j \ 'i i ■i .: •! 1^ ROSES AND HOLLY. A HOPE has cioss'd me, in tlie course Of this self-pleasing exercise, that ye My zeal to his would liken, who, possess'd Of some rare gems, or pictures finely wrought. Unlocks his cabinet, and draws them forth. One after one, soliciting regard To this, and this. IVordsivoii/i. ROSES AND HOLLY A GIFT-BOOK FOR ALL THE YEAR. WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY COURLAY STF.ELL, R.S.A. SAMUEL BOUGH, A.R.S.A. R. HER DM AN, R.S.A. JOHN iM'WHIRTER, A.R.S.A. CLARK STA.VTO.V, A.R.S.A. JOHN LA WSON. AND OTHER EMINENT ARTISTS. ENGRAVED BY R. PATERSON. EDINBURGH: WILLIAM P. NIMMO. 1 HINTICD BV I^AI.LANTYNE AM) COMPANV EDIMiUKGlI ANU LONDON THE LIBRARY •UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA SANTA BAfiBARA PREFACE. A X /"E have ventured to name this pictorial and literary treasury, Roses and Holly. The rose — the queen of flowers^is significant of summer, of beauty, and of love : the holly — the ever- green of happiness — which cheers the heart through the gloom of winter, and shadows round the Christmas hearth pleasant memo- ries, and feelings of friendship, of comfort, and of gaiety. The two ends of the year meet in these emblematic flowers ; and, with a liberty which we hope will not be too closely questioned, we have chosen them as the appellation of our Gift Book for all the Year. In preparing RoSES AND HOLLY, the idea of the editor has been to depart in some measure from the beaten track of his pre- decessors. Instead of the classified selections and special subjects which are usually chosen for Gift Books, and to which all due credit for excellence of taste and propriety of judgment is heartily awarded, it seemed to him that a miscellaneous collection of art and literary gems, grouped together " in most admired disorder," wovild form a volume of interest and value. The main object kept in view in the preparation of RoSES AND Holly has been to secure variety in the selection ; while literary vi PREFACE. merit, it need scarcely be added, has not been overlooked in the articles chosen. In the volume will be found poetry for the imaginative, and prose for the matter-of-fact ; matter serious and didactic for the reflective : mirth for the merry : in the words of the dramatist — " There 's no want of meat, sir ; Portly and curious viands are prepared, To please all kinds of appetites." The illustrations which adorn RoSES AND HOLLY have been specially drawn and engraved for the volume ; and among them will be found original examples of several of the most distin- guished Scottish artists. The entire artistic and mechanical work has been executed in the Northern Capital ; and the publisher puts it forth with some degree of confidence, as a favourable example of art and typography. ILLUSTRATIONS, ENGRAVED BY R. PATERSON. SUBJECT. Roses and Holly, . Spring, .... Giant and Dwarf, . L'Allegro, Annabel Lee, . Vanity Fair, Flowers, .... The Sorrows of Werter, Summer, .... Our Little Republic, John Bull, Love, . ... The Ram and its Shadow, Scotland in 1798, A Wild Night at Sea, . The Antiquary at Market, Seven Ages of Man, Waiting for the Foe, . The Brahmin and the Knaves, Autumn, . DRAWN BV PAGE Clark Stanton, A.R.S.A., I ^o/ui M' Whirter, . 3 Charles A. Doyle, . 8 Clark Stanton, A.R.SA., 15 John Lazuson, 23 John Lawson, 29 Clark Stanton, A.R.SA. 37 Charles A. Doyle, . 41 John M'Whirter, . 45 John Lawson, 49 Charles A. Doyle, . 54 R. Herdman, R.S.A., 59 Gourlay S tee 11, R.S.A., 65 Charles A. Doyle, . 69 Sam. Bough, A.R.S.A., 71 George Hay, . 76 Clark Stanton, A.R.S.A. 81 John Lawson, 86 ES, Charles A. Doyle, ■ 90 John M'Whirter, . 95 JLLUS /'RATIONS. MUiJiiCT. DKAWN l)Y PACK r»i£ TwA Sisters, .... John Laivsoti, lOI Morning JohnM'Whirtcr, . 1 06 Night, ... John M'lVhirtcr, . 107 Thk Dkvil'.s Walk, . Charles A. Doyle, . III Thk Captive, John Laiusoji, . 114 The Startled Stag, Gourlay Stecll, R.S.A., 117 Mrs Partington, Cliarlcs A. Doyle, . 121 Literary Puffing, . Charles A. Doyle, . I 22 Winter, .... John M'Whirter, . 127 The Children's Hour, . John Lawson, 130 LONDON, .... Charles A. Doyle, . 134 The Shepherd Boy's Song, John Lawson, 141 The Most Terrifying Adventure ot the Windmills, Charles .1. Doyle, . H3 CONTENTS. Roses and Holly, .... Spring, A Cluster of Shakespearian Proverbs, What is Wit, Young Authors, .... A Cluster of German Proverbs, . A Cluster of Spanish Proverbs, , The Giant and the Dwarf, . ■ . The Love of Country and of Home, The Theory of Quarrelling, The Nobility of Ambition, , The Heigh-* OF Honour, A Good Word for Publishers, L'Allegro, The Island, The Advantages of Travelling, . Annabel Lee, School-Boy Days, .... The Best Things, .... No Age Content, .... A Modern Critic, .... The Soiil's Errand. Carew, Ban'ow, . Thackeray^ Goldsmith^ Motitgoinay, Shakespeare, Johnson, Massinger, Thackejny, Milton, . Hood, Beaumont and Poe, Thackeray, Tusser, . Earl of Surrey. Butter, . /\ah'!gh, . Fletcher, PAGE I 2 5 6 6 7 7 8 10 1 1 12 12 13 14 21 23 23 25 26 26 27 X cox TENTS. Glorv and Taxatiox, Sydney Smith, I'.VGE 33 Proverbs from Pope, 33 A Sailor, . . . Sir Thomas Ovcrbui % • 34 Bob.vdil's Mode of Warfare, Den Jonson, . 35 Thoughts on Various Subjects, Dean Swifi, . • 2,^ Flowers, Ritskin, . 37 A Touch of Conscience, Charles Lamb, ■ 38 A Milk and Water Epigram, 38 Couplets from Pope, 39 Sermons in Stones, Ruskin, . 40 Love in Man and Woman, TJiackcray, 40 The Sorrows of Werter, Thackeray, 41 The Sea, Fuller, . 42 A Cluster of Arabic Proverbs, 42 The War Horse, Book of Job, . 43 The Book of Job, Carlyle, . 43 Summer, 44 The Power of Little Things, Smiles, 47 The World's Wealth, . . 47 A Professor of Puffing, Sheridan, 48 The Sage's Wit, . 48 Our Little Republic, Goldsmith, 49 A Cluster of French Proverbs, . 50 Genevieve, Coleridge, 51 A Cluster of Italian Proverbs, SI PRAVER, Montgomery, . 52 .\L\N, 1 Dryden, . 53 John Rui.l, .... Washington Irving, 54 A Contented Mind, Earl of Surrey, 57 ; A Ci r-iM.' ..!• TtRKisH Proverbs,. 57 l."\i ... Coleridge, • 58 Heauiy, Bacon, 64 I'HF Ram am» i i > Shadow, Words7i>orth, . • 65 CONTENTS. xi PACK What is Poetry ? Leii^h Himt, . 66 Scotland in i 798, Sydney Smith., 68 A Wild Night at Sea, .... Dickens, . 70 Love's Young Dream, Moore, 73 Apophthegms and Aphorisms, • 74 The Antiquary at Market, . Scott, . . . . 76 The Academy at Legado, . . Swift, . . . . 79 Seven Ages of Man, .... Shakespeare., . 80 Anger, Jeremy Taylor, 83 The Holly Tree, Southcy, . 84 Jehovah the Provider, .... Wordsworth, . 8S Waiting for the Foe, . 86 To A Mouse, Burns, 88 Life, Jones, 89 The Brahmin and the KxVaves, . Macatday, 90 A Cluster of Scottish Proverbs, 91 Epigrams, 92 Autumn, Thomson, 94 To-Morrow, Collins, . 97 Shakespeare and his Writings, . Johnson, . 98 Contentment, Walton, . 100 The Bible, Scott, 100 The Twa Sisters : A Scottish Ballad lOI Mr Pepys Quarrels with his Wife, Pepys, . 105 Morning, Shakespeare, . 106 Night, Yoiinj;^, . . 107 Partial Justice, .... Sydney Smith, 108 Taste and Feeling : An Epigram, 109 Song of Selma, .... Ossian, no The Devil's Walk, .... Forson, . III Pride of Authorship, Lessi7ig, . 113 The Captive, 114 Russian Watchman's Song, . . 115 xii CONTENTS. PAGE Laconics, 115 The Startled Stag, Scolt, . 116 Omnipresence of the Deity. Pope, . 119 The Use of History. Bolingbroke, . 120 Mrs Partington, Sydney Smith, 121 Literary Puffing, . Macaulay, (22 Zara's Ear-Rings, Lock/iart, 124 Eccentric Royal Promotions, Disraeli, 125 Winter, ..... Bunts, . 126 A Walk Through Vanity Fair, Haxuthorne, . 129 The Children's Hour, . I^ongfellow, . 130 The Poor Relation, Lamb, 132 A Cluster of Hebrew Proverrs, ^33 London, 134 A Cluster of English Proverbs, 13s Country Hospitality, . Swift, . 136 Books, ChanniJig, 137 Modern Speaking, . Steele, . . 138 The Stranger, .... Barry Cornivail, 139 The Glove AND the Lions, Leigh Hunt, . 140 The Shepherd Boy's Song, Bnnyan, 141 The Most Terrifying Adventuk E OF THE Windmills, Don Quixote, 142 Poetry, .... Macaulay, 146 ^ \ Of Roses sweet and Holly leaves so bright : Of Summer's charm and Winter's pleasant flower ; This page is compass'd in a floral bower. Here, traced by cunning hand of art^'s high light, The Seasons, wreathed in Love and Joy, unite. Of Love, the god himself his presence lends, And Joy, o'er all her fragrant sweetness blends, To aid enjoyment and increase delight. " Roses and Holly !" The year's antipodes ! The Summer's sunshine and tlie Winter's glow — Spring's opening day, and Autumn's fruitfulness — The cycle of the Seasons here below, This wreath doth show. May it ne'er fail to prove A heart's tribute to friendship and to love ! -A V ^O Jt'-n. fane»:ou get all the honour and rewards, but all the blows fdl upon me." Gohhmiln. lO /iOSES ylND HOLLY. 'J'HE LOVE OF COUNTRY AND OF IIOMK. '"PHERl'^ is a land, of every land the pride, Beloved by Heaven, o'er all the world beside ; Where brighter suns dispense serener light. And milder moons emparadise the night ; A land of beauty, virtue, valour, truth, Time-tutor'd age, and love-exalted youth : The wandering mariner, whose eye explores The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores, Views not a realm so bountiful and fair. Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air; In e\ery clime the magnet of his soul, Touch'd by remembrance, trembles to that pole ; For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace. The heritage of nature's noblest race. There is a spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest : "Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside His sword and sceptre, ])ageantry and pride, \\'hile in his soflen'd looks benignly blend The sire, tlie son, tlic husband, father, friend : Here woman reigns ; the mother, daughter, wife, Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life ; In the clear hea\en of her delightful eye. An angel-guard of loves and graces lie ; Around her knees domestic duties meet. And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet. " Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?" Art thou a man? — a ])atriot? — look around; Oh, thou shalt fmd, howe'er thy footsteps roam, Tiiat land iHV C()L ntrv, and that spot thy home I Moiiigo))icry. /iOSES AA'D HOLLY. 1 I THE THEORY OF QUARRELLING, Touchstone. I did dislike the cut of a certain courtier's beard; he sent me word, if I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was : this is called the Retort courteous. If I sent him word, again, it was not well cut, he would send me word, he cut it to please himself : this is called the Quip modest. If again, it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment : this is called the Reply churlish. If again, it was not well cut, he would answer, I spake not true : this is called the Reproof valiant. If again, it was not well cut, he would say I lie : this is called the Countercheck quar- relsome : and so to the Lie circumstantial, and the Zie direct. Jaques. And how oft did you say his beard was not well cuti Touchstone. I durst go no further than the Lie circumstantial, nor he durst not give me the Lie direct ; and so we measured swords, and parted. Jaques. Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie ? Touchstone. O Sir, we quarrel in print, by the book ; as you ha\-e books for good manners : I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort courteous; the second, the Quip modest; the third, the Reply churlish ; the fourth, the Reproof valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with circumstance ; the seventh, the Lie direct. All these you may avoid, but the Lie direct; and you may avoid that too, with an " if." I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel ; but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thouglit but of an " if," as " If you said so, then I said so ; " and they shook hands, and swore brothers. Your "if" is the only peacemaker; much virtue in "if" Shakespeare. 1 2 /C OSES A ND HOLL Y. THE NOBILITY OF AMBITION. A MBITION is the stamp impress'd by Heaven -^^^ To mark the noblest minds ; with active heat Inform'd, they mount the precipice of power, Grasp at command, and tower in quest of empire ; While vulgar souls compassionate their cares. Gaze at their height and tremble at their danger. Thus meaner spirits with amazement mark The varying seasons, and revolving skies, And ask, what guilty power's rebellious hand Rolls with eternal toil the pond'rous orbs % While some archangel, nearer to perfection, In easy state presides o'er all their motions. Directs the planets with a careless nod. Conducts the sun, and regulates the spheres. THE HEIGHT OF HONOUR. NO man to offend — Ne'er to reveal the secrets of a friend ; Rather to suffer, than to do a wrong, To make the heart no stranger to the tongue ; Provoked, not to betray an enemy. Nor at his meat I choke with flattery; Bl ashless to tell wherefore I wear my scars, Or for my conscience, or my country's wars ; To aim at just things, if we've wildly run Into offences, wish them all undone, "Tis poor, in grief for a wrong done, to die, Honour to dare to live, and satisfy. Johnson. Massi/icrr /^OSES AND HOLLY. A GOOD WORD FOR PUBLISHERS. " T PROTEST against that wretch of a middle-man wliom I see between -*- Genius and his great landlord, the Public, and who stops more than half of the labourer's earnings and fame." "I am a prose labourer," Warrington said : "you, my boy, are a poet in a small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are authorised to be flighty. What is it you want % Do you want a body of capitalists that shall be forced to purchase tlie works of all authors, who may present themselves, manuscript in hand ? Everybody who writes his epic, every driveller who can or can't spell, and produces his novel or his tragedy, — are they all to come and find a bag of sovereigns in exchange for their worthless reams of paper"? Who is to settle what is good or bad, saleable or otherwise"? Will you give the buyer leave, in fine, to i)urchase or not ? ^Vhy, sir, when Johnson sate behind the screen at Saint John's Gate, and took his dinner apart, because he was too shabby and poor to join the literary bigwigs who were regaling themselves round Mr Cave's best table- cloth, the tradesman was doing him no wrong. You couldn't force the publisher to recognise the man of genius in the young man who presented himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry. Rags are not a proof of genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times go, and is perforce the bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the literary inventor as with any other ; — if I produce a novelty in the book trade, I must do the best I can with it ; but I can no more force Mr Murray to purchase my book of travels or sermons, than I can compel Mr Tattersall to give me a hundred guineas for my horse. I may have my own ideas of the value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of animals ; but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and may want a lady's horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a sound hack for the road, and my beast won't suit him." lliacko-av. ..-k>S)M^;M^ 14 /iOSES AND HOLLY. L'ALLEGRO. /^~^OME, thou goddess fair and free, ^"^ In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne, And by men heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, With two sister Graces more. To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore : Or whether (as some sages sing) The frohc wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing. As he met her once a-Maying, There, on beds of violets blue. And fresh-blown roses Avash'd in dew, Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair. So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity. Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles. Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek ; Sport that wrinkled Care derides. And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip it, as you go. On the light fantastic toe ; And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain nymi)h, sweet Liberty; And, if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew. To live with her, and live with thee. In unrci>ro\c(l pleasures free; ^_ \^'':i 1 ROSES AND HOLLY. \J To hear the lark begin his flight, And, singing, startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweetbrier, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine : While the cock, with lively din. Scatters the rear of darkness thin. And to the stack, or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before : Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From the side of some hoar hill, Through the high wood echoing shrill ; Some time walking, not unseen, Ey hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate Where the great sun begins his state. Robed in flames, and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; While the ploughman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrow'd land. And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tq^s his tale, Under the hawthorn in the- dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landscape round it measures ; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; Mountains, on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest ; Meadows trim, with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide ; c I 8 JWSES AND HOLLY. Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Wliere, i)erhaps, some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks. Where Corydon and Thyrsis met. Are at their savoury dinner set Of herbs, and other country messes, Which the neat-iianded Phillis dresses ; And then in haste her bower she leaves, With Thestylis to bind the sheaves; Or, if the earlier season lead, To tlie tann'd haycock in the mead. Sometimes, with secure delight, The upland hamlets will invite, When the merry bells ring round. And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid Dancing in the checker'd shade; And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday. Till the livelong daylight fail : Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat, How fliiry Mab the junkets eat ; She was jMnch'd, and puU'd, she said ; And he, by friar's lantern led. Tells how the drudging goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn. His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn. That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down the lubber fiend. And, strctch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength ; A'OSES AND HOLLY. 1 9 And, crop-full, out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock his matin rings. Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, By whispering winds soon luU'd asleep. Tower'd cities please us then, And the busy hum of men. Where throngs of knights and barons ])old In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear. And pomp, and feast, and revelry. With mask and antique pageantry ; Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon. If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's cliiUl, Warble his, native wood-notes wild. And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs. Married to immortal verse. Such as the meeting soul may pierce. In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out. With wanton heed and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes runnhii Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony; That Orpheus' self may heave his head, From golden slund^er on a bed Of heap'd Kiysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would ha\-e won the ear 20 HOSES AND NOLL V. Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regain'd Eurydice. These dehghts if thou canst give, Mirth, with thee I mean to live. MilioJi. J? OSES AND HOLLY. 21 THE ISLAND. T F the author of the Irish Melodies had ever had a httle isle so mucli his own as I have possessed, he might not have found it so sweet as the song anticipates. It has been my fortune, like Robinson Crusoe, to be thrown on such a desolate spot ; and I felt so lonely, though I had a follower, that I wish Moore had been there. I had the honour of being in that tremendous action off Finisterre, which proved the end of the earth to many a brave fellow. I was ordered with a boarding party forcibly to enter the Santissima Trinidada ; but in the act of climbing into the quar- ter-gallery, which, however, gave no tjuarter, was rebutted by the but-end of a gun — a marine's ; who remained the quarter-master of the place. I fell senseless into the sea, and should no doubt have perished in the waters of oblivion, but for the kindness of John Monday, who picked me up to go adrift with him in one of the ship's boats. All our oars were carried away, — that is to say, we did not carry away any oars ; and while shot was raining, our feeble hailing was unheeded. As may be supposed, our boat was anything but the jolly-boat; for we had no provisions to spare in the middle of an immense waste. We were, in fact, adrift in the cutter, with nothing to cut. We had not even junk for junketing, and nothing but salt-water, even if the wind should blow fresh. Famine indeed seemed to stare each of us in the face,- — that is, we stared at one another. We were truly in a very disagreeable pickle, with oceans of brine and no beef; and, I fancy, we would have exchanged a pound of gold for a pound of flesh. No bread rose in the east, and in the opposite point we were equally disappointed. We could not compass a meal any how, but got mealy-mouthed, notwithstanding. Time hung heavy on our hands, for our fast days seemed to i)ass ver_\- slowly ; and our strength was rapidly sinking, from being so much afloat. Still we nourished Hope, though we had nothing to give her. But at last we lost all prospect of land, if one may say so when no land was in sight. The weather got thicker as we were getting thinner ; and though we kept a sharp watch, it was a very bad look-out. We could see nothing before us but nothing to eat and drink. At last the fog cleared oft', and we saw something like land right head ; but, alas 1 the wind was in our teeth as ROSES AND HOLLY. well as in our stomachs. We could do nothing but " keep her near," and as we could not keep ourselves full, we luckily suited the course of the boat ; so that, after a tedious beating about — for the wind not only gives blows, but takes a great deal of beating — we came to an island. Here we landed, and our first impulse on coming to dry land was to drink. There was a little brook at hand, to which we applied ourselves, till it seemed actually to murmur at our inordinate thirst. Our next care was to look for some food ; for though our hearts were full at our escape, the neighbour- ing region was dreadfully empty. We succeeded in getting some natives out of their bed, but with difficulty got them open ; a common oyster-knife would have been worth the price of a sceptre. Our next concern was to look out for a lodging ; and at last we discovered an empty cave, reminding me of an old inscription at Portsmouth, "The hole of this place is to let." We took the precaution of rolling some great stones to the entrance, for fear of last lodgers, — lest some bear might come home from business, or a tiger to tea. Here, under the rock, we slept without rocking; and when, through the night's failing, the day broke, we saw, with the first instalment of light, that we were upon a small desert isle, now for the first time an Isle of Man. Hood. THE ADVANTAGES OF TRAVELLING. TT draws the grossness off the understanding. And renders active and industrious spirits. He that knows most men's manners must of necessity Best know his own, and mend those, by example. 'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill horse, Still in the place he was born in, lamed and blinded ; Living at home is like it. Pure and strong spirits. That, like the fire, still covet to fly upward, And to give fire, as well as take it, cased up and mew'd here — I mean at home, like lusty-mettled horses. Only tied up in stables to please their masters. Beat out their fici}' lives in their own litters. BmuiiiouI and Flchiuf. ROSES AND HOLLY. ANNABEL LEE. TT was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there Hved whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee ; And this maiden she hved with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. / was a child and she was a child. In this kingdom by the sea : But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee ; With a love that the winged seraphs of lieaven Coveted her and me. J^OSES AXD HOLLY. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling Aly beautiful Annabel Lee ; So that her high-born kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me — Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night. Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. liut our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we — Of many far wiser than we — And neither the angels in heaven above. Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : For the moon never beams, without Ijringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee ; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her toml) by the sounding sea. E. A. Foe. KOSES AM) HOLLY. SCHOOL-BOY DAYS. A RTHUR PENDENNIS'S schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that, as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a dunce or as a scholar. He never read to improve himself out of school-hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, plays, and poetry, on which he could lay his hands. He never was flogged, but it was a wonder how he escaped the whipping-post. When he had money he spent it royally in tarts for himself and his friends ; he has been known to disburse nine and sixpence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day. When he had no funds he went on tick. When he could get no credit he went without, and was almost as happy. He has been known to take a thrash- ing for a crony without saying a word ; but a blow, ever so slight, from a friend, would make him roar. To fighting he was averse from his earliest youth, as indeed to physic, the Greek Grammar, or any other exertion, and would engage in none of them, except at the last extremity. He seldom if ever told lies, and never bullied little boys. Those masters or seniors who were kind to him, he loved with boyish ardour. And though the Doctor, when he did not know his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play, said that that boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate for ruin in ihu world, and perdition in the next ; a profligate who would most likely bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a dishonoured grave, and the like — yet as the Doctor made use of these compliments to most of the boys in the place, (which has not turned out an unusual number of felons and pickpockets,) little Pen, at first uneasy and terrified by these charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them; and he has not, in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any act worthy of transportation or hanging up to the present day. T/iackffay. 26 /^OSES AAD HOLLY. THE BEST I'HINGS. A "\ ^7" II AT wisdom more, what better life, than jjleaseth God to send \ * * What worldly goods, what longer use, than pleaseth God to lend / What better fare than well content, agreeing with thy wealth % AVhat better guest than trusty friend, in sickness and in health % What better bed than conscience good, to pass the night with sleep ? ^Vhat better work than daily care from sin thyself to keep ? What better thought than think on God, and daily Him to serve % What better gift than to the poor, that read}' be to starve 1 What greater praise of God and man than mercy for to show? Who, merciless, shall mercy find, that mercy shows to i^w I What worse despair than loath to die, for fear to go to hell? What greater foith than tru.->t in God, through Christ in heaven to dwell ? T//sser. NO AGE COxNTENT. T AID in my (juiet bed, in study as I were, -^ I saw, within my troubled head, a heap of thoughts aj^pear ; And every thought did show so lively in mine eyes. That now I sigh'd, and then I smiled, as cause of thoughts did rise. 1 saw the little boy, and thought how oft that he Did wish of God, to 'scape the rod, a tall young man to be; The young man eke, that feels his bones with pains oppress'd. How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest. 'I'he ricli old man, that sees his end draw on so sore. How he would be a man again, to live so much the more. Whereat full oft T smiled, to see how all these three, !■ rom boy to man, from mail to boy, would chop and change degree. I^ar/ of Surrey. A'OSES AAD HOLLY. V A MODERN CRITIC. A MODERN critic is a corrector of the press, gratis ; and as he does it for nothing, so is it to no purpose. He fancies himself clerk of Stationers' Hall, and nothing must pass current that is not entered by him. He is very severe in his supposed office, and cries, " Woe to ye scribes," right or wrong. He supposes all writers to be malefactors without clergy, that claim the privilege of their books, and will not allow it, where the law of the land and common justice do. He censures in gross, and condemns all without examining particulars. If they will not confess and accuse themselves, he will rack them until they do. He is a committee man in the Commonwealth of Letters, and as great a tyrant ; so is not bound to pro- ceed but by his own rules, which he will not endure to be disputed. He has been an apocryphal scribbler himself; but his writings wanting autho- rity he grew discontent, and turned apostate, and thence becomes so severe to those of his own profession. He never commends anything but in op- position to something else, that he would undervalue, and commonly sides with the weakest, which is generous anywhere but in judging. He is worse than an index expitrgatoriiis ; for he blots out all, and when he cannot find a fault, makes one. He " demurs " to all writers, and when he is " over- ruled," will run into " contempt." He is always bringing " writs of error," like a pettifogger, and "reversing of judgments," though the case be never so plain. He is a mountebank, that is always quacking of the infirm and diseased parts of books, to show his skill; but has nothing at all to do wiUi the sound. He is a very ungentle reader, for he reads sentences on all authors that have the unhappiness to come before him ; and therefore pedants, that stand in fear of him, always appeal from him beforehand, by the names of Momus and Zoilus, complain sorely of his extrajudicial pro- ceedings, and protest against him as corrupt, and his judgment "void and of none effect ; '" and put themselves into the protection of some powerful patron, who, like a knight-errant, is to encounter with the magician, and free them from his enchantments. Butler. 28 A'OSES AND HOLLY. THE SOUL'S ERRAND. /^^ O, Soul, the Body's guest, ^-^ Ui)on a thankless errand ; Fear not to touch the best ; The truth shall be thy warrant. Go, since I needs must die, And give them all the lie. Go, tell the Court it glows, And shines like painted wood ; Go, tell the Church it shows What's good, but does no good. If Court and Church reply. Give Court and Church the lie. Tell Potentates, they live Acting, but, oh ! their actions Not loved, unless they give ; Nor strong, but by their factions. If Potentates reply. Give Potentates the lie. Tell men of high condition, That rule affairs of state, Their purpose is ambition ; Their practice only hate. And if they do rejily. Then give them all the lie. Tell those that brave it most. They beg for more by spending, Who, in their greatest cost, Seek nothing but commending. And if they make reply, Spare not to give the lie. ROSES AND HOLLY. ' 3 1 Tell Zeal it lacks devotion ; Tell Love it is but lust ; Tell Time it is but motion ; Tell Flesh it is but dust : And wish them not reply, For thou must give the lie. Tell Age it daily wasteth ; Tell Honour how it alters ; Tell Beauty that it blasteth ; Tell Favour that she falters : And as they do reply, Give every one the lie. Tell Wit how much it wrangles In fickle points of niceness ; Tell Wisdom she entangles Herself in over-wiseness : And if they do reply, Then give them both the he. Tell Physic of her boldness ; Tell Skill it is pretension ; Tell Charity of coldness ; Tell Law it is contention : And if they yield reply, Then give them still the lie. Tell Fortune of her blindness ; Tell Nature of decay ; Tell Friendship of unkindness ; Tell Justice of delay : And if they do reply, Then 2:ive them all the lie. /WSES A AD HOLLY. Tell Arts they have no soundness, But vary by esteeming ; Tell Schools they lack profoundness, And stand too much on seeming. If Arts and Schools reply, Give Arts and Schools the lie. Tell Faith it 's fled the city ; Tell how the Country erreth ; Tell Manhood, shakes off pity ; Tell Virtue, least preferreth. And if they do reply. Spare not to give the lie. So, Avhen thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blaltbing ; Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing ; Yet stab at thee who will. No stab the Soul can kill. ^V," ]Va/ftr Ka/eii'/i. 7WSES AND HOLLY. 33 GLORY AND TAXATION. "Xl /"HAT are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory? — ^ * Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot — taxes upon everything whicli it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, sn^ll, or taste — taxes on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth — on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home — taxes on the raw material — taxes on every fresli value that is added to it by the industry of man — taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and the drug that restores him to health — on the ermine which decorates the judge, and tne rope which hangs the criminal — on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spice — on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride — at bed or board, coiuhant or Lrant, we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top— the beardless youth manages his taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road ; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent. — flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent. — and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble ; and he is then gathered to his fathers —to be taxed no more. Sydney Smith. PROVERBS FROM POPE. T^HE proper study of mankind is man Order is Heaven's first law. An honest man 's the noblest work of God. Virtue alone is happiness below. All our knowledge is, ourselves to know. A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn. Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? Gentle diilness ever loves a joke. 34 A'OSES AM) HOLLY. I A SAILOR S a pitched piece of reason calked and tackled and only studied to dis- pute with tempests. He is part of his own provision for he lives ever pickled. A forewind is the substance of his creed, and fresh water the burden of his prayers. He is naturally ambitious, for he is ever climbing ; out of which as naturally he fears, for he is ever flying; time and he are everywhere, ever contending who shall arrive first; he is well winded, for he tires the day, and outruns darkness. His life is like a hawk's, the best [)art mewed ; and if he live till three coats, is a master. He sees God's wonders in the deep, but so as rather they appear his playfellows than stirrers of his zeal; nothing but hunger and hard rocks can convert him, and then but his upper deck only, for his hold neither fears nor hopes. His sleeps are but reprievals of his dangers, and when he wakes it is but next stage to dying. His wisdom is the coldest part about him, for it ever points to the north ; and it lies lowest, which makes his valour every tide overflow it. In a storm it is disputable whether the noise be more his or the elements, and which will first leave scolding; on which side of the ship he may be saved best, whether his fi\ith be starboard faith or larboard ; or the helm at that time not all his hope of heaven ; his keel is the emblem of his conscience, till it be split he never repents, then no further than the land allows him, and his language is a new confusion, and all his thoughts new nations ; his body and his ship are both one burden, nor is it known which, stows most wine or rolls most, only the ship is guided, he has no stern ; a barnacle and he are bred together, both of one nature, and it is feared one reason ; upon any but a wooden horse he cannot ride, and if the wind blow against him he dare not ; he swarves u]) to his seat as to a sailyard, and cannot sit unless he bear a flagstaff; if ever he be broken to the saddle it is but a voyage still, for he mistakes the bridle for a bowline, and is ever turning his horse's tail; he can ])ray, but it is by rote, not faith, and when he would he dares not, for his brackish belief hath made that ominous. A rock or a quicksand plucks him before he be ripe, else he is gathered to his friends at Wapping. Sir Thomas Ovcrlnirv. ROSES AM) HOLLY. J5 BOBADIL'S MODI': OF WARFARE. T WILL tell you, by the way of private, and under seal, I am a gentle- man, and live here obscure, and to myself: but were I known to his majesty, and the lords, observe me, I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public benefit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of his subjects in general, but to save the one half, nay, three parts of his yearly charge in holding war, and against what enemy soever. And how would I do it, think you \ Why, thus : — I would select nineteen more to myself; gentlemen they should be, of a good spirit, strong, and able constitution; I would choose them by an instinct, a character that 1 have; and I would teach these nineteen the special rules ; as your Punto, your Reverse, your Stoccata, your Imbrocata, your Passada, your Montonto ; till they could all play very nearly, or altogether, as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong ; w'e twenty w^ould come into the field the tenth of March, or thereabouts ; and we would challenge twenty of the enemy ; they could not, in their honour, refuse us ! Well, we would kill them ;^challenge twenty more, kill them ; — twenty more, kill them ; — twenty more, kill them too ; — and thus would we kill every man his twenty a-day ! That 's twenty score ; — twenty score, that 's two hundred ; — two hundred a-day, five days a thousand : — forty thousand , forty times five, five times forty, . . . two hundred days kills them all up, by computation ! And this I will venture my poor gentlemanlike carcass to perform — provided there be no treason practised upon us — by fair and discreet manhood ; that is, civilly by the sword. B:n Jouson. ROSES AXD HOLLY. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. A "\ THEN a true genius appeareth in the world, you may know him by * ^ this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side setteth up false lights, and maketh a great noise, that the enemy may believe them to be more numerous and strong than they really are. I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others, but useless to themselves ; like a sun-dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within. The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit. Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices ; so, climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping. Censure is the tax a man payeth to the public for being eminent. No wise man ever wished to be younger. An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before. Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and t!ie sincerest part of our devotion. To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like ; by which they plainly confess that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told : whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a maxim, that whoever desires the character of a proud man, ought to conceal his vanity. Whoever can make two ears of corn or two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, will deserve better of mankind, and do more essen- tial service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together. Ealse happiness is like false money, it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves ordinary occasions ; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss. Dean Swift. A'OS/-S AND UOJ.LV. 0/ WERS J I -^-^ 17 LOWERS seem intended for the solace of ordi- nary humanity : children love them ; quiet, tender, contented ordinary people love them as they grow ; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered. They are the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded town, mark, as with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace. Passionate or religious minds contemplate them with fond, feverish intensity ; the affection is seen severely calm in the works of many old religious painters, and mixed with more open and true country sentiment in those of our own pre-Raphaelites. To the child and the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing operative, to the grisette and the nun, the lover and the monk, they are precious always. But to the men of supreme power and thoughtfulness, precious only at times ; symbolically and pathetically often to the poets, but rarely for their own sake. They fall forgotten from the great workman's and soldier's hands. Such men will take, in thankfulness, crowns of leaves, or crowns of thorns — not crowns of flowers. Jiuskin. 7^ OSES AND HOLLY. A TOUCH OF CONSCIENCE. T R1':MEMBER a touch of conscience at school. My good old aunt, *■ who never parted from nie at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet-meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar saluted me, (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit.) I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and in the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of — the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; but before I had got to the end or the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, and who miglit be a bad man for aught I knew ; and then I thought of tlie pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself and not another — wouUl eat her nice cake — and what should I say to her the next time I saw her — how naughty 1 was to part with her pretty present — and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, And her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms giving, and out- of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of tliat insidious, gooil-for nothing, old gray impostor. Charles Lamb. A MILK AND WATER EPIGRAM. " A RE good folk very clean up town V Inquired a rustic o'er his porter. "Clean ! " cried a cockney just come down, " They even wash their milk M-ith water." ROSES AND HOLL Y. 39 COUPLETS FROM POPE. "" I "IS with our judgments as our watches; none Go just aUke, yet each beheves his own. A Uttle learning is a dangerous thing ! Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. Words are like leaves ; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue ; But, like a shadow, prove the substance true. Good nature and good sense must ever join ; To err is human, to forgive, divine. Hope springs eternal in the human breast : Man never is, but always to be blest. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen. Honour and state from no condition rise ; Act well your part, there all the honour lies. 'Tis education forms the common mind, And as the twig is bent, the tree 's inclined. Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And, though no science, fairly worth the seven. 40 IWSES AND HOLLY SERMONS IN STONES. THERE are no natural objects out of which more can be thus learned than out of stones. They seem to have been created especially to reward a patient observer. Nearly all other objects in nature can be seen, to some extent, without patience, and are pleasant even in being half seen. 'I'rees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but stumbhng : no plea- sure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind ; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and struc- ture, in a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one ; and taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill ; more fantastic in form, and incomparably richer in colour. Rtiskin. LOVE IN MAN AND WOMAN. TT is an old and received truism — love is an hour with us : it is all night and all day with a woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, tailors' bills, parliamentary duties, and the deuce knows what to think of; Delia has to think about Damon — Damon is the oak, (or the post,) and stands up, and Delia is the ivy or the honeysuckle whose arms twine about him. Is it not so, Delia? Is it not your nature to creep about his feet and kiss them, to twine round his trunk and hang there ; and Damon's to stand like a British man with his hands in his breeches pocket, while the pretty fond parasite clings round him ? Thackciity. ROSES AND HOLL V. 4' ^-^m THE SORROWS OF WERTER. 'I ]| rERTER had a love for Charlotte, Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter. So he sigh'd, and pined, and ogled, And his passion boiled and bubbled, Till he blew his silly brains out, And no more Avas by it troubled. Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter; Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter. Thackcrax. 42 ROSES AND HOLLY. THE SEA. TELL me, ye naturalists, who sounded the first march and retreat to the tide, "Hither shalt thou come, and no farther?" Why doth not the water recover his riglit over the earth, being higher in nature? Whence came the salt, and who first boiled it, which made so much brine % When the winds are not only wild in a storm, but even stark mad in a hurricane, who is it that restores them again to their wits, and brings them asleep in a calm? Who made the mighty whales, which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them ? Who first taught the water to imitate the creatures on land, so that the sea is the stable of horse-fishes, the stall of kine -fishes, th& sty of hog-fishes, the kennel of dog-fishes, and in all things the sea the ape of the land ? Whence grows the ambergris in the seal which is not so hard to find where it is as to know w'hat it is. Was not God the first shipwright ? and have not all vessels on the water descended from the loins (or ribs rather) of Noah's ark? or else, who durst be so bold, wath a {c\n crooked boards nailed together, a stick standing upright, and a rag tied to it. to adventure into the ocean? What loadstone first touched the loadstone? or how first fell it in love with the North, rather affecting that cold climate than the pleasant East, or fruitful South or West? How comes that stone to know more than men, and find the way to the land in a mist ? In most of these, men take sanctuary at occulta gua/ifas, (some hidden quality,) and complain that the room is dark, when their eyes are blind. Lideed, they are God's wonders ? and that seaman the greatest wonder of all for his blockishness, who, seeing them daily, neither takes notice of them, admires them, nor is thankful for them. Fnikr. A CLUSTER OF ARABIC PROVERBS. A THOUSAND cranes in the air are not worth one .sparrow in the fist. There are no fans in hell. 'I'he man who makes chaff of himself will be eaten by cows. If I were to trade in winding-sheets, my luck would make all men live. yy'OS/£S AND HOLLY. 43 THE WAR HORSE. TTAST thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder ? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength : he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted : neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage : neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets. Ha, ha ; and he smelleth the battle afar ofif, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. Book of Job. THE BOOK OF JOB. T CALL that, apart from all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book ; all men's Book, It is our first, oldest state- ment of the never-ending Problem, — man's destiny and God's ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free-flowing outlines ; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity ; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcile- ment. There is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So true every way ; true eyesight and vision for all things ; material things no less than spiritual : the Horse, — " Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder V — he " laughs at the shaking of the spear I" Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation ; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind ; — so soft, and great : as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars ! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit. Car/vlc. 44 ROSES AND HOLLY. SUMMER. T 'M coming along wiili a bounding pace, To finish the work that spring begun; 1 've left them all with a brighter face, The flowers in the vales through which I 've run. I have hung festoons from laburnum-trees, And clothed the lilac, the birch, and broom ; 1 've waken'd the sound of humming bees. And deck'd all nature in brighter bloom. I 've roused the laugh of the playful child, And tired it out in the sunny noon ; A.11 nature at my approach hath smiled, And I 've made fond lovers seek the moon. For this is my life, my glorious reign, And I 'II queen it well in my leafy bower ; All shall be bright in my rich domain ; I 'm ([ueen of the leaf, the bud, and the flower. And I '11 reign in triumph till autumn time Shall conquer my green and verdant pride ; Then I '11 hie me to another clime, Till I 'm call'd again as a sunny bride. ROSES AND HOLLY. 47 THE POWER OF LITTLE THINGS. A 1 /"HEN Franklin made his discovery of the identity of Hghtning and electricity, it was sneered at, and people asked, " Of what use is if?" To which his apt reply was, "What is the use of a child? It may become a man ! " When Galvani discovered that a frog's leg twitched when placed in contact with different metals, it could scarcely have been imagined that so apparently insignificant a fact could have led to im- portant results. Yet therein lay the germ of the Electric Telegraph, which binds the intelligence of continents together, and probably, before many years elapse, will " put a girdle round the globe." So too, little bits of stone and fossil, dug out of the earth, intelligently interpreted, have issued in the science of geology and the practical operations of mining, in which large capitals are invested, and vast numbers of persons profitably em- ployed. The gigantic machinery employed in pumping our mines, working our mills and manufactories, and driving our steam-ships and locomotives, in like manner depends for its supply of power upon so slight an agency as particles of water expanded by heat. The steam which we see issuing from the common tea-kettle, when pent up within an ingeniously-contrived mechanism, displays a force equal to that of millions of horses, and con- tains a power to rebuke the waves, and to set even the hurricane at de- fiance. Nay, it is the same power at work within the bowels of the earth which has been the cause of many of those semi-miraculous catastrophes, — volcanoes and earthquakes, — that have played so mighty a part in the history of the globe. Smiles. THE WORLD'S WEALTH. 'T^HIS world's wealth, which men so much desire, May well be liken'd to a burning fire : Whereof a little can do little harm. But profit much, our bodies well to warm. But take too mucli, and surely tliou shalt burn ; So too much wealth to too much woe doth turn. 4S ROSES AXD HOLLY. A PROFESSOR OF PUFFING. T AM, sir, a practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a j^ro- fessor of the art of puffing, at your service I daresay, now, you conceive half the very civil paragraphs and advertisements you see to be written by the parties concerned, or their friends 1 No such thing : nine out of ten are manufactured by me in the way of business. Even the auctioneers now— the auctioneers, I say — though the rogues have lately got some credit for their language — not an article of the merit theirs : take them out of their pulpits, and they are as dull as catalogues ! — No, sir; '"twas I enriched their style — 'twas I first taught them to crowd their advertisements with panegyrical superlatives, each epithet rising above the other, like the bidders in their own auction-rooms ! From me they learned to inlay their phraseology with variegated chips of exotic metophor : by me, too, their inventive faculties were called forth : — by me they were instructed to clothe ideal walls with gratuitous fruits — to insinuate obsequious rivulets into visionary groves — to teach courteous .shrubs to nod their approbation of the grateful soil : or on emergencies to raise upstart oaks, \vhere there never had been an acorn ; to create a delightful vicinage without the assistance of a neighbour; or fix the temple of Hygeia in the fcns of Lincolnshire ! S/wriiiaii. THE SAGE'S WIT. A S lately a sage on fine ham was repasting, (Though for breakfast too savoury, I ween,) He cxclaim'd to a friend, who sat silent and fasting, " What a breakfast of learning is mine ! " " A breakfast of learning ! " with wonder he cried, And laugh'd, for he thought him mistaken ; " Why, what is it else 1 " the sage quickly rei)lied, " When I 'm making large extracts from Bacon i ' JWSKS .IN J) HOLLY 49 OUR LITTLE REPUBLIC. nPHE little republic, to which I gave laws, was regulated in the follow- ing manner : by sunrise we all assembled in our common apartment, the fire being previously kindled by the servant. After we had saluted each other with proper ceremony, for I always thought fit to keep up some mechanical forms of good breeding, without which freedom ever destroys friendship, we all bent in gratitude to that Being who gave us anotlier day. This duty being performed, my son and I went to pursue our usual industry abroad, while my wife and daughters employed themselves in providing breakfast, which was always ready at a certain time. I allowed half-an-hour for this meal, and an hour for dinner ; which time was taken up in innocent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philosophical arguments between my son and mc. 50 KOSES ANV HOLLY. As we rose with the sun, so we never joursued our labours after it was gone down, but returned home to the expecting family, where smiling looks, a neat hearth, and pleasant fire were prej^ared for our reception. Nor were tve without guests ; sometimes Farmer I'lamborough, our talk- ative neighbour, and often the blind piper would pay us a visit, and taste our gooseberry-wine ; for the making of which we had lost neither the recipe nor the reputation. These harmless people had several ways of being good company ; for, while one played, the other would sing some soothing" ballad — -Johnny Armstrong s Last Go d-nigJif. or The Cruelty of Barbara AUan. The night was concluded in the manner we began the morning; my youngest boys being appointed to read the lessons of the day; and he that read loudest, distinctest, and best, was to have a half- penny on Sunday to put into the poor's-box. G olds III iiJi. A CLUSTER OF FRENCH PROVERBS. ' I ""HE fox says of the mulberries when he cannot get at them, '"They are not good.'' Loaves put awry into the oven come out crooked. He pulls at a long rope who desires another's death. 'J'he friendship of the great is like the shadow of a bush, soon gone. Money borrowed is soon sorrowed. ^Vith the hel]) of an " If }()u might ])ut Paris in a bottle. For over-buying there 's no helj) but selling again. He has a good pledge of the cat who has her skin. It is nothing at all : only a woman drowning. A hundred years is not much, but never is a long while. He knocks boldly at the door who brings good news. Never sell the bear skin till you have killed the bear. The beadle of the parish is alway.s of the vicar's oi)inion. Horses run for benefices, but asses get them. One " take this" is better than two " you shall have." AVord by word big books are made. A'OSES AND HOLLY. 51 genevip:vk. AID of my love, sweet Genevieve 1 In Beauty's liglit you glide along : V'our eye is like the star of eve, And sweet your voice as seraph's song. Yet not your heavenly beauty gives This heart with passion soft to glow; Within your soul a voice there lives — It bids you hear the tale of woe. When sinking low the sufferer wan Beholds no hand outstretcht to save, Fair as the bosom of the swan I'hat rises graceful o'er the wave, I 've seen your breast with pity heave. And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve ! Coleridge. — — *J5i^— ~- A CLUSTER OF ITALIAN PROVERBS. T^OR the buyer a hundred eyes are too few: for the seller one is enough. He dances well to whom Fortune pipes. He who errs in the tens errs in the thousands. There is no making pancakes without breaking eggs. He who pays before hand is served behind hand. He who would be long an old man must begin betimes. Credit is dead. Bad pay killed it. When the will is prompt the legs are nimble. One eye of the master sees more than four eyes of his servants. To protest and knock one's head against the wall is what c\erybody can do. The virtue of silence is a great piece of knowledge. If the young man knew, if the old man could, there is ncjthing but would be done D- ROSES AND HOLLY. PRAYER "pRAYER is the soul's sincere desire, ^ Utter'd or unexpress'd ; The motion of a hidden fire Tliat trcml)lcs in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, The falling of a tear; 'J'lie upward glancing of an eye. \\'hen none but God is near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech That infant lips can try; Prayer, the sublimest strains that reach The Majesty on high. Prayer is the Christian's vital breatli. The Christian's native air ; His watchward at the gates of death — He enters heaven by prayer. Prayer is the contrite sinner's voice, Returning from his ways ; A\'hile angels in their songs rejoice, And cry, " Behold, he prays ! " The saints in ])rayer appear as one, In word, and deed, and mind ; AVhile with the Father and the Son, Sweet fellowship they find. Here on the hills He feeds His herds. His flocks on yonder plains ; His praise is warbled by tlie birds ; Oh, could wc catch their strains ! ROSES' AND HOLLY. 53 O Thou ! by whom we come to God, The Life, the Truth, the Way; The path of prayer Thyself hast trodj Lord, teach us how to pray. As fliil the waters from the deep, As summer brooks run dry, Man heth down in dreamless sleep, His life is vanity. Man lieth down, no more to wake, Till yonder arching sphere Shall with a roll of thunder break, And nature disappear. Oh ! hide me till Thy wrath be past, Thou, who canst slay or save ! Hide me where hope may anchor fast, In my Redeemer's grave ! y, i//u's AJo/i/^i^o/Hc'rv. MAN. TV /TEN are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs. And full as craving too, and full as vain ; And yet the soul, shut up in her dark room, Viewing so clear abroad, at home sees nothing; But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind, Works all her folly up, and casts it outward To the world's open view. Drydcn. 54 ROSES AND HOLLY. y ,\\-^?Vk'' \^^' IS no species of humour in which ^i^the EngUsh more excel than that which consists in caricaturing and giving hidicrous appellations or nicknames. In this way they have whimsically desig- nated, not merely individuals, but nations ; and, in their fondness for pushing a joke, they have not spared even themselves. One would think that, in personifying itself, a nation would be apt to picture something grand, heroic, and imposing ; but it is cha- racteristic of the peculiar humour of the English, and of their love for what is blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have embo- died their national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent old fellow, with a three- cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view ; and have been so successful in their delineations, that there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the public mind than that eccentric jjerson- age, John Bull. Jolm Bull, to all ajjpearance, is a plain, Ifl^^^ 'vi ^-^=3:;'=^^^ j5n. V ROSES AND HOLLY. 55 downright, rnatter-of-fact fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose. There is little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of strong natural feeling. He excels in humour more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay ; melancholy rather than morose ; can easily be moved to a sudden tear, or surprised into a broad laugh ; but he loathes senti- ment, and has no turn for light pleasantry. He is a boon companion, if you allow him to have his humour, and to talk about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a quarrel, with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgelled. In this last respect, to tell the truth, he has a propensity to be some- what too ready. He is a busy-minded personage, who thinks not merely for himself and family, but for all the country round, and is most gener- ously disposed to be everybody's champion. He is continually volunteer- ing his services to settle his neighbours affairs, and takes it in great dudgeon if they engage in any matter of consequence without asking his advice ; though he seldom engages in any friendly office ot the kind without finishing by getting into a squabble with all jjarties, and then railing bitterly at their ingratitude. He unluckily took lessons in his youth in the noble science of defence, and having accomplished himself 5^ A' OSES A AD BOLL]'. in the use of his hmbs and his weapons, and become a perfect master at boxing and cudgel play, he has had a troublesome life of it ever since. He cannot hear of a (quarrel between the most distant of his neighbours but he begins incontinently to fimible with the head of his cudgel, and consider whether his interest or honour does not require that he should meddle in the broil. He is a little fond of playing the magnifico abroad ; of pulling out a long purse ; flinging his money bravely about at boxing-matches, horse- races, cock-fights, and carrymg a high head among '• gentlemen of the fancy;" but immediately after one of these fits of extravagance, he will be taken with violent qualms of economy ; stop short at the most trivial expenditure ; talk desperately of being ruined and brought upon the parish ; and in such moods will not pay the smallest tradesman's bill without violent altercation. He is, in fact, the most punctual and dis- contented paymaster in the world ; drawing his coin out of his breeches- pocket with infinite reluctance ; paying to the uttermost farthing, but accompanying every guinea with a growl. IVas/ii/igfo/i Irving. ROSES AND HOLLY. S7 A CONTENTED MIND. TIT" HEN all is done and said, In the end thus shall you find, He most of all doth bathe in bliss That hath a quiet mind. Companion none is like Unto the mind alone, For many have been harm'd by speech- Through thinking few or none. Our wealth leaves us at death. Our kinsmen at the grave ; But virtue of the mind unto The heavens with us we have. Wherefore for virtue's sake I can be well content. The sweetest time of all my life To deem in thinking spent. liar/ of Surrey, A CLUSTER OF TURKISH PROVERBS. TT is a fast-day to-day, and I must not eat," says the cat, when she cannot reach the liver. Honey is a good thing, but the price of honey is another thing. Death is a black camel that kneels once before every door. Fame is not gained on a feather bed. Which are the most beautiful birds % " My little ones," said the crow. The lazy man says, " I have no strength." 58 IWSES AND HOLLY. LOVE. A LL thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame. All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame. Oft in my waking dreams do I Live o'er again that happy hour, When midway on the mount I lay Beside the ruin'd tower. The moonshine stealing o'er the scene Had blended with the lights of eve ; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve ! She lean'd against the arme'd man, The statue of the armed knight ; She stood and hsten'd to my lay, Amid the lingering light. Few sorrows halh she of her own My hope ! my joy ! my Genevieve ! She loves me best, whene'er I sing The songs that make her grieve. I play'd a soft and doleful air, I sang an old and moving story — An old rude song, that suited well. 'I'hat ruin wild and hoarv. "'•''^^^'^'U^; -m^^]' \ i^^ KOSES A ND HOLL V. 6 1 She listen'd with a flitting l)lush, Witli downcast eyes and modest grace ; For well she knew, I could not choose But gaze upon her lace. I told her of the Knight that wore Upon his shield a burning brand; And that for ten long years he woo'd The Lady of the Land. I told her how he pined : and ah! The deep, the low, the pleading tone With which I sang another's love Literpreted my own. She listen'd with a flitting blush, With downcast eyes, and modest grace ; And she forgave me, that I gazed Too fondly on her face. But when I told the cruel scorn 'I'hat crazed that bold and lovely Knight, And that he cross'd the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night ; That sometimes from the savage den, And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once In green and sunny glade There came and look'd him in the face An angel beautiful and bright; And that he knew it was a Fiend, This miserable Kniglitl 02 ROSES Ai\D HOLLY. And that unknowing what he did, He leap'd amid a murderous band, And saved from outrage worse than death The Lady of the Land ; And how she wept, and clasp'd his knees, And how she tended him in vain ; And ever strove to expiate The scorn that crazed his brain ; And that she nursed him in a cave, And how his madness went away, When on the yellow forest-leaves A dying man he lay ; — His dying words — but when I reach'd That tenderest strain of all the ditty. My faltering voice and pausing harp Disturb'd her soul with pity ! All impulses of soul and sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve ; The music and the doleful tale, The rich and balmy eve ; And hopes, and fears that kindle hope. An undistinguishable throng. And gentle wishes long subdued. Subdued and cherish'd long! She wept with pity and delight. She blush'd with love and virgin shame \ And like the murmur of a dream. I heard her breathe my name. ROSES AND HOLLY. 63 Her bosom heaved — she stepp'd aside, As conscious of my look she stept — Then suddenly, with timorous eye She fled to me and wept. She half enclosed me with her arms, She press'd me with a meek embrace ; And bending back her head, look'd up, And gazed upon my face. 'Twas partly love, and partly fear, And partly 'twas a bashful art, That I might rather feel than see The swelling of her heart. I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride ; And so I won my Genevieve, I\Iy bright and beauteous bride. S. T. Coleridge. 64 ROSES AND HOLLY. BEAUTY. A VIRTUE is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features ; and that hath rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect; neither is it almost seen, that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue; as if nature were rather busy not to err, than in labour to produce excellency ; and therefore they prove accomplished, but not of great spirit ; and study rather behaviour, than virtue. But this holds not always ; for Augustus Caisar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Alciblades of Athens, Lsmael, the sofi of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour, is more than that of colour ; and that of decent and gracious motion, more than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express : no, nor the first sight of the life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the pro- portion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler ; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions ; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them ; not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was ; l)ut he must do it by a kind of felicity, (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music) and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you examine them ])art by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly it is no marvel, though persons in years seem many times more amiable ; pulcJironun autiimnus fiilc/irr ; for no youth can be comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make u]) the comeliness. Beauty is as ^unmier fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and, for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance ; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine, and vices blush. Jnicon. /^!OSES AND HOLLY THE RAM AND ITS SHADOW. ON the green turf, with his imperial front Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb, The breathing creature stood ; as beautiful Beneath him, show'd his shadowy counterpart. Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, And each seem'd centre of his own fair world : Antipodes unconscious of each other. Yet, in partition, with their several spheres, Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight ! ]Vords7i.'orf7/ 66 NOSES AM) HOLLY. WHAT IS POETRY? T F a young reader should ask, after all, What is the best way of knowing ■^ bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best, and so on % the answer is, the only and twofold way ; first, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention ; and second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they nre. Every true reader of poetry partakes of a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature ; and no one can be completely such, who does not love, or take an interest in everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy — from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of tlie low. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realises the greatest amount of enjoy- ment, and facilitates reference. It enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up to the stature of its exalter. If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the highest? I .should say, undoubtedly, the Epic ; for it includes the drama, with narra- tion besides ; or the speaking and action of the characters, with the speak- ing of the poet himself, whose utmost address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly in the passages least sustained by enthu- siasm. Whether this class has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial ; for Shakespeare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claimant is Homer; though if a judgment may be drawn from his early narratives, (" Venus and Adonis," and the " Rape of Lucrece,") it is to be doubted whetlier even Shakespeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfretation of thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even in his plays ; — if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to wish it away. Next to Homer and Shakespeare come such narrators as the less universal but intcnser Dante; Milton, with his dignified imagination; the universal profoundly simple Chaucer ; and luxuriant remote Spenser — immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes : then the great second- rate dramatists ; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am, demand a i)lacc for them before Chaucer: then the A' OSES A An HOLLY. 6/ airy yet robust universality of Ariosto ; the hearty out-of-door nature of Theocritus, also a universalist ; the finest lyrical poets, (who only take short flights, compared with the narrators ;) the i)urely contemplative poets, who have more thought than feeling ; the descriptive, satirical, didactic, epigrammatic. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the first poet of an inferior class may be superior to followers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted ; otherwise Pope would be superior to Fletcher, and Eutler to Pope. Imagination, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest poets ; feeling and thought the next ; fancy (by itself) the next ; wit the last. What the poet has to cultivate above all things is love and truth ; — what he has to avoid, like poison, is the fleeting and the false. He will get no good by proposing to be " in earnest at the moment." His earnestness must be innate and habitual ; born with him, and felt to be his most precious inheritance. " I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings," says Coleridge, in the Preface to his Poems ; " and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its oivn exceeding great reward ; it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." " Poetry," says Shelley, " lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if tJiey were not familiar. It repro- duces all that it represents ; and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contem- plated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which ex- tends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret of morals is love, or of going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination/ and poetry administers to the cffert by acting ui)on the cause." Leidi Hunt. 68 7? OSES AXD HOLLY. m f 98 requires a sr.rgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. Their only idea of v^it, or rather that inferior variety of this electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which under the name of wut, is so indefinitely (hs- tressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals. They are so imbued v.ith metaphysics that they even make love metaphysically. I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim, in a sudden pause of the music, " What you say, my lord, is very true of love in the aibsfrad, but — " here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost. No nation has so large a stock of benevolence of heart. If you meet with an accident, half Edinburgh immediatelv flocks to your door to inquire after your/////- hand or your ////;■ foot, and with a degree of interest that convinces you their whole hearts are in the inquiry. You find they usually arrange their dishes at dinner by the points of the compass — " Sandy, put the gigot of mutton to the south, and move the singet sheep's-head a wee bit to the nor-wast." If you knock at the door, you hear a .shrill female voice from the fifth flat shriek out, " Wha 's chapping at" the door]" which is pre- sently opened by a lassie with short petticoats, bare legs, and thick ankles. My Scotch servants bargained they were not to have salmon more than three times a-week, and always ]ndled off their stockings, in spite of my repeated objurgations, the moment my back was turned. Their temper stands anything but an attack on their climate. They would have you even believe they can ripen fruit; and to be candid, I must own in re- markably warm summers I have tasted peaches that made most excellent juckles ; and it is upon record that at the siege of Perth, on one occasion. ROSES AND HOLLY. 69 the ammunition failing, their nectarines made adaiirable cannon-balls. Even the enlightened mind of Jeffrey cannot shake off the illusion that myrtles flourished at Craig Crook. In vain I have represented to him that they are of the genus Cardials, and pointed out their prickly pecu- harities. In vain I have reminded him that I have seen hackney coaches drawn by four horses in the winter on account of the snow ; that I had rescued a man blown flat against my door by the violence of the winds, and black in the face ; that even the experienced Scotch fowls did not venture to cross the streets, but sidled along, tails aloft, without venturing to encounter the gale, Jeffrey sticks to his myrtle illusions, and treats my attacks with as much contempt as if I had been a wild visionary, who had never breathed his caller air, nor lived and suffered under the rigour of his climate, nor spent five years in discussing metaphysics and medicine in that garret of the earth — that knuckle-end of England — that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur. S} diicy Siiiith. 70 ROSES AA'D HOLLY. A WILD NIGHT AT SEA. /~\N, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space, roll the long heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for what is now the one, is now the other ; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggling, ending in a spouting uj) of foam that whitens the black night ; incessant change of place, and form, and hue ; constancy in nothing but eternal strife ; on, on, on they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howl the winds, and more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea — when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm, " xV ship !" Onward she comes, in gallant combat wath the elements, her tall masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain ; onward she comes, now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows of the sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury ; and every storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, " A ship ! " Still she comes striving on : and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look ; and round about the vessel, far as the mariners on her decks can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, and starting up and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break, and round her surge and roar; and, giving place to otliers, moan- ingly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their bafiHed anger : still she comes onward bravely. And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the sliip in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, w^th dim lights l)urning in her hull, and people there, asleep : as if no deadly element were ])eering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawn- ing in the unfiilhomablc depths below. Diikt/is. J^OSES AND HOLLY. y^, LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. /^H ! the days are gone when beauty bright ^-"^ My heart's chain Avove ; When my dream of hfe, from morn till night, Was love, still love ! New hope may bloom, And days may come, Of milder, calmer beam, But there 's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream ! Oh ! there 's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream ! Though the bard to purer fame may soar. When wild youth 's past ; Though he win the wise, who frown'd before. To smile at last ; He '11 never meet A joy so sweet In all his noon of fame As when first he sung to woman's ear His soul-felt flame, And at every close she blush'd to hear The one loved name ! Oh ! that hallow'd form is ne'er forgot, Which first love traced ; Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot On memory's waste ! 'Twas odour fled As soon as shed ; 'Twas morning's winged dream ; 'Twas a light that ne'er can shine again On life's dull stream ! Oh 1 'twas a light that ne'er can shine again On life's dull stream 1 Mooic. 74 J^OSES AND HOLLY. APOPHTHEGMS AND APHORISMS. /^F Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the ^^ bosom of God ; her voice the harmony of the world : all things in heaven and earth do her homage ; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power : both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and man- ner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of peace and joy. Hooker. Be merry, but with modesty ; be sober, but not sullen : be valiant, but not venturous : let your clothes be comely, but not costly : your diet wholesome, but not excessive : mistrust no man without cause, neither be thou credulous without proof Serve God, fear God, love God, and God will so bless you as either your heart can wish or your friends desire. Lyly. Books, such as are worthy the name of books, ought to have no patrons but truth and sense. Bacoji. For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries, — to read the best authors, observe the best speakers, and much exercise of his own style. JonsoJi. A good memory is the best monument. Others are subject to casualty or time ; and we know that the Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders. Fuller. Envy is that dark shadow ever waiting upon a shining merit. Fuller. Poverty wants some. Luxury many. Avarice all things. Cozcley. The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves ; the liberty of a private man in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. Cowley. Aversion from proof is not wise. It is a mark of a little mind. A great man can afford to lose; a Httle insignificant fellow is afraid of being snuffed out. Cecil. ROSES AND HOLLY. 75 If you choose to represent the various parts \x\ Hfe by holes upon a table, of different shapes — some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong — and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into a round hole. Sydney Smith. To be wise too late, is the exactest definition of a fooi. Young. She — the Roman Catholic Church — may still exist in undiminished vigour, when some traveller from New Zealand, in the midst of a vast solitude, takes his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul's. Macaulay. The ceremonial of the world is not without its use : it may indeed take from warmth of friendship, but it covers the coldness of indifference. Mackenzie. He that begins without reason, hath reason enough to leave oft", by perceiving he had no reason to begin. Taylor. To be humble to superiors is duty ; to equals is courtesy ; to inferiors is nobleness ; and to all is safety : it being a virtue, that, for all her low- liness, commandeth the souls it stoops to. Difficulties spur us whenever they do not check us. Reade. The stage is a supplement to the pulpit, where virtue, according to Plato's sublime idea, moves our love and affection when made visible to the eye. Disraeli. Where preferment goes more by favour than by merit, tlie rejected have more honour than the elected. Ftdler. The bread of life is love ; the salt of life is work ; the sweetness of life, poesy ; the water of life, faith. Jameson. Plain truths lose much of their weight when they are rarefied into sub- lilties ; and their strength is impaired when they are spun into too fine a tliread. St i /ling feet When religion is made a science, there is nothing more intricate ; when it is made a duty, nothing more easy. Il'i/son. 76 ROSES AND HOLLY. THE ANTIQUARY AT MARKET. 'T^HE Antiquary led the way to the sands. Upon the links or downs close to them, were seen four or five huts inhabited by fishers, whose boats, drawn high upon the beach, left the odoriferous vapours of pitch melting under a burning sun, to contend with those of the offals of fish and other nuisances, usually collected round Scottish cottages. Undis- ROSES .LVD HOLLY. yy turbed by these complicated steams of abomination, a middle-agetl woman, with a foce which had defied a thousand storms, sat mending a net at the door of one of the cottages. A handkerchief close bound about her head, and a coat which had formerly been that of a man, gave her a masculine air, which was increased by her strength, uncommon stature, and harsh voice. "What are ye for the day, your honour?" she said, or rather screamed, to Oldbuck ; " caller haddocks and whitings — a bannock-fluke and a cock-paddle." "How much for the bannock-fluke and cock-paddle ?" demanded the Antiquary. " Four white shillings and saxpence," answ^ered the Naiad. " Four devils and six of their imps ! " retorted the Antit^uary ; " do ye think I am mad, Maggie ? " " And div ye think," rejoined the virago, setting her arms a-kimbo, " that my man and my sons are to gae to the sea in weather like yestreen and the day — sic a sea as it's yet outby — and get naethmg for their fish, and be misca'd into the bargain, Monkbarns \ It 's no fish ye 're buying — it 's men's lives." " Well, Maggie, I '11 bid you fair — I '11 bid you a shilling for the fluke and the cock-paddle, or sixpence separately — and if all your fish are as well paid, I think your man, as you call him, and your sons, will make a good voyage." " Deil gin their boat were knocket against the Bell-rock rather ! it wad be better, and the bonnier voyage o' the twa. A shilling for thae twa bonny fish ! Od, that's ane indeed ! " " Well, well, you old beldame, carry your fish up to Monkbarns, and see what my sister will give you for them." " Na, na, Monkbarns, deil a fit — I '11 rather deal wi' yoursell ; for, though you 're near enough, yet Miss Grizel has an unco close grip — I 'II gie ye them (in a softened tone) for three-and-saxpence." " Eighteen-pence, or nothirig ! " " Eighteen-pence! ! !" (in a loud tone of astonishment, which declined into a sort of rueful whine, when the dealer turned as if to walk away) — " Ye 'II no be for the fish then \ " — (then louder, as she saw him moving off) — " I '11 gie them — and — and — and a half-a-dozen o' partans to make the sauce, for three shillings and a dram." JS ROSES AND HOLLY. " Half-a-cro\vn then, Maggie, and a dram." " Aweel, your honour maun hae "t your ain gate, nae doubt ; but a dram's worth siller now — the distilleries is no working." "And 1 hope they'll never work again in my time," said Oldbuck. " Ay, ay — it's easy for your honour, and the like o' you gentle-folks, to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, and fire and fending, and meat and claith, and sit dry and canny by the fireside — but an ye wanted fire, and meat, and dry claise, and were deeing o' cauld, and had a sair heart, whilk is worst ava', wi' just tippence in your pouch, wadna ye be glad to buy a dram wi't, to be eliding and claise, and a supper and heart's ease into the bargain, till the morn's morning]" " It's even too true an apology, Maggie. Is your goodman off to sea this morning, after his exertions last night?" " In troth he is, Monkbarns ; he was awa this morning by four o'clock, when the sea was working like barm wi' yestreen's wind, and our bit coble dancing in't like a cork. ' " Well, he 's an industrious fellow. Carry the fish up to Monkbarns." " That I will — or I 11 send little Jenny, she '11 rin iaster ; but I '11 ca' on Miss Grizzy for the dram mysell, and say ye sent me." A nondescript animal, which might have passed for a mermaid, as it was paddling in a pool among the rocks, was summoned ashore by the shrill screams of its dam ; and having been made decent, as her mother called it, which was performed by adding a sh.ort red cloak to a petticoat, which was at first her sole covering, and which reached scantily below her knee, the child was dismissed with the fish in a basket, and a request on the part of Monkbarns, that they miglit be prepared for dinner. "It would have been long," said Oldbuck, with much self-complacency, " ere my woman- kind could have made such a reasonable bargain with that old skinflint, though they sometimes wrangle with her for an hour together under my study window, like three sea-gulls screaming and splutiering in a gale of wind.' • Scoti. ROSES A A' D HOLLY. 79 THE ACADEMY AT LEGADO. T N the school of political projectors I was but ill entertained ; the pro- fessors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, whi( h is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhapi^y people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue ; of teach- ing ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services ; of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people ; of choosing for employments persons qualified to exercise them ; with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive ; and confirmed in me the old observation, " That there is nothing so extravagant and irrational, which some philo- sophers have not maintained for truth." I heard a very warm debate between two professors about the most commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money v>ithout grieving the subject. The first affirmed, " The justest method would be to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly ; and the sum fixed upon eveiy man to be rated, after the fairest manner, by a jury of his neighbours." The second was of opinion directly contrary : " To tax those qualities of body and mind for which men chiefly value themselves ; the rate to be more or less according to the degrees of excelling, the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own breast." The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest fiivourites of the other sex. Wit, valour, and politeness, were likewise proposed to be largely taxed, and collected in the same manner, by every person's gi\'ing his own word for the quantum of what he possessed. But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed at all, because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour, or value them in himself The women were proposed to be taxed according to their beauty and skill in dressing, wherein they had the same privilege with the men, to be determined by their own judgment. But constancy, good sense, and good nature, were not rated, because thc\- would not bear the charge of collecting. Sic if t. 8o ROSES AND HOLLY. SEVEN AGES OF MAN. ALL the world 's a stage, And all the men and women merely players : They have their exits and their entrances ; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant. Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms : xA-nd then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school : and then the lover. Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow : then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel. Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth : and then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined. With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut. Full of wise saws and modern instances, And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon. With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shanks ; and his big manly voice. Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange evenlful history. Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, — Sans teeth, .sans eyes, .sans taste, sans everything. Shakcspcaic. ROSES AND HOLLY. S ANGER A NGP2R is a urofessed I A NGP2R is a professed enemy to counsel ; it is a direct storm, in which no man can be heard to speak or call from without : for if you counsel gently, you are despised ; if you urge it and be vehement, you provoke it more. 2. Of all passions it entleavours most to make reason useless. 3. That it is a universal passion, of an infinite object; for no man was ever so amorous as to love a toad ; none so envious, as to repine at the condition of the miserable ; no man so timorous as to fear a dead bee ; but anger is troubled at every thing, and every man, and every accident : and therefore, unless it be suppressed, it will make a man's condition restless. 4. If it proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury ; if from a small cause, it is peevishness : and so is always either terrible or ridiculous. 5. It is neither manly nor ingenuous. 6. It pro- ceeds from softness of spirit and pusillanimity ; which makes, that women are more angry than men, sick persons more than the healthful, old men more than young unprosperous and calamitous people than the blessed and fortunate. 7. It is troublesome, not only to those that sufter it, but to them that behold it ; there being no greater incivility of entertainment, than, for the cook's fault or the negligence of the servants, to be cruel or outrageous, or unpleasant in the presence of guests. 8. It makes marriage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble ; friendships, and societies, and familiarities to be intolerable. 9. It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. 10. It makes inno- cent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. 11. It turns friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself, and his reason, and his argument in disputations. It changes discipline into tcdiuusness and hatred of liberal institutions. It makes a prosperous man to be envied, and the unfor- tunate to be unpitied. It is a conlluence of all the irregular passions : there is in it envy and sorrow, iear and scorn, pride and prejudice, rash- ness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil and a desire to inflict it, self-love, impatience, and curiosity. And, lastly, though it be very troublesome to others, yet it is most lr(niblcsonie to Inm lliat hath it. Jnrniy 2 ay/or. 84 ROSES AND HOLLY THE HOLLY TREE. O READER ! hast thou ever stood to see The Holly Tree ? The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves, Ordered' by an Litelligence so wise, As miglit confound the Atheist's sophistries. Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen ; No grazing cattle through their prickly round Can reach to wound ; But, as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear. I love to view these things with curious eyes. And moralise ; And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree Can emblems see. Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after-time. Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear Harsh and austere ; 'l"o those, who on my leisure would intrude. Reserved and rude ; — Centle at home amid my friends I 'd be. Like the high leaves upon the Llolly Tree. And should my youth, as youth is apt 1 know, Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. JWSES AND HOLLY. 85 Soitthew And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaves a sober hue display Less bright than they ; But, when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree % So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng ; So would I seem amid the young and gay More grave than they ; That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the Holly Tree. ---t.-t?*c)^-»^ JEHOVAH THE PROVIDER. A UTHOR of being ! life-sustaining King ! Lo ! Want's dependent eye from Thee implores The seasons, which provide nutritious stores ; Give to her prayers the renovating spring, And summer-heats all perfecting that bring The fruits which autumn from a thousand stores Selecteth provident ! when Earth adores Her God, and all her vales exulting sing. Without Thy blessing, the submissive steer Bends to the ploughman's galling yoke in vain ; Without Thy blessing on the varied year. Can the swarth reaper grasp the golden grain \ ^^'ithout Thy blessing, all is black and drear ; \<\\\\ it, the joys of Eden bloom again. W'ords-aHviL 86 ROSES AND NOLL V. WAITING FOR THE FOE. A '1' dusky eve, the rockbound lieadhmd swarms With crowds of eac;er watchers. Anxiousl\-, A'(;.S'£-.S- AND HOLLY. ^j And with bated breoth, they scan the sea-board For the expected foe. The round red sun Has sunk into the west : the hght of day Is shrouded in the deep gray shadows of Approaching night; and, with glare of torchhglit. And vivid flame of starthng beacon fire, The hardy Britons cleave the murky air, And cast their glances o'er the wat'ry course. Each warrior bold, 'mid mingled hope and fear, Strains eyes and ears in eagerness to gain First tidings of the invading galleys Of the Norsemen. With hand upraised, the chief Peers out into the blackness, and beholds In fancy what his heart doth prompt. Banners Of the foe ! The Raven black of Norway, With wings outspread, as if on carnage bent, And the warlike hosts of Haco and the Norsemen of the Isles. Or ere the space of many days had jjassed— Th' October moon its advent scarce had made- When Haco's hosts bore down upon the coast. His warriors grim, in numbers far outshone The hardy Scots who clustered on the shore, And vict'ry seemed within his easy grasp. But ere that consummation could be gained, There came a power, which quickly changed the scene : The God of Battles loosed His thunderbolts— The lightnings flashed, and heaven's artill'ry, With storm tempestuous and raging winds Spread ravage dire throughout the Norseman's fleet : And in a few brief hours were wrecked The Hundred Ships that late were Norway's pride ! A Fiao:))iait sw-gestrd by the Ha/f/c of Larg^s, 1263. 88 IWSES AND HOLLY TO A MOUSE, ON TURNING UP HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, NOVEMBER T785. T "X TEE, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie, Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie ! Thou needna start awa' sae hasty, \Vi' bickering brattle I I wad be laith to rin and chase thee, Wi' murd'ring pattle ! I 'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, And justifies that ill opinion Which maks thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, And fellow-mortal ! I doubt na, ^\ hyles, but thou may thieve ; What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live ! A daimen icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request : I "11 get a blessin' wi' the lave. And never miss 't ! Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! Its silly wa's the win's are strewin' ! And naething now to big a new ane O' foggage green ! And bleak December's winds ensuin', Raith snell and keen 1 Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste, And weary winter comin' fast /WSES AND HOLLY. 89 And cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till, crash ! the cruel coulter past Out through thy cell. That wee bit heap o' leaves and stibble Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! Now thou 's turn'd out for a' thy trouble, But house or hauld, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, And cranreuch cauld \ But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain : The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley, And lea'e us nought but grief and pain For promised joy. Still thou art blest, compared wi' me ! The present only toucheth thee : But, oh I I backward cast my ee On prospects drear ] And forward, though I canna see, I guess and fear. Bunts. LIFE. T IFE ! what is life ? A shadow ! Its date is but the immediate breath we draw ; Nor have we surety for a second gale ; Ten thousand accidents in ambush lie, A frail and fickle tenement it is, ^\1lich, like the brittle glass that measures time. Is often broke, ere half it sands are run. ' fonc. M 93 A' OSES J AD HOLLY. THE BRAHMIN AND THE KNAVES. AN EASTERN APOLOGUE. A PIOUS Brahmin made a vow that on a certain day he would sacrifice a slieep, and on the appointed morning he went fortli to buy one. There Hved in his neighbourhood three rogues who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met him and said, " O Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice." "It is for that very purpose," said the holy man, " that I came forth this day." Then the impostor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, " Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utterest things untrue, callest thou that cur a sheep?" " Truly," answered the other, " it is a sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. O Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods." " Friend," said the Brahmin, " either thou or I must be blind." ROSES A ND HOLL V. 9 1 Just then one of the accomphces came up. " Praised be the gods," said this second rogue, " that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep ! This is such a sheep as T wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it r"' When the Brahmin heard this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. " Sir," said he to the new-comer, " take heed what thou doest ; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur." "O Brahmin," said the new-comer, "thou art drunk or mad ! " At this time the third confederate drew near. " Let us ask this man," said the Brahmin, " what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say." To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, "O stranger, what dost thou call this beast 1 " " Surely, O Brahmin," said the knave, " it is a fine sheep." Then the Brahmin said, " Surely the gods have taken away my senses ;" and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints. J/aca///aj'. A CLUSTER OF SCOTTISH PROVERBS. T^ VERY man bows to the bush he gets bield frae. Keep out o' his company that cracks o' his cheatery. Cripples are aye great doers — break your leg and try. Mony ane speaks o' Robin Hood that ne'er shot Avi' his bow. A wise man carries his cloak in fair weather, and a fool wants his in rain. He that doesna mind corn pickles never comes to forpits. A crooked stick will throw a crooked shadow. A man's weal or wae as he thinks himsel sae. Do weel, and doubt nae man ; do ill, and doubt a' men. A dreigh drink is better than a dry sermon. Better be the head o' the commons than the tail o' the gentry. " Sail," quo' the king ; " Haud," quo' the wind. Ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew. " I winna mak a toil o' n pleasure,"" quo' the man when he buried his wife. ROSES AND HOLLY. EPIGRAMS. A CHANCERY SUIT. M R I.EACH made a speech, angry, neat, but wrong : Mr Hart, on the other part, was prosy, dull, and long. Mr Bell spoke very well, though nobody knew about what ; Mr Trower talked for an hour, sat down, fatigued, and hot. Mr Parker made the case darker, which was dark enough without ; Mr Cooke quoted his book, and the Chancellor said, " I doubt." THE THEORY OF PECULATION. A LITTLE stealing is a dangerous part, -^^ But stealing largely is a noble art ; 'Tis mean to rob a henroost, or a hen, But stealing thousands makes us gentlemen. ON A MAN NAMED NOTT. 'T^HERE was a man who was Nott born, His father was Nott before him, He did Nott live, he did Nott die, And his epitaph was Nott o'er him. A goose's reason. A GOOSE, my grandam one day said, Entering a bam, pops down its head ; I begg'd her then the cause to show ; She told me she must wave the task, For nothing but a goose would ask, What nothing but a goose could know. ROSES AND HOLLY. 93 I\I/RRIAGE IN HEAVEN. C AID Celia to a reverend Dean, " What reason can be given, Since marriage is a holy thing, That they have none in lieaven 1 " " They have," says he, " no women there." She quick returns the jest : " Women there are, but I 'm afraid They cnnnot find a priest." THE FORTUNATE DEFECT. pr OW hke is this picture, you 'd think tluit it breatlie.' What life ! what expression ! what spirit ! It wants but a tongue. " ALis ! " said the spouse, " That want is its principal merit." THE RULE OF THE ROAD. 'X'HE rule of the road is a paradox quite Both in riding and driving along ; If you go the left you are sure to go right, If you go to the right you go wrong : Cut in walking the streets, 'tis a different case, To the right it is right you should bear. To the left should be left quite enough of free space For the persons you chance to meet there. LADIES MEN. V\/'HETHER tall men, or short men, are best. Or bold men, or modest or shy men, r can't say; l)ut I this can protest. All the fair are in faxour o{ /iv-iiicn. 94 ROSES AND HOLLY. AUTUMN. O OON as tlie morning trembles o'er the sky, And unperceived, unfolds the spreading day ; Before the ripen'd field the reapers stand, In fair array At once they stoop and swell the lusty sheaves ; While through their cheerful band the rural talk, The rural scandal, and the rural jest, Fly harmless, to deceive the tedious time, And steal unfelt the sultry hours away. Behind, the master walks, builds up the shocks : And, conscious, glancing oft on every side His sated eye, feels his heart heave with joy. The gleaners spread around, and here and there, Spike after spike, their scanty harvest pick. Be not too narrow, husbandman ! but fling From the full sheaf, with charitable stealth, The liberal handful. Think, oh, think ! How good the God of harvest is to you. Who pours abundance o'er your flowing fields ; While these unhappy partners of your kind Wide hover round you, like the fowls of heaven, And ask their humble dole. The various turns Of fortune ponder ; that your sons may want What now, with hard reluctance, faint, ye give. 11 10 in soil. ROSES AND HOLLY. I TO-MORROW. N the downhill of life, when I find I 'm declining, May my lot no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining. And a cot that o'erlooks the wiiite sea ; With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn, While I carol away idle sorrow. And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn Look forward with hope for to-morrow. With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too, As the sunshine or rain may prevail ; And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too, With a barn for the use of the Hail : A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game. And a purse when a friend wants to borrow; I '11 envy no nabob his riches or fame. Nor what honours await him to morrow. From the bleak northern blast may my cot be completely Secured by a neighbouring hill; And at night may rejjose steal upon me more sweetly By the sound of a murmuring rill. And while peace and plenty I find at my board. With a heart free from sickness and sorrow, With my friends may I share what to-day may afford, And let them spread the table to-morrow. And when 1 at last nuist throw off this frail covering Which I 've worn for threescore years and ten, On the brink of the grave I '11 not seek to kccj) hovering, Nor my thread wish to spin o'er again : IhU my face in. the glass I'll serenely survey, And with smiles count each wrinkle and furrow ; As this old worn-out stuff, which is ihrcad bare to day, May become everlasting to morrow. Co/Inn N 98 J^OSES AND HOLLY. SHAKESPEARE AND HIS WRITINGS. CT HAKESPEARE may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, "^ and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive venera- tion. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost ; and every topic of merriment or motive of sorrow which the motives of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end ; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished ; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives ; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are there- fore praised only as pleasure is obtained ; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they have passed through variations of taste and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every transmission. Shakespeare is, above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature — the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world ; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers ; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions : they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets, a character is too often an individual ; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides that every verse was a precept ; and it may be said of Shakespeare that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence ; yet his real power ROSES AND HOLLY. 99 is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable and the tenor of his dialogue ; and he that tries to recom- mend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen. It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excels in accom- modating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualiiied for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. The same remark may be applied to every stage but that of Shakespeare. The theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the com- merce of mankind. But the dialogue of this author is often so evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common conver- sation and common occurrences. This, therefore, is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstacies by reading human sentiments in human language ; by scenes by which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. Johnson. lOO ROSES A\D HOLLY. CONTENTMENT. T KNE;.W a man that had health and riches, and several houses, all -*- beautiful and ready furnished, and would often trouble himself and family to be removing from one house to another ; and being asked by a friend why he removed so often from one house to another, replied, " It was to find content in some of them." But his friend, knowing his temper, told him, " If he would find content in any of his houses, he must leave himself behind him ; for content will never dwell but in a meek and quiet soul." And this may appear, if we read and consider what our Saviour says in St Matthew's Gospel, for He there says, " Blessed be the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed be the meek, for they shall possess the earth." Not that the meek shall not also obtain mercy, and see God, and be com- forted, and at last come to the kingdom of heaven ; but, in the meantime, he, and he only, possesses the earth, as he goes toward that kingdom of kingdoms, by being humble and cheerful, and content with what his good God has allotted him. He has no turbulent, repining, vexatious thoughts that he deserves better ; nor is vexed when he sees others possessed of more honour or more riches than his Avise God has allotted for his share ; but he possesses what he has with a meek and contented quietness, such a quietness as makes his very dreams pleasing, l)oth to God and himself. Walfon. -ex«X.S-r- THE BIBLE. "\ X HTHIN this awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries : Happiest they of human race To whom their God has given grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray. To lift the latch — to force the way ; But better had they ne'er been born Who read to doubt, or read to scorn. Stvf/. A' USA'S .LVD NOLL]'. lOI THE TWA SISTERS. 'T'HERE were twa sisters lived in a bouir; Binnorie, O Binnorie ; The youngest o' them, oh, she was a flonfr! By the bonnie mill-dams o' Binnorie. There came a stjuire frae the west ; Binnorie, O Binnorie ; He lo'ed them baith, but the youngest best, By the bonnie mill-dams o' Binnorie. He gied the eldest a gay gold ring ; But he lo'ed the youngest abune a' ihing. 102 ROSES AND HOLLY. He courted the eldest wi' broach and knife ; But he lo'ed the youngest as his hfe. The eldest she was vexed sair, And sore envied her sister fair. And it fell ance upon a day, The eldest to the youngest did say : " Oh, sister, come to the sea strand, And see our father's ships come to land." She's taen her by the milk-white hand, And led her doun to the sea strand. The youngest sat upon a stane ; The eldest cam' and threw her in. " Oh, sister, sister, lend me your hand. And you shall be heir of half my land."' " Oh, sister, I '11 not reach my hand. And I '11 be heir of your land. Shame fa' the hand that I should take ! It twined me and my world's maik. Your cherry cheeks and yellow hair Had gar'd me gang maiden evermair." " Oh, sister, reach me but your glove. And you shall be sweet William's love. " Sink on, nor ho])e for hand or glove ; And sweet William shall better be my love." ROSES AND HOLLY. iq- First she sank, and syne she swam, Until she cam to Tweed mill-dam. The miller's daughter was baking breid, And gaed for water as she had need. " Oh, father, father, in our mill-dam, There 's either a ladye or a milk-white swan." The miller quickly drew his dam, And there he fand a drown'd woman. You couldna see her yellow hair, For gowd and pearls that were sae rare. You couldna see her middle sma', Her gowden girdle was sae braw. You couldna see her lilie feet, Her gowden fringes were sae deep. You couldna see her fingers sma' ; Wi' diamond rings they were cover'd a'. " Sair will they be, whae'er they be, The hearts that live to weep for thee ! " Then by there cam' a harper fine. That harped to the king at dine. And when he look'd that lady on, He sigh'd and made a heavy moan. He has ta'en three locks o' her yellow hair, And wi' them strung his harp sae fair. I04 ROSES AND HOLLY. And he brouglu the harj) to her father's liall, And there the court was assembled all. He laid this harp upon a stone, And straight it began to play alone. " Oh yonder sits my father, the king I And yonder sits my mother, the (jueen '. "And yonder stands m\ brother Hugli, And by hiin my William sweet and true '. '" But the last tune that the harp i^lay'd then, Rinnorie, O Binnoric, ^\'as, '" U'oc to my sister, false Helen ! " Bv the bonnie mill tlams o' Binnone. ''^^: ^^ ROSES AND HOLLY. 10 = MR PEPYS QUARRELS WITH HIS WIFE. A /FAY II, 1667. — My wife being dressed this day in fair hair, did make me so mad, that I spoke not one word to her, thougli I was ready to burst with anger. After that. Creed and I into the Park, and walked, a most pleasant evening, and so took coach, and took up my wife, and in my way home discovered my trouble to my wife for her white locks, swear- ing several times, which I pray God forgive me for, and bending my fist, that I would not endure it. She, poor wretch, was surprised with it, and made me no answer all the v.ay home ; but there we parted, and I to the office late, and then home, and without supper to bed, vexed. 12. (Lord's Day.) — Up and to my chamber, to settle some accounts there, and by and by down comes my wife to me in her night gown, and we began calmly, that, ujion having money to lace her gown for second mourning, she would promise to wear white locks no more in my sight, which I, like a severe fool, thinking not enough, began to except against, and made her fly out to very high terms and cr}-, and in her heat, told me of keeping company with Mrs Knipp, saying, that if I would promise never to see her more — of whom she had more reason to suspect than I had heretofore of Pembleton — she would never wear white locks more. This vexed me, but I restrained myself from saying anything, but do think never to see this woman — at least, to have here more; and so all ve:y good friends as ever. My wife and I bethought ourselves to go to a French house to dinner, and so inquired out Monsieur Robins, my peri- wig-maker, who keeps an ordinary, and in an ugly street in Covent Garden did find him at the door, and so we in ; and in a moment almost had the table covered, and clean glasses, and all in the French manner, and a mess of potage first, and then a piece of bceuf-a-la-mode, all ex- ceeding well-seasoned, and to our great liking; at least it would have been anywhere else but in this bad street, and in a periwig-maker's house ; but to see the pleasant and ready attendance that we had, and all things so desirous to please, and ingenious in tlie people, did take me mightily. Our dinner cost us 6s. ^'/J-*"- io6 ROSES AND HOLLY. MORNING. T OOK wlicrc tlie Morn, in russet mantle clad, "■^^ Walks o'er the dew of yon hi^h eastern hill, T-ook what streaks Ho hire the severing clouds in yonder east. Night's ta])ers arc burnt out, ;iii(] jocund Day Stands tiptoe on (he misty mountain to|is. The glowworm shows the mnlin to ])e near, And "gins lo ii.de liis ineflectual lire. The wolves have ]:)rey'd ; and, look, the gentle Day, Before the wheels of Phrchus, round about. Dapples the drowsy east with spots of giay. S//akesprarc J^ USA'S AXD HOLLY 107 NIGHT. r\ MAJESTIC Night! Nature's great ancestor ! Day's elder-born ! And foted to survive tlie transient sun ! By mortals and immortals seen with awe. A starry crown thy raven brow adorns ; An azure zone thy waist ; clouds, in lieaven's loom Wrought through varieties of shape and shade, In ample folds of drapery divine, Thy flowing mantle form, and, heaven throughout, Voluminously pour thy pompous train : Thy gloomy grandeurs — Nature's most august, Inspiring aspect ! — claim a grateful verse. And, like a sable curtain starr'd with gold. Drawn o'er my labours past, shall clothe the scene. Yoinii 108 J^OSES AND HOLLY. PARTIAL JUSTICE. T^HERE is a village (no matter where) in which the inhabitants, on ■^ one day in the year, sit clown to a dinner prepared at the common expense : by an extraordinary piece of tyranny, (which Lord Hawkesbury would call the wisdom of the village ancestors,) the inhabitants of three of the streets, about a hundred years ago, seized upon the inhabitants of the fourth street, bound them hand and foot, laid them upon their backs, and compelled them to look on while the rest were stuffing themselves with beef and beer : the next year, the inhabitants of the persecuted street (though they contributed an equal quota of the expense) were treated precisely in the same manner. The tyranny grew into a custom ; and (as the manner of our nature is) it was considered as the most sacred of all duties to keep these poor fellows without their annual dinner : the village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it ; every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Provi- dence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his election, had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist as an aboli- tionist, in order to frustrate his ambition, endanger his life, and throw the village into a state of the most dreadful commotion. By degrees, how- ever, the obnoxious street grew to be so well peopled, and its inhabitants so firmly united, that their oppressors, more afraid of injustice, were more disposed to be just. At the next dinner they are unbound, the year after allowed to sit upright, then a bit of bread and a glass of water \ till at last, after a long series of concessions, they are emboldened to ask, in pretty plain terms, that they may be allowed to sit down at the bottom of the table, and to fill their bellies as well as the rest. Forthwith a general cry of shame and scandal. " Ten years ago, were you not laid upon your backs ? Don't you remember what a great thing you thought it to get a piece of bread? How thankful you were for cheese-parings? Have you forgotten that memorable era, ^\licn the lord of the manor interfered to obtain for you a slice of the public pudding? And now, with an audacity only equalled by your ingratitude, you have the impudence to ask for knives and forks, and to request, in terms loo plain to be mistaken, that you may sit down to table with tlie rest, and be indulged even with beef /^OSES AND HOLLY. I09 and beer : there are not more than half-a-dozen dishes which we have reserved for ourselves : the rest has been thrown open to you in the utmost profusion ; you have potatoes and carrots, suet dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious toast and water, in incredible quantities. Beef, mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours; and if you were not the most rest- less and dissatisfied of human beings, you would never think of aspiring to enjoy them." Is not this, my dainty Abraham, the very nonsense, and the very insult which is talked to and practised upon the Catholics? You are surprised that men who have tasted of partial justice should ask for perfect justice ; that he who has been robbed of coat and cloak will not be contented with the restitution of one of his garments. He would be a very lazy block- head if he were content ; and I (who, though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank God, some sense of justice) most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere in their just demands till they are admitted to a more complete share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others ; and if they see a little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has filched from the public feast, to carry home to his wife and children. Sydney Smith. TASTE AND FEELING. nPHE French have taste in all they do, Which we are quite without ; For Nature, which to them gave goftt^ To us gave only gout. Answer. Condemn not in such haste. To letters four appealing ; French gout is only tastc\ But English gout is feeling ! 1 10 JiOSES AND HOLLY. SONG OF SELMA. T^ RATH son of Odgal repined ; his brother had been slain by Armar '' He came disguised hke a son of the sea; fair was his skiff on tlie wave; wliite his locks of age ; calm his serious brow. Fairest of women, he said, loveliest daughter of Armin ! a rock not distant in the sea bears a tree on its side ; red shines the fruit afar ! There Armar waits for Daura. I come to carry his love ! She went, she called on Armar. Nought answered, but the son of the rock, Armar, my love ! why tormentest thou me with fear ! hear, son of Arnart, hear ; it is Daura, who calleth thee ! I'>ath the traitor tied laughing to the land. She lifted up her voice ; she called for her brother and her flithcr. Arindal ! Armin ! none to relieve your Daura ! Her voice came over the sea. Arindal my son descended from the hill ; rough in spoils of the chase. His arrows rattled by his side ; his bow was in his hand ; five dark -gray dogs attend his steps. He saw fierce Erath on the shore; he seized and bound him to an oak. Thick wind the thongs of the hide around his limbs ; he loads the wind with his groans. Arindal ascends the deep in his boat, to bring Daura to land. Armar came in his wrath, and let fly the gray-feathered shaft. It sunk, it sunk in thy heart, O Arindal my son ; for Erath the traitor thou diedst. The oar is stopped at once ; he panted on the rock and expired. What is thy grief, O Daura, when round thy feet is poured thy brother's blood ! The boat is broken in twain. Armar plunges into the sea, to rescue his Daura, or die. Sudden a blast from the hill came over the waves. He sunk, and he rose no more. Alunc, on the sea-beat rock, my daughter was heard to complain. All night I heard her cries, loud was the wind, the rain beat hard on the hill. Before morning appeared, her voice was weak. It died away, like the evening l)reeze among the grass of the rocks. Spent with grief, she ex- ])ircd ; and left ihce, .Armin, alone. Often by the setting moon I see the ghosts of my (hildren. Half viewless they walk in mournful conference together. Will none of you speak in pity? They do not regard their father. I am sad, O Carmor, nor small is my cause of woe ! Ossian. /WSJ£S AND HOLLY. 1 I I THE DEVIL'S WALK. T7R0I\I his l)ninstoiie "bed, at break of day, A-walking the Devil has gone, To visit his snug httle farm of the earth, And see how his stock goes on. And over the hill, and over the dale, He walk'd, and over the plain ; And backwards and forwards he swiich'd his long tail, As a gentleman >wit( hes his ranc. And pray how was the Devil drest ? Oh ! he was in hi^ Sunday's best ; His roal was red, and his breeches were blue, With a hole behinrl, where his tail came through. 1 1 2 ROSES AND HOLL Y. He saw a lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill, beside his own stable ; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel. An apothecary, on a white hors2, Rode by on his avocations : " Oh ! " says the Devil, " there 's my old friend Death in the Revelations ! '"' He saw a cottage, with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility ! And the Devil was pleased, for his darling vice Is the pride that apes humility. He stepp'd into a rich bookseller's shop ; Says he, " We are both of one college. For I myself sat, like a cormorant, once, Hard by on the tree of knowledge." As he pass'd through Cold-Bath-Fields, he saw A solitary cell : And the Devil was charm'd, for it gave him a hint For improving the prisons of hell. He saw a turnkey in a trice Fetter a troublesome jade ! " Ah ! nimble," quoth he, " do the fingers move When they're used to their trade." He saw the same turnkey unfetter the same, But with little expedition ; And the Devil thought on the long debates On the Slave Trade Abolition. KOSES AND IIOLL V. I 1 3 Down the river did glide, with wind and witli tide, A pig, with vast celerity ! And the Devil grinn'd, for he saw all the while How it cut its own throat, and he thought with a smile Of " England's commercial prosperity ! " He saw a certain minister (A minister to his mind) Go up into a certain house, With a majority behind. The Devil quoted Genesis, Like a very learned clerk, How " Noah, and his creeping things, Went up into the ark !" General Gascoigne's burning face He saw with consternation, And back to hell his way did take ; For the Devil thought, by a slight mistake, 'Twas the General Conflagration I PRIDE OF AUTHORSHIP.. " T AM going to fly," cried the gigantic ostrich ; and the whole assembly ^ of birds gathered round in earnest expectation, " I am going to fly," he cried again ; and, stretching out his immense pinions, he shot, like a ship with outspread sails, away over the ground, without, however, rising an inch above it. Thus it happens when a notion of being poetical takes possession of unpoetical brains ; in the opening of their monstrous odes they boast of their intention to soar over clouds and stars, but never- theless remain constant to the dust. > ,, Less///^'-. 114 HOSES AND HOLLY IHE CAPTIVE. T N prison strong, to massive wall enchain'd ; Fetter'd in hands and feet — in heart and soul Tlie youthful captive hangs liis troubled head, While sad reflections throudi his ineni"r\ roll. /^OSES A i\D HOLL Y. 1 1 5 Thoughts of home, of happiness, of frieflds, — Of country loved, and freedom's voice now hush'd, Of glorious future fondly conjured up; But now, alas ! by war's sad havoc crush'd. Conderan'd to die ! Yet not afraid of death ! Nay, proud that he is martyr to the cause Of freedom. And in high heaven he hopes As life's last moment near him draws. RUSSIAN WATCHMAN'S SONG. TT EARKEN, folks, to what I 'm singing — Ten o'clock the bell is ringing : Ten commandments were from heaven By th' Almighty to us given. Ill our watching would defend you, Did not God himself befriend you ; Fount of goodness, power, and might, Give to all a happy night ! LACONICS. TI^EAR sometimes adds wings to the heels, and sometimes nails them to the ground, and fetters them from moving. Montaigne. A poet hurts himself by writing prose ; as a race-horse hurts his motions by condescending to draw in a team. Shenstone. Those beings only are fit for solitude, who like nobody, are like nobody, and are liked by nobody. Zimviennan. Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders generally discover everybody's face but their own, — which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended by it. Swift. It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on, as when they have lost their edge. Swift. I 1 6 J^OSES AND HOLLY. THE STARTLED STAG. nPHE stag at eve had drunk his fill, "^ Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, And deep his midnight lair had made In lone Glenartney's hazel shade ; But, when the sun his beacon red Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head, The deep-mouth'd bloodhound's heavy bay Resounded up the rocky way, And faint, from farther distance borne. Were heard the clanging hoof and horn. As chief who hears his warder call, " To arms ! the foemen storm the wall," — The antler'd monarch of the waste Sprung from his heathery couch in haste. But, ere his fleet career he took, The dew-drops from his flanks he shook ; Like crested leader proud and high, Toss'd his beam'd frontlet to the sky ; A moment gazed adown the dale, A moment snuff'd the tainted gale, A moment listen'd to the cry. That thicken'd as the chase drew nigli ; Then, as the headmost foes appear'd. With one brave bound the copse he clear'd. And, stretching forward free and far, Sought the wild lieaths of Uam-Yar. 'I'hc noble stag was pausing now Upon the mountain's southern brow Where broad extended, far beneath, The varied realms of fair MtMiteilli. ROSES AND HOLLY. II9 With anxious eye he wander'd o'er Mountain and meadow, moss and moor, And ponder'd refuge from his toil. By fiir Lochard or Aberfoyle. But nearer was the copse-wood gray, That waved and wept on Loch-Achray, And mingled with the pine-trees blue On the bold cliffs of Benvenue. Fresh vigour with the hope return'd, With flying foot the heath he spurn'd. Held westward with unwearied race, And left behind the panting chase. Scott. OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY. A LL are but parts of one stupendous whole, ^^ Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns. As the rapt seraph that adores and burns ; To Him, no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all. Pope 120 ROSES AND HOLLY. THE USE OF HISTORY. T^O teach and lo inculcate the general principles of virtue, and the general rules of wisdom and good policy which result from such details of actions and characters, comes, for the most part, and always should come, expressly and directly into the design of those who are capable of giving such details ; and, therefore, whilst they narrate as historians, they hint often as philosophers : they put into our hands, as it were, on every proper occasion, the end of a clue, that serves to remind us of searchmg, and to guide us in the search of that truth which the example before us either establishes or illustrates. If a writer neglects this part, we are able, however, to supply his neglect by our own attention and industry; and when he gives us a good history of Peruvians or Mexicans, of Chinese or Tartars, of IMuscovites or Negroes, we may blame him, but we must blame ourselves much more, if we do not make it a good lesson of philosophy. This being the general use of history, it is not to be neglected. Every one may make it who is able to read, and to reflect on what he reads ; and every one who makes it will find, in his degree, the benefit that arises from an early acquaintance contracted in this manner with mankind. We are not only passengers or sojourners in this world, but we are absolute strangers at the first steps we make in it. Our guides are often ignorant, often unfaithful. By this map of the coun- try, which history spreads before us, we may learn, if we please, to guide ourselves. In our journey through it, we are beset on every side. We are besieged sometimes, even in our strongest holds. Terrors and tempta- tions, conducted by the passions of other men, assault us; and our own passions, that correspond with these, betray us. History is a collection of the journals of those who have travelled through the same country, and been exposed to the same accidents ; and their good and their ill success are equally instructi\e. In this pursuit of knowledge an immense field is opened to us : general histories, sacred and profane ; the histories of particular countries, particular events, particular orders, particular men ; memorials, anecdotes, travels. But we must not ramble in this field with- out discernment or choice, nor even with these must we ramble too long. Bo/i/igbrokc. ROSES AND HOLLY. 121 MRS PARTINGTON. T DO not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town — the tide rose to an incredible height — the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction ! In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs Partington's spirit was up ; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease — be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs Partington. Sidney Smith. 122 ROSES AND HOLLY. LITERARY PUFFING. A /TEX of letters have ceased to court individuals, and have begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing. Whether the old or the new vice be the worse, whether those who formerly lavished insincere praise on others, or those who now con- trive by every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public with praises of themselves, disgrace their vocation the more deeply, we shall not attempt to decide. But of this we are sure, that it is high time to make a stand against the new trickery. The puffing of books is now so shamefully and so successfully carried on, that it is the duty of all who are anxious for the purity of the national taste, or for the honour of the literary character, to join in discountenancing the practice. All the pens that ever were employed in magnifying Bish's lucky office, Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, all the placard-bearers of Dr Eady, all the wall-chalkers of Day and Martin, seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable are adopted without I^OSES AND HOLLY. 123 scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the liigher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the first quality, and going for half the value. We exjiect some reserve, some decent jDride. in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters. It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications which have had a run during the last {*t\\ years. The publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical works over which the publisher, or the author, or the author's coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puft's of all the various kinds which Sheridan enu- merated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Macaulax. 1 24 J^OSES A ND HOLL 3 \ ZARA'S EAR-RINGS. " A/T^ ear-rings! my ear-rings ! they've dropt into the well, And what to say to Muga, I cannot, cannot tell." — ^Twas thus, Granada's fountain by, spoke Albuharez' daughter,- " The well is deep, far down they lie, beneath the cold blue water — To me did Muga give them, when he spake his sad farewell, And what to say when he comes back, alas ! I cannot tell. " My ear-rings ! my ear-rings ! they were pearls in silver set, That when my Moor was far away, I ne'er should him forget. That I ne'er to other tongue should list, nor smile on other's tale. But remember he my lips had kiss'd, pure as those ear-rings pale — When he comes back and hears that I have dropp'd them in the well. Oh, what will Mu^a think of me, I cannot, cannot tell. " My ear-rings ! my ear-rings ! he'll say they should have been, Not of pearl and silver, but of gold and glittering sheen, Of jasper and of onyx, and of diamond shining clear, Changing to the changing light, with radiance insincere — That changeful mind unchanging gems are not befitting well — Thus will he think, — and what to say, alas ! I cannot tell. " He'll think when I to market went, I loiter'd by the way; He '11 think a willing ear I lent to all the lads might say ; He '11 think some other lover's hand among my tresses noosed, From the ears where he had placed them, my rings of pearl unloosed; He '11 think when I was sjDorting so beside this marble well. My pearls fell in, — and what to say, alas ! I cannot tell. "He '11 say I am a woman, and we are all the same ; He '11 say I loved when he was here to whisper of his flame — But when he went to Tunis my virgin troth had broken, And thought no more of Mu^'a, and cared not for his token. My ear-rings ! my ear-rings ! O luckless, luckless well ! For what to say to Muca, alas ! I cannot tell. ROSES A ND HOLL Y. 1 2 5 " I '11 tell the truth to MiK^a, and I hope he will believe — - That I have thought of him at morning, and thought of him at eve : That musing on my lover, when down the sun was gone, His ear-rings in my hand I held, by the fountain all alone : And that my mind was o'er the sea, when from my hand they fell. And that deep his love lies in my heart, as they lie in the well." Lockhart. ECCENTRIC ROYAL PROMOTIONS. 1\ /T ARC ANTONY gave the house of a Roman citizen to a cook who had prepared for him a good supper ! Louis XI. promoted a poor priest whom he found sleeping in the porch of a church, that the proverb might be verified, that to lucky men good fortune will come even when they are asleep. Our Henry YII. made a viceroy of Ireland, if not for the sake of, at least with a clench. When the king was told that all Ireland could not rule the Earl of Kildare, he said. Then shall this earl rule all Ireland. When Cardinal de Monte was elected pope, before he left the conclave, he bestowed a cardinal's hat upon a servant, whose chief merit consisted in the daily attentions he paid to his holiness's monkey ! George Villiers was suddenly raised from a private station, and loaded with wealth and honours by James the First, merely for his personal beauty. Almost all the favourites of James became so from their hand- someness. M. de Chamillart, Minister of France, owed his promotion merely to his being the only man who could beat Louis XIV. at billiards. The Duke of Luynes was originally a country lad, who insinuated himself into the favour of Louis XI 1 1., then young, by making bird-traps {pics- grihhes) to catch sparrows. It was little expected, says Voltaire, that these puerile amusements were to be terminated by a most sanguinary revolution. De Luynes, after causing his patron, the Marshal D'Ancre, to be assassinated, and the queen-mother to be imprisoned, raised himself to a title and the most tyrannical power. Sir Walter Raleigh owed his promotion to an act of gallantry to Queen Elizabeth, and Sir Christopher Hatton owed his preferment to his dancing. Isaac Disraeli. 126 J^OSI-:s AND HOLLY. winti<:r. ' I ""HE wintry west extends his blast, And hail and rain does blaw ; Or the stormy north sends driving forth The blinding sleet and snaw : While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down, And roars frae bank to brae ; And bird and beast in covert rest, And pass the heartless day. " The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast," Ihe joyless winter day, Let others fear, to me more dear Than all the pride of ]\Iay : The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul, My griefs it seems to join ; The leafless trees my fancy please, Their fiite resembles mine ! Thou Power Suj)reme, whose mighty scheme These woes of mine fulfil. Here firm I rest — they must be best, Jk'cause they are Thy will ! Then all I want, (oh ! do Thou grant This one request of mine !) Since to enjoy Thou dost deny, Assist me to resiiin. Bid iis. — e-?«»'- fe^ ' "' '"'' ROSES AND HOLLY. 1 29 A WALK THROUGH VANITY VXUl. O OME of the purchasers, I thought, made very foohsh bargains. For ^ instance, a young man, having inherited a splendid fortune, laid out a considerable portion of it in the purchase of diseases, and finally spent all the rest for a heavy lot of repentance and a suit of rags. A very pretty girl bartered a heart as clear as crystal, and which seemed her most valuable possession, for another jewel of the same kind, but so worn and defliced as to be utterly worthless. In one shop, there were a great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, authors, statesmen, and various other people, pressed eagerly to buy; some purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives ; others by a toilsome servitude of years ; and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable, yet finally slunk away with- out the crown. There was a sort of stock or scrip, called Conscience, which seemed to be in great demand, and would purchase almost any- thing. Indeed, few rich commodities were to be obtained without paying a heavy sum of this particular stock, and a man's business was seldom very lucrative, unless he knew precisely when and how to throw his hoard of Conscience into the market. Yet as this stock was the only thing of permanent value, whoever parted with it was sure to find himself a loser in the long run. Several of the speculations were of a questionable char- acter. Occasionally, a member of parliament recruited his pocket by the sale of his constituents ; and I was assured that public oflicers have often sold their country at very moderate prices. Thousands sold their happi- ness for a whim. Gilded chains were in great demand, and purchased with almost any sacrifice. In truth, those who desired, according to the old adage, to sell anything valuable for a song, might find customers all over the fair ; and there were innumerable messes of pottage, piping hot, for such as chose to buy them with their birthrights. A few articles, however, could not be found genuine at Vanity Fair. If a customer wished to renew his stock of youth, the dealers offered him a set of false teeth and an auburn wig; if he demanded peace of mind, they recom- mended opium or a brandy-bo. tie. Ha7i.fJionic. i^.o A'OSES AXD HOLLY THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. pETWEEN the dark and the dayhght, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as tlie Children's Hour. I hear in the chamber above nie The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is open'd, And voices soft and sweet. From my study 1 see in the lamplight, Descending the broad hall-stair, Grave Alice, and laughing AUegra, And Editli with trolden hair. ROSES AND HOLLY. 131 A whisper, and then a silence : Yet I know by their merry eyes They are plotting and planning together To take me liy surprise. A sudden rush from the stairway, A sutlden raid from the hall ! By three doors left unguarded They enter my castle wall ! They climb up into my turret O'er the arms and back of my chair ; If I try to escape they surround me ; They seem to be e\'erywhere. They almost devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine, Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen In l"iis Mouse Tower on the Rhine \ Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti. Because you have scaled the wall, Such an old moustache as I am Is not a match for you all ? I have \i)U fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart. But put you down into the dungeon In the round tower of my heart. And there I will keep you for ever, Yes, for ever and a day, Till the walls shall c rumble lo ruin, And moulder in dust away ! Loiiii fcllo',c>. 1 3 2 ROSES A ND HOLL I ". THE POOR RELATION. A POOR relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of ■^^ impertinent correspondency, an odious approximation, a haunting- conscience, a preposterous shadow lengthening in the noontide of our prosperity, an unwelcome remembrancer, a perpetually-recurring mortifi- cation, a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, a drawback upon success, a rebuke to your rising, a stain in your blood, a blot on your 'scutcheon, a rent in your garment, a death's head at your banquet, Agathocles's pot, a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in your chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, the one thing not needful, the hail in harvest, the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you, " That is Mr ." A rap, between familiarity and respect, that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of entertainment. He entereth smiling and embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time, when the table is full. He oftereth to go away, seeing you have company, but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommo- dated at a side-table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says, with some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr will drop in to-day." He remembereth birthdays, and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish — the turbot being small — yet sufifereth himself to be importuned into a slice against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port ; yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough to him. The guests think " they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition ; and the most part take him to be — a tide-waiter. He calletli you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half; yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity, he might i)ass for a casual dei)endant ; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; yet takelh on 7\;0SES AND HOLLY. 1 33 him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country- tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent ; yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, tliat your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist-table ; refuseth on the score of poverty, and resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach, and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather ; and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote of the family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as " he is blest in seeing it now.'' He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth — favourable com- parisons. With a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture ; and insults you with a special commendation of your window curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape ; but, after all, there was something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle, which you must remember. He daresay you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances. Lamb. A CLUSTER OF HEBREW PROVERBS. T F any say, that one of thine ears is the ear of an ass, regard it not ; if he say so of them both, procure thyself a bridle. That city is in a bad case whose physician hath the gout. The camel, going to seek horns, lost his ears. If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth two. When the weasel and the cat make a marriage, it is a very ill presage. He that hath been bitten by a serpent is afraid of a rope. He that hath had one of his family hanged, may not say to his neigh- bour, Hang up this fish. They can fintl money for mischief who can find none to buy corn. 134 /^OSES AND HOLLY. ^ .^ i "'4^ - - 4:^ ^\\;■ TTOUSES, churches, mix'd together; Streets, unpleasant in all weather ; Prisons, palaces, contiguous ; Gates, a bridge, the Thames irriguous ; Gaudy things enough to tempt you, Showy outsides, insides empty ; Bubble.;, trades, mechanic arts ; Coaches, wheelbarrows, and carts ; Warrants, bailiffs, bills unpaid. Lords of laundresses afraid ; Rogues that nightly rob and shoot men, Hangmen, aldermen, and footmen ; Lawyers, poets, priests, physicians, Noble, simple — all conditions : Mi "^ ROSES A XD HOLL Y. 135 Worth, bencatli a I bread bare cover, Villany, bedaub'd all over ; Women, black, red, fair, and gni}-, Priides, and such as never pray. Handsome, ugly, noisy, still, Some that will not, some that will : Many a beau without a shilling, Many a widow^ not unwilling ; ]\Iany a bargain if you strike it : This is London — how d'ye like it? A CLUSTER OF ENGLISH PROVERBS. A Brr in the morning is better than nothing all day. "^ Broken friendships may be soldered, but never sound. He that buys a house that 's wrought, hath many a ]^in and nail for nought. Three may keep counsel, if two be away. ' ris a good horse that never stumbles, and a good wife that never grumbles. 'Tis a long journey to the world's end. Talk is but talk ; but 'tis money that buys land. A man of courage never wants a weapon. On the sea, sail ; on the land, settle. Buying and selling is but winning and losing. Every couple is not a pair. Fetters of gold are fetters, and silken cords pinch. (ireat pains and little gains soon make a man weary. If young men had wit, and old men strength, all would be well. That trial is not fair where affection is judge. The king's cheese goes half away in parings. Vows made in storms are forgotten in calms. An ass that carries you is better than a horse that throws you. 6 ROSES AXD HOLLY. COUNTRY HOSPITALITY. A S soon as I entered the parlour, they put me into the great chair that ■^^ stood close by a huge fire, and kept me there by force until I was almost stifled. Then a boy came in a great hurry to pull off my boots, which I in vain opposed, urging that I must return soon after dinner. In the meantime, the good lady Avhispered her eldest daughter, and slipped a key into her hand ; the girl returned instantly with a beer-glass half full of aqua miralnlis and sirup of gillyflowers. I took as much as I had a mind for, but madam vowed I should drink it off; for she Avas sure it would do me good after coming out of the cold air ; and I was forced to obey, which absolutely took away my stomach. When dinner came in, I had a mind to sit at a distance from the fire ; but they told me it was as much as my life was worth, and set me with my back just against it. Although my appetite was quite gone, I was resolved to force down as much as I could, and desired the leg of a pullet. " Indeed, Mr Bickerstaff," says the lady, " you must eat a wing, to oblige me ;" and so put a couple upon my plate. I was persecuted at this rate during the whole meal : as often as I called for small beer, the master tipped the wink, and the servant brought me a brimmer of October. Some time after dinner, I ordered my cousin's man, who came with me, to get ready the horses ; but it was resolved I should not stir that night ; and when I seemed pretty much bent upon going, they ordered the stable- door to be locked, and the children hid my cloak and boots. The next ([uestion was, What would I have for supper? I said, I never eat any- thing at night ; but was at last, in my own defence, obliged to name the first thing that came into my head. After three hours, spent chiefly in apologies for my entertainment, insinuating to me, '* That this was the worst time of the year for provisions ; that they were at a great distance from any market ; that they were afraid I should be starved ; and that they knew they kept me to my loss;" the lady went, and left me to her husband ; for they took special care I should never be alone. As soon as her back was turned, the little misses ran backward and forward every moment, and constantly as they came in, or went out, made a courtesy directly at me, which, in good manners, I was forced to return with a bow, and " your humble servant, pretty miss." Exactly at eight, the J? OSES AND HOLL V. 137 mother came up, and discovered, by the redness of her face, that supper was not far off It was twice as large as the dinner, and my persecution doubled in proportion. I desired at my usual hour to go to my repose, and was conducted to my chamber by the gentleman, his lady, and the whole train of children. They importuned me to drink something before I went to bed ; and, upon my refusing, at last left a bottle of stingo, as they call it, for fear I should wake and be thirsty in the night. I was forced in the morning to rise and dress myself in the dark, because they would not suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb me at the hour I desired to be called. I was now resolved to break through all measures to get away ; and, after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold beef, mutton, neat's tongues, venison pasty, and stale beer, took leave of the family. But the gentleman would needs see me part of the way, and carry me a short cut through his own ground, which he told me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility had like to have cost me dear, being once or twice in danger of my neck by leaping over his ditches, and at last forced to alight in the dirt, when my horse, having slipped his bridle, ran away, and took us up more than an hour to recover him again. Swift. BOOKS. T N the best books, great men talk to us, give us tlieir most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books ! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithlully use them, the society, the spiritual presence of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am — no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling — if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof — if Milton will cross my threshold, and sing to me of paradise ; and Shakespeare, to open to me the worlds of imagination, and the workings of the human Iieart; and Franklin, to enrich me with his i)ractical wisdom — I shall not pine for want of intellectual rompanionshiji ; and 1 may l)crome a culti- vated man, though excluded from what is called tlic best society in the place where T live. , Ciianuia^i^: 1 3 8 i:OSES A ND HOLL V. MODERN SPEAKING. A /[ ETHUSELAH might be half an hour in teUing what o'clock it was; "*" but as for us postdiluvians, we ought to do everything in haste; and in our speeches, as well as actions, remember that our time is short. A man that talks for a quarter of an hour together in company, if I meet him frequently, takes up a great part of my span. A quarter of an hour may be reckoned the eight-and-fortieth part of a day, a day the three hun- dred and sixtieth part of a year, and a year the threescore and tenth part of life. I would establish but one great general rule to be observed in all con- versation, which is this, " That men should not talk to please themselves, ])Ut those that hear them." This would make them consider whether what they speak be worth hearing ; whether there be either wit or sense in what they are about to say; and whether it be adapted to the time Avhen, the place whfere, and the person to whom, it is spoken. For the utter extirpation of these orators and story-tellers, which I look upon as very great pests of society, I ha\c invented a watch whicli divides the minute into twelve parts, after the same manner that the ordinary watches are divided into hours ; and will endeavour to get a patent, which shall oblige every club or company to provide themselves with one of these watches, that shall lie upon the table, as an hour-glass is often placed near the pulpit, to measure out the length of a discourse. I shall be willing to allow a man one round of my watch, that is, a whole minute to speak in ; but if he exceeds that time, it shall be lawful for any of the company to look upon the watch, or to call him down to order. Provided, however, that if any one can make it appear he is turned of threescore, he may take two, or, if he pleases, three rounds of the watch without giving offence. Provided also that this rule be not construed to extend to the fair sex, who shall still be at liberty to talk by the ordinary watch that is now in use. I would likewise earnestly recommend this Httle automaton, which may easily be carried in the pocket without any encumbrance, to all such as are troubled with this infirmity of speech, that upon pulling out their watches, they may have frecjuent occasion to con- sider what they are doing, and by that means cut the thread of the story short, and hurrv to a conclusion. Sfcc/e. IWSES A ND HOLL V. I 39 THE STRANGER. A STRANGER came to a rich man's door, And smiled on his mighty feast ; And away his brightest child he bore, And laid her toward the east. He came next spring, with a smile as gay, (At the time the east wind blows,) And another bright creature he led away, With a cheek like a burning rose. And he came once more, when the spring was blue. And whisper'd the last to rest, And bore her away, — yet nobody knew The name of the fearful guest ! Next year, there was none but the rich man left, — Left alone in his pride and pain. Who call'd on the stranger, like one bereft, And sought through the land, — in vain ! He came not : he never was heard nor seen Again, (so the story saith ;) But wherever his terrible smile had been, Men shudder'd, and talk'd of — Death ! Barry Connvall. 1 40 ROSES A ND HOLL Y. THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS. KING FRANCIS was a worthy king, and loved a royal sport, And one day, as his lions strove, sat looking on the court; The nobles fiU'd the benches round, the ladies by their side, And 'mongst theni Count de Lorge, with one he hoped to make his bride : And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valour and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below. Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws, They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws Witii wallowing might and stifled roar, they roU'd on one another, Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thund'rous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing thiough the air; Said Francis then, " Good gentlemen, we're better here than there I" De Lorge's love o'erheard the king,— a beauteous, lively dame, ^Vith smiling lips, and sharp bright eyes, which always seem'd the same : She thought, " The Count, my lover, is as brave as brave can be ; He surely would do desperate things to show his love for me ! King, ladies, lovers, all look on ; the chance is wondrous fine ; I'll drop my glove to prove his love; great glory will be mine 1" She dropp'd her glove to ])rove his love : then look'd on him and smiled ; He bovv'd, and in a moment leap'd among the lions wild ; The leap was quick ; return was quick ;.he soon regain'd his place ; Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face ; " In truth," cried F"rancis, " rightly done ! " and he. rose from where he sat " No love," quoth he, " but vanity, sets love a task like that !" LcigJi Hunt. 7^ OSES AND HOLLY. 141 *d^^^^ THE SHEPHERD BOY'S SONG. T T E that is down needs fear no fall ; He that is low no pride ; He that is huml)le ever shall Have God to be his guide. I am content with what I have, Little be it or much ; And, Lord ! contentment still I cra\ e, Because Thou savest such. Fulness to such a burden is, That go on i)ilgrimage ; Here little, and hereafter blisSj Is best from age to age. 142 ROSES AND HOLLY. THE MOST TERRIFYING ADVENTURE OF THE WINDMILLS. T N the midst of this their conversation, they discovered thirty or forty windmills all together on the plain, which the knight no sooner per- ceived than he said to his squire, " Chance has conducted our affairs even better than we could either wish or hope for : look there, friend Sancho, and behold thirty or forty outrageous giants, with whom I intend to engage in battle, and put every soul of them to death, so that we may begin to enrich ourselves with their spoils ; for it is a meritorious warfare, and serviceable both to God and man, to extirpate such a wicked race from the face of the earth." " What giants do you mean?" said Sancho Panza, in amaze. " Those you see yonder," replied his master, " with vast ex- tended arms, some of which are two leagues long." " I would your wor- ship would take notice," replied Sancho, " that those you see yonder are no giants, but windmills ; and what seem arms to you are sails, which being turned with the wind, make the mill-stone work." " It seems very l^lain," said the knight, " that you are but a novice in adventures ; these I affirm to be giants, and if thou art afraid, get out of the reach of danger, and put up thy prayers for me, while I join with them in fierce and un- equal com.bat." So saying, he put spurs to his steed Rozinante, without paying the least regard to the ciies of his squire Sancho, who assured him that those he was going to attack were not giants, but innocent windmills ; but he was so much possessed with the opinion that they were giants, that he neither heard the advice of his squire Sancho, nor would use the intel- ligence of his own eyes, tliough he was very near them : on the contrary, when he approached them he called aloud, " Fly not, ye base and cowardly miscreants, for he is but a single knight who now attacks you." At that instant, a breeze of wind springing up, the great sails began to turn, which being perceived by Don Quixote, "Though you wield," said he, "more arms than ever belonged to the giant Briareus, I will make you pay for your insolence." So saying, and heartily recommending himself to his lady Dulcinea, whom he implored to succour him in this emergency, bracing on his target, and setting his lance in the rest, he put his Rozinante to full sjiced, and assaulting the nearest windmill, thrust it into one of the sails, I^OSES AND HOLLY. 145 which was driven about by the wind with so much fury, that the lance was shivered to pieces, and both knight and steed whirled aloft, and over- thrown in very bad plight upon the plain. Sancho Panza rode as fast as the ass could carry him to his assistance, and when he came up found him unable to stir, by reason of the bruises which he and Rozinante had received. " Lord have mercy upon us ! " said the squire, " did not I tell your worship to consider well what you were about? Did I not assure you they were no other than windmills? Indeed, nobody could mistake them for anything else, but one who has windmills in his own head." " Prithee, hold thy peace, friend Sancho," replied Don Quixote ; " the affairs of war are more than anything subject to change. How mucli more so, as I believe, nay, am certain, that the sage Freston, who stole my closet and books, has converted those giants into mills, in order to rob me of the honour of their overthrow, such is the enmity he bears me ; but in the end all his treacherous arts will but little avail against the vigour of my sword." "God's will be done!" replied Sancho Panza, who helped him to rise and mount Rozinante, that was almost disjointed. Don Quixote. 14^ ROSES AND HOLLY. POETRY. "pOETRY is, as was said more than two thousand years ago, imitation. It is an art analogous in many respects to the art of painting, sculpture, and acting. The imitations of the painter, the sculptor, and the actor, are indeed, within certain limits, more perfect than those of the poet. The machinery which the poet employs consists merely of words ; and words cannot, even when employed by such an artist as Homer or Dante, present to the mind images of visible objects quite so lively and exact as those which we carry away from looking on the works of the brush and the chisel. But, on the other hand, the range of poetry is infinitely wider than that of any other imitative art, or than that of all the other imitative arts together. The sculptor can imitate only form ; the painter only form and colour; the actor, until the poet supplies him with words, only form, celcu.r, and motion. Poetry holds the outer world in common Aviih the otlicr arts. The heart of man is the province of poetry, and of poetry alone. The painter, the sculptor, and the actor can exhibit no more of human passion and character than that small portion which overflows into the gesture and the face, always an imperfect, often a deceitful, sign of that which is within. The deeper and more complex parts of human nature can be exhibited by means of words alone. Thus the objects of the imitation of poetry are the whole external and the whole internal universe, the face of nature, the vicissitudes of fortune, man as he is in himself, man as he appears in society, all things which really exist, all things of which we can form an image in our minds by combining together parts of things which really exist. The domain of this imperial art is commensurate with the imaginative faculty. Macau la 1;ALI.ANTYNE and COMTANV, I'KINTERS, EDIXBUKGH AND LONDON. NIMMO'S CARMINE GIFT-BOOKS. Small 4to, beautifully printed within red lines on superior paper, handsomely bound in cloth extra, bevelled boards, gilt edges, price 7s. 6d., ROSES AND HOLLY: A Gift-Bool: for all the Year. With Original Illustrations by GoURLAY Steell, R.S.A. ; Sam. Bough, A.R.S.A. ; John M'Whirter ; R. Herdman, R.S.A. ; Clark Stanton, A.R.S.A. ; J. Lawson ; and other eminent Artists. 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