 
 ( 126 ) 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 AN EVENT ABOUT WHICH NO SCEPTIC 
 EVER DOUBTED. 
 
 xiOW long, without any change of cir- 
 cumstances, I might have continued in 
 the same cheerless state, or to what lower 
 depth of infidelity and wretchedness I 
 might have sunk, it is impossible to say: 
 but as I was one day sitting in my rooms, 
 in an arm-chair which was the favourite 
 scene of my musings, and was diligently 
 reading a celebrated work on " the hid- 
 den joys of free-thinking," an express 
 suddenly brought me the intelligence 
 that my aunt Winifred was dead. 
 
 Dead!" said I to the servant: "What! 
 suddenly, and without any warning? 
 
 " Dead!" he replied; "and, as my mis- 
 tress always said, ' it is a happy re- 
 lease. ' " 
 
 I asked
 
 ( 127 ) 
 
 I asked no more questions; but leaped 
 into a chaise, and proceeded direct to 
 the family mansion. But the comment 
 of the servant on the sudden death of my 
 aunt continued to sound in my ears. 
 The words he had used had, indeed, been 
 as often in the mouth of his mistress as 
 the bell chanced to toll in the parish ; 
 and what she had so liberally applied to 
 others, he thought fairly due to herself. 
 Familiar, however, as this saying was 
 to every member of her family, I never 
 seemed to have weighed the full meaning 
 of it before ; but now I found my at- 
 tention irresistibly drawn to it. " If," 
 said I to myself, " my poor aunt is gone 
 to heaven; it is indeed a ' happy release ' 
 to escape from a world such as this. If 
 she is even annihilated ; it is better not 
 to be than to be miserable. If, how- 
 ever, the Bible is true, and all my doubts 
 and all her doubts are ill founded; then 
 death may be very far from a * happy 
 release.' " 
 
 G 4 Surrounded
 
 ( 128 ) 
 
 Surrounded by the terrible visions 
 which this last supposition was likely to 
 call up, I almost wished myself religious; 
 and, at the moment, had I known the 
 prayer, " Lord, I believe: help thou my 
 unbelief," J do think that, between doubt 
 and conviction, I should have been 
 tempted to offer it. 
 
 When I arrived at home, the state of 
 things was by no means such as either 
 to raise my spirits, or to dissipate the 
 sort of terror with which 1 regarded my 
 aunt's fate. A sort of solemn awe 
 seemed to reign through the family. Not 
 a tear of affectionate sorrow appeared 
 to be shed by the servants. No poor 
 villagers came to inquire into the fate 
 of their benefactress. No officious at- 
 tendant on her sick or dying bed con- 
 veyed to the gloomy circle the cheering 
 intelligence of a single prayer she had 
 offered, of a single hope she had ex- 
 pressed, or of a single sign of inward 
 and unutterable peace and joy which 
 
 she
 
 ( 129 ) 
 
 she had made. No person, however 
 familiar with the page of inspiration, 
 dared at that instant to utter a wish, 
 " let my latter end be like hers." 
 
 It was scarcely possible for me not to 
 express a desire to see all that remained 
 of her who had been my earliest and 
 most constant friend. Otherwise, I will 
 freely own, that I should have been glad 
 to have escaped the spectacle. It is a 
 singular feature of the mind, that the 
 least religious persons are often the 
 most superstitious. The sailor, perhaps 
 amidst a volley of oaths, nails the propi- 
 tious horse-shoe to the mast. The solu- 
 tion of this fact probably is, that the man 
 of piety, whilst he believes in the exist- 
 ence of a world of spirits, feels himself to 
 be under the protection of that merciful 
 Being who controuls them all ; but the 
 irreligious man, though he believes little, 
 suspects much, and has nothing to op- 
 pose to his possible dangers. Be this, 
 however, as it may with regard to others, 
 C 5 certainly
 
 ( 130 ) 
 
 certainly few persons were more truly 
 superstitious and timid than myself. I 
 always shrunk from a scene of death ; 
 felt much more than I chose to confess 
 at the flight of what is called a * c coffin" 
 from the fire, or at the appearance of a 
 " winding-sheet" in the candle ; and 
 never failed to cross the church-yard 
 with a very wary eye, hurried step, and 
 palpitating bosom. The reader, then, 
 will not wonder that I felt the dislike I 
 have expressed to a visit to my aunt's 
 chamber. Perhaps this dread was in- 
 creased by my having lately perused, in 
 the works of some of the Port-Royalists, 
 the terrific history of the conversion of 
 their founder, Bruno; which I here re- 
 cord, for the benefit of persons unread 
 in their innumerable and immeasurable 
 volumes. 
 
 Bruno, it appears, had an intimate 
 fr'end, of a profligate character, of the 
 name of Raymond. Raymond suddenly 
 fell to the ground in a fit of apoplexy. 
 
 No
 
 ( 131 ) 
 
 No doubts were entertained of his being 
 dead : and he was accordingly borne, by 
 torch-light, in an open coffin, under the 
 covering of a pall, to his grave. Bruno 
 was, of course, among the mourners. 
 The chapel was hung with black, and 
 lighted by innumerable tapers. The an- 
 them of death began when suddenly, 
 
 says the annalist, the pall was slowly 
 lifted, the supposed corpse erected itself 
 on the bier, fixed its glazed eyes upon 
 Bruno, and, in the hollow voice of an- 
 guish, solemnly pronounced the awful 
 words " Justo judicio Dei appellatus 
 sum! Justo judicio Dei judicatus sum! 
 Justo judicio Dei condemnatus sum!" 
 and then, with a hollow groan of de- 
 spair, fell back to speak no more! 
 
 Now, it is very true that the authority 
 of this story is not remarkably good; but 
 very slight evidence of danger will satisfy 
 a coward ; and such, in the largest sense 
 of the word, had I the misfortune to be. 
 
 It is not easy, therefore, to conceive 
 
 the
 
 ( JS2 ) 
 
 the sensation of dread with which I heard 
 the door fasten that enclosed me in the 
 same room with the breathless body 
 of my aunt. Nevertheless, by that sort 
 of controul exercised over our senses bv 
 terrible objects, I felt my eyes irresistibly 
 fixed upon the countenance I had so 
 often watched, studied, feared. And, 
 though I saw nothing of those super- 
 natural horrors which serve to swell the 
 stories of superstition ; though my aunt 
 neither sighed from her coffin, nor arose 
 in it to address me ; yet I seemed to see 
 on her pale forehead a frown of deep 
 and unutterable despair, which spoke 
 terrible things to my soul. What would 
 I have given, at the moment, to disco- 
 ver any sign of peace or joy to hear 
 a voice which said, " To me, to die is 
 gain!" 
 
 I know of no circumstances in which 
 it is so difficult to be a sceptic, and in 
 which the truths of religion take such 
 easy and complete possession of the mind, 
 
 as
 
 ( 133 ) 
 
 as in the chamber of death. Who can 
 believe the prostrate ruin before us, to 
 be all that survives of man ? The plant 
 and the animal reach their maturity be- 
 fore they perish ; but the soul is plainly 
 only in the infancy of its powers, when 
 the body falls a victim to disease the 
 imagination has scarcely tried its wings; 
 the judgment is only beginning to ex- 
 ercise its powers ; the memory is con- 
 tinually adding to its stores; every 
 faculty, in short, is either developing 
 new powers, or accumulating fresh pos- 
 sessions. And can God have made such 
 a creature as man in vain ? Can he have 
 struck off from himself so bright a ray of 
 intelligence only to extinguish it in a 
 moment ? If not, then how monstrous is 
 scepticism, how reasonable is religion, 
 and how essential a Saviour to cancel the 
 faults of a creature at once so highly 
 endowed and so very deep in guilt ! 
 
 These, and many such reflections, hur- 
 ried through my mind in the few mo- 
 ments
 
 ( 134 ) 
 
 ments I passed in my aunt's chamber. 
 I will not say that they left me convinc- 
 ed of the truth of religion, but they dis- 
 posed me to believe that there was no 
 true happiness without it. 
 
 My first interview with my surviving 
 aunt was of the most painful nature. 
 Her sister had so strictly interdicted all 
 religious intercourse between us, and 
 my own growing gloom and severity had 
 so strengthened the barrier, that she 
 was completely a stranger to my opi- 
 nions. When we met, I said nothing ; 
 and she was, after a long silence, able 
 only to say, " We have both lost a friend, 
 Sancho : God grant that we may love 
 one another the better." I could see, 
 indeed, that many weighty subjects were 
 pressing on her mind ; but we had so 
 few opinions and feelings in common, 
 that all communication was very diffi- 
 cult between us. 
 
 It was not long, moreover, before I 
 discovered another obstacle to any such 
 
 intercourse.
 
 ( is* ) 
 
 intercourse. Upon reading her sister's 
 will, what was my astonishment and in- 
 dignation to find, that, in spite of every 
 pledge formerly given, she had left me 
 only a very moderate legacy, and my 
 aunt Rachel the bulk of her fortune ! In 
 the quickness of my resentment, I did 
 not fail to attribute this act of the one 
 sister to the policy and stratagems of the 
 other j and, accordingly, I determined 
 to revenge myself by unalterable silence 
 and chilling disdain. True it was that 
 my aunt looked most provokingly simple 
 and innocent that her heart seemed to 
 be absorbed by the loss itself, instead of 
 dwelling upon its consequences that 
 she discovered, in her manner at least, 
 none of the hatred said by the Roman 
 Annalist to be felt towards the injured by 
 those who have injured them. But what 
 of all this ? She was rich, and I was poor 
 and who could forgive such a mortal 
 offence ? 
 
 But as I am now entering upon a 
 
 period
 
 ( 136 ) 
 
 period of my history with every move- 
 ment of which my now only remaining 
 aunt was intimately connected, I reserve 
 the account of our mutual proceedings 
 for a new chapter. In the mean time 
 the reader will not fail to observe, that 
 the want of religion was, in my case, ac- 
 companied by none of the lofty qualities 
 with which the imagination of the irreli- 
 gious is accustomed to adorn it. Nor 
 could I ever, by the strictest examina- 
 tion, discover the smallest tendency in 
 irreligion to produce great or generous 
 qualities. The man who does not love 
 God, rarely fails intensely to love him- 
 self: and the mind cannot thus stoop 
 from the highest to the lowest object of 
 veneration, without a corresponding de- 
 basement. He who would be great, 
 must contemplate great objects: and 
 whilst the philosopher prescribes to 
 those who aspire to the sublime in con- 
 duct or literature, to present to them- 
 selves some " beau ideal," some shadowy 
 
 image
 
 ( 137 ) 
 
 image of perfection, the saint sees in his 
 God the Perfect Being of which phi- 
 losophy dreamt. In the shades of his 
 retirement, or on the steps of the altar, 
 he surrounds himself with Deity he 
 launches out into the depth of the Divine 
 perfections he becomes great, by gazing 
 upon Immeasurable Greatness he be- 
 comes, in a measure, " like" God, for he 
 sees him " as he is '. How little, on the 
 contrary, those become who take the op- 
 posite course, may be fully ascertained 
 by reading the following chapter. 
 
 CHAP.
 
 ( 138 ) 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 JOURNAL OF A SELFISH AND DISAP- 
 POINTED MAN. 
 
 1 HAVE promised the reader to ex- 
 hibit in this chapter an example of the 
 debasing influence of irreligion on the 
 character. Ashamed am I to say, that 
 the unfortunate creature to be thus ex- 
 hibited is myself. It so chances, how- 
 ever, that I am released from the over- 
 whelming task of delineating afresh my 
 own deformities, by having found, tied 
 up in a bundle of manuscript arguments 
 against Christianity, the following page 
 of a diary written at the period at which 
 this history has now arrived. The reader, 
 when he has examined this journal of 
 about twelve hours of my life, will not 
 fail to acknowledge my extraordinary 
 candour in thus presenting it to him. It 
 
 may
 
 ( 139 ) 
 
 may fairly, I conceive, have prefixed to 
 it the title which stands at the head of 
 this chapter. 
 
 " Eight o'clock. Awoke, if it can be 
 called awaking from that which is not 
 sleep Dream't all night of unpleasant 
 things fancied myself sitting in my own 
 carriage, which suddenly turned to a 
 dirty cart fancied Roger the butler 
 treading on my toes in his haste to make 
 a bow to my aunt Rachel fancied my- 
 self looking over the family title-deeds, 
 which changed in a moment into college 
 bills. 
 
 " Eight to nine. Tossed up and down 
 in my bed Could not find one single 
 comfortable subject to think about. 
 
 " Ten. Breakfasted alone The sun very 
 bright the birds very noisy both ex- 
 tremely troublesome Scolded Roger for 
 burning the toast. N. B. Roger never 
 does right Took clown my aunt Rachel's 
 picture from the wall in my study no 
 
 truth
 
 ( 140 ) 
 
 truth in physiognomy, otherwise aunt 
 Rachel's picture could not be so very 
 agreeable. 
 
 " Eleven o'clock. Read from eleven to 
 two Boileau's Satires Satire very plea- 
 sant reading, especially when it cuts 
 deep vastly comfortable to know that 
 men are not so good and wise as they 
 seem. 
 
 "Two to three. Tried to satirize my 
 aunt and the parson after the manner of 
 Boileau ; but failed ; I believe, for the 
 want of incident. 
 
 " Three o'clock. My aunt knocked at 
 the door and begged me to walk with 
 her refused roughly; but went out half 
 an hour afterwards into a path in which 
 she was sure to see me The smell of the 
 May and Lilacs quite overpowering- 
 wish there were none In very low 
 
 spirits thought a good deal about my 
 aunt Winifred's death life bad death 
 worse Aunt Rachel deluded, but happy 
 in her ignorance. 
 
 Four
 
 ( 141 ) 
 
 " Four o'clock. Saw my aunt walking 
 with the old parson and his wife am 
 sure they were talking of me Parson 
 very mild, but always preaches at me 
 preached last Sunday on the happiness 
 of religion, on purpose to plague me 
 Nothing so vexatious as to be told that 
 others are happy when we are not. 
 
 " Five o'clock. Dined with my aunt, 
 the parson, and the lawyer all looked 
 suspiciously at me Parson begged for 
 1 1 is school always begging, though I 
 must say he gives largely himself. 
 
 " Seven o'clock. My aunt went away 
 with the lawyer suppose to plot, as be- 
 foreLeft alone with the parson did 
 not like it so very gentle, impossible to 
 quarrel with him All the parish, except 
 the publicans, speak well of him hate 
 men whom every body praises Parson 
 very talkative A weak man ; seems to 
 be pleased with every thing praised the 
 church, though he has only a poor vica- 
 ragespoke kindly about my aunt 
 
 "Winifred,
 
 ( 142 ) 
 
 Winifred, though she left him no le- 
 gacy all hypocrisy. Drew me insen- 
 sibly to talk on the evidences of reli- 
 gion very strong on that point ten- 
 der in his manner seemed to love and 
 pity me called God ' our Father* 
 spoke of the world as one large family 
 said we should love one another as bro- 
 thers all beautiful, if true. 
 
 " Eight o'clock. My aunt and lawyer 
 not returning, parson asked me to walk 
 in the park afraid to refuse, lest he 
 should think ill of me Parson a quick 
 eye for the beauties of nature looked 
 at the landscape as if he thought it all 
 his own heard him say to himself, f My 
 Father made it all' Not so weak as I 
 thought full of information on practi- 
 cal subjects; Count Rumford, Howard, 
 patent lamps, cheap cookery, smoky 
 chimneys, schools, medicine, &c. &c. 
 Useful man in a parish; but always 
 drawing to one subject Wonderful to 
 see a man's heart so taken up with re- 
 ligion
 
 ( 143 ) 
 
 ligion Came to a very pretty cottage- 
 asked whose it was Listened to a touch- 
 ing story parson wept sometimes as he 
 told it kind-hearted old man Went 
 into the cottage saw a young creature 
 on the bed of death, without doubts, 
 without fears; longing to be gone: she 
 said, very emphatically, 'To depart and 
 to be with Christ is far better' En- 
 vied her. 
 
 " Ten o'clock. Went to my room 
 thought much of what I had heard and 
 seen compared my poor aunt Winifred 
 with this young creature no compa- 
 rison in their state Opened aunt Ra- 
 chel's Bible at the account of the two 
 Apostles in the dungeon at Philippi 
 very striking 'At midnight they 
 sang praises, and the prisoners heard 
 them' heard them, but did not sing 
 themselves perhaps returned groans for 
 praises Prison possibly the only place 
 in Philippi in which the voice of joy was 
 heard at midnight Much power in re- 
 ligion
 
 ( 144 ) 
 
 ligion Prayed more heartily than I 
 have done for years felt more com- 
 fortable." 
 
 Here ends the journal which I pro- 
 mised the reader; and, if I am not mis- 
 taken, it has let him more into the se- 
 crets of. my mind than any portrait 
 taken at this distance of time could have 
 done. And here, as it is not impossible 
 that he may be sufficiently interested, 
 especially in the character of the old 
 clergyman, to feel a desire to hear the 
 story of the young dying person to 
 whom the journal alludes, I will endea- 
 vour to tell it as nearly as possible in 
 the words of the old clergyman. 
 
 I had perceived that when we reached 
 the cottage, he paused opposite to it, as 
 if doubtful whether to go in. I then 
 asked to whom it belonged. After a 
 little hesitation, he answered, " Will 
 you, Sir, accept, instead of a short an- 
 swer
 
 ( 145 ) 
 
 swer to that question, a somewhat long 
 story? I do think it will interest you; 
 and if not, I am sure that you know how 
 kindly to forgive an old man for talking 
 at length upon a very favourite topic." 
 I could not but assent to a proposal so 
 kindly introduced, and he therefore pro- 
 ceeded in his narration nearly as follows. 
 But the story shall^ have a chapter to 
 itself. 
 
 h CHAP.
 
 ( 146 ) 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 THE DYING COTTAGER. 
 
 " FANNY came to our vil- 
 lage at the age of eighteen one of 
 the most lovely creatures you ever saw. 
 Her eyes were full of intelligence, her 
 complexion bright, and her smile such 
 as at once to fix the eye and win the 
 affection of every one who conversed 
 with her. She was gay, good humour- 
 ed, and obliging; but without religion. 
 She had left her father's house to come 
 here as servant at a public-house. In 
 this situation, the worst that might have 
 been anticipated happened. She was 
 ruined in character; left the public-house 
 when she could no longer retain her 
 situation; married the partner of her 
 guilt, and came to live in this little cot- 
 tage.
 
 ( 147 ) 
 
 tage. There, as is usually the case in 
 marriages where neither party respect 
 the other, he first suspected, then ill- 
 treated her. When her child was born, 
 his hatred and anger seemed to in- 
 crease. He treated both with cruelty; 
 and, after some time, succeeded in ruin- 
 ing her temper, and almost breaking her 
 heart. At length, after a quarrel, in 
 which it is to be feared both had been 
 almost equally violent, he threw her 
 over the hedge of their garden, and 
 brought on the disease of which she is 
 now dying. During the two years in 
 which all these events had occurred, her 
 neglect of God and of religion had, I 
 suppose, increased ; all that was amiable 
 in her character vanished; and she learn- 
 ed to swear and to scold in almost as fu- 
 rious a tone as her husband. I could 
 not learn that, during all this time, 
 she had more than once discovered the 
 smallest sense of her misconduct, or fears 
 about futurity. Once, indeed, her neigh- 
 II 2 bours
 
 ( 148 ) 
 
 faours told me, that, when she heard the 
 clergyman in his sermon describe the 
 happiness of Heaven, she burst into tears, 
 and quitted the church. 
 
 "It happened, that, on a fine summer's 
 evening, (you will excuse me, Sir, for 
 referring to the small part which I acted 
 in this history), I was taking my rounds 
 in my parish, to look after my little 
 flock, and came, at length, to this cot- 
 tage, where I remember to have paused 
 for a moment to admire the pretty 
 picture of rural life which it presented. 
 The mists of the evening were beginning 
 to float over the valley in which it stood, 
 and shed a sort of subdued, pensive light 
 on the coitage and the objects immedi- 
 ately around it. Behind it, at the dis- 
 tance perhaps of half a mile, on the top 
 of a lofty eminence rose, the ancient 
 spire of the village church. The sun 
 still continued to shine on this higher 
 ground, and shed all its glories on the 
 walls of the sacred edifice. * There,' I 
 
 could
 
 ( 149 ) 
 
 could not help saying to myself, is a 
 picture of the world. Those without 
 religion are content to dwell in the vale 
 of mists and shadows; but the true ser- 
 vants of God dwell on the holy hill, in 
 the perpetual sunshine of the Divine 
 Presence.' 
 
 " I entered the cottage, and was much 
 struck with the appearance of its owner. 
 She looked poor; and the house was des- 
 titute of many of those little ornaments 
 which are indications, not merely of the 
 outward circumstances, but of the inward 
 comforts of the inhabitants. She was 
 sitting busily at work with her sister. 
 I always feel it, Sir, both right and use- 
 ful to converse a good deal with the 
 poor about their worldly circumstances. 
 Not only does humanity seem to require 
 this, but I find it profitable to myself: 
 for after, as it were, taking the depth of 
 their sufferings, I am ashamed to go 
 home and murmur at Providence, or 
 scold at my servants, for some trifling 
 n 3 deficiency
 
 ( 150 ) 
 
 deficiency in my own comforts. Be- 
 sides, I love to study the mind of man 
 in a state of trial to see how nobly 
 it often struggles with difficulties and 
 how, by the help of God, it is able to 
 create to itself, amidst scenes of misery 
 and gloom, a sort of land of Goshen, in 
 which it lives, and is happy. 
 
 " After conversing with her for some 
 time on topics of this kind, and discover- 
 ing her to be a person of strong feelings 
 deeply wounded, of fine but uncultivated 
 powers, and of remarkable energy of ex- 
 pression, I naturally proceeded to deliver 
 to her a part of that solemn message with 
 which, as the minister of religion, I am 
 charged: and not discovering in her 
 the smallest evidence of penitential 
 feeling being able, indeed, to extract 
 nothing more from her than a cold and 
 careless acknowledgment that * she was 
 not all she ought to be ' I conceived it 
 right to dwell, in ray conversation with 
 her, chiefly upon those awful passages of 
 
 Scripture
 
 ( isi ) 
 
 Scripture designed by Providence to 
 rouse the unawakened sinner. Still, Sir, 
 feeling then, as I do always, that the 
 weapon of the Gospel is rather love than 
 wrath, I trust that I did not so far for- 
 sake the model of my gracious Master, 
 as to open a wound without endeavour- 
 ing to shew how it might be bound up. 
 Few persons are, in my poor judgment, 
 frightened into Christianity: God was not 
 in the ' earthquake' he was not in the 
 ' storm' but in ' the small still voice.' 
 " After a pretty long conversation, I 
 left her, altogether dissatisfied, I will 
 own, with her apparent state of mind. 
 Nay, such was my proneness to pro- 
 nounce upon the deficiencies of a fellow- 
 creature, that I remember complaining, 
 on my return home, with some degree of 
 peevishness I fear, of the hardness of her 
 heart. I would fain hope, Sir, that I 
 have learnt, by this case, to form un- 
 favourable judgments of others more 
 slowly; and in dubious, or even appa- 
 ll 4 rently
 
 ( 152 ) 
 
 rently bad cases, to ' believe,' or, at 
 least, to ' hope, all things.' 
 
 " Notwithstanding, however, my dis- 
 appointment as to the state of her feel- 
 ings, it was impossible not to feel a 
 strong interest in her situation. Accord- 
 ingly, I soon saw her again. But neither 
 did I then discover any ground for 
 hoping that her heart was in the smallest 
 degree touched by what had been said 
 to her. But, at a short distance of time, 
 as I was one day walking in my garden 
 and musing on some of the events of my 
 own happy life, and especially on that 
 merciful appointment of God which had 
 made me the minister of peace to the 
 guilty, instead of the stern disperser of 
 the thunders of a severer dispensation, 
 I was roused by the information that this 
 poor young creature desired to see me. 
 
 " One of her poor neighbours, who 
 came to desire my attendance, informed 
 me, with apparent tenderness, that Fanny 
 * was very ill ;' that, as she expressed it, 
 
 she
 
 ( 153 ) 
 
 she had been in a very ' linked state 
 ' since I saw her, and that she hoped I 
 ' would be kind enough to come and 
 comfort her.' ' God grant,' I said to 
 the poor woman, ' that she may be in a 
 ' state to be comforted.' ' That she is, 
 ' Sir,' said the woman: * she has suffered 
 ' a deal since you were with her. The 
 
 * boards be very thin between our 
 houses, and I hear her, by day and by 
 1 night, calling upon God for mercy. 
 ' It would break your heart to hear her, 
 
 * she is so very sad. Tom (her husband) 
 1 scolds and swears at her j but she begs, 
 c as she would ask for bread, " Let me 
 ' " pray, Tom; for what will become of 
 
 * " me if I die in my sins ? " ' 
 
 " Tin's account disposed me, of course, 
 to make the best of my way to the cot- 
 tage. I soon reached it ; and there, to 
 be sure, I did see a very touching spec- 
 tacle. Her disease, which her fine com- 
 plexion had before concealed, had made 
 rapid strides in her constitution. Her 
 H 5 colour
 
 ( 1M ) 
 
 colour came and went rapidly; and she 
 breathed with difficulty. Her counte- 
 nance was full of trouble and dismay. 
 
 " It was evident, as I entered the 
 room, how anxious she had been to see 
 me. At once she began to describe her 
 circumstances ; informed me, that, even 
 before my first visit, her many and great 
 sins bad begun to trouble her con- 
 science; that although her pride had 
 then got the better of her feelings of 
 shame and grief, this conversation had 
 much increased them ; that she had 
 since, almost every evening, visited the 
 house of a neighbour, to hear her read 
 \he Scriptures and other good books ; 
 that she was on the edge of the grave, 
 without peace or hope ; that she seemed, 
 (to use her own strong expression) * to 
 see God frowning upon her in every 
 cloud that passed over her head.' 
 
 '" Having endeavoured to satisfy my- 
 self of her sincerity, I felt this to be a 
 case where I was bound and privileged 
 
 to
 
 ( 155 ) 
 
 to supply all the consolations of religion; 
 to lead this broken-hearted creature to 
 the feet of a Saviour; and to assure her, 
 that if there she shed the tear of real 
 penitence, and sought earnestly for 
 mercy, He, who had said to another 
 mourner, Thy sins are forgiven thee/ 
 would also pardon, and change, and 
 bless her. 
 
 " I will not dwell upon the details of 
 this and many other similar conversa- 
 tions. Imperfectly as I discharged the 
 holy and happy duty of guiding and 
 comforting her, it pleased God to bless 
 the prayers which we offered together 
 to the Throne of Mercy ; and this poor, 
 agitated, comfortless creature became, 
 by degrees, calm and happy. 
 
 " You will not, Sir, I trust, place me 
 among those who are ready to mistake 
 every strong turn in the tide of the feel- 
 ings for religion. On the contrary, all 
 sudden changes of character are, I think, 
 to be examined with a wary, though not 
 
 with
 
 ( 156 ) 
 
 with an uncharitable eye. There are, 
 indeed, innumerable happy spirits which 
 surround the throne of God ; but all of 
 them bear in their hands * palms' the 
 signs, at once, of contest and of victory. 
 I was far more anxious, therefore, to 
 know that her penitence was sincere, 
 than that her joy was great. But, in- 
 deed, it was not long possible to doubt 
 of either. The rock was struck, and 
 there daily gushed out fresh streams of 
 living water. New and most attractive 
 qualities daily appeared in her. She 
 became gradually meek, humble, affec- 
 tionate, and self-denying. Her time 
 was divided between the few family 
 duties she was able to discharge, and 
 the study of the Scriptures, which she 
 learned to read fluently during her six 
 months' sickness. She bent every faculty 
 of her body and mind to the task of re- 
 claiming her husband. And a more 
 affecting picture can scarcely be ima- 
 gined, than this interesting creature 
 
 rising
 
 ( 157 ) 
 
 rising on the bed of anguish to calm his 
 anger, to melt him by accents of tender- 
 ness, to beseech him to unite in her dy- 
 ing prayer for mercy. Indeed, her con- 
 duct to him is not the least striking evi- 
 dence of her change of mind. In the 
 conversations I have heard between 
 them, she takes so much of the blame for 
 all that is past upon herself, that I should 
 never have suspected his misconduct but 
 from the accounts of their friends. But 
 there are other circumstances, no less 
 decisive to my mind, of her sincerity. I 
 observe, for instance, that, far from the 
 sense of her offences being a mere tran- 
 sient emotion, she rarely speaks of them 
 without a blush. And as she feels the 
 colour thus rush unbidden into her 
 cheek, I have heard her say more than 
 once, ' Oh! how sin comes up in one's 
 face!' Another very satisfactory feature 
 in her religion is her extraordinary ten- 
 derness for the souls of others. She 
 sends for all her young friends, and, in 
 
 the
 
 ( * ) 
 
 the most solemn and touching manner, 
 warns them of her past errors, and tells 
 them of her present happiness. And 
 when a poor creature, whose offences 
 were of a like kind with her own, chanced 
 to settle in a cottage near her, I found 
 she had crawled, though with much pain 
 and risk, to the house, giving this reason 
 for the undertaking, That any other vi- 
 sitor would be * too good to speak to 
 such a sinner. I can tell her,' she 
 said, ' that I have been as guilty as her- 
 self; and that, since God has pardoned 
 me, he will, if she seeks mercy, pardon 
 her.' A part of this anxiety about 
 others springs, I believe, from the ex- 
 traordinary degree of emotion with 
 which she regards that state of eternal 
 punishment, on the very verge of which 
 she conceives herself to have stood. One 
 day, as I entered her room, she said, * I 
 have been longing, Sir, to see you. I 
 have been reading in " the Book" of a 
 man who enlarged his barns, and said to 
 
 his
 
 ( 159 ) 
 
 his soul, " Soul, take thine ease ;" but a 
 voice said to him, " This night thy soul is 
 required of thee."* Now, Sir, who re- 
 quired his soul ?' I answered, ' God.' 
 'Then,' she said, that poor man was on 
 the way to the bad place, I fear.' ' I 
 fear he was,' I replied. ' An!' she said, 
 ' I thought so !' and the hectic of her 
 cheek instantly changed to a deadly 
 white. 1 am delighted also to dis- 
 cover one other circumstance. She is, as 
 I said, full of peace and joy ; but, then, 
 her peace and joy are derived exclu- 
 sively from one source. There is a pic- 
 ture in Scripture of which her state con- 
 tinually reminds me I mean that of the 
 poor creature pressing through the 
 crowd to touch the hem of our Lord's 
 garment. Such, I may say, is the per- 
 petual effort of her mind. She re- 
 nounces all hopes of Heaven founded 
 either on herself or any human means; 
 and relies only on that ' virtue' which 
 goes out of the great Physician,' to 
 
 heal
 
 ( 160 ) 
 
 heal the diseased, and to save the guilty. 
 When she partakes of the sacred rite 
 which commemorates his death, such is 
 the deep solemnity of her feelings, such 
 her holy peace and joy, that you would 
 think she actually felt the presence of 
 the Lord ; and that, in another instant, 
 she would * spread her wings, and flee 
 away, and be at rest.' 
 
 " But, Sir, why do I continue to de- 
 scribe her, when you may judge of her 
 for yourself? Pray come with me to the 
 cottage. I think you will have no cause 
 to regret the visit." 
 
 I need not tell the reader that I com- 
 plied with the desire of the old cler- 
 gyman ; nor shall I dwell upon the scene 
 to which I have already adverted : I 
 will only say, that I did indeed there 
 1 see how a Christian could die ' that I 
 felt it impossible to continue a sceptic, 
 when I marked in her countenance and 
 language the power of religion that 1 
 
 can
 
 ( 161 ) 
 
 can trace back to that period a great 
 change and improvement in my ovyn 
 character that I discovered, even in 
 the short time I spent by her dying bed, 
 much evidence of the precision with 
 which her pastor had described the 
 source of her hopes and joys. I per- 
 ceived that no part of her happiness was 
 gained by shutting her eyes upon her 
 own guilt. She remembered it she ac- 
 knowledged it she blushed for it she 
 wept over it; but, then, she raised her 
 eyes from herself to the cross of her Sa- 
 viour, and seemed no longer either to 
 fear or to doubt. It is said of a cele- 
 brated Infidel, the motto of whose ban- 
 ner, in his crusade against religion, was 
 * Ecrusez VJnfdme,' that, on his dying 
 bed, he conceived himself to be perpe- 
 tually haunted by the terrific image of 
 his bleeding Lord. That hallowed image 
 seemed also to be present with her. 
 But, far from shrinking from the vision, 
 she appeared afraid of letting it go. 
 
 Her
 
 ( 162 ) 
 
 Her eyes seemed sometimes to wander, 
 as if in search of it ; and then to rise to 
 Heaven in gratitude for what shehad seen. 
 This sacred name was ever on her lips ; 
 and, as my old friend afterwards told me, 
 she died breathing out, in interrupted 
 sentences, that most solemn of all hu- 
 man supplications, "By thine agony and 
 bloody sweat; by thy cross and passion j 
 by thy precious death and burial; by 
 thy glorious resurrection and ascension; 
 and by the coming of the Holy Ghost; 
 good Lord, deliver us." 
 
 Having thus fulfilled my promise of 
 relating the simple story told by the ve- 
 nerable clergyman, I shall resume the 
 account of myself in a new chapter. 
 
 CHAP.
 
 ( 163 ) 
 
 CHAP. XV. 
 
 AN ALMOST INCURABLE MAN RESTORED 
 WITHOUT SENDING HIM TO A MAD- 
 HOUSE. 
 
 1 TRUST the reader has not so far lost 
 the thread of my history as to forget that 
 he left me retiring to bed after my walk 
 and conversation with the old clergy- 
 man. I slept quietly, and rose in better 
 temper than usual. But I could by no 
 means cease to look with suspicion on 
 my aunt's conduct; and, more especially, 
 I felt disposed to complain of her long 
 and frequent interviews with the lawyer, 
 mentioned above. Nor did the day 
 produce any event calculated to allay 
 my anger: on the contrary, several cir- 
 cumstances contributed to sharpen the 
 edge of my resentment. In the first 
 
 place,
 
 ( 164 ) 
 
 place, I found that my aunt had, with- 
 out the smallest communication with 
 me, summoned a general meeting of the 
 tenantry of the estate to whom, I felt 
 no doubt, she designed to expose my 
 recent disappointment, and her own 
 triumph. Secondly, and this I took ex- 
 ceedingly ill, considering my known 
 hostility to the education of the poor, it 
 appeared that she had ordered the first 
 stone to be laid of a new parish-school. 
 Thirdly, I discovered that she had deter- 
 mined to enlarge the alms-house, which 
 I always, though in opposition I will 
 own to general opinion, considered as an 
 eye-sore from the dining-room window. 
 Fourthly, I caught the gardener, acting 
 under my aunt's express authority, in 
 the very act of cutting down a branch of 
 a fine oak in the park, in order to let in 
 a view of the spire of the village church. 
 Fifthly, I collected from my own ser- 
 vant, who, with the clothes, professed to 
 adopt the opinions of his master, that my 
 
 aunt
 
 ( 165 ) 
 
 aunt had been busily engaged with the 
 old clergyman in ferreting out from the 
 library every free-thinking bookj had 
 actually conveyed them into an out- 
 house ; had deposited them carefully 
 upon two or three bundles of faggots; 
 and was probably on the eve of con- 
 signing them to the same fate with 
 the books of magic in the first ages of 
 Christianity. Sixthly, and lastly, I found 
 that, while I had been walking out, my 
 aunt had herself entered the study, and, 
 with a hammer and an infinity of nails, 
 had fastened up her own picture in such 
 a manner as to be absolutely immovable, 
 in the very spot from which I had taken 
 it down. This last measure was per- 
 fectly intolerable. Was I not merely 
 to bear the occasional burthen of her 
 bodily presence, but to have her image 
 pursuing me even into my retirement ; 
 haunting me, like a spectre, by night 
 and by day ? " Is this," said I, " her 
 " charity? Can the old clergyman jus- 
 tify
 
 ( m ) 
 
 " tify this ? Would he not have been 
 " better employed in checking this spi- 
 " rit of insult and despotism, than in 
 " carrying, as I see him at this moment, 
 " those noble volumes of Hobbes, and 
 " Chubb, and Collins, to their funeral 
 "pile?" It was not that I had not 
 begun to detest these volumes myself: 
 still, in the present state of my mind, I 
 regarded each of these unhappy authors 
 as little short of martyrs to feminine in- 
 trigue and priestly bigotry, and could 
 have almost drawn a sword, if I had 
 worn one, in defence of those disho- 
 noured volumes. 
 
 In this state of agitation I passed the 
 day; slept ill, and rose late. At ten 
 o'clock, however, I was surprised by a 
 summons from my aunt, begging me to 
 attend her in the library. After gome 
 hesitation, as it seemed to promise me 
 an opportunity of protesting against 
 these tyrannical proceedings, I deter- 
 mined to clothe myself in appropriate 
 
 thunders,
 
 ( 167 ) 
 
 thunders, and to obey her summons. I 
 accordingly descended, opened the door 
 with much dignity, and found my aunt 
 with some parchments in her hand, and, 
 seated at her side, her now apparently 
 inseparable companions, the lawyer and 
 the vicar. She and the old clergyman 
 rose to meet me both, I must say, with 
 countenances which left it almost impos- 
 sible to be angry. We took our seats, 
 and, after a little pause, my aunt 
 began 
 
 " I have been examining, my dear 
 Sancho, with much attention, the par- 
 ticulars of my sister's will." 
 
 " It is the last thing, aunt," I replied, 
 u that I have any disposition to ex- 
 amine." 
 
 She proceeded, without noticing my 
 answer " I have always considered it 
 as one of the first duties of the living to 
 watch over the reputation of the dead ; 
 and, among other means of guarding 
 them from reproach, I conceive one of 
 
 the
 
 ( 16*8 ) 
 
 the most important to be the endeavour- 
 ing to repair any injury which, in a mo- 
 ment of infirmity or mis-information, 
 they may have inflicted." 
 
 " Very true, aunt," said I; " and now 
 for the application of this remark." 
 
 " I think, then," continued she, " that 
 my poor sister has unguardedly inflicted, 
 such an injury ; and I now call upon you, 
 Sancho, to assist me in repairing it." 
 
 " What injury do you mean, aunt ?" 
 said I. 
 
 " You shall hear," she replied. " My 
 sister educated you. Sancho, to be her 
 heir. She promised you the guardian- 
 ship of her estate and of her tenants 
 the privilege of being the friend and the 
 father of all the poor villagers around. 
 In some unguarded moment, or prompt- 
 ed, perhaps, by her unmeriu d regard for 
 me, she has made a h ill, riving you a 
 mere legacy, and me the bulk of her for- 
 tune. Now it seems *o me, Sancho, to 
 be but common justice to one so dear to 
 
 us
 
 ( 169 ) 
 
 us both, to reverse the terms of the will ; 
 and, though perhaps a proverb or two" 
 (shesaid.smiling) " might be found in op- 
 position to such a course of proceeding, 
 to give the fortune to you, and to keep 
 the legacy myself. In executing this 
 project, my dear boy, I have taken the 
 advice of one of these gentlemen" 
 pointing to the old clergyman, whose 
 face was bathed in tears during the 
 whole of this transaction " and have 
 borrowed the professional assistance of 
 the other. All that now remains is for 
 you to transfer to me your legacy. And 
 because I wish, Sancho, to be in your 
 debt, I will beg of you my favourite 
 lodge in the corner of the park, which 
 you shall have the pleasure of enlarging 
 and adorning for my residence. There, 
 unless you constrain me to Jive for a 
 time with you, I should wish to spend 
 the rest of my life. I shall there enjoy 
 the retirement which you know I so 
 much love and which may, 1 hope, beal- 
 I lowed
 
 ( 170 ) 
 
 lowed to an old, useless woman. There, 
 also, I shall be near my poor neighbours. 
 There I may seek that * better country/ 
 where we shall neither weep nor offend 
 any more. There, also, I shall hope to 
 hear, my dear Sancho, what it will be 
 the joy of my heart to know, that you 
 are good and happy yourself, and a 
 blessing to all around you. I have sum- 
 moned the tenants to-morrow, and I beg 
 of you to receive them as their master 
 and friend." 
 
 Need I tell the reader with what min- 
 gled emotions of astonishment, shame, 
 gratitude, and love I received this decla- 
 ration of my aunt. I was silent at the 
 moment; and I must beg to be silent 
 now. I remember, that at the time I 
 could only weep ; and now, at the dis- 
 tance of thirty years, I feel far more dis- 
 posed to shed an additional tear over the 
 honoured grave of my benefactress and 
 friend, than to describe my very imper- 
 fect manner of acknowledging her great- 
 ness,
 
 ( in ) 
 
 ness, and ray own baseness and ingra- 
 titude. 
 
 But, because I do not choose to enter 
 upon the description of this particular 
 seene, is it necessary that I should also, 
 at this very point, somewhat abruptly 
 cut short my simple tale? It is and I 
 will honestly confess the reason. 
 
 It appears, then, to me, that I have 
 been considerably too explicit as to the 
 events of my own life, and the failings of 
 one of my near relatives, to render it 
 desirable the readers of this volume 
 should be able, at once, to point to the 
 hand from which it proceeds. But if I 
 were to continue the narrative with 
 equal precision through the latter stages 
 of my life, such an exposure of the fa- 
 mily would be inevitable. Although, 
 therefore, whatever I dare reveal I will ; 
 I must yet take the liberty of a biogra- 
 pher, in drawing a veil over the rest. 
 
 My first step then, on taking possession 
 
 of my property, was earnestly to request 
 
 i % my
 
 ( 17* ) 
 
 my aunt's society in my house. I soon 
 learnt to love her tenderly. And having 
 convinced myself, by minute examina- 
 tion, that she owed all her charms and 
 comforts to religion, I was led to carry 
 all my wants, and infirmities, and guilt 
 to the steps of that Altar of Mercy 
 where never suppliant knelt in vain. 
 There I sought peace; and there, by the 
 mercy of God, I found it. The dove, 
 which could discover no " resting place" 
 elsewhere for the " sole of her foot," re- 
 turned, and found it in the ark of her God. 
 I respected religion for a time for my 
 aunt's sake, but I soon learnt to love it 
 for its own. Then, indeed, I may ven- 
 ture to say, that it would have been very 
 difficult to find two people happier than 
 ourselves. There are persons, I know, 
 who entertain a widely different concep- 
 tion of religion who receive a propo- 
 sition to devote themselves to the service 
 of God as they would a scheme to im- 
 mure them in a dungeon which the sun 
 
 never
 
 ( 173 ) 
 
 never visits, and where the cheerful 
 notes of nature and the music of the* 
 human voice are never heard. But, 
 whatever those may say who have 
 made no trial of the happiness of reli- 
 gion, let not any of my readers, young 
 or old, believe them. " I have been 
 young, and now am old ;" and in the 
 many wanderings of my worldly pil- 
 grimage have visited most of the fabled 
 sources of human happiness. I stooped 
 to drink of their waters, and always dis- 
 covered them to be either tasteless or 
 bitter. Still thirsting for happiness, I 
 turned from these to drink at the foun- 
 tain-head of devotion ; and there all my 
 fondest hopes have been realized. Re- 
 ligion has, indeed, shut me out from the 
 circle of tumultuous joys, and dubious 
 amusements ; but has abridged me of no 
 real pleasure. On the contrary, it im- 
 measurably multiplies the means and ca- 
 pacities of happiness. It invites us to 
 1 3 the
 
 ( 174 ) 
 
 the cultivation of all our nobler powers, 
 by supplying a new field and loftier ob- 
 ject for them: it unlocks to the imagi- 
 nation the glories of an invisible world 
 it calls out the best feelings of the heart, 
 by allying us to all the world it sur- 
 rounds us with dear friends, who overlook 
 our infirmities in their busy efforts to 
 subdue their own it raises us above the 
 atmosphere of the world's troubles, into 
 the stiller regions of hope and joy it 
 unites us with the highest and tenderest 
 of Beings, enables us to hold sweet and 
 solemn communion with Him, to call 
 Him our Father and our Friend it fills 
 us with hope that He who died for the 
 guilty has pity upon us, and that, behind 
 the veil which hides him from the world, 
 he is quickening our drowsy powers, and 
 qualifying us for the enjoyments of the 
 saints in glory. And is not this hap- 
 piness ? And must not all who have 
 tasted of it, when asked, " will ye also 
 
 go
 
 ( W , 
 
 go away ?" with one heart and voice 
 reply, " Lord, to whom shall we go 
 thou hast the words of eternal life. " 
 But, to proceed in our history _ 
 Although the lodge was enlarged and 
 ornamented according to my aunt's own 
 fancy ; and although we contrived, there 
 also, to let in a view of the village church, 
 she never occupied it : for though she 
 made a faint struggle to escape, when I 
 was united, at the distance of some years, 
 to a daughter of her most intimate 
 friend, we knew her value too well not 
 to detain her. 
 
 It may, perhaps, amuse the reader to 
 hear of a fete prepared for his mistress by 
 Roger the butler a very capital man in 
 the family on the first Fifth of Novem- 
 ber which succeeded my establishment 
 in my mansion. The family had always 
 been much signalized by its attachment 
 to Church and King; and it had been 
 customary, ever since the days of the 
 Stuarts, to proclaim this attachment to 
 I 4 at
 
 ( 176 ) 
 
 at least half a dozen surrounding coun- 
 ties, by an enormous bonfire lighted up 
 on the top of our hill. I did not think 
 it right to set aside so loyal a custom, 
 but only to prevent the excesses which 
 so often accompany it and by which, I 
 am well persuaded, neither the Church 
 nor the King are at all benefited. Ac- 
 cordingly, some of the faggots were pre- 
 pared. But Roger, a person of no small 
 ingenuity, having discovered, a few days 
 before, the immense hoard of free-think- 
 ers and faggots which my aunt and the 
 old vicar had collected and forgotten in 
 the out-house, he caused them to be 
 secretly conveyed to the scene of con- 
 flagration j and, having earnestly soli- 
 cited the attendance of the family on the 
 occasion, though without signifying his 
 reason, we ascended the hill, and the old 
 man had the singular satisfaction of see- 
 ing his mistress both amused and gra- 
 tified with the result of his ingenuity. 
 It was, indeed, curious to see her, at the 
 
 first
 
 ( 177 ) 
 
 first auto da feat which she ever presided, 
 in the true spirit of a Spanish Inquisitor, 
 hurl back to the flames, with her gold- 
 headed cane, a volume of Shaftesbury, 
 which had leapt presumptuously from 
 
 the fire. Nor did the inventions of 
 
 Roger terminate here. Having learnt 
 something of the distinct character of the 
 authors to be thus consigned by a family 
 act to total oblivion, he determined that 
 the title-pages, at least, of each of these 
 volumes should die a sort of appropriate 
 death. Accordingly, the ambitious Lord 
 Bolingbroke expired in a rocket; sly 
 Mr. Hobbes hissed away his existence as 
 a serpent ; and Voltaire, with an enor- 
 mous band of his associates, were ac- 
 tually broken on a wheel. 
 
 My aunt gave Roger much credit for 
 his device, and, in return, made him a 
 present of a quarto Bible in which I 
 often hear him reading, with his own 
 luminous comment, to the younger ser- 
 vants, in a voice which, with the utmost 
 
 facility.
 
 ( 178 ) 
 
 facility, reaches from one end of the 
 house to the other. 
 
 And now, should there be any of my 
 readers dissatisfied with the degree of in- 
 formation concerning myself, which I 
 have thought it right to lay before them ; 
 and desirous of possessing some few gene- 
 ral marks, by which they ma}', at least, be 
 prevented from imputing this work to any 
 innocent person; I cannot find it in my 
 heart absolutely to deny their request. 
 
 If then, they should, in one of the 
 most mountainous of our distant coun- 
 ties, discover an old squire, dwelling in 
 a venerable mansion, which grandly looks 
 over the woody vale, and limpid lake 
 beneath if they should find this retired 
 person with an unusual quantity of silver 
 hair; with an inclination of the shoulders 
 greater, perhaps, than might be expect- 
 ed at sixty; with something of that ex- 
 pression which belongs to a countenance 
 
 where
 
 ( 179 ) 
 
 where much happiness has succeeded to 
 much trouble If, moreover, they should 
 find that he is a great reader of the 
 Bible, though freely acknowledging and 
 deeply feeling his imperfect compliance 
 with its precepts that he is a calm and 
 modest interpreter of Scripture, holding 
 what is plain, strongly; but what is dif- 
 ficult, humbly and charitably that he 
 is anxious rather to reconcile the good 
 of various parties than to dictate to any 
 that he is a man of naturally quick 
 temper, much subdued a zealous pro- 
 moter of religion, even by unpopular 
 means a prudent friend to Church and 
 State, theugh a hater of bigotry in re- 
 ligion, and of corruption in courts If, 
 moreover, they should discover in him 
 many infirmities; some, the result of na- 
 tural constitution ; some, of early habits; 
 all daily diminishing, and all deeply, 
 constantly, and loudly deplored by him- 
 self If, also, they should detect in him 
 a somewhat unaccountable repugnance 
 
 to
 
 ( 180 ) 
 
 to those short, pithy, sententious, ora- 
 cular sayings, called " proverbs," to 
 which a large part of the world are dis- 
 posed to render a most unqualified ho- 
 mage If they should find all these cir- 
 cumstances concentred in the same 
 individual then it is not improbable 
 that they have met with the very indi- 
 vidual for whom this memoir is design- 
 ed And if not, they have probably 
 met with a better man, and therefore 
 can have no reason to complain. More 
 minutely it does not become me to 
 speak. 
 
 But whilst I cannot persuade myself 
 to yield to the wishes of the reader, in 
 revealing the name of the author of this 
 little work ; I beg leave, in conclusion, 
 most explicitly to state to them its 
 moral. It is, then, its humble design to 
 shew that mere human wisdom is very 
 defective that a large proportion of the 
 most popular maxims are exceedingly 
 unsafe that many of them have a strong 
 
 tendency
 
 ( 181 ) 
 
 tendency to create a sordid and selfish 
 character that our principles of action 
 are to be sought in the. Bible and, 
 finally, that if any person desires to be 
 singularly happy, he has only to pray 
 and to labour to become eminently 
 good. 
 
 FIN! S. 
 
 K.'rnou aud Henderson, Printers, 
 Jnhu^on'i Cou:t, Fleet Street, LojhIob.
 
 Lately published, 
 By T. CADELL and W. DAVIES, Strand. 
 
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 first Artists, from Drawings made on the spot, by the 
 Author, represents the most remarkable Remains of 
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 In order to meet the convenience of purchasers, it is 
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 By JAMES CAVANAH MURPHY, Architect. 
 
 Elegantly printed in one Volume 4to. with a Map 
 shewing the principal Conquests of the Arabs under 
 the Khalifs, or Successors of Mahomet. Price 11. 15s. 
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 The whole published from the Originals, in the Posses- 
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