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 COMMON-PLACES REFRESHED. 
 
 By LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 IN T\VO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LOVK ADDS A PRECIOUS SEEING TO THE EYE. — SAaAcspcare. 
 
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 . • BOSTON: ' 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 143, Washington Street. 
 
 1S65.
 
 boston: 
 
 STEREOTYI'F.D AND PRINTED BT JOHN WILSON AND SOS. 
 No. 5, Water Street. 
 
 THIBD EDITION. 
 
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 '"'■] 
 
 V. \ 
 PREFACE. 
 
 g-THE following Essays have been collecSted, for tlie first 
 
 time, fi'om such of the author's periodical writings as 
 
 ^ it was thought might furnish another publication simi- 
 
 ^ lar to the " Indicator," Most of them have been taken 
 
 from the " London Journal," and the remainder from 
 
 the " Liberal," the " Monthly Repository," the " Tat- 
 
 ler," and the " Round Table." The title, of course, is 
 
 ^ to be understood in its primitive and most simple sense, 
 
 "— and not in its portentous one, as connefted with fore- 
 
 "^ sight and prophecy ; nor would the author profess, 
 
 intelle6lually, to see " farther into a millstone " than 
 
 => his betters. His motto, which thoroughly explains, 
 
 will also, he trusts, vindicate, all which he aspires to 
 
 sliow ; which is, that the more we look at any thing in 
 
 . this beautiful and abiuidant world with a desire to be 
 
 ty pleased with it, the moi'e we shall be rewarded by the 
 
 loving Spirit of the universe with discoveries that 
 
 await only the desire. 
 
 It will ever be one of the most delightful recollec- 
 tions of the author's life, that the periodical work, from 
 which the colle(5lion has been chiefly made, was en- 
 couraged b}- all parties in the spirit in which it was set 
 
 298868 '""
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 up. Nor, at the hazard of some imputation on his 
 modesty (which he must be allowed not very terribly 
 to care for, where so much love is going forward) , can 
 he help repeating what he wrote on this point, when 
 his heart was first touched by it : — 
 
 " As there is nothing in the world which is not super- 
 natural in one sense ; as the very world of fashion 
 itself rolls round with the stars, and is a part of the 
 mystery and the variety of the shows of the universe : 
 so nothing, in a contemptuous sense, is small, or un- 
 worthy of a grave and calm hope, which tends to 
 popularize Christian refinement, and to mix it up with 
 every species of social intercourse as a good realized, 
 and not merely as an abstraction preached. What ! 
 have not Philosophy and Christianity long since met 
 in the embrace of such loving discoveries? and do 
 not the least and most trivial things, provided they 
 have an earnest and cheerful good-will, partake of 
 some right of greatness, and the privilege to be hon- 
 ored, — if not with admiration of their wisdom, yet 
 with acknowledgment of the joy which is the end of 
 wisdom, and which it is the privilege of a loving sin- 
 cerity to reach by a short road? Hence we have had 
 two obje(Stions, and two hundred encouragements ; 
 and excellent writers of all sorts, and of all other shades 
 of belief, have hastened to say to us, 'Preach that,* 
 and prosper.' Have not the ' Times ' and the ' Ex- 
 aminer ' and the ' Atlas ' and the ' Albion ' and the 
 ' True Sun,' and twenty other newspapers, hailed us 
 for the very sunniness of our religion ? Does not that 
 old and judicious Whig, the ' Scotsman,' waive his 
 deliberate manner in our favor, and ' coi'dially ' wish
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 US success for it? Does not the Radical 'Glasgow 
 Argus,' in an eloquent article, 'fresh and glowing' 
 as his good-will, expressly recommend us for its per- 
 vading all we write upon, tears included? And the 
 rich-writing Tory, Christopher North, instead of obje6t- 
 ing to the entireness of our sunshine, and requiring a 
 cloud in it, does he not welcome it, ay, every week, 
 as it strikes on his breakfast-cloth, and speak of it, in a 
 burst of bright-heartedness, as ' dazzling the snow ' ? " 
 And so, with thanks and blessings upon the warm- 
 hearted of all parties, who love their fellow-creatures 
 quite as much as we do, perhaps better, and who may 
 think, for that very reason, that the edge of their con- 
 test with one another is still not to be so much softened 
 as we suppose, here is another bit of a corner, at all 
 events, where, as in the recesses of their own minds, 
 all green and hopeful thoughts for the good and enter- 
 tainment of men may lovingly meet. 
 
 [Given at our suburban abode, with a fire on one 
 side of us, and a vine at the window on the other, 
 this nineteenth day of October, one thousand eight 
 hundred and fort}', and in the very green and 
 invincible year of our life, the fifty-sixth.] 
 
 L. H.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 PLEASURE 9 
 
 ON A PEiiBLE .... 19 
 
 SPRING 28 
 
 COLOR 34 
 
 WINDOWS 38 
 
 WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM INSIDE 48 
 
 A FLOWER FOR YOUR WINDOW 59 
 
 A WORD ON EARLY RISING 67 
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER 73 
 
 BREAKFAST {continued) 86 
 
 BREAKFAST (concluded) 97 
 
 ANACREON 108 
 
 THE WRONG SIDES OF SCHOLARSHIP AND NO SCHOLARSHIP . 124 
 
 CRICKET 130 
 
 A DUSTY DAY 133 
 
 BRICKLAYERS, AND AN OLD BOOK 145 
 
 A RAINY DAY 154 
 
 THE EAST WIND 163 
 
 STRAWBERRIES 168 
 
 THE WAITER 1"5 
 
 "THE butcher" 1^0 
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF 187 
 
 [Vii]
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PASS 
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF [concluded) 193 
 
 WORDSWORTH AND MILTON 204 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. NO. 1 211 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. NO. II 220 
 
 SPECIMENS OP CHAUCER. — NO. Ill 225 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. NO. IV 232 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. NO, V 243 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. NO. VI 248 
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN ...... 256 
 
 ENGLISH AND FRENCH FEMALES 276 
 
 ENGLISH MALE COSTUME 288 
 
 ENGLISH WOMEN VINDICATED 296 
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. NO. 1 305 
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. NO. 11 314 
 
 SUNDAY IN THE SUBURBS 319 
 
 A HUMAN BEING AND A CROWD 326
 
 THE SEER; 
 
 COMMON-PLACES REFRESHED. 
 
 PLEASURE. 
 
 Poo7' Rich Men and Rich Poor Men. — A Word or^ 
 two on the Periodical Writings of the Author. 
 
 'i^^i^i^^h LEASURE is the business of this book : we 
 own it. We love to begin it with tlie word : 
 
 ^0W 
 
 it is like commencing the day (as we are 
 now commencing it) with sunshine in the room. Plea- 
 sure for all who can receive pleasure ; consolation and 
 encouragement for the rest, — this is our device. But 
 then it is pleasure like that implied by our simile, — 
 innocent, kindly ; we dare to add, instru6tive and ele- 
 vating. Nor shall the gravest aspe6ts of it be wanting. 
 As the sunshine floods the sky and the ocean, and yet 
 nurses the baby buds of the roses on the wall ; so we 
 would fain open the largest and the very least sources 
 of pleasure, — the noblest that expands above us into 
 the heavens, and the most familiar that catches our 
 glance in the homestead. We would break open the 
 surfaces of habit and indifference, of objects that are 
 supposed to contain nothing but so much brute matter
 
 lO THE SEER. 
 
 or commonplace utility, and show what treasures they 
 conceal. Man has not yet learned to enjoy the world 
 he lives in ; no, not the hundred-thousand-millionth 
 part of it : and we would fain help him to render it 
 produ6live of still greater joy, and to delight or comfort 
 himself in his task as he proceeds. We would make 
 adversity hopeful, prosperity sympathetic ; all kinder, 
 richer, and happier. And we have some right to assist 
 in the endeavor : for there is scarcely a single joy or 
 sorrow, within the experience of our fellow-creatures, 
 which we have not tasted ; and the belief in the good 
 and beautiful has never forsaken us. It has been medi- 
 cine to us in sickness, riches in poverty, and the best 
 part of all that ever delighted us in health and suc- 
 cess. 
 
 There is not a man living, perhaps, in the present 
 state of society, — certainly not among those who have 
 a surfeit of goods, any more than those who want a suf- 
 ficiency, — that has not some pain which he would 
 diminish, and some pleasure, or capability of it, that 
 he would increase. We would say to him. Let him 
 be sure he can diminish that pain and increase that 
 pleasure. He will find out the secret by knowing 
 more, and by knowing that there is more to love. 
 "Pleasures lie about our feet." We would extradl 
 some for the unthinking rich man out of his very 
 carpet (though he thinks he has already got as much 
 as it can yield) ; and for the unthinking or unhoping 
 poor one, out of his bare fioor. 
 
 " Can you put a loaf on my table?" the poor man 
 may ask. No : but we can show him how to get it in 
 the best manner, and comfort himself while he is get-
 
 PLEASURE. I I 
 
 ting it. If he can get it not at all, we do not profess 
 to have even the right of being listened to by him. 
 We can only do what we can, as his fellow-crea- 
 tures and by other means, towards hastening the ter- 
 mination of so frightful an exception to the common 
 lot. 
 
 " Can you rid me of my gout, or my disrelish of all 
 things ? " the rich man may ask. No : nor perhaps 
 even diminish it, unless you are a very daring or a 
 very sensible man ; and if you are very rich indeed, 
 and old, neither of these predicaments is very likely. 
 Yet we would try. We are inextinguishable friends 
 of endeavor. 
 
 If you had the gout, however, and were Lord Hol- 
 lafid, you would smile, and say, " Talk on." You 
 would suspend the book, or the pen, or the kindly 
 thought you were engaged in, and indulgently wait 
 to see what recipes or amusing fancies we could add to 
 your stock. 
 
 Nay, if you were a kind of stai^ving Di*. Johnson, 
 who wrote a letter one day to the editor of the maga- 
 zine to which he contributed, signing himself, " Din- 
 nerless," * you would listen to us even without a loaf 
 on your table, and see how far we could bear out the 
 reputation of the Lydians, who are said to have in- 
 vented play as a resource against himger. But Dr. 
 Johnson knew he had his remedy in his wits. The 
 wants of the poor in knowledge are not so easily post- 
 
 * Impransus. It miglit mean simply, tliat he had not dined; hi't 
 there is too much reason to believe othenvise. And yet how much 
 good and entertainment did not the very necessities of such a man help 
 to produce us !
 
 12 THE SEER. 
 
 poned. With deep reverence and sympathy would 
 we be vuiderstood as speaking of them. A smile, 
 however closely it may border upon a grave thought, 
 is not to be held a levity in us, any more than sun be- 
 twixt rain. One and the same s^anpathy with all 
 things fetches it out. 
 
 But to all but the famished we should say with the 
 noble text, " Man does not live by bread alone." " A 
 man," says Bacon, in words not unworthy to go by the 
 side of the others, " is but what he knoweth." " I 
 think," said Descartes ; " therefore I am." A man has 
 no proof of his existence but in his consciousness of it, 
 and the return of that consciousness after sleep. He 
 is therefore, in amount of existence, only so much as 
 his consciousness, his thoughts, and his feelings 
 amount to. The more he knows, the more he ex- 
 ists ; and the pleasanter his knowledge, the happier 
 his existence. One man, in this sense of things, and 
 it is a sense proved beyond a doubt (except with those 
 merry philosophers of antiquity who doubted their 
 very consciousness, nay, doubted doubt itself), is infi- 
 nitely little compared with another man. If we could 
 see his mind, we should see a pygmy ; and it would be 
 stuck perhaps into a pint of beer, or a scent-bottle, or 
 a bottle of wine ; as the monkey stuck Gulliver into 
 the marrow-bone. Another man's inind would show 
 larger, another larger still ; till at length we should 
 see minds of all shapes and sizes, from a microscopic 
 one up to that of a giant or a demigod, or a spirit that 
 filled the visible world. Milton's would be like that 
 of his own archangel. " His stature reached the 
 sky." Shakspeare's would stretch from the midst of
 
 PLEASURE. 
 
 13 
 
 US into the regions of " airy nothing," and bring us 
 new creatures of his own making. Bacon's would 
 be lost into the next ages. Many a "great man's" 
 would become invisible, and many a little one suddenly 
 astonish us with the overshadowing of its great- 
 ness. 
 
 Men sometimes, by the magic of their knowledge, 
 partake of a great many things which they do not 
 possess : others possess much which is lost upon them. 
 It is recoi-ded of an exquisite^ in one of the admirable 
 exhibitions of Mr. Mathews, that being told, with a 
 grave face, of a mine of silver which had been dis- 
 covered in one of the London suburbs, he exclaimed, in 
 his jargon, " A mine of 5/7-'y«2^ / Good Gaud! You 
 don't tell me so! A rcnuQ oi sil-vazi ! Good Gaud I 
 I've often seen the little boys playing about ; but I had 
 no idea that there was a mine of sll-vau.'" 
 
 This gentleman, whom we are to understand as re- 
 peating these words out of pure ignorance and absur- 
 dity, and not from any power to receive information, 
 would be in possession, while he was expressing his 
 astonishment at a thing unheard of and ridiculous, of 
 a hundred real things round about him, of which he 
 knew nothing. Shakspeare speaks of a man who was 
 " incapable of his own distress ; " that is to say, who had 
 not the feclinsrs of other men, and was insensible to 
 what would have distressed everybody else. This dan- 
 dy would be incapable of his own wealth, of his own 
 furniture, of his own health, friends, books, gardens ; 
 nay, of his very hat and coat, except inasmuch as they 
 contributed to give him one single idea ; to wit, that of 
 his dandyism. From all those stores, small and great,
 
 14 THE SEER. 
 
 nothing but that solitary and sorry impression would 
 he receive. 
 
 Of all which his wealth could procure him, in the 
 shape of a real enjoyment of poetry, painting, music, 
 sculpture, and the million of ideas which they might 
 produce, he would know nothing. 
 
 Of all the countries that produced his furniture, all 
 the ti^ades that helped to make it, all the arts that went 
 to adorn it, all the materials of which it was com- 
 posed, and the innumerable images of men, lands, 
 facilities, substances, elements, and interesting pheno- 
 mena of all sorts to which the knowledge might 
 give rise, he would know nothing. 
 
 Of his books he would know nothing, except that 
 they were bound, and that they caust a great deal. 
 
 Of his gardens he would know nothing, except that 
 they were " tedious," and that he occasionally had a 
 pink out of them to put in his button-hole, provided 
 it was tlie fashion. Otherwise pinks are "vulgar." 
 Nature's and God's fashion is nothing. 
 
 Of his hat and his coat it might be thovight he must 
 know something : but he would not, except as far as 
 we have stated ; unless, indeed, his faculties might pos- 
 sibly attain to the knowledge of a " fit" or a " set," and 
 then he would not know it with a grace. The know- 
 ledge of a good thing, even in the least matters, is not 
 for a person so poorly educated, — so worse than left 
 to grow up in an ignorance unsophisticate. Of the 
 creatures that furnished the materials of his hat and 
 coat — the curious handicraft beaver, the spinster silk- 
 worm, the sheep in the meadows (except as mutton) — 
 nothing would he know or care, or receive tlie least
 
 PLEASURE. 15 
 
 pleasurable thought from. In the mind that consti- 
 tutes his man, in the amount of his existence, terri- 
 bly vacant are the regions, — bald places in the map, 
 — deserts without even the excitement of a storm. 
 Nothing lives there but himself, — a suit of clothes in a 
 solitude, — emptiness in emptiness. 
 
 Contrast a being of this fashion (after all allowance 
 for caricature) with one who has none of his deformi- 
 ties, but with a stock of ideas such as the other wants. 
 Suppose him poor, even struggling, but not unhappy ; 
 or if not without unhappiness, yet not without relief, 
 and unacquainted with the desperation of the other's 
 ennui. Such a man, when he wants recreation for his 
 thoughts, can make them flow from all the objects, or 
 the ideas of those obje(5ts, which furnish nothing to the 
 other. The commonest goods and chattels are preg- 
 nant to him as fairy tales, or things in a pantomime. 
 His hat, like Fortunatus's wishing-cap, carries him 
 into the American solitudes among the beavers, where 
 he sits in thought, looking at them during their work, 
 and hearing the majestic whispers in the trees, or the 
 falls of the old trunks that are repeatedly breaking 
 the silence in those wildernesses. His coat shall carry 
 him, in ten minutes, through all the scenes of pastoral life 
 and mechanical, — the quiet fields, the sheejD-shearing, 
 the feasting, the love-making, the downs of Dorsetshire, 
 and the sti^eets of Birmingham, where, if he meet with 
 pain in his sympathy, he also, in his knowledge, finds 
 reason for hope and encouragement, and for giving his 
 manly assistance to the common good. The very 
 toothpick of the dandy, should this man, or any man 
 like him, meet with it, poor or rich, shall suggest to
 
 1 6 THE SEER. 
 
 him, if he pleases, a hundred agreeable thoughts of 
 foreign lands, and elegance and amusement, — of toi"- 
 toises, and books of travels, and the comb in his 
 mistress's hair, and the elephants that carry sultans, 
 and the real silvei'-mines of Potosi, with all the won- 
 ders of South-American history, and the starry cross in 
 its sky : so that the smallest key shall pick the lock of 
 the greatest treasui^es ; and that which in the hands 
 of the possessor was only a poor instrument of affe6la- 
 tion, and the very emblem of indifference and stupidity, 
 shall open to the knowing man a universe. 
 
 We must not pursue the subje6l further at present, 
 or trust our eyes at the smallest objedls around us, 
 which, from long and loving contemplation, have en- 
 abled us to report their riches. We have been at this 
 work now, off' and on, man and boy (for we began 
 rssay-writing while in our teens), for up\vards of thirty 
 years : and excepting that we would fain have done 
 far more, and that experience and suffering have long 
 restored to us the natural kindliness of boyhood, and 
 put an end to a belief in the right or utility of severer 
 views of any thing or person, we feel the same as we 
 have done throughout ; and we have the same hope, 
 the same love, the same faith in the beauty and good- 
 ness of Nature and all her prospers, in space and In 
 time ; we could almost add, if a sprinkle of white hairs 
 in our black would allow us, the same yovith : for, what- 
 ever maybe thought of a consciousness to that effect, the 
 feeling is so real, and ti'oublc of no ordinary kind has 
 so remarkably spared the elasticity of our spirits, that 
 we are often startled to think how old we have become, 
 compared with the little of age that is in our disposi-
 
 PLEASURE. 1 7 
 
 tion ; and we mention this to bespeak the reader's 
 faith in what we shall write hereafter, if he is not ac- 
 quainted with us already. If he is, he will no more 
 doubt us than the children do at our fireside. We 
 have had so much sorrow, and yet are capable of so 
 much joy, and receive pleasure from so many familiar 
 objects, that we sometimes think we should have had 
 an unfair portion of happiness, if our life had not been 
 one of more than ordinary trial. 
 
 The reader will not be troubled in future with per- 
 sonal intimations of this kind ; but in commencing a 
 new work of the present nature, and having been per- 
 suaded to put our name at the top of it (for which we 
 beg his kindest constructions, as a point conceded by a 
 sense of what was best for others) , it will be thought, 
 we trust, not unfitting in us to have alluded to them. 
 We believe we may call ourselves the father of the 
 present penny and three-halfpenny literature, — desig- 
 nations once distressing to " ears polite," but now no 
 longer so, since they are producing so many valuable 
 results, fortunes included. The first number of tiie 
 new popular review, the " Printing Machine," — in an 
 article for the kindness and cordiality of which we take 
 this our best opportunity of expressing our gratitude, 
 and can only wish we could turn these sentences into 
 so many grips of the hand to show our sense of it, — 
 did us the honor of noticing the " Indicator " as the first 
 successful attempt (in one respe6l) to revive something 
 like the periodical literature of former days. We fol- 
 lowed this with the " Companion," lately republished in 
 connexion with the " Indicator ; " and a few years ago, 
 in a fit of anxiety at not being able to meet some obli- 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 l8 THE SEER. 
 
 gations, and fearing we were going to be cut off from 
 life itself without leaving answers to still graver wants, 
 we set up a half-reviewing, half-theatrical periodical, 
 under the name of the "Tatler" (a liberty taken by 
 love), in the hope of being able to realize some sud- 
 den as well as lasting profits ! So little, with all our 
 zeal for the public welfare, had we found out what 
 was so well discerned by Mr. Knight and others, 
 when tliey responded to the intelledtual wants of the 
 many. However, we pleased some readers, whom it 
 is a kind of prosperity even to rank as such ; we con- 
 ciliated the good-will of others, by showing that an 
 ardent politician might still be a man of no ill-temper, 
 nor without good-will to all ; and now, once inore 
 setting up a periodical work, entirely without politics, 
 but better calculated, we trust, than our former ones, 
 to meet the wishes of many as well as few, we are, in 
 hearty good earnest, the public's very sincere and cor- 
 dial friend and servant.
 
 19 
 
 ON A PEBBLE. 
 
 'OOKING about us during a walk to see what 
 subjecSl we could write upon in this our second 
 number, that should be familiar to everybody, 
 and aflbrd as striking a specimen as we could give 
 of the entertainment to be found in the commonest 
 obje(5ls, oiu- eyes lighted upon a stone. It was a com- 
 mon pebble, a flint ; such as a little boy kicks before 
 him as he goes, by way of making haste witli a mes- 
 sage, and saving his new shoes. 
 
 " A stone ! " cries a reader, " a flint ! — the very sym- 
 bol of a miser ! What can be got out of that?" 
 
 The question is well put ; but a little reflecflion on 
 the part of our interrogator would soon rescue tlie poor 
 stone from tlie cojiiparison. Strike him at any rato, 
 and you will get something out of him ; warm liis 
 heart, and out come the genial sparks that shall ghuUk'n 
 your hearth, and put hot dishes on your table. Tliis 
 is not miser's work. A French poet lias described tlie 
 l^rocess, well known to the maid-servant (till lucifers 
 came up), when she stooped, with flashing face, over 
 the tinder-box on a cold morning, and rejoiced to see
 
 20 TIIH SEER. 
 
 the first laugh of the fire. A sexton, in the poem we 
 alhide to, is striking a Hght in a church : — 
 
 " Boirude, qui voit que le p6ril approche, 
 Les an6tc', et tiraut un fusil de sa poche, 
 Dcs veines d'un caillou, qu'il frappe au iiioine instant, 
 II iait jaillir un feu qui petille en sortant; 
 Et bientot au brasier d'une nieche enflammee, 
 Montre, a I'aide du souffre, une cire allumniee." 
 
 BOII-KAU. 
 
 " Tlie prudent sexton, studious to reveal 
 Dark iioles, here takes from out his pouch a steel, 
 Tlien strikes upon a flint. In many a spark 
 Fortli leaps the spriglitly fire against tiie dark: 
 The tinder feels the little lightning hit, 
 The match provokes it, and a candle's lit." 
 
 We shall not stop to pursue this fiery point into all 
 its consequences ; to show what a world of beauty or 
 of formidable power is contained in that single pro- 
 perty of oin- friend flint; what fires, what lights, what 
 conflagrations, what myriads of clicks of triggers, — 
 awful sounds before battle, when, instead of letting 
 his flint do its j^roper good-natured work of cooking 
 his supper, and warming his wife and himself over 
 their cottage-fire, the poor fellow is made to kill and be 
 killed by other poor fellows, whose brains are strewed 
 about the place for want of knowing better. 
 
 But to return to the natural, quiet condition of our 
 friend, and what he can do for us in a peaceful way, 
 and so as to please meditation. What think you of 
 him as the musician of the brooks? as the unpretending 
 player on those watery pipes and flageolets during 
 the hot noon or the silence of the night? Without the 
 pebble, the brook would want its prettiest murmur ;
 
 ox A PEBBLE. 21 
 
 and then, in reminding you of these murmurs, he 
 reminds you of the poets. 
 
 "A noise as of a hidden brook 
 In the leafy month of June, 
 That to the sleeping woods all night 
 Singeth a quiet tune." 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Yes, the brook singeth ; but it would not sing so 
 well, it would not have that tone and ring in its 
 music, without the stone. 
 
 " Then 'gan the shepherd gather into one 
 
 BQs straggling goats, and drove them to a ford. 
 Whose coerule stream, rumbling in pebble-stone,* 
 Crept under moss as green as any goiu-d." 
 
 Spenser's Gnat. 
 
 Spenser's " Gnat," obsen-e • he wrote a whole poem 
 vipon a gnat, and a most beautiful one too, founded 
 upon another poem on the same subject written by the 
 great Roman poet Virgil, not because these great poets 
 wanted or were unequal to great subjects, such as all 
 the world think great, but because they thought no 
 care, and no fetching-out of beauty and wonder, ill 
 bestowed upon the smallest marvellous obje6l of God's 
 workmanship. The gnat, in their poems, is the crea- 
 ture that he really is, full of elegance and vivacity, airy, 
 trumpeted, and plumed, and dancing in the sun- 
 beams, — not the contempt of some thoughtless under- 
 standing, which sees in it nothing but an inse6t coming 
 
 * "Rumbling in pebble-stone" is a pretty enlargement of Virgil's 
 svsnirrantis ("whispering"). Green as any gourd is also an improve- 
 ment as well as an addition. The expression is as fresh as the color.
 
 22 THE SEER. 
 
 to vex its skin. The e}e of the poet, or other informed 
 man, is at once telescope and microscope, — able to 
 traverse the great heavens, and to do justice to the least 
 thing they have created. But to our brook and pebbles. 
 See how one pleasant thing reminds people of an- 
 other ! A pebble reminded us of the brooks ; and the 
 brooks, of the poets ; and the poets reminded us of the 
 beauty and comprehensiveness of their words, whether 
 belonging to the subjecft in hand or not. No true poet 
 makes use of a word for nothing. " Coerule stream," 
 says Spenser ; but why cceriile^ which comes from the 
 Latin, and seems a pedantic word, especially as it 
 signifies blue^ which he might have had in English? 
 The reason is, not only that it means sky-bhie^ and 
 therefore shows us how blue the sky was at the time, 
 and the cause why the brook was of such a color (for, 
 if he had wantad a word to express nothing but that 
 circumstance, he might have said sky-blue at once, how- 
 ever quaint it might have sounded to modern ears : 
 he would have cared nothing for that ; it was his busi- 
 ness to do justice to nature, and leave modern ears, as 
 they grew poetical, to find it out) ; but the word ccerule 
 was also a beautiful word, beautiful for the sound, and 
 expressive of a certain liquid yet neat softness, some- 
 what resembling the mixture of soft hissing, rumbling, 
 and inward music of the brook. We beg the reader's 
 indulgence for thus stopping him by the way to dwell 
 on the beauty of a word : but poets' words are minia- 
 ture creations, as ciu-ious, after their degree, as the 
 insedls and the brooks themselves ; and, when com- 
 panions find themselves in pleasant spots, it is natuial 
 to wander both in feet and talk.
 
 ON A PEBBLE. 23 
 
 So much for the agreeable sounds of which the 
 sight of a common stone may remind us (for we have 
 not chosen to go so far back as the poetry of Orpheus, 
 who is said to have made the materials of stone walls 
 answer to his lyre, and dance themselves into shape 
 without troubling the mason). We shall come to 
 grander echoes by and by. Let us see, meanwhile, 
 how pleasant the sight itself may be rendered. Mr. 
 Wordsworth shall do it for us in his exquisite little 
 poem on the fair maiden who died by the river Dove. 
 Our volume is not at hand ; but we remember the 
 passage we more particularly allude to. It is where 
 he compares his modest, artless, and sequestered 
 beauty with — 
 
 "A violet by a mossy stone, 
 
 Half liidden from the eye ; 
 Fair as the star, when only one 
 Is shining in the sky." 
 
 Is not that beautiful ? Can any thing express a lovelier 
 loneliness than the violet half hidden by the mossy 
 stone, — the delicate blue-eyed flower against the coun- 
 try green? And then the loving imagination of this 
 fine poet, exalting the object of his earthly worship to 
 her divine birthplace and fviture abode, suddenly raises 
 his eyes to the firmament, and sees her there, the soli- 
 tary star of his heaven. 
 
 But Stone docs not want even moss to render him 
 interesting. Here is another stone, and another soli- 
 tary evening star, as beautifidly introduced as the 
 others, but for a different purpose. It is in the opening 
 words of Mr. Keats's poem of " Hyperion," where he
 
 24 THE SEER. 
 
 describes the dethroned monarch of the gods sittuig in 
 his exile : — 
 
 "Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, 
 Far simken from the healthy breath of Morn, 
 Tar from the fiery Noon and Eve's one star. 
 Sate gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." 
 
 Quiet as a stone ! Nothing certainly can be more 
 qviiet than that. Not a syllable or a sigh will a stone 
 utter, though you watch and bear him company for a 
 whole week on the most desolate moor in Cumberland. 
 Thus silent, thus unmoved, thus insensible to whatever 
 circumstances might be taking place, or spectators 
 might think of him, was the soul-stunned old patriarch 
 of the gods. We may pi6lure to ourselves a large or 
 a small stone, as we please, — Stone-henge, or a pebble. 
 The simplicity and grandeur of truth do not care 
 which. The silence is the tiling, — its intensity, its 
 unalterableness. 
 
 Our friend Pebble is here in grand comj^any, and 
 you may think him (though we hope not) unduly bet- 
 tered by it. But see what Shakspeare will do for him 
 in his hardest shape, and in no finer company than a 
 peasant's : — 
 
 " Weariness 
 Can snore upon the flint, wlien restive sloth 
 Finds the down pillow hard." 
 
 Sleeping on hard stone would have been words 
 strong enough for a common poet ; or perhaps he 
 would have said "resting" or "profoundly reposing," 
 or that he could have made his " bed of the bare floor ; " 
 and the last saying would not have been the worst :
 
 ON A PEBBLE. 25 
 
 but Shakspeare must have the very strongest words 
 and really profoundest expressions, and he finds them 
 in the homeliest and most primitive. He does not 
 mince the matter, but goes to the root of both sleep 
 and stone, — can snore upon the Jllnt. We see the 
 fellow hard at it, bent upon it ; deeply drinking of the 
 forgetful draught. 
 
 To conclude our quotations from the poets, we will 
 give another line or two from Shakspeare, not inappli- 
 cable to our proposed speculations in general, and still 
 less so to the one in hand. 
 
 Green, a minor poet, author of the " Spleen," — an 
 effusion full of wit and good sense, — gives pleasant 
 advice to the sick who want exercise, and who are 
 frightened with hypochondria : — 
 
 "Fling but a stone, the giant dies." 
 
 And this reminds us of a pleasant story connedled 
 with the flinging of stones, in one of the Italian novels. 
 Two waggish painters persuade a simple brother of 
 theirs, that there is a plant which renders the finder 
 of it invisible ; and they all set out to look for it. They 
 pretend suddenly to miss him, as if he had gone away ; 
 and to his great joy, while throwing stones about in 
 his absence, give him great knocks in the ribs, and 
 horrible bruises ; he hugging himself all the while at 
 these manifest proofs of his success, and the little sus- 
 picion which they have of it. It is amusing to picture 
 him to one's fancy, gi'owing happier as the blows grow 
 worse, rubbing his sore knuckles with delight, and 
 hardly able to ejaculate a triumphant " Hah ! " at some 
 excessive thump in the back. 
 
 3
 
 26 THE SEER. 
 
 But, setting aside the wonders of the poets and the 
 novelists, Pebble, in his own person and by his own 
 family alliances, includes wonders far beyond the most 
 wonderful things they have imagined. Wrongly is 
 Flint compared with the miser. You cannot, to be 
 sure, skin him : but you can melt him ; ay, make him 
 absolutely flow into a liquid, — flow, too, for i.\se and 
 beauty, and become light unto your eyes, goblets to 
 yoiu' table, and a mirror to 3'oin- beloved. Bring two 
 friends of his about him, called Potash and Soda, and 
 Flint runs into melting tenderness, and is no longer 
 Flint : he is Glass. You look through him ; you 
 drink out of him ; he fiu'nishes you beautiful and 
 transparent shutters against the rain and cold ; you 
 shave by him ; protect pictures with him, and watches, 
 and books ; are assisted by him in a thousand curi- 
 ous philosophies ; are helped over the sea by him ; 
 and he makes your cathedral windows divine, and 
 enables your mistress to wear your portrait in her 
 bosom. 
 
 But we must hasten to close our article, and bring 
 his most precious riches down in a shower surpassing 
 the rainbow. Stone is the humble relation, nay, the 
 stock and parent, of Precious Stone I Ruby, Emerald, 
 and Sapphire are of his family ! — of the family of the 
 Flints ; and Flint is more in them than any thing else ! 
 That the habitations and secret bosoms of the precious 
 metals ai"e stone, is also true ; but it is little compared 
 with this. Precious stone, for the most part, is stone 
 itself, is flint, with some wonderful circumstance of 
 addition, nobody knows what ; but, without the flint, 
 the preciousness would not be. Here is wealth and
 
 ON A PEBBLE. 27 
 
 honor for the poor Pebble ! Look at him, and think 
 what splendors issue from his loins : — 
 
 "Fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, 
 Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds, 
 Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds, 
 And seld-seen costly stones of so great price, 
 As one of them, indiiferently rated, 
 Might serve, in peril of calamity, 
 To ransom great kings from captivity." 
 
 Marlo-we. 
 
 "Sparkling diamonds" are not properly in our list 
 of pebbles ; for diamond, the most brilliant mystery of 
 all, is a charcoal ! 
 
 What now remains for slone, thus filling the coffers 
 of wealth, glorifying the crowns of sultans, and adding 
 beams to beauty itself? One thing greater than all. 
 The oldest and stoniest of stone is granite, and granite 
 (as far as we know) is the chief material of the earth 
 itself, — the bones of the world, the substance of our 
 s^ar. 
 
 Honored, therefore, be thou, thou small pebble lying 
 in the lane ; and, whenever any one looks at thee, may 
 he think of the beautiful and noble world he lives in, 
 and all of which it is capable !
 
 28 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 HIS moiTiIng, as we sat at breakfast, thinking 
 of our present subje6l, with our eyes fixed on 
 a set of the British Poets, which stand us in 
 stead of a prospe6t, there came by the window, from a 
 child's voice, a cry of " Wallflowers ! " There had just 
 been a shower ; sunshine had followed it ; and the 
 rain, the sun, the boy's voice, and the flowers came 
 all so prettily together upon the subje(5l we were think- 
 ing of, that, in taking one of his roots, we could not 
 help fancying we had received a present from Nature 
 herself, with a penny for the bearer. There were 
 thirty lumps of buds on this penny root : their beauty 
 was yet to come; but the promise was there, — the 
 new life, the spring ; and the raindrops were on 
 them, as if the sweet goddess had dipped her hand in 
 some fountain, and sprinkled them for us by way of 
 message ; as who should say, " April and I are com- 
 ing." 
 
 What a beautiful word is Spring I At least, one 
 fancies so, knowing the meaning of it, and being used 
 to identify it with so many pleasant things. An Italian 
 might find it harsh, and obje6t to the Sp and the ter- 
 minating consonant : but if he were a proper Italian, 
 a man of fancy, the worthy countryman of Petrarch 
 and Ariosto, we would convince him that the word
 
 SPRING. 29 
 
 was an excellent good word, crammed as full of beauty 
 as a bud ; and that S had the whistling of the brook? 
 in it, p and r the force and roughness of whatsoever is 
 animated and picturesque, z'ng- the singing of the birds, 
 and the whole word the suddenness and salience of all 
 that is lively, sprouting, and new, — spring, spring- 
 time, a spring-green, a spring of water ; to spring ; 
 springal, a word for a young man, in old (that is, ever 
 new) English poetry, which with many other words 
 has gone out, because the youthfulness of our hearts 
 has gone out, — to come back with better times, and 
 the nine-hundredth number of the work before us. 
 
 If our Italian, being very unlike an Italian, ill-na- 
 tured, and not open to pleasant conviction, should still 
 obje6t to our word, we would grow uncourteous in 
 turn, and swear it was a better word than his Prhiia- 
 vera, — which is what he calls Spring, — Prima-vera ; 
 that is to say, the Jirst Vera, or Ver of the Latins, the 
 Veer {finp lonice) or Ear of the Greeks ; and what that 
 means, nobody very well knows. But why Prima- 
 vera? and what is Seco?ida, or second Vera? The 
 word is too long and lazy, as well as obscure, com- 
 pared with our brisk, little, potent, obvious, and leap- 
 ing Spring, full of all fountains, buds, birds, sweet- 
 briers, and sunbeams. 
 
 " Leaping, like wanton kids in pleasant spring," — 
 
 savs the poet, speaking of the "wood-born people" 
 that flocked about fair Serena. How much better the 
 word spring- suits here with the word leaping, than if 
 it had been prima-vera ! How much more sudden 
 and starting, like the boundings of the kids ! Prima-
 
 30 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 vera is a beautiful word ; let us not gainsay it : but 
 it is more suitable to the maturity than to the very 
 springing of springs as its first syllable would pre- 
 tend. So long and comparatively languid a word 
 oucrht to belong to that side of the season which is 
 next to summer. Vcr^ the Latin word, is better, — or 
 rather Greek word ; for, as we have shown before, it 
 comes from the Greek, like almost every good thing in 
 Latin. It is a pity one does not know what it means : 
 for the Greeks had " good meanings " (as Sir Hugh 
 Evans would say) ; and their Ver^ Feer^ or Ear^ we 
 may be sure, meant something j^le^sant, — possibly 
 the rising of the sap, or something conne6led with the 
 new air, or with love ; for etymologists, with their 
 happy facilities, might bring it from the roots of such 
 w^ords. Ben Jonson has made a beautiful name of its 
 ad)e6tive i^Earinos^ vernal) for the heroine of his 
 ''Sad Shepherd:" — 
 
 " Earine, 
 "Wlio had her very being and her name 
 "With the first knots or buddhigs of the Spring; 
 Born with the primrose and the violet. 
 Or earliest roses blown ; wlien Cupid smiled, 
 And Venus led the Graces out to dance ; 
 And all the flowers and sweets in Natiu-e's lap 
 Leaped out." 
 
 The lightest thoughts have their roots in gravity, 
 and the most fugitive colors of the world are set off 
 by the mighty background of eternity. One of the 
 greatest pleasures of so light and airy a thing as 
 the vernal season arises from the consciousness, that 
 the world is young again ; that the spring has come
 
 srRiNO, 31 
 
 round ; that we shall not all cease, and be no world. 
 Nature has begun again, and not begun for nothhig. 
 One fancies somehow that she could not have the 
 heart to put a stop to us in April or May. She 
 may pluck away a poor little life here and there ; nay, 
 many blossoms of youth : but not all, not the whole 
 garden of life. She prunes, but does not destroy. If 
 she did ; if she were in the mind to have done with 
 us^ — to look upon us as an experiment not worth 
 going on with ; as a set of ungenial and obstinate com- 
 pounds which refused to co-operate in her sweet de- 
 signs, and could not be made to answer in the working ; 
 depend upon it, she would take pity on our incapability 
 and bad humors, and conveniently quash us in some 
 dismal, sullen winter's day, just at the natural dying of 
 the }'ear, most likely in November ; for Christmas is a 
 sort of spring itself, a winter-flowering. We care 
 nothing for arguments about storms, earthquakes, or 
 other apparently unseasonable interruptions of our 
 pleasures : we imitate, in that respe6l, the magnani- 
 mous indifference, or what appears such, of the Great 
 JNIother herself, knowing that she means us the best in 
 the gross ; and also that we may all get our remedies 
 for these evils in time, if we co-operate as before §aiJ. 
 People in South America, for instance, may learn from 
 experience, and bziild so as to make a comparative 
 nothing of those rockings of the ground. It is of the 
 g}'oss itself that we speak ; and sure we are, that, with 
 an eye to that^ Nature docs not feel as Pope ventures 
 to say she does, or see " with equal eye " — 
 
 "Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, 
 And now a bubble burst, and now a wovM."
 
 33 THE SEER. 
 
 He may have flattered himself that he should think it 
 a fine thing for his little poetship to sit upon a star, 
 and look grand in his own eyes, from an eye so very 
 dispassionate ; but Nature, who is the author of pas- 
 sion and joy and sorrow, does not look upon animate 
 and inanimate, depend upon it, with the same want of 
 sympathy. "A world" full of loves and hopes and 
 cMideavors, and of her own life and loveliness, is a far 
 greater thing in her eyes, rest assured, than a " bub- 
 ble ; " and a fortiori^ many worlds, or a " system," far 
 gi-eater than the " atom" talked of with so much com- 
 placency by this divine little whipper-snapper. Ergo^ 
 the moment the kind mother gives promise of a re- 
 newed year with these her green and budding signals, 
 be certain she is not going to falsify them ; and that, 
 being sure of April, we are sure as far as November. 
 As to our existence any further, that, we conceive, 
 depends somewhat upon how we behave ourselves ; 
 and therefore we would exhort everybody to do their 
 best for the earth, and all that is upon it, in order that 
 it and they may be thought worth continuance. 
 
 What ! shall we be put into a beautiful garden, and 
 turn up ovir noses at it, and call it a " vale of tears," and 
 all sorts of bad names (helping thereby to make it so), 
 and yet confidently reckon that Nature will never shut 
 it up, and have done with it, or set about forming a 
 better stock of inhabitants? Recolledl, we beseech 
 you, dear " Lord Worldly Wiseman," and you, " Sir 
 Having," and my lady " Greedy," that there is rea- 
 son for supposing that man was not always an inha- 
 bitant of this very fashionable world, and somewhat 
 larger globe ; and that pei'haps the chief occupant
 
 SPRING. 33 
 
 before him was only of an inferior species to ourselves 
 (odd as you may think it), who could not be brought 
 to only know what a beautiful place he lived in, and 
 so had another chance given him in a difterent shape. 
 Good heavens ! if there were none but J7tere ladies and 
 gentlemen, and city-men and soldiers, upon earth, 
 and no poets, readers, and milk-maids to remind us 
 that there was such a thing as Nature, we really 
 should begin to tremble for Almack's and Change 
 Alley about the 20th of next October !
 
 34 
 
 COLOR. 
 
 M$.^. 
 
 N this beloved, beautiful, but sometimes fog- 
 gy, and too often not very brilliant, country of 
 ours, we are not fond enough of colors^ — not 
 fond enough of a beauty of which Nature herself is 
 evidently very fond ^ and with which, like all the rest 
 of her beauties, it is the business of civilized man to 
 adorn and improve his own well-being. The summer 
 season is a good time for becoming acquainted with 
 them ; for it is then we see them best, and may ac- 
 quire a relish for them against the insipidity of winter. 
 We remember a dyer in Genoa, who used to hang out 
 his silks upon a high wall opposite his shop, where 
 they shone with such lustre under the blue sky (we 
 particularly remember some yellow ones), that it was 
 a treat to pass that way. You hailed them at a dis- 
 tance, like — 
 
 " Another sun 
 Risen at noonday ; " — 
 
 or as if Natine herself had been making some drape- 
 ries out of buttercups, and had just presented the 
 world with the phenomenon. It is the blue sky and 
 clear air of their native land which have made the Ital- 
 ian painters so famous for coloring ; and Rubens and 
 Watteau, like wise men, saw the good of ti^ansferring
 
 COLOR. 35 
 
 the beauty to the less fortunate cHmate of Flanders. 
 One of the first things that attradted our notice in Italy 
 was a red cap on the head of a boatman. In Eng- 
 land, where nobody else wears such a cap, we should 
 have thought of a butcher : in Italy, the sky set it oft' 
 to such advantage, that it I'eminded us of a scarlet bud. 
 The Puritans, who did us a great deal of good, 
 helped to do this harm for us. They degraded ma- 
 terial beauty and gladness, as if essentially hostile to 
 what was spiritually estimable ; whereas the desirable 
 thing is to show the compatibility of both, and vindi- 
 cate the hues of the creation. Thus the finest colors 
 in men's dresses have at last almost come to be con- 
 fined to livery servants and soldiers. A soldier's wife, 
 or a market-woman, is the only female that ventures 
 to wear a scarlet cloak ; and we have a favorite epithet 
 of vituperation, gaudy, which we bestow upon all 
 coloi-s that do not suit our melancholy. It is sheer 
 want of heart and animal spirits. We were not always 
 so. Puritanism and wars and debts, and the Dutch 
 succession, and false ideas of utility, have all conspired 
 to take gladness out of our eyesight, as well as jollity 
 out of our pockets. We shall recover a better taste, 
 and we trust exhibit it to better advantage than before ; 
 but we must begin by having faith in as many good 
 things as possible, and not think ill of any one of 
 Heaven's means of making us cheerful, because in itself 
 it is cheerful. " If a merry meeting is to be wished," 
 says the man in Shakspeare, " may God prohibit it I " 
 So, the more obviously cheerful and desirable any thing 
 is, the more we seem to beg the question in its dis- 
 favoj. Reds and yellows and bright blues are " gau-
 
 36 THE SEER. 
 
 dy : " we must have nothing but browns and blacks, 
 and drab-color or stone. Earth is not of this opinion, 
 nor the heavens either. Gardens do not think so, nor 
 the fields, nor the skies, nor the mountains, nor dawn, 
 nor sunset, nor light itself, which is made of colors, 
 and holds them always ready in its crystal quiver, to 
 shoot forth and divide into loveliness. The beautiful 
 atti-a6ts the beautiful. Colors find homes of color. 
 To red go the red rays, and to purple the pui-ple. 
 The rainbow reads its beauteous le6lure in the clouds, 
 showing the sweet division of the hues ; and the me- 
 chanical " philosopher," as he calls himself, smiles with 
 an air of superiority, and thinks he knows all about 
 it, because the division is made. 
 
 The little child, like the real philosopher, Jcjtows 
 more; for his " heart leaps up," and he acknowledges 
 a glad mystery. He feels the immensity of what he 
 does not know ; and, though the purely mechanical- 
 minded man admits that sucb immensity exists with 
 regard to himself, he does not feel it as the child or the 
 wiser man does, and therefore he does not truly per- 
 ceive, — does not thoroughly take it into his conscious- 
 ness. He talks and a6ls as if he had come to the 
 extent of his knowledge ; and he has so. But be- 
 yond the dry line of knowledge lies beauty, and all 
 which is beautiful in hope, and exalting in imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 We feel as if there were a moral as well as material 
 beauty in color, — an inherent gladness, — an intention 
 on the part of Nature to share with us a pleasure felt 
 by herself. Colors are the smiles of Nature. When 
 they are extremely smiling, and break forth into other
 
 COLOR. 37 
 
 beauty besides, they are her laughs ; as in the flowers. 
 The " laughing flowers," says the poet ; and it is the 
 business of the poet to feel truths beyond the proof 
 of the mechanician. Nature at all events, humanly 
 speaking, is manifestly very fond of color ; for she 
 has made nothing "jjithout it. Her skies are blue ; 
 her fields green ; her waters vary with her skies ; her 
 animals, minerals, vegetables, are all colored. She 
 paints a great many of them in apparently superfluous 
 hues, as if to show the dullest eye how she loves color. 
 The pride of the peacock, or some stately exhibition 
 of a qualit}^ very like pride, is a singular matter of 
 fa6t, evidently connected with it. Youthful beauty in 
 the human being is partly made up of it. One of 
 the three great arts with which Providence has 
 adorned and humanized the mind — Painting — is 
 founded upon the love and imitation of it. And the 
 magnificence of empire can find nothing more preci- 
 ous, either to possess or be proud of wearing, than — 
 
 " Fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, 
 Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds, 
 Beauteous rubies, sparkhng diamonds, 
 And seld-seen costly stones of so great price, 
 As one of them, indifferently rated, 
 May serve in peril of calamity 
 To ransom great kings from captivity." * 
 
 * We had just quoted these lines before ; but the reader will doubt- 
 less pardon the ropetition. 
 
 298368
 
 38 
 
 WINDOWS. 
 
 p^i^^-Pi'E have had a special regard for a window 
 
 '>T/Vc4i ^^'^^' ^""1^6 we sat in an old-fashioned one 
 i^§M^-'l\ with a low seat to it in our childhood, and 
 
 read a book. And, for a like reason, we never see a 
 doorway in a sequestered corner, with a similar ac- 
 commodation for the infiint student, without nestling 
 to it in imagination, and taking out of our pocket the 
 "Arabian Nights," or "Philip Qiiarll." The same 
 recolledlion makes us prefer that kind of window to all 
 others, and count our daily familiarity with it as by no 
 means among the disser^'ices rendered us by fortune. 
 The very fact of its existence shows a liberality in the 
 dimensions of old-fashioned walls. There is " cut and 
 come again" in them. Had modern houses been 
 made of cheeses, and La Fontaine's mouse found him- 
 self in one of them, he would have despised those 
 rinds of buildings, — thin and fragile as if a miser had 
 pared them away. 
 
 Those modern windows are all of a piece, inside 
 and out. They may make a show of having some 
 thickness of wall at the sides : but it is only a hollow 
 pretence for the convenience of the shutters ; and, even 
 when the opportunity of forming a recess is thus 
 offered them, it is not taken. It is seldom they con-
 
 WINDOWS. 39 
 
 tain a seat even in the parlor : and the drawing-room 
 windows in sucli liouses cannot comfortably have any, 
 because, for the benefit of one's feet in this cold cli- 
 mate, they are cut down to the floor ; a veranda being 
 probably overhead to intercept any superfluity of sun- 
 shine. " If a merry meeting is to be wished," says 
 the man in Shakspeare, " may God prohibit it ! " If 
 there is any sunshine to be had, stave it off", especially 
 if you have been grumbling for its absence all the rest 
 of the year. 
 
 " Would you have us sit then, and be baked, ]Mr. 
 Seer?" 
 
 Dear madam, you ask the question with so pleasant 
 a voice, and such a pretty good-natured exaggeration, 
 that you are evidently one of those who may do, or not 
 do, just what you please. We shall not find fault with 
 you, if you close every shutter in the room, let the sun 
 be never so smiling. Besides, we give up the hottest 
 days in July and August. But grant us, at any rate, 
 that to have vei'andas always, as we see them in some 
 houses, is hardly more reasonable than having win- 
 dows down to the floor at any thne ; and that the hor- 
 ror of a sunshine, by no means too abundant in this 
 region, has more to do with the fear of discolored 
 curtains and carpets than it ought to have, especially 
 among the rich. What signifies the flying of a few 
 colors, easily replaced, compared with the giving a 
 proper welcome to the great colorer himself, — the 
 sun, that makes all things beautiful ? There are few 
 sights in your town-house more cheerful than a sudden 
 burst of sun into the room, smiting the floor into so 
 many windows, and making the roses on the very
 
 40 THE SEER. 
 
 carpet look as if tliey felt it. Let them fade in good 
 season as the others do ; and make up for the expense, 
 dear fashionable people, by staying a little more at 
 home, keeping better hours, and saving the roses on 
 your cheeks. 
 
 Verandas have one good efle6l : they are an orna- 
 ment to the house outside, and serve to hide the 
 shabby cut of the windows. Still more is to be said 
 for them where they and the balcony include flowers. 
 Yet windows down to the floor we hold to be a nui- 
 sance always, — unnecessary, uncomfortable, absurd ; 
 to say nothing of perils of broken panes and scolded 
 children. They let draughts of air in across the floor, 
 where nobody wants them ; they admit superfluous 
 light, — from earthwai'ds instead of from heaven ; they 
 render a seat in the window impossible or disagi'eea- 
 ble ; they hinder the fire from sufficiently warming the 
 room in winter-time ; and they make windows partake 
 too much of out-of-doors, showing the inhabitants at 
 full-length as they walk about, and contradi6ling the 
 sense of snugness and seclusion. Lastly, when they 
 have no veil or other ornament outside, they look 
 gawky and out of proportion. But the outside cut of 
 windows in this country is almost universally an eye- 
 sore. We have denounced them before, and shall 
 denounce them again, in the hopes that house-builders 
 may be brought to show some proofs of being the 
 "architects" they cafl themselves, and dare to go 
 to an expense of nine and sixpence for a little wood 
 or plaster to make a border with. Look at the 
 windows down the streets, at the west end of the 
 town, and they are almost all mere cuts in the wall,
 
 WINDOWS. 
 
 41 
 
 just such as they make for barracks and work- 
 houses. The windows of an Irish cabin are as good, 
 as far as architecture is concerned. The port-holes 
 of- a man-of-war have as much merit. There is no 
 pediment nor border ; seldom even one visible vari- 
 ety of any sort ; not a colored brick. And it is the 
 same with the streets that contain shops, except, in 
 some instances, those of the latest constru(5lion ; which, 
 if not in the best taste otherwise, are built with a 
 little more generosity, and that is a good step towards 
 taste. When we meet with windows of a better sort, 
 the effect is like quitting the sight of a stupid miser for 
 that of a liberal genius. Such are the windows in 
 some of the nobler squares ; and you may see them 
 occasionally over shops in the Strand and Piccadilly. 
 Obsei-ve for instance the windows of Messrs. Greensill 
 and Co., the lamp-oil manufacturers in the Strand, 
 compared with those of the neighbors ; and see what 
 a superiority is given to them by the mere fact of their 
 having borders, and something like architedlural de- 
 sign. We will venture to say, it is serviceable even in 
 a business point of view : for such houses look wealth- 
 ier ; and it is notorious, that the i^eputation of money 
 brings money. Where there is no elegance of this 
 kind (and of course also where there is), a box of 
 flowers along the v^'indows gives a liberal look to a 
 house, still more creditable to the occupants, from the 
 certainty we have of its being their own work. See, 
 in Piccadilly, the houses of Messrs. Rickards, the spirit- 
 merchants, near Regent Street ; and Messrs. Meyer and 
 Co., the wax-chandlers, near the Park end. We never 
 pass the latter without being grateful for the beautiful 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 42 THE SEER. 
 
 show of nasturtiums, — a plant which it is an elegance 
 itself to have so much regard for. There is also some- 
 thing very agreeable iii the good-natured kind of inter- 
 course thus kept up between the inmates of a house 
 and those who pass it. The former appeal to one's 
 good opinion in the best manner by complimenting 
 us with a share of their elegances ; and the latter are 
 happy to acknowledge the appeal, for their own sakes 
 as well as that of the flowers. Imagine (what perhaps 
 will one day be the case) whole streets adorned in this 
 manner, right and left ; and multitudes proceeding on 
 their tasks through avenues of lilies and geraniums. 
 Why should they not ? Nature has given us the 
 means, and they are innocent, animating, and contri- 
 bute to our piety towards her. We do not half enough 
 avail ourselves of the cheap riches wherewith she 
 adorns the earth. We also get the most trivial mis- 
 takes in our head, and think them refinements, and are 
 afraid of being " vulgar" ! A few seeds, for instance, 
 and a little trouble, would clothe our houses every 
 summer, as high as we chose, with draperies of green 
 and scarlet ; and, after admiring the beauty, we might 
 eat the produce. But then this produce is a bean ; and, 
 because beans are found at poor tables, we despise 
 them ! Nobody despises a vine in front of a house ; 
 for vines are polite, and the grapes seldom good 
 enough to be of any use. Well : use, we grant, is 
 not the only thing ; but surely we have no right to 
 think ourselves unbigoted to it, when it teaches us 
 to despise beauty. In Italy, where the drink is not 
 common, people have a great respec5l for bccr^ and 
 would perhaps rather see a drapery of hops at the
 
 WINDOWS. 43 
 
 front of a house than vine-leaves. Hops are like 
 vines ; yet who thinks of adorning his house with 
 them in England? No: they remind us of the ale- 
 house instead of Nature and her beauties ; and there- 
 fore they are " vulgar." But is it not we who are 
 vulgar in thinking of the ale-house, when Nature 
 and her beauties are the greater idea? 
 
 It is objedted to vegetation against walls and win- 
 dows, that it liarbors insects ; and good housewives 
 declare they shall be " overrun." If this be the fa6t, 
 care should be taken against the consequences ; and, 
 should the care prove unavailing, every thing must be 
 sacrificed to cleanliness. But is the charge well 
 founded? and, if well founded in respect to some sorts 
 of vegetation, is it equally so with all? we mean, with 
 regard to the inability to keep out the inseds. There 
 is a prejudice against ivy on houses, on the score of its 
 harboring wet, and making the houses damp ; yet this 
 opinion has been discovered to be so groundless, that 
 the very contrary is the fad. Ivy is found to be a 
 remedy for damp walls. It wards off the rain, and 
 secures to them a remarkable state of dryness ; as any 
 one may see for himself by turning a bush of it aside, 
 and observing the singular drought and dustiness pre- 
 vailinsr between the brick or mortar and the back of 
 the leaves. 
 
 Plate-class has a beautiful look in windows ; but 
 it is too costly to become general. We remember, 
 when the late Mrs. Orby Hunter lived in Grosvenor 
 Place, it was quite a treat to pass by her parlor win- 
 dow, which was an arch, full of large panes of plate- 
 glass, with a box of brilliant flowers underneath it,
 
 ^ THE SEER. 
 
 and jessamine and other creepers making a bower of 
 the walL Perhaps the house has the same aspe6t still ; 
 but we thought the female name on the door was par- 
 ticularly suited to it, and had a just ostentation. 
 
 Painted g-lass is still finer : but we have never seen 
 it used in the front-windows of a house, except in nar- 
 row strips or over doorways ; which is a pity, for its 
 loveliness is extreme. A good portion of the upper 
 part of a window or windows might be allotted to it, 
 with great effect, in houses where there is light to 
 spare ; and it might be turned to elegant and otherwise 
 useful account by means of devices, and even regular 
 pictures. A beautiful art, little known, might thus be 
 restored. But we must have a separate article on 
 painted windows, which are a kind of passion of ours. 
 They make us loath to speak of them, without stop- 
 ping, and receiving on our admiring eyes the beauty 
 of their blessing. For such is the feeling they always 
 give us. They seem, beyond any other inanimate 
 objedt, except the finest pictures by the great masters 
 (which can hardly be called such), to unite something 
 celestial with the most gorgeous charm of the senses. 
 There are more reasons tlian one for this feeling ; but 
 we must not be tempted to enter upon them here. 
 The window must have us to itself, as in the rich quiet 
 of a cathedral aisle. 
 
 We will conclude this outside consideration of win- 
 dows (for we must have another and longer one for 
 the inside) by dropping from a very heavenly to a very 
 earthly pi6lure, though it be one still suspended in the 
 air. It is that of the gallant footman, in one of Steele's 
 comedies, making love to the maid-sen'ant, while they
 
 WINDOWS. 45 
 
 are both occupied in cleaning the windows of their 
 master's house. He does not make love as his honest- 
 hearted brother Dodsley would have done (who from 
 a footman became a man of letters) ; still less in the 
 style of his illustrious broth'er Rousseau (for he, too, 
 was once a footman) ; though there is one passage in 
 the incident, which the ultra-sensitive lackey of the 
 " Confessions " (who afterwards shook the earth with 
 the very strength of his weakness) would have turned 
 to fine sentimental account. The language also is a 
 little too good even for a fine gentleman's gentleman : 
 but the "exquisite" airs the fellow gives himself are 
 ■not so much beyond the reach of brisk footman-imita- 
 tion as not to have an essence of truth in them, pleas- 
 antly showing the natural likeness between fops of all 
 conditions ; and they are as happily responded to by 
 those of the lady. The combination of the unsophis- 
 ticate picture at the close of the extradl, with the lan- 
 guishing comment made upon it, is extremely ludi- 
 crous. 
 
 Enter Tosr, meeting Phillis. 
 
 Tom. Well, Phillis ! What ! with a face as if you 
 had never seen me before ? What a work have I to 
 do now ! She has seen some new visitant at their 
 house whose airs she has catched, and is resolved to 
 practise them upon me. Numberless are the changes 
 she'll dance through before she'll answer this plain 
 question ; videlictt^ Have you delivered my master's 
 letter to your lady ? Nay, I know her too well to ask 
 an account of it in an ordinary way : I'll be in my airs 
 as well as she {aside). Well, madam, as unhappy as 
 you are at present pleased to make me, I would not
 
 46 THE SEER. 
 
 in the genet'al be any other than what I am : I would 
 not be a bit wiser, a bit richer, a bit taller, a bit short- 
 er, than I am at this instant {looking steadfastly at 
 her). 
 
 Phil. Did ever anybody doubt, Master Thomas, 
 that you were extremely satisfied with your sweet 
 self? 
 
 Tom. I am indeed. The thing I have least reason 
 to be satisfied with is my fortune ; and I am glad of my 
 poverty. Perhaps, if I were rich, I should overlook 
 the finest woman in the world, that wants nothing but 
 riches to be thought so. 
 
 Phil. How prettily was that said ! But I'll have 
 a great deal more before I say one word {aside). 
 
 Tom. I should perhaps have been stupidly above 
 her, had I not been her equal ; and, by not being her 
 equal, never had an opportunity of being her slave. 
 I am my master's sei'vant from hire : I am my mis- 
 tress's sei"vant from choice, would she but approve my 
 passion. 
 
 Phil. I think it is the first time I ever heard you 
 speak of it with any sense of anguish, if you really 
 suffer any. 
 
 To7n. Ah, Phillis ! can you doubt after what you 
 have seen? 
 
 Phil. I know not what I have seen, nor what I 
 have heard ; but, since I am at leisure, you may tell 
 me when you fell in love with me, how you fell in 
 love with me, and what you have suffered, or are 
 ready to suffer, for me. 
 
 Tom. Oh ! the unmerciful jade ! when I am in 
 haste about my master's letter ! But I must go
 
 wirjDOAvs. 47 
 
 through it (aside). Ah ! too well I remember when, 
 and on what occasion, and how, I was first surprised. 
 It was on the First of April, one thousand seven hun- 
 dred and fifteen, I came into Mr. Sealand's service : I 
 was then a little hobble-de-hoy, and you a little tight 
 girl, a favorite handmaid of the housekeeper. At that 
 time, Ave neither one of us knew what was in us. I 
 remember I was ordered to get out of the window, one 
 pair of stairs, to rub the sashes clean : the person 
 employed on the inner side was your charming self, 
 whom I had never seen before. 
 
 J^/ii'l. I think I remember the silly accident. What 
 made you, you oaf, ready to fall down into the street? 
 
 Tom. You know not, I warrant you : you could 
 not gi.iess what surprised me. You took no delight 
 when you immediately grew wanton in your conquest, 
 and put your lips close, and breathed upon the glass ; 
 and, when my lips approached, a dirty cloth you 
 rubbed against my face, and hid your beauteous form : 
 when I again drew near, you spit and rubbed, afid 
 smiled at my undo big.
 
 48 
 
 WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM INSIDE. 
 
 HE other day, a butterfly came into our room, 
 and began beating himself against the upper 
 panes of a window half open, thinking to get 
 back. It is a nice point, relieving your butterfly ; 
 he is a creature so delicate ! If you handle him with- 
 out ceremony, you bring away on your fingers some- 
 thing which you take to be down, but which is plumes 
 of feathers ; and as there are no fairies at hand, two 
 atoms high, to make pens of the quills, and write 
 "articles" on the invisible, there would be a loss. 
 Mr. Bentham's ghost would visit us, shaking his vene- 
 rable locks at such unnecessary-pain-producing and 
 reasonable-pleasure-preventing heedlessness. Then, if 
 you brush him downwards, you stand a chance of 
 hurting his antennse, or feelers, and of not knowing 
 what mischief you may do to his eyes, or his sense of 
 touch, or his instruments of dialogue ; for some phi- 
 losophers hold that inse6ts talk with their feelers, as 
 dumb people do with their fingers. However, some 
 suffering must be hazarded in order to prevent worse, 
 even to the least and most delicate of Heaven's crea- 
 tures, who would not know pleasure if they did not 
 know pain ; and perhaps, the merrier and happier they
 
 WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM INSIDE. 49 
 
 are in general, the greater the lumps of pain they can 
 bear. Besides, all must have their share, or how 
 would the burden of the great blockish necessity be 
 equally distributed? and, finally, what business had 
 little Papilio to come into a place unfit for him, and 
 get bothering himself with glass? Oh, faith! — your 
 butterfly must learn experience, as well as your Bona- 
 parte. 
 
 There was he, beating, fluttering, flouncing, — won- 
 dering that he could not get through so clear a matter 
 (for so glass appears to be to inserts, as well as to 
 men), and tearing his silken little soul out with inef- 
 fedlual energy. What plumage he must have left 
 upon the pane ! what feathers and colors, strewed 
 about, as if some fine lady had gone mad against a 
 ball-room door for not being let in ! 
 
 But we had a higher simile for him than that, 
 " Truly," thought we, "little friend, thou art like some 
 of the great German transcendentalists, who, in think- 
 ing to reach at heaven by an impossible way (such at 
 least it seemeth at present), run the hazard of cracking 
 their brains, and spoiling their wings for ever ; where- 
 as, if thou and they would but stoop a little lower, and 
 begin with earth first, there, before thee, lieth open 
 heaven as well as earth ; and thou mayest mount high 
 as thou wilt, after thy own happy fashion, thinking 
 less, and enjoying all things." 
 
 And hereupon we contrived to get him downwards ; 
 and forth, out into the air, sprang he, — first against 
 the lime-trees, and then over them into the blue ether, 
 — as if he had resolved to put our advice into prac- 
 tice. 
 
 5
 
 50 THE SEER. 
 
 We have before spoken of the fret and fury into 
 which the common fly seems to put himself against a 
 window. Bees appear to take it more patiently, out 
 of a greater knowledge ; and slip about with a strange 
 air of hopelessness. They seem to " give it up." 
 These things, as Mr. Pepys said of the humanities at 
 court, " it is pretty to obsei-ve." Glass itself is a phe- 
 nomenon that might alone sen'e a reflecting observ^er 
 with meditation for a whole morning, — so substantial, 
 and yet so air-like ; so close and compadt to keep away 
 the cold, yet so transparent and facile to let in light, 
 the gentlest of all things ; so palpably somethings and 
 }'et to the eye and the perceptions a kind of nothing I 
 It seems absolutely to deceive insects in this respect ; 
 which is remarkable, considering how closely they 
 handle it, and what microscopic eyes we suppose them 
 to have. We should doubt (as we used to do) whether 
 we did not mistake their ideas on the subje(5l, if we 
 had not so often seen their repeated dashings of them- 
 selves against the panes, their stoppings (as if to take 
 breath), and then their recommencement of the same 
 violence. It is difficult to suppose that they do this for 
 mere pleasure ; for it looks as if they must hurt them- 
 selves. Observe in particular the tremendous thumps 
 given himself by that great hulking fellow of a fly, that 
 Ajax of the Diptera, the blue-bottle. Yet in autumn, in 
 their old age, flies congregate in windows as elsewhere, 
 and will take the matter so quietly as sometimes to 
 stand still for hours together. We suppose they love 
 the warmth, or the light ; and that either they have 
 found out the secret as to the rest, or — 
 
 "Years liave brought the philosophic mind."
 
 WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM INSIDE. 5I 
 
 Why should Fly plague himself any longer with 
 household matters which he cannot alter? He has 
 tried hard in his time ; and now he resigns himself 
 like a wise insect, and will taste whatsoever tranquil 
 pleasures remain for him, without beating his brains 
 or losing his temper any longer. In natural livers, 
 pleasure sui-\'ives pain. Even the artificial, who keep 
 up their troubles so long by pride, self-will, and the 
 want of stimulants, contrive to get more pleasure than 
 is supposed out of pain itself, especially by means of 
 thinking themselves ill used and of gi-umbling. If the 
 heart (for want of better training) does not much keep 
 up its a6tion with them, the spleen does ; and so there 
 is adlion of some sort : and, whenever there is action, 
 there is life ; and life is found to have something valu- 
 able in it for its own sake, apart from ordinary conside- 
 rations either of pain or pleasure. But your fly and 
 your philosopher are for pleasure too, to the last, if it 
 be harmless. Give old JVIusca a grain of sugar, and 
 see how he will put down his proboscis to it, and dot 
 and pound, and suck it in, and be as happy as an old 
 West-India gentleman pondering on his sugar-cane, 
 and extra6ling a pleasure out of some dulcet recollec- 
 tion ! 
 
 Gamblers, for want of a sensation, have been known 
 to start up from their wine, and lay a bet upon two 
 raindrops coming down a pane of glass. How poor 
 are those gentry, even when they win, compared with 
 obsei-vers whose resources need never fail them ! To 
 the latter, if they please, the raindrop itself is a world, 
 — a world of beauty and mystery and aboriginal idea, 
 bringing before them a thousand images of proportion
 
 52 THE SEER. 
 
 and refledlion, and the elements, and light and color, 
 and roundness and delicacy and fluency, and benefi- 
 cence, and the refreshed flowers, and the growing 
 corn, and dewdrops on the bushes, and the tears 
 that fall from gentle eyes, and the ocean, and the 
 rainbow, and the origin of all things. In water, we 
 behold one of the old primeval mysteries of which 
 the world was made. Thus the commonest raindrop 
 on a pane of glass becomes a visitor from the solitudes 
 of time. 
 
 A window, to those who have read a little in Na- 
 ture's school, tlius becomes a book or a pi(5lure, on 
 which her genius may be studied, handicraft though 
 the canvas be, and little as the glazier may have 
 thought of it. Not that we are to predicate ignorance 
 of your glazier now-a-days, any more than of other 
 classes that compose the various readers of penny and 
 three-half-penny philosophy, — cheap visitor, like the 
 sunbeams, of houses of all sorts. The glazier could 
 probably give many a incher man information respect- 
 ing his glass, and his diamond, and his putty (no anti- 
 climax in these analytical days), and let him into a 
 secret or two, besides, respecting the amusement to be 
 derived from it. (We have just got up from our 
 work to inform ourselves of the nature and properties 
 of the said mystery, putty ; and should blush for the 
 confession, if the blush would not imply that a similar 
 ignorance were less common with us than it is.) 
 
 But a window is a frame for other pidtures besides 
 its own ; sometimes for moving ones, as in the instance 
 of a cloud going along, or a bird, or a flash of light- 
 ning ; sometimes for the distant landscape, sometimes
 
 WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM INSIDE. tJ3 
 
 the nearer one, or the trees that are close to it with 
 their lights and shades ; often for the i:)assing multi- 
 tude. A picture, a harmony, is obsen'able, even in 
 the drapery of the curtains that invest it ; much more 
 in the sunny vine-leaves or roses that may be visible 
 on the borders, or that are trailed against it, and which 
 render many a poor casement so pleasant. The other 
 day, in a -ver}- humble cottage-window in the suburbs, 
 we saw that beautiful plant, the nasturtium, trained 
 over it on several strings ; which must have furnished 
 the inmates with a screen as they sate at their work 
 or at their tea inside, and at the same time permitted 
 them to see through into the road ; thus constitutinor a 
 far better blind than is to be found in many great 
 houses. Sights like these give a favorable impression 
 of the dispositions and habits of the people within, — 
 show how superior they are to their sophistications, if 
 rich ; and how^ possessed of natural refinement, if among 
 the poorer classes. Oh ! the human mind is a fine 
 gi-aceful thing everywhere, if the music of Nature does 
 but seize its attention, and throw it into its natural 
 attitude. But so little has the "schoolmaster" yet 
 got hold of this point, or made way witli it, and so 
 occupied are men with digging gold out of the ground, 
 and negle6ling the other treasures which they toss 
 about in profusion during the operation (as if the clay 
 were better than the flowers which it produced), that 
 few make the most of the means and appliances for 
 enjoyment that lie round about them, even in tlicir 
 very walls and rooms. Look at the windows down a 
 street, and, generally speaking, they are all barren. 
 The inmates might see through roses and geraniums.
 
 54 THE SEER. 
 
 if they would ; but they do not think of it, or not with 
 lovinsr knowledsre enousfli to take the trouble. Those 
 who have the advantage of living in the country or the 
 suburbs are led in many instances to do better, though 
 their necessity for agreeable sights is not so great. 
 But the presence of Nature tempts them to imitate her. 
 There are few windows anywhere which might not be 
 used to better advantage than they are, if we have a 
 little money, or can procure even a few seeds. We 
 have read an art of blowing the fire. There is an art 
 even in the shutting and opening of windows. People 
 might close them more against dull objects, and open 
 them more to pleasant ones and to the air. For a 
 few pence they might have beautiful colors and odors, 
 and a pleasing task, emulous of the showers of April, 
 beneficent as May : for they who cultivate flowers in 
 their windows (as we have hinted before) are led in- 
 stin6tively to cultivate them for others as well as them- 
 selves ; nay, in one respeft, they do it more so ; for 
 you may observe, that, wherever there is this " fenestral 
 horticulture " (as Evelyn would have called your win- 
 dow-gardening), the flowers are turned with their 
 faces towards the street. 
 
 But " there is an art in the shutting and opening of 
 windows." Yes, for the sake of air (which ought to 
 be had night as well as day, in reasonable measure, 
 and with precautions), and for the sake of excluding 
 or admitting what is to be seen out of doors. Suppose, 
 for example, a house is partly opposite some pleasant, 
 and partlv some unpleasant, object : the one, a tree or 
 garden ; the other, a gin-shop or a squalid lane. The 
 sight of the first should be admitted as constantly as
 
 "WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROM INSIDK. 55 
 
 possible, and with open window. That of tlic other, 
 if you are rich enough, can be shut out with a painted 
 bHnd, that shall substitute a beautiful landscape for the 
 nuisance ; or a blind of another sort will serve the pur- 
 pose ; or, if even a blind cannot be aftbrded, the shutters 
 may be partly closed. Shutters should always be di- 
 vided in two, horizontally as well as otherwise, for 
 purposes of this kind. It is sometimes pleasant to 
 close the lower portion, if only to presence a greater 
 sense of quiet and seclusion, and to read or write the 
 more to yourself; light from above having both a 
 softer and stronger eftecl than when admitted from all 
 quarters. We have seen shutters, by judicious man- 
 agement in this way, in the house of a poor man who 
 had a taste for nature, contribute to the comfort and 
 even elegance of a room in a surprising manner, and 
 (by the opening of the lower portions and the closure 
 of the upper) at once shut out all the sun that was not 
 v/antcd, and convert a row of stunted trees into an 
 appearance of interminable foliage, as thick as if it had 
 been in a forest. 
 
 " But the fad v^'as othei"wise," cries some fastidious 
 personage, more nice than wise : "• you knew there 
 %vas no forest^ and therefore could not have been de- 
 ceived." 
 
 "Well, mv dear sir, but deception is not necessary 
 to every one's pleasure ; and fad is not merely what 
 you take it for. The fa6l of there being no forest 
 might have been the onlv f;ict ^vith yourself, and so 
 have prevented the enjoyment : but, to a livelier fancy, 
 there would have been the fadt of the imagination of 
 the forest (for evcrv thing is a fa6l which docs any thing
 
 56 THE SEER. 
 
 for us) ; * and there would also have been the fadl of 
 having cultivated the imagination, and the fadl of our 
 willingness to be pleased, and the fa6t of the books we 
 have read, and, above all, the fa6t of the positive satis- 
 faftion. If a man be pleased, it is in vain you tell him 
 he has no cause to be pleased. The cause is proved 
 by the consequence. Whether the cause be rightly or 
 wrongly cultivated, is another matter. The good of it 
 is assumed in the present instance ; and it would take 
 more fa(5ls than are in the possession of a " mere mat- 
 ter-of-fa6t man" to disprove it. Matter of fa6l, and 
 spirit of fa6t, must both be appreciated, in order to do 
 justice to the riches of Nature. We are made of mind 
 as well as body,. — of imagination as well as senses. 
 The sam.e mysterious faculty v>^hich sees what is before 
 the eyes, sees also what is suggested to the memory. 
 Matter of fadt is only the more palpable world, around 
 which a thousand spirits of fa6t are playing, like angels 
 in a pidlure. Not to see both is to be a poor unat- 
 tended creatiu'e, who walks about in the world, con- 
 scious of nothing but himself, or at best of what the 
 horse-jockey and the coach-maker has done for him. 
 If his banker fails, he is ruined ! Not so those, who, in 
 
 * Facio, factum (Latin), — " to do," " done." "What is done in imagi- 
 nation makes a greater or less impression according to the power to 
 receive it: but it is unquestionably done, if it impresses us at all: and 
 thus becomes, after its kind, a fact. A stupid fellow, utterly without 
 imagination, requires tickling to make him laugh: a livelier one laughs 
 at a comedy, or at the bare apprehension of a thing laughable. In both 
 instances, there is a real impression, though from very dilfcrent causes,— 
 one from " matter of fact" (if you please), the other from spirit of fact* 
 but in either case the thing is done, the fact takes place. The moving 
 cause exists somehow, or how could we be moved ?
 
 WINDOWS, CONSIDERED FROHI INSIDE. ^7 
 
 addition to the resources of their industry, have stock 
 in all the banks of Nature and Art (pardon us this pun 
 for the sake of what grows on it), and whose consola- 
 tions cannot wholly fail them, as long as they have a 
 flower to look upon, and a blood not entirely vitiated. 
 
 A window high up in a building, and commanding 
 a fine prospe(5l, is a sort of looking-out of the air, and 
 gives a sense of power, and of superiority to earth. 
 The higher also you go, the healthier. We speak of 
 such windows as Milton fancied, when he wished that 
 his lamp should be seen at midnight in " some high 
 lonely tower ; " a passage justly admired for the good- 
 nature as well as loftiness of the wish ; thus desiring- 
 that wayfarers should be the better for his studies, and 
 enjoy the evidence of their fellow-creature's vigils. But 
 elevations of this kind are not readily to be had. As 
 to health, we believe that a very little lift above the 
 ground-floor, and so on as you ascend, grows healthier 
 in proportion. Malaria (bad air), in the countries 
 where a plague of that kind is prevalent, is understood 
 to be confined to a certain distance from the earth ; 
 and we really believe, that even in the healthiest quar- 
 ters, where no positive harm is done by nearness to it, 
 the air is better as the houses ascend, and a seat in a 
 window becomes valuable in proportion. By and by, 
 perhaps, studies and other favorite sitting-rooms will 
 be built accordingl}', and more retrospective reverence 
 be shown to the "garrets" that used to be so famous 
 in the annals of authorship. The poor poet in Pope, 
 who lay — 
 
 " High in Drury lano, 
 Liillcd by poft zephyrs through the broken pine," —
 
 58 THE SEER. 
 
 was better off there than if he had occupied the 
 ground-floor. For our parts, in order that we may 
 save the dignity of our three-halfpenny meditations, 
 and at the same time give evidence of practising what 
 we preach, we shall finish by stating, that we have 
 written this article in a floor neither high enough to be 
 so poetical, nor low enough for too earthly a prose, — 
 in a little study made healthy by an open window, and 
 partly screened from over-lookers by a bit of the shut- 
 ter ; while our lookout presents us with a world of 
 green leaves, and a red cottage-top, a Gothic tower 
 of a church in the distance, and a glorious apple-tree 
 close at hand, laden with its yellow balls, — 
 
 " Studded with apples, a beautiful show." 
 
 Some kindness of this sort. Fortune has never failed to 
 presei'v^e to us, as if in return for the love we bear to 
 her rolling globe ; and, now that the sincerity of our 
 good-will has become known, none seem inclined to 
 grudge it us, or to dispute the account to which we 
 may tumi it, for others as well as ourselves. 
 
 We had something more to say of seats in windows, 
 and a good deal of windows at inns, and of sitting and 
 looking out of windows ; but we have other articles to 
 write this week, of more length than usual, and must 
 reserve it for a future number.
 
 A FLOWER FOR YOUR WINDOW. 
 
 Na77ies of Flowers. — Mystery of their Beauty. 
 
 jN the window beside which we are writing 
 this article, there is a geranium shining with 
 
 its scarlet tops in the sun, the red of it being 
 
 the more red for a background of lime-trees which are 
 at the same time breathing and panting like airy pleni- 
 tudes of joy, and developing their shifting depths of 
 light and shade of russet brown and sunny inward 
 gold. 
 
 It seems to say, " Paint me ! " So here it is. 
 
 Every now and then, some anxious fly comes near 
 it. We hear the sound of a bee, though we see none ; 
 and, upon looking closer at the flowers, we observe 
 that some of the petals are transparent with the light, 
 while others are left in shade ; the leaves are equally 
 adorned, after their opaquer fashion, with those efledls 
 of the sky, showing their dark-brown rims ; and on 
 one of them a red petal has fallen, where it lies on the 
 brighter half of the shallow green cup, making its own 
 red redder, and the green greener. We perceive, in 
 imagination, the scent of those good-natured leaves, 
 which allow you to carry oft' their perfume on your 
 fingers ; for good-natured they are, in that resped,
 
 6o THE SEER. 
 
 above almost all plants, and fittest for the hospitalities 
 of your rooms. The very feel of the leaf has a house- 
 hold warmth in it something analogous to clothing 
 and comfort. 
 
 Why does not everybody (who can afford it) have 
 a geranium in liis window, or some other flower? 
 It is very cheap ; its cheapness is next to nothing, 
 if you raise it from seed or from a slip ; and it is 
 a beaut}' and a companion. It sweetens the air, 
 rejoices the eye, links you with nature and inno- 
 cence, and is something to love. And, if it cannot 
 love you in return, it cannot hate you ; it cannot 
 utter a hateful thing, even for your neglecSling it ; for, 
 though it is all beaut}', it has no vanity : and such 
 being the case, and living as it does purely to do you 
 good and afford you pleasure, how will you be able to 
 neglecSt it? 
 
 But pray, if you choose a geranium, or possess but a 
 fev/ of them, let us persuade you to choose the scarlet 
 kind, the "old original" geranium, and not a variety 
 of it, — not one of the numerous diversities of red and 
 white, blue and white, ivy-leaved, &c. Those are all 
 beautiful, and very fit to vary a large colle6tion ; but 
 to prefer them to the originals of the race is to run the 
 hazard of preferring the curious to the beautiful, and 
 costliness to sound taste. It may be taken as a good 
 general rule, that the most popular plants are the best ; 
 for otherwise they would not have become such. And 
 what the painters call "pure colors" are preferable to 
 mixed ones, for reasons which Nature herself has 
 given when she painted the sky of one color, and the 
 fields of another, and divided the rainbow itself into a
 
 A FI.OWER FOR YOUR WINDOW. 6l 
 
 few clistin6l hues, and made die red rose the queen of 
 flowers. Variations of flowers are like variations in 
 music, often beautiful as such, but almost always in- 
 ferior to the theme on wdiich they are founded, — the 
 original air. And the rule holds good in beds of 
 flowers, if they be not very large, or in any other small 
 assemblage of them. Nay, the largest bed will look 
 well, if of one beautiful color ; while the most beauti- 
 ful varieties may be inharmoniously mixed up. Con- 
 trast is a good thing : but we should first get a good 
 sense of the thing to be contrasted ; and we shall find 
 this preferable to the contrast, if we are not rich enough 
 to have both in due measure. We do not, in general, 
 love and honor any one single color enough ; and we 
 are instindlively struck with a conviction to this efte6l 
 when we see it abundantly set forth. The other day, 
 we saw a little garden-wall completely covered with 
 nasturtiums, and felt how much more beautiful it was 
 than if any thing had been mixed with it. For the 
 leaves, and the light and shade, ofler variety enough : 
 the rest is all richness and simplicity united, which 
 is the triumph of an intense perception. Embower a 
 cottage thickly and completely with nothing but roses, 
 and nobody would desire the interference of another 
 plant. 
 
 Every thing is handsome about the geranium, not 
 excepting its name ; which cannot be said of all flow- 
 ers, though we get to love ugly words when associated 
 with pleasing ideas. The word " geranium " is soft 
 and elegant : the meaning is poor ; for it comes from a 
 Greek word signifying a crane, the fruit having a form 
 resembling that of a crane's head or bill. Crane's bill
 
 63 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 is the English name of geranium ; though the learned 
 appellation has superseded the vernacular. But what 
 a reason for naming the Jlozver ! as if the fruit were 
 any thing in comj^arison, or any one cared about it. 
 Such distinctions, it is true, are useful to botanists ; 
 but, as plenty of learned names are sure to be reserved 
 for the free-masonry of the science, it would be better 
 for the world at large to invent joyous and beautiful 
 names for these images of jo}- and beauty. In some 
 instances, we have them ; such as heart's-ease, honey- 
 suckle, marigold, mignonette (little darling), daisy 
 (day's-eye), &c. And many flowers are so lovely, and 
 have associated names otherwise unmeaning so joleas- 
 antly with one's memory, that no new ones would 
 sound so well, or seem even to have such proper sig- 
 nifications. In pronouncing the words lilies, roses, 
 pinks, tulips, jonquils, we see the things themselves, 
 and seem to taste all their beautv and sweetness. 
 "Pink" is a harsh petty word in itself; and yet as- 
 suredly it does not seem so ; for in the word we have 
 the flower. It would be difficult to persuade ourselves 
 that the word " rose " is not very beautiful. " Pea." is a 
 poor Chinese-like monosyllable ; and " brier" is rough 
 and fierce, as it ought to be : but, when we think of 
 " sweet-pea" and " sweet-brier," the words appear quite 
 worthy of their epithets. The poor monosyllable be- 
 comes rich in sweetness and appropriation ; the rough 
 dissyllable also ; and the sweeter for its contrast. But 
 what can be said in behalf of liverwort, bloodwort, 
 dragon' s-head, devil's-bit, and devil-in-a-bush ? There 
 was a charming line in some verses in last week's 
 "• London Journal," written by a lady : —
 
 A FLOWER FOR YOUR WINDOW. 63 
 
 " I've marred your blisses, 
 
 Those sweete Idsses 
 That the young breeze so loved yesterdaye ! 
 
 I've seen ye sighing, 
 
 Now ye're dying : 
 How could I take your prettie lives away ? " 
 
 But you could not say this to dragon' s-head and devil's- 
 bit : — 
 
 " dragon's-head, devil's-bit, bloodwort ! say, 
 How could I take your pretty lives away 1 " 
 
 This would be like Dryden's version of the pig-squeak- 
 ing in Chaucer : — 
 
 " Poor swine ! as if their pretty hearts would break." 
 
 The names of flowers in general among the polite are 
 neither pretty in themselves, nor give us information. 
 The country people are apt to do them more justice. 
 Goldy-locks, ladies'-fingers, bright-eye, rose-a-rubie, 
 shepherd's-clock, shepherd's-purse, sauce-alone, scarlet- 
 runners, sops-in-wine, sweet-william, &c., give us some 
 ideas either useful or pleasant. But from the peasantry 
 also come many uncongenial names, as bad as those of 
 the botanists. Some of the latter are handsome as well 
 as learned, have meanings easily found out by a little 
 reading or scholarship, and are taking their place ac- 
 cordingly in popular nomenclatures ; as amaranth, 
 adonis, arbutus, asphodel, &c. : but many others are as 
 ugly as they are far-fetched ; such as colchicum, tagetcs, 
 yucca, ixia, mesembryanthemum ; and as to the Adan- 
 sonias, Browallias, Koempferias, John Tomkinsias, or 
 whatever the personal names may be that are bestowed
 
 64 THE SEER. 
 
 at the botanical font by their proud discoverers or god- 
 fathers, we have a respeft for botanists and their pur- 
 suits, and wish them all sorts of "little immortalities" 
 except these ; unless they could unite them with some- 
 thing illustrative of the flower as well as themselves. 
 A few, certainly, we should not like to displace ; Brow- 
 allia for one, which was given to a Peruvian flower 
 by Linnaeus, in honor of a friend of his of the name of 
 Browall : but the name should have included some 
 idea of the thing named. The Browallia is remarkable 
 for its brilliancy. " We cannot," says Mr. Cui'tis, " do 
 it justice by any colors we have." * Now, why not 
 have called it Browall's Beauty? or Browall's Inimi- 
 table ? The other day we were ad?7iiring an enormous- 
 ly beautiful apple, and were told it was called " Kirk's 
 Admirable" after the gardener who raised it. We felt 
 the propriety of this name directly. It was altogether 
 to the purpose. There was use and beauty together, — 
 the name of the raiser, and the excellence of the fruit 
 raised. It is a pity that all fruits and flowers, and 
 animals too, except those with good names, could not 
 be passed in review before somebody with a genius for 
 christening, as the creatures did before Adam in Para- 
 dise, and so have new names given them worthy of 
 their creation. 
 
 Suppose flowers themselves were new. Suppose 
 they had just come into the world, a sweet reward for 
 some new goodness ; and that we had not yet seen 
 them quite developed ; that they were in the a<5t of 
 growing ; had just issued with their green stalks out 
 
 * We learn this from the " Flora Domestica," an elegant and poetry- 
 loving book, pgecially intended for cultivators of flowers at home.
 
 A FLOWER FOR YOUR WINDOW. 65 
 
 of the ground, and engaged the attention of the curious. 
 Imagine what we should feel when we saw the first 
 lateral stem bearing off from the main one, or putting 
 forth a leaf. How we should watch the leaf gradually 
 unfolding its little graceful hand ; then another, then 
 another ; then the main stalk rising, and producing 
 more ; then one of them giving indications of an aston- 
 ishing novelty, a bud ! then this mysterious, lovely bud 
 gradually unfolding like the leaf, amazing us, enchant- 
 ing us, almost alarming us with delight, as if we knew 
 not what enchantment were to ensue ; till at length, in 
 ail its fairy beauty, and odorous voluptuousness, and 
 mysterious elaboration of tender and living scuIjDture, 
 shone forth — 
 
 " The bright consummate flower ! " 
 
 Yet this phenomenon, to a mind of any thought and 
 lovingness, is what may be said to take place every 
 day ; for the cominonest objects are only wonders at 
 which habit has made us cease to wonder, and the 
 mai-\'ellousness of which we may renew at pleasure 
 by taking thought. Last spring, walking near some 
 cultivated grounds, and seeing a multitude of green 
 stalks peeping forth, we amused ourselves with liken- 
 ing them to the plumes or other head-gear of fairies, 
 and wondering what faces might ensue : and, from this 
 exercise of the fancy, we fell to considering how true, 
 and not merely fanciful, those speculations were ; what 
 a perpetual reprodudlion of the marvellous was carried 
 on by Nature ; how utterly ignorant we were of the 
 causes of the least and most disesteemed of the com- 
 monest vegetables ; and what a quantit}' of life and 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 66 THE SEER. 
 
 beauty and mystery and use and enjoyment was to be 
 found in tliem, composed out of all sorts of elements, 
 and shaped as if by the hands of fairies. What work- 
 manship, with no apparent workman ! What con- 
 summate elegance, though the result was to be nothing 
 (as we call it) but a radish or an onion, and these 
 were to be consumed, or thrown away by millions ! 
 A rough tree grows up, and at the tips of his rugged 
 and dark fingers he puts forth — round, smooth, shin- 
 ing, and hanging delicately — the golden apple, or 
 the cheek-like beauty of the peach. The other day, 
 we were in a garden where Indian corn was growing ; 
 and some of the cobs were plucked to show us. First 
 one leaf or sheath was picked off, then another, then 
 another, then a fourth, and so on, as if a fruit-seller 
 was unpacking fruit out of papers ; and at last we 
 came, inside, to the grains of the corn, packed up into 
 cucumber-shapes of pale gold, and each of them pressed 
 and flattened against each other, as if some human 
 hand had been doing it in the caverns of the earth. 
 But what Hand ! 
 
 The same that made the poor yet rich hand (for is it 
 not his workmanship also ?) that is tracing these mar- 
 velling lines, and which if it does not tremble to write 
 them, it is because Love sustains, and because the 
 heart also is a flower which has a right to be tranquil in 
 the garden of the All-wise.
 
 67 
 
 A WORD ON EARLY RISING. 
 
 \ 
 S we are writing this article before breakf;ist, 
 at an earlier hour than usual, we are inclined 
 to become grand and intolerant on the 
 strength of our virtue, and to look around us, and say, 
 "Why is not everybody up? Hoav catt people lie in 
 bed at an hour like this, — ' the cool, the fragrant ' ? " 
 
 " Falsely luxurious, will not man awake ? " 
 
 Thus exclaimed good-natured, enjoying Thomson, and 
 lay in bed till twelve ; after which he strolled into his 
 garden at Richmond, and ate peaches off a tree, with 
 his hands in his waistcoat - pockets ! Browsing! A 
 perfect specimen of a poetical elephant or rhinoceros ! 
 Thomson, however, left an immortal book behind him, 
 which excused his trespasses. What excuse shall 
 mortality bring for hastening its end by lying in bed, 
 and anticipating the grave? for, of all apparently inno- 
 cent habits, lying in bed is perhaps the worst ; while, 
 on the other hand, amidst all the different habits 
 through which peojole have attained to a long life, it is 
 said that in this one respedt, and this only, they have all 
 agreed^ — no very long-lived man has been a late riser ! 
 Judge Holt is said to have been curious respedting 
 longevity, and to have questioned every very old man 
 tliat came before him, as to his modes of living ; and
 
 68 THE SEER. 
 
 in the matter of early rising there was no variation : 
 every one of them got up betimes. One lived chiefly 
 upon meat, another upon vegetables ; one drank no 
 fermented liquors, another did drink them ; a iifth 
 took care not to expose himself to the weather, another 
 took no such care : but every one of them was an early 
 riser. All made their appearance at Nature's earliest 
 levee ; and she was pleased that they hailed her as soon 
 as she waked, and that they valued her fresh air, and 
 valued her skies, and her birds, and her balmy quiet : 
 or, if they thought little of this, she was pleased that 
 they took the first step in life, every day, calculated to 
 make them happiest and most healthy ; and so she 
 laid her hands upon their heads, and pronounced them 
 good old boys, and enabled them to run about at 
 wonderful ages, while their jDOor senior juniors were 
 tumbling in down and gout. 
 
 A most pleasant hour it is certainly, — when you 
 are once up. The birds are singing in the trees ; ev- 
 ery thing else is noiseless, except the air, which comes 
 sweeping every now and then through the sunshine, 
 hindering the coming day from being hot. We feel it 
 on our face as we write. At a distance, far oft', a dog 
 occasionally barks ; and some huge fly is loud upon 
 the window-pane. It is sweet to drink in at one's ears 
 these innocent sounds, and this very sense of silence, 
 and to say to one's self, " We are up, we are up, 
 and are doing well : the beautiful creation is not 
 unseen and unheard for want of 7is" Oh ! it's a pro- 
 digious moment when the vanity and the viitue can go 
 together. We shall not say how early we write this 
 article, lest we should appear immodest, and excite
 
 A WORD ON EARLY RISING. 69 
 
 envy and despair. Neither shall we mention how 
 often we thus get up, or the hour at which we gene- 
 rally rise, — leaving our readers to hope the best of us ; 
 in return for which, we will try to be as little exalted 
 this morning as the sense of advantage over our neigh- 
 bors will permit, and not despise them, — a great 
 stretch for an uncommon sense of merit. There, for 
 instance, is C, — hard at it, we would swear; as fast 
 asleep as a church. Of what value are his books now, 
 and his subtleties, and his speculations ? as dead, poor 
 man ! as if they never existed. What proof is there of 
 an immortal soul in that face with its eyes shut, and its 
 mouth open, and not a word to say for itself, any more 
 than the dog's? And W. thei'e, — what signifies his 
 love for his children and his garden, neither of which 
 he is now alive to, though the child-like birds are call- 
 ing him, hopping amidst their songs ; and his break- 
 fast would have twice the relish? And the L.'s with 
 their garden and their music ? — the orchard has all the 
 music to itself: they will not arise to join it, though 
 Nature manifestly intends concerts to be of a morning 
 as well as evening, and the animal spirits are the 
 first that are up in the universe. 
 
 Then the streets and squares. Very much do we 
 fear, that, for want of a proper education in these 
 thoughts, the milkman, Instead of despising all these 
 shut-up windows, and the sleeping incapables inside, 
 envies them for the riches that keep injuring their dia- 
 phragms and digestions, and that will render their 
 breakfast not half so good as his. " Call you these 
 gentle-folks ? " said a new maid-servant, in a family of 
 our acquaintance : " why, they get up early in the
 
 7© THE SEER. 
 
 morning ! Only make me a lady, and see if I wouldn't 
 lie abed." 
 
 Seriously speaking, we believe that there is not a 
 wholesomer thing than early rising, or one which, if 
 persevered in for a ver}- little while, would make a 
 greater difference in the sensations of those who suffer 
 from most causes of ill-health, particularly the besetting 
 disease of these sedentary times, — indigestion. AVe 
 believe it would supersede the supposed necessity' of a 
 great deal of nauseous and pernicious medicine, — that 
 pretended friend, and ultimately certain foe, of all im- 
 patient stomachs. Its utilit}'^ in other respedls every- 
 body acknowledges, though few profit by it as they 
 might. Nothing renders a man so completely master 
 of the day before him ; so gets rid of arrears, antici- 
 pates the necessity of haste, and insures leisure. Sir 
 Walter Scott is said to have wu-itten all his greatest 
 works before breakfast : he thus also procured time for 
 bcing one of the most social of friends, and kind and 
 attentive of correspondents. One sometimes regrets 
 that experience passes into the shape of provei'bs, 
 since those who make use of them are apt to have no 
 other knowledge, and thus procure for them a worldly 
 character of the lowest order, Franklin did them no 
 good, in this respe6l, by crowding them together in 
 " Poor Richard's Almanack ; " and Cervantes intimated 
 the commonplace abuse into which they w^ere turning, 
 by putting them into the mouth of Sancho Panza. 
 Swift completed the ruin of some of them, in this 
 covnitry, by mingling them with the slip-slop of his 
 "Polite Conversation," — a Tory libel on the talk of 
 tlie upper ranks, to which nothing comparable is to be
 
 A WORD ON EARLY RISIXG. ^I 
 
 found in the Whig or Radical objedlions of modern 
 times. Yet, for the most part, proverbs are equally 
 true and generous ; and there is as much profit for 
 others as for a man's self in believing that " early to 
 bed and early to rise will make a man healthy and 
 wealthy and wise : " for the voluntary early riser is 
 seldom one who is insensible to the beautv as well as 
 the uses of the spring of day ; and in becoming healthy 
 and wise, as well as rich, he becomes good-humored 
 and considerate, and is disposed to make a handsome 
 use of the wealth he acquires. Mere saving and spar- 
 ing (which is the ugliest way to wealth) permits a 
 man to lie in bed as long as most other people, espe- 
 cially in winter, when he saves fire by it ; but a gallant 
 acquisition should be as stirring in this respe6t as it is 
 in others, and thus render its riches a comfort to it, 
 instead of a means of unhealthy care and a prepara- 
 tion for disappointment. How many rich men do we 
 not see jaundiced and worn, not w^ith necessary care, 
 but superfluous ; and secretly cursing their riches, as if 
 it were the foult of the money itself, and not of the bad 
 management of their health? These poor, unhappy, 
 rich peojile come at length to hug their money out 
 of a sort of spleen and envy at the luckier and less 
 miserable poverty' that wants it, and thus lead the 
 lives of dogs in the manger, and are almost tempted to 
 hang themselves ; whereas, if they could jDurify the 
 current of their blood a little, which, perhaps, they 
 might do by early rising alone, without a penny for 
 physic, they might find themselves growing more p:\- 
 tient, more cheerful, more liberal, and be astonished 
 and delighted at receiving the praises of the commu-
 
 72 THE SEER. 
 
 nity for their public spirit and their patronage of 
 noble Institutions. Oh ! if we could but get half Lon- 
 don up at an earlier hour, how they, and our colleges 
 and univei^sities and royal academies, &c., would all 
 take a start together, and how the quack advertise- 
 ments in the newspapers would diminish ! 
 
 But we must not pretend, meanwhile, to be more 
 virtuous ourselves than frail teachers are apt to be. 
 The truth is, that lying in bed is so injurious to onr 
 particular state of health, that we are early risers in 
 self-defence ; and we were not always such : so that 
 we .are qualified to speak to both sides of the question. 
 And as to our present article, it is owing to a relapse ! 
 and we fear is a very dull one in consequence ; for we 
 are obliged to begin it earlier than usual, in conse- 
 quence of being late. We shall conclude it with the 
 sprightliest testimony we can call to mind in favor of 
 early rising ; which is that of James the First, the royal 
 poet of Scotland, a worthy disciple of Chaucer, who, 
 when he was kept in unjust captivity during his youth 
 by Henry the Fourth, fell in love with his future excel- 
 lent queen, in consequence of seeing her through his 
 prison-windows walking in a garden at break of da}', 
 as Palamon and Arcite did Emilia ; which caused him 
 to exclaim, in words that might be often quoted by 
 others out of gratitude to the same hour, though on a 
 different occasion, — 
 
 " Mv custom was to rise 
 Early as day. Oh happy exercise, 
 By thee I came to joy out of torment ! " 
 
 See the " King's Quair," the poem he wrote about it. 
 We quote from memory', but we believe ^vith corre(fl- 
 ness.
 
 73 
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. 
 
 REAKFAST in summer ! " cries a reader, 
 in some narrow street in a cit}' : " that 
 means, I suppose, a breakfast out of doors, 
 among trees ; or, at least, in some fine breakfast-room, 
 looking upon a lawn or into a conservatory. I have 
 no such breakfast-room : the article is not written for 
 me. However, let us see what it says ; let us see 
 whether, according to our friend's recipe, — 
 
 " One can hold 
 A silver- fork, and breast of pheasant on't, 
 By thinking of sheer tea, and bread and butter." 
 
 Nay, let us do him justice too. Fancy is a good thing, 
 though pheasant may be better. Come, let us see 
 what he says ; let us look at his Barmecide break- 
 fast, — at all the good things I am to eat and drink 
 without tasting them." 
 
 Editor. Reader, thou art one of the right sort. 
 Thy fancy is large, though thy street be narrow. In 
 one thing only do we find thee deficient. Thy faith is 
 not perfeft. 
 
 Reader. How ! Am I not prepared to enjoy what 
 I cannot have? And do I not know the Barmecide? 
 Am I not a reader of the " Arabian Nights," — a will- 
 ing visitor of that facetious personage who set the 
 imaginary feast before the poor hungiy devil Shaca- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 74 THE SEER. 
 
 bac, and made him drunk with invisible wine, till, in 
 the retributive intoxication of the hvunor, mine host got 
 his ears boxed ? 
 
 Editor. Halloo ! what is that you are saying? Oh ! 
 you " intend nothing personal." Well, it is luckily 
 added ; for, look you, — we should othenvise have 
 " heaped coals of fire on your head." The want of 
 faith we complain of is not the want of faith in books 
 and fancies, but in us and our intentions towards thy- 
 self; for how camest thou to suppose that we intended 
 omitting thy breakfast, — thy unsophisticated cup of 
 bohea, and most respectable bread and butter? Why, 
 it is of and to such breakfasts that we write most. 
 The others, unless their refinement be of the true, 
 universal sort, might fancy they could do without us ; 
 whereas those that really can do so are not unwilling 
 to give us reception, for sympathy's sake, if for nothing 
 else. To enjoy is to reciprocate. We have the honor 
 (in this our paper person) of appearing at some of the 
 most refined breakfast-tables in the kingdom ; some of 
 these being at the same time the richest, and some the 
 poorest, that epicure could seek or eschew, — that is to 
 say, unintelle(5lual epicure ; and, when such a man is 
 found at either, we venture to afiirm that he misses 
 the best things to be found near him. It does not 
 become us to name names ; but we may illustrate the 
 matter by saying, that, had it been written fort}' years 
 back, we have good reason to think that the intentions 
 of this our set of essays would have procured it no 
 contemptuous welcome at the breakfast-table of Fox 
 with his lords about him, or Burns with his " bonnie 
 Jeanie " at his side. Porcelain, or potter's clay, silver
 
 ^ 
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. 75 
 
 or pewter, potted meats, oatmeal or bacon, are all one 
 to us, provided there is a good appetite, and a desire 
 to make the best of ivhat is before us. Without that, 
 who would breakfast with the richest of fools? and 
 with it, who, that knows the relish of wit and good 
 humor, would not sit down to the humblest fare with 
 inspired poverty? 
 
 Now, the art of making- the best of -what is before 
 7is (not in forgetfulness of social advancement, but in 
 encouragement of it, and in aid of the requisite activity 
 or patience, as the case may require) is one of the 
 main objects of this publication ; and, as the commoner 
 breakfast seems to requii-e it most, it is to such tables 
 the present paper is chiefly addressed, — always sujd- 
 posing that the breakfaster is of an intelligent sort ; 
 and not without a hope of suggesting a pleasant fancy 
 or so to the richest tables that may want it. And 
 there are too many such ! — perhaps because the table 
 has too many " good things " on it already, — too much 
 potted gout and twelve-shilling irritability. 
 
 Few people, rich or poor, make the most of what 
 they possess. In their anxiety to increase the amount 
 of the means for future enjoyment, they are too apt to 
 lose sight of the capability of them for present. Above 
 all, they overlook the thousand helps to enjoyment 
 which lie round about them, free to everybody, and 
 obtainable by the very willingness to be pleased, as- 
 sisted by that fancy and imagination which Nature has 
 bestowed, more or less, upon all human beings. Some 
 miscalled Utilitarians, incapable of their own master's 
 dodrine, may aflecl to undervalue fancy and imagina- 
 tion, as though they were not constituent properties of
 
 *j6 THE SEER. 
 
 the human mind, and as if they themselves, the mis- 
 takers, did not enjoy even what they do by their very 
 assistance ! Why, they liave fancies for tliis or that 
 teacup, this or that coat, this or that pretty face ! 
 They get handsome wives, when they can, as well as 
 other people, and when plain ones would be quite as 
 "useful"! How is that? They pretend to admire 
 tlie green fields, the blue sky, and would be ashamed to 
 be insensible to the merits of the flowers. How can 
 they take upon them to say where the precise line 
 should be drawn, and at what point it is we are to 
 cease turning these perceptions of pleasure and ele- 
 gance to account? 
 
 The first requisite towards enjoying a breakfast, or 
 any thing else, is the willingness to be pleased ; and 
 the greatest proof and security of this willingness is 
 the willingness to please others. "Better" (says a 
 venerable text) " is a dinner of herbs, where peace is, 
 than a stalled ox with contention." Many a breakfast, 
 that has every other means of enjoyment, is turned 
 to bitterness by unwilling discordant looks, perhaps to 
 the great misery of some persons present, who would 
 give and receive happiness if at any other table. Now, 
 breakfast is a foretaste of the whole day. Spoil that, 
 and we probably spoil all. Begin it well, and if we 
 are not very silly or ill-taught persons indeed, and at 
 tlie mercy of every petty impulse of anger and offence, 
 we in all probability make the rest of the day worthy 
 of it. These petty impulses are apt to produce great 
 miseries ; and the most provoking part of the busi- 
 ness is, that for want of better teaching, or of a little 
 forethought or imagination, they are sometimes in-
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. 77 
 
 dulged in by people of good hearts, who would be 
 ready to tear their hair for anguish if they saw you 
 wounded or in a ht, and yet will make your tlays a 
 heap of wretchedness by the eternal repetition of these 
 absurdities. 
 
 It being premised, then, that persons must come to 
 breakfast without faces sour enough to turn the milk 
 (and we begin to think that our cautions on this head 
 are unnecessary to such readers as are likely to pat- 
 ronize us), we have to inform the most unpretending 
 breakfaster, — the man the least capable of potted 
 meats, partridges, or preserves, — that, in the common- 
 est tea-equipage and fare which is set upon his board, 
 he possesses a treasure of pleasant thoughts ; and that 
 if he can command but the addition of a flower, or a 
 green bough, or a book, he may add to them a visible 
 grace and luxury, such as the richest wits in the nation 
 would respe6l. 
 
 " True taste," says one of these very persons (Mr. 
 Rogers, in his notes to a poem), "is an excellent 
 economist. She delights in producing great effe6ls by- 
 small means." This maxim holds good, we see, even 
 amidst the costliest elegances : how much more is it 
 precious to those whose means are of necessity small, 
 while their hearts are large? Suppose the reader is 
 forced to be an economist, and to have nothing on his 
 breakfast-table but plain tea and bread and butter. 
 Well : he is not forced also to be sordid or wretched, 
 or without fancy, love, or intelligence. Neither are 
 his teacups forced to be ill-shaped, nor his bread and 
 butter ill-cut, nor his table-cloth dirty ; and shapeli- 
 ness and cleanliness are in themselves elegances, and
 
 78 THE SEER. 
 
 of no mean order. The spirit of all other elegance is 
 in them, — that of sele(5lness, — of the superiority to 
 what is unfit and superfluous. Besides, a breakfast 
 of this kind is the prefei'ence, or good old custom, of 
 thousands who could aflbrd a richer one. It may be 
 called the staple breakfast of England ; and he who 
 cannot make an excellent meal of it would be in no 
 very good way with the luxiu'ies of a George the 
 Fourth, still less with the robust meats of a huntsman. 
 Delicate appetites may reasonably be stimulated a 
 little, till regularity and exercise put them in better 
 order ; and nothing is to be said against the innocen- 
 cies of honeys and marmalades. But strong meats of 
 a morning are only for those who take strong exercise, 
 or who have made up their minds to defy the chances 
 of gout and corpulence, or the undermining pre-diges- 
 tion of pill-taking. 
 
 If the man of taste is able to choose his mode of 
 breakfasting in summer-time, he will of course invest 
 it with all the natural luxuries within his reach. He 
 will have it in a room looking upon grass and trees, 
 hung with paintings, and furnished with books. He 
 will sit with a beautiful portrait beside him ; and the 
 air shall breathe freshly into his room ; the sun shall 
 color the foliage at his window, and shine betwixt 
 their checkering shadows upon the table ; and the bee 
 shall come to partake the honey he has made for him. 
 
 But suppose that a man capable of relishing all these 
 good things does not possess one of them ; at least, 
 can command none that require riches. Nay, suppose 
 him destitute of every thing but the plainest fare, in 
 the plainest room, and in the least accommodating part
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. 79 
 
 of the city. What does he do? Or what, upon ru- 
 fledion, may he be led to do? Why, his taste will 
 have recourse to its own natural and acquired riches, 
 and make the utmost it can out oF the materials before 
 it. It will show itself superior to that of thousands of 
 ignorant rich men, and make its good-will and its 
 knowledge open sources of entertainment to him un- 
 known to treasures which they want the wit to unlock. 
 Be willing to be pleased, and the power will come. 
 Be a reader, getting all the information you can ; and 
 every fresh information will paint some commonplace 
 article for you with brightness. Such a man as we 
 have described will soon learn not to look upon the 
 commonest table or chair without deriving pleasure 
 from its shape or shapability ; nor on the cheapest 
 and most ordinary teacup, without inci"easing that 
 gratification with fifty amusing recolle6tions of books 
 and plants and colors, and strange birds, and the 
 quaint domesticities of the Chinese. 
 
 For instance, if he breakfasts in a room of the kind 
 just mentioned (which is putting the case as strongly 
 as we can, and implies all the greater comforts that 
 can be drawn from situations of a better kind), he will 
 seledt the snuggest or least cheerless part of the room 
 to set his table in. If he can catch a glimpse of a tree 
 from any part of a window (and a great many more 
 such glimpses are to be had in the city than people 
 would suppose), he will plant his chair, if possible, 
 within view of it ; or, if no tree is to be had, perhaps 
 the morning sun comes into his room, and lie will 
 contrive that his table shall have a slice of that. He 
 will not be unamused even with the Jack-o'-lantern
 
 8o THE SEER. 
 
 which strikes up to the ceiling, and dances with the 
 stirring oT his tea, glancing and twinkling like some 
 chuckling elfin eye, or reminding him of some wit 
 making his brilliant refle6tions, and casting a light 
 upon commonplaces. The sun is ever beautiful and 
 noble, and brings a cheerfulness out of heaven itself 
 into the humblest apartment, if we have but the spirit 
 to welcome it. 
 
 But if we have neither tree nor sun, and nobody 
 with us to make amends, suppose it winter-time, and 
 that we have a fire. This is sun and company too, 
 and such an associate as will either talk with us, if we 
 choose to hear it ; or leave us alone, and give us com- 
 fort unheard. It is now summer-time, however ; and 
 we had better reserve our talk of fires for cold weatlier. 
 Our present object is rather to point out some new 
 modes of making tlie best of imaginary wants, dian to 
 dilate upon luxuries recognized by all. 
 
 Suppose then, that neither a fire, the great friend 
 in-doors, nor sunshine, the great friend out-of-doors, 
 be found with us in our breakfast - room ; that we 
 could neither receive pleasure from the one, if we 
 had it, nor can command a room into which the 
 other makes its way : what ornament is there — 
 what supply of light. or beaut}' could we discover, at 
 once exquisite and cheap — that should furnish our 
 humble boai'd with a grace precious in the eyes of the 
 most intelligent among the rich? Flowers, Set 
 flowers on your table, a whole nosegay if you can get 
 it ; or but two or three, or a single flower, — a rose, 
 a pink, nay, a daisy. Bring a few daisies and butter- 
 cups from your last field-walk, and keep them alive in
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. Si 
 
 a little water ; nv, presei-ve but a bunch of clover, or a 
 handful of flowering grass, one of the most elegant as 
 well as cheap of Nature's productions, and you have 
 something on your table that reminds you of the beau- 
 ties of God's creation, and gives you a link with the 
 poets and sages that have done it most honor. Put but 
 a rose or a lily or a violet on your table, and yoit and 
 Lord Bacon have a custom in common ; for that great 
 and wise man was in the habit of having the flowers 
 in season set upon his table, — morning, we believe, 
 noon, and night ; that is to say, at all his meals : for 
 dinner, in his time, was taken at noon. And why should 
 he not have flowers at all his meals, seeing that they 
 were growing all day? Now, here is a fashion that 
 shall last you for ever, if you please ; never changing 
 with silks and velvets and silver forks, nor dependent 
 upon the caprice of some fine gentleman or lady, who 
 have nothing but caprice and change to give them 
 importance and a sensation. The fashion of the gar- 
 ments of heaven and earth endures for ever, and you 
 may adorn your table with specimens of their drapery, 
 — with flowers out of the fields, and golden beams out 
 of the blue ether. 
 
 Flowers on a morning table are specially suitable to 
 the time. They look like the happy wakening of the 
 creation : they bring the perfumes of the breath of 
 Nature into your room ; they seem the i-epresentations 
 and embodiments of the very smiles of your home, the 
 graces of its good-morrow ; proofs that some intellectual 
 beauty is in ourselves, or those about us ; some house 
 Aurora (if we are so lucky as to have such a compan- 
 ion) helping to strew our life with sweets ; or in our-
 
 82 THE SEER. 
 
 selves some masculine mildness not unworthy to pos- 
 sess such a companion, or unlikely to gain her. 
 
 Even a few leaves, if we can get no flowers, are far 
 better than no such ornament, — a branch from the 
 next tree, or the next herb-iharket, or some twigs that 
 have been plucked from a flowering hedge. They are 
 often, nay always, beautiful, particularly in spi-ing, 
 when their green is tenderest. The first new boughs 
 in spring, plucked and put into a water-bottle, have 
 often an efi'e(5l that may compete with flowers them- 
 selves, considering their novelty' ; and indeed — 
 
 "Leaves would be coiuated flowers, if earth had none." 
 
 (There is a verse for the reader ; and not a bad one, 
 considering its truth.) We often have vines (such as 
 they are, — better than none) growing upon tlie walls 
 of our city houses, — or clematis, or jessamine ; per- 
 haps ivy on a bit of an old garden-wall, or a tree in a 
 court. We should pluck a sprig of it, and plant it 
 on our breakfast-table. It would show that the cheap 
 elegances of earth, the universal gifts of the beauty of 
 nature, are not thrown away upon us. They shadow 
 prettily over the clean table-cloth or the pastoral milk, 
 like a piece of nature brought in-doors. The tender 
 bodies of the young vernal shoots above mentioned, 
 put into water, might be almost fancied clustering to- 
 gether with a sort of virgin delicacy, like young 
 nym2:)hs, mute-struck, in a fountain. Nay, any leaves, 
 not quite faded, look well, as a substitute for the want 
 of flowers, — those of the common elm ; or the plane ; 
 or the I'ough oak, especially when it has become gentle 
 with its acorn tassels ; or the lime, which is tasselled in
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. 83 
 
 a more flowery manner, and has a breath as beautiful. 
 Ivy, which is seldom or never brought in-doors, greatly 
 deserves to be better treated, especially the young 
 shoots of it, which point in a most elegant manner 
 over the margin of a glass or decanter, seeming to 
 have been newly scissored forth by some fairy hand, 
 or by its own invisible quaint spirit, as if conscious of 
 the tendency within it. Even the green tips of the fir- 
 trees, which seem to have been brushed by the golden 
 pencil of the sun, when he resumes his painting, bring 
 a sort of light and vernal joy into a room, in default of 
 brighter visitors. But it is not necessary to a loving 
 and refle6ling spirit to have any thing so good as those. 
 A bit of elm-tree or poplar would do, in the absence 
 of any thing rarer. For our parts, as far as ourself 
 alone is concerned, it seems to us that we could not be 
 mastered by the blackest storm of existence, in the 
 worst pass that our pilgrimage could bring us to, as 
 long as we had shelter over our heads, a table with 
 bread and a cup of tea upon it, and a single one of 
 these green smiles upon the board, to show us that 
 good-natured Nature was alive. 
 
 Does any reader misgive himself, and fancy that to 
 help himself to such comforts as these would be " tri- 
 fling " ? Oh ! let him not so condescend to the igno- 
 rance of the proud or envious. If this were trifling, 
 then was Bacon a trifler, then was the great Conde a 
 trifler, and the old Republican Ludlow, and all the 
 great and good spirits that have loved flowers, and 
 Milton's Adam himself, nay, heaven itself; for heaven 
 made these harmless elegances, and blessed them with 
 tlie universal good-will of the wise and innocent. To
 
 84 THE SEER. 
 
 trifle is not to make use of small pleasures for the help 
 and refreshment of our duties, but to be incapable of 
 that real estimation of either, which enables us the 
 better to appreciate and assist both. The same mighty- 
 energy which whirls the earth round the sun, and 
 crashes the heavens with thunderbolts, produces the 
 lilies of the valley, and the gentle dewdrops that keep 
 them fair. 
 
 To return, then, to our flowers and our breakfast- 
 table : were time and place so cruel as not to gi"ant 
 us even a twig, still there is a last resource, and a rich 
 one too, — not quite so cheap as the other, but ob- 
 tainable now-a-days by a few pence, and which may 
 be said to grow also on the public walls, — a book. 
 We read, in old stories, of enchanters who drew gai"- 
 dens out of snow ; and of tents no bigger than a nut- 
 shell, which opened out over a whole army. Of a 
 like nature is the magic of a book, — a casket, from 
 which you may draw out, at will, bowers to sit under, 
 and affe6lionate beauties to sit by, and have trees, 
 flowers, and an exquisite friend, all at one spell. We 
 see it now before us, standing among the cups, edge- 
 ways, plain-looking, perhaps poor and battered, per- 
 haps bought of some dull huckster in a lane for a few 
 pence. On its back we read, in old worn-out letters 
 of enchantment, the word " Milton ; " and, upon open- 
 ing it, lo ! we are breakfasting forthwith, — 
 
 " Betwixt two aged oaks, 
 On herbs and other country messes 
 Whic'i the neat-handed Phillis dresses," 
 
 in a pUce which they call " Allegro." Or the word 
 on the back of the casket is " Pope ;" and instantly a
 
 BREAKFAST IN SUMMER. 8^ 
 
 beautv in a " neglige" makes breakfast for us, and we 
 have twenty sylphs instead of butterflies, tickling the 
 air round about us, and comparing colors with the 
 flowers, or pouncing upon the crumbs that threaten to 
 foil upon her stomacher. Or " Thomson " is the magic 
 name ; and a friend still sweeter sits beside us, with 
 her eyes on ours, and tells us with a pressui"e on the 
 hand, and soft, low words, that our cup awaits us. Or 
 we cry aloud, " Theocritus ! " plunging into the sweet- 
 est depths of the cormtry ; and, lo ! we breakfast, down 
 in a thick valley of leaves and brooks and the brown 
 summer-time, upon creams and honey -combs, the 
 guest of bearded Pan and the Nymphs ; while at a 
 distance, on his mountain-top, poor overgrown Poly- 
 phemus, tamed and made mild with the terrible sweet 
 face of love, which has frightened him with a sense of 
 new thoughts, and of changes which cannot be, sits 
 overshadowing half of the vineyards below him, and, 
 with his brow in tears, blows his harsh reeds over the 
 sea. 
 
 Such has been many a breakfast of our own, dear 
 readers, with poverty on one side of us, and these 
 riches on the other. Such must be many of yours ; 
 and, as far as the riches are concerned, such may be 
 all. But how is this? We have left out the milk, 
 and the bread, and the tea itself! We must have an- 
 otlier breakfast with the reader, in order to do tliem 
 justice.
 
 86 
 
 BREAKFAST CONTINUED. 
 
 Tea-drinking. 
 
 BREAKFAST - TABLE in the morning, 
 clean and white with its table-cloth, colored 
 with the cups and saucers, and glittering with 
 the teapot, — is it not a cheerful objecfl, reader? and 
 are you not always glad to see it? 
 
 We know not any inanimate sight more pleasant, 
 unless it be a very fine painting, or a whole abode 
 snugly pitched ; and, even then, one of the best things 
 to fancy in it is the morning ineal. 
 
 The yellow or mellow-colored butter (which softens 
 the effe6l of the other hues), the milk, the bread, the 
 sugar, — all have a simple, temperate look, very relish- 
 ing, however, to a hungry man. Perhaps the morning 
 is sunny : at any rate, the day is a new one, and the 
 hour its freshest. We have been invigorated by sleep. 
 The sound of the shaken canister prepares us for the 
 fragrant beverage that is coming : in a few minutes it 
 is poured out ; we quaff the odorous refreshment, per- 
 haps chatting with dear kindred, or loving and laugh- 
 ing with the " morning faces " of children ; or, if alone, 
 reading one of the volumes mentioned in our last, 
 and taking tea, book, and bread and butter, all at once,
 
 BREAKFAST CONTINUED. 87 
 
 — no "inelegant" pleasure, as Sir Walter Scott saith 
 of the eating of tarts.* 
 
 Dear reader, male or female (very dear, if the lat- 
 ter), do you know how to make good tea? — because, 
 if you do not (and we have known many otherwise 
 accomplished persons fail in that desideratum), here is 
 a recipe for you, furnished by a mistress of the art : — 
 
 In the first place, the teapot is found by experience 
 to be best when it is made of metal. But, whether 
 metal or ware, take care that it be thoroughly clean, 
 and the water thoroughly boiling. There should not 
 be a leaf of the stale tea left from the last meal. The 
 tests of boiling are various with diflerent people : but 
 there can be no uncertainty, if the steam come out of 
 the lid of the kettle ; and it is best, therefore, to be sure 
 of that evidence. No good tea can be depended upon 
 from an urn, because an urn cannot be kept boiling ; 
 and water should never be put upon the tea but in a 
 thoroughly and initncd lately boiling state. If it has 
 done boiling, it should be made to boil again. Boiling, 
 proportion, and attention are the three magic words 
 of tea-making. The water should also be soft, — hard 
 water being sure to spoil the best tea : and it is advisa- 
 ble to prepare the teapot against a chill, by letting a 
 small quantity of hot water stand in it before you 
 
 » In his "Life of Dryden;" original edition, p. 86: "Even for some 
 time after his connection with the theatre, we learn, from a contemporary, 
 that his dress was plain at least, if not mean; and his pleasures moderate, 
 though not inelegant. ' I remember,' says a correspondent of the ' Gen- 
 tleman's Magazine ' for 1745, ' plain John Dryden, before he paid his 
 court with success to the great, in one uniform ciotiiing of Norwich-drug- 
 get. I have eat tarts with him and Madam Reeve at the Mulberry Gar- 
 dens, when our author advanced to a sword and a Chadreux wig." "
 
 88 THE SEER. 
 
 begin ; emptying it out, of course, when you do so. 
 These premises being taken care of, excellent. tea may 
 be made for one person by putting into the pot three 
 teaspoonfuls, and as much water as will cover the 
 quantity. Let this stand five minutes, and then add 
 as much more as will twice fill the cup you are going 
 to use. Leave this additional water another five min- 
 utes ; and then, first putting the sugar and milk into 
 the cup, pour out the tea ; making sure to put in an- 
 other cup of boiling water directly. 
 
 Of tea made for a party, a spoonful for each, and one 
 over, must be used ; taking care never to drain the tea- 
 pot^ and always to add the requisite quantity of boiling 
 water as just mentioned. 
 
 The most exquisite tea is not j^erhaps the whole- 
 somest. The more green there is in it, certainly the 
 less Avholesome it is ; though green adds to the palata- 
 bleness. And drinking tea very hot is a pernicious 
 custom. Green tea and hot tea make up the two causes 
 which produce perhaps all the injurious results attribut- 
 ed to tea-drinking. Their united efte6ts, in particular, 
 are sometimes formidable to the " nei"\^es,'" and to per- 
 sons liable to be kept awake at night. Excellent tea 
 may be made, by judicious management, of black tea 
 alone ; and this is unquestionably the most wholesome. 
 Yet a little green is hardly to be omitted. 
 
 Now, have a cup of tea thus well made, and you will 
 find it a very different thing from the insipid dilution 
 which some call tea, watery at the edges, and trans- 
 parent half-way down ; or the sirup into which some 
 convert their tea, who are no tea-drinkers, but should 
 take treacle for their breakfast : or the mere strensfth
 
 BREAKFAST CONTINUED. 89 
 
 of tea, without any due qualification from other mate- 
 rials, — a tiling no better than melted tea-leaves, or 
 than those which it is said were a6tually served up at 
 dinner, like gi-eens, when tea was first got hold of by 
 people in remote country parts, who had not heard of 
 the way of using it, — a dish of acrid bitterness. In 
 tea, properly so called, you should slightly taste the 
 sugar, be sensible of a balmy softness in the milk, and 
 enjoy at once a solidity, a delicacy, a relish, and a fra- 
 grance in the tea. Thus compounded, it is at once a 
 refreshment and an elegance, and, w^e believe, the 
 most innocent of cordials ; for "we think we can say 
 from experience, that, when tea does harm, it is either 
 from the unmitigated strength just mentioned, or from 
 its being taken too hot, — a common and most perni- 
 cious custom. The inside of a man, dear people, is 
 not a kitchen copper. 
 
 But good tea, many of you may say, is dear. Tea of 
 all sorts is a great deal too dear ; but we have known 
 very costly tea turn out poor in the drinking, and com- 
 paratively poor tea become precious. Out of very bad 
 tea it is perhaps impossible to make a good cup ; but 
 skill and patience are famous for converting ordinaiy 
 materials into something valuable. And it should be 
 added, that it is better to have one cup of good tea than 
 half a dozen of bad. Nevertheless, we are not for 
 despising the worst of all, if the drinker finds any kind 
 of refreshment in it, and can procure no better. The 
 very natncs of tea and tea-time are worth something. 
 
 And this brings us to an association of ideas, which, 
 however common with us at the breakfast-table, and 
 doubtless with hundreds of other people, we never cx- 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 pO THE SEER. 
 
 perience without finding them amusing. We allude to 
 China and the Chinese. The very word tea^ so petty, 
 so infantine, so winking-eyed, so expressive somehow 
 or other of something inexpressibly minute and satisfied 
 with a little {tee /), resembles the idea one has (perhaps 
 a very mistaken one) of that extraordinary people, of 
 whom Europeans know little or nothing, except that 
 they sell us this preparation, bow back again our am- 
 bassadors, have a language consisting only of a few 
 hundred words, gave us Ckina-waxQ and the strange 
 pictures on our teacups, made a certain progress in 
 civilization long before we did, mysteriously stopped at 
 it, and would go no further, and if numbers, and the 
 customs of " venerable ancestors," are to carry the day, 
 are at once the most populous and the most respedlable 
 nation on the face of the earth. As a population, they 
 certainly are a most enormous and wonderful body ; 
 but, as individuals, their ceremonies, their trifling edicts, 
 their jealousy of foreigners, and their teacup representa- 
 tions of themselves (which are the only ones jDopularly 
 known), impress us irresistibly with a fancy, that they 
 are a people all toddling, little-eyed, little-footed, little- 
 bearded, little-minded, quaint, ovei"weening, pig-tailed, 
 bald-headed, cone -capped, or pagoda -hatted, having 
 childish houses and temples with bells at every corner 
 and story, and shuffling about in blue landscapes, over 
 " nine-inch bridges," with little mysteries of bell-hung 
 whips in their hands, — a boat, or a house, or a ti'ee 
 made of a pattern, being over their heads or underneath 
 them (as the case may happen), and a bird as large as 
 the boat, always having a circular white space to fly 
 in. Such are the Chinese of the teacups and the gi'o-
 
 BREAKFAST CONTINUED. 9 1 
 
 cers' windows, and partly of theii- own novels too, in 
 which every thing seems as little as their eyes, — little 
 odes, little wine-parties, and a series of little satisfac- 
 tions. However, it must be owned, that from these 
 novels one gradually acquires a notion that there is a 
 great deal more good sense and even good poetry 
 among: them than one had fancied from the accounts 
 of embassies and the autobiographical paintings on the 
 china-ware ; and this is the most probable supposition. 
 An ancient and great nation, as civilized as they, is not 
 likely to be so much behind-hand with us in the art of 
 living as our self-complacency leads us to imagine. 
 If their contempt of us amounts to the barbarous, per- 
 haps there is a greater share of barbarism than we 
 suspect in our scorn of them. 
 
 At all events, it becomes us to be grateful for their tea. 
 What a curious thing it was, that all of a sudden the 
 remotest nation of the East, othei'wise unknown, and 
 foreign to all our habits, should convey to us a domes- 
 tic custom, which changed the face of our morning re- 
 freshments ; and that, instead of ale and meat or wine, 
 all the polite part of England should be drinking a 
 Chinese infusion, and setting up earthern-ware in their 
 houses, painted with preposterous scenery ! We shall 
 not speak contemptuously, for our parts, of any such 
 changes in the history of a nation's habits, any more 
 than of the changes of the wind, which now comes from 
 the west, and now from the east, doubtless for some 
 good purpose. It may be noted, that the introduction 
 of tea-drinking followed the diffusion of books among 
 us, and the growth of more sedentary modes of life. 
 The breakfasters upon cold beef and " cool tankards"
 
 92 THE SEER. 
 
 were an adlive, horse-riding generation. Tea-drinking 
 times are more in-door, given to reading, and are riders 
 in carriages, or nianufadturers at the loom or the steam- 
 engine. It may be taken as an axiom, — the more 
 sedentary, the more tea-drinking. The conjuncSlion is 
 not the best in the workl ; but it is natural, till some- 
 thing better be found. Tea-drinking is better than 
 dram-drinking ; a practice which, if our memory does 
 not deceive us, ^vas creeping in among the politest and 
 even the foirest circles during the transition from ales 
 to teas. When the late Mr. Hazlitt, by an eflbrt wor- 
 thy of him, suddenly left off the stiff glasses of brandy 
 and water by which he had been tempted to prop up 
 his disappointments, or rather to loosen his tongue at 
 the pleasant hour of supper, he took to tea-drinking ; 
 and, it must be owned, was latterly tempted to make 
 himself as much amends as he could for his loss of 
 excitement, in the quantity he allowed himself: but 
 it left his mind free to exercise its powers ; it " kept," 
 as Waller beautifully says of it, — 
 
 " The palace of the soul serene ; " 
 
 not, to be sure, the quantity, but the tea itself, com- 
 pared with the other drink. The prince of tea-drink- 
 ers was Dr. Johnson, one of the most sedentary of men, 
 and the most unhealthy. It is to be feared his quantity 
 suited him still worse ; though the cups, of which we 
 hear such multitudinous stories about him, were very 
 small in his time. It was he that wrote, or rather 
 effused^ the humorous request for tea, in ridicule of 
 the style of the old ballads (things, be it said without 
 irreverence, which he did not understand so well as
 
 BREAKFAST CONTINUED. 93 
 
 "his cups"). The verses were extempore, and ad- 
 dressed to Mrs. Thrale : — 
 
 " And now, I pray thee, Hetty dear, 
 That thou wilt give to me. 
 With cream and sugar softened well. 
 Another dish of tea. 
 
 But hear, alas ! this mournful truth, — 
 
 Nor hear it with a frown, — 
 Tliou canst not make the tea so fast 
 
 As I can gulp it down." 
 
 Now, this is among the pleasures of reading and 
 reflecting men over their breakfast, or on any other 
 occasion. The si^fht of what is a tiresome nothinsf to 
 others shall suggest to them a hundred agreeable rec- 
 olIe6lions and speculations. There is a teacup, for 
 example. " Well, what is a teacup?" a simpleton 
 might cry : " it holds my tea, — that's all." Yes, that's 
 all to you and your poverty-stricken brain : we hope 
 you are rich and prosperous, to make up for it as well 
 as you can. But, to the right tea-drinker, the cup, 
 we see, contains not only recollections of eminent 
 brethren of the bohea, but the whole Chinese nation, 
 with all its history. Lord Macartney included ; nay, 
 for that matter, Ariosto and his beautiful story of An- 
 gelica and Mcdoro ; for Angelica was a Chinese : and 
 then collaterally come in the Chinese neighbors and 
 conquerors from Tartary, with Chaucer's — 
 
 " Story of Curabuscan bold," 
 
 and the travels of Marco Polo and others, and the 
 Jesuit missionaries, and the Japanese with our friend 
 Golownin, and the Loo Choo people, and Confucius,
 
 94 THE SEER. 
 
 whom Voltaire (to show his learning) delights to call 
 by his proper native appellation of Kong - foo - tsee 
 (reminding us of Congo tea) : and then we have the 
 Chinese Tales, and Goldsmith's " Citizen of the World," 
 and Goldsmith brings you back to Johnson again, and 
 the tea-drinkings of old times : and then we have the 
 " Rape of the Lock" before us, with Belinda at break- 
 fast, and Lady Wortley Montague's tea-table eclogue, 
 and the domestic pictures in the " Tatler" and " Spec- 
 tator," with the passions existing in those times for 
 chinaware ; and, Horace Walpole, who was an old 
 woman in that respedl ; and, in short, a thousand other 
 memories, grave and gay, poetical and prosaical, all 
 ready to wait upon anybody who chooses to read books, 
 like spirits at the command of the book-readers of old, 
 who, for the advantages they had over the rest of the 
 world, got the title of Magicians. 
 
 Yea, pleasant and rich is thy sight, little teacup (largo, 
 though, at breakfast), round, smooth, and colored; 
 composed of delicate earth, — like the earth, producing 
 flowers and birds and men ; and containing within 
 thee thy Lilliputian ocean, vrhich we, after sending 
 our fancy sailing over it, past islands of foam called 
 " sixpences," and mysterious bubbles from below, will, 
 giant-like, ingulf: — 
 
 But hold ! — there's a fly in. 
 
 Now, why could not this inconsiderate monster of 
 the air be content with the whole space of the heavens 
 round about him, but he must needs plunge into this 
 scalding pool? Did he scent the sugar? or was it a 
 fascination of terror from the heat? " Hadst thou my 
 three kingdoms to range in," said James the First to a
 
 BREAKFAST CONTINUED. 95 
 
 fly, "and yet must needs get into my e^ye?" It was 
 a good-natured speech, and a natural. It shows that 
 the monarch did his best to get the fly out again ; at 
 least, we hope so : and therefore we follow the royal 
 example in extricating the little winged wretch, who 
 has struggled hard with his unavailing pinions, and 
 become drenched and lax with the soaking. 
 
 He is on the dry clean cloth. Is he dead? No: 
 the tea was not so hot as we supposed it. See ! he 
 gives a heave of himself foi"ward ; then endeavors to 
 drag a leg up, then another ; then stops, and sinks 
 down, saturated and overborne with wateriness ; and 
 assuredly, from the inmost soul of him, he sighs (if 
 flies sigh ; which we think they must do sometimes, 
 after attempting in vain, for half an hour, to get through 
 a pane of glass). However, his sigh is as much 
 mixed with joy as fright and astonishment and a hor 
 rible hot bath can let it be ; and the heat has not been 
 too much for him. A similar case would have been 
 worse for one of us with our fleshy bodies. For, see ! 
 after dragging himself along the dry cloth, he is fairly 
 on his legs : he smoothes himself, like a cat, first 
 one side, then the other, only with his legs instead of 
 his tongue ; then rubs the legs together, partly to dis- 
 engage them of their burthen, and partly as if he con- 
 gratulated himself on his escape ; and now, finally, 
 opening his wings (beautiful privilege ! for all wings, 
 except the bat's, seem beautiful, and a privilege, and 
 fit for envy), he is off" again into the air, as if nothing 
 had happened. 
 
 He may forget it, being an inconsiderate and giddy 
 fly ; but it is to us, be it remembered by our conscience,
 
 96 THE SEER. 
 
 that he owes all which he is hereafter to enjoy. His 
 su(5lions of sugar, his flights, his dances on the win- 
 dow, his children, yea, the whole House of Fly, as far 
 as it depends on him their ancestor, will be owing to 
 us. We have been his providence, his guardian angel, 
 the invisible being that rescued him without his know- 
 ing it. What shall we add, reader? Wilt thou laugh, 
 or look placid and content ; hvunble, and yet in some 
 sort proud withal, and not consider it as an unbecoming 
 meeting of ideas in these our most mixed and reflective 
 papers, — if we argue from i*escued flies to rescued 
 human beings, and take occasion to hope, that, in the 
 midst of the struggling endeavors of such of us as have 
 to wrestle with fault or misfortune, invisible pit}' may 
 look down with a helping eye upon ourselves ; and 
 that what it is humane to do in the man, it is divine 
 to do in that which made humanity.
 
 97 
 
 BREAKFAST CONCLUDED. 
 Tea and Coffee^ Milk^ Breads Sc. 
 
 ^ra=^^,E have said nothin<^ of coffee and chocolate at 
 W\r<iA breakfast, though a good example has been 
 "^iSjttl set us in that respedl in the pleasant pages of 
 Mr. D'Israeli. We confined ourselves to tea, because 
 it is the staple drink. A cheap coflee, however, or 
 imitation of it, has taken place of tea with many ; and 
 the poor have now their " coffee-houses," as the rich 
 used to have. We say " used," because coffee-drinking 
 in such places among the rich is fast going out in con- 
 sequence of the later hours of dinner and the attra6lions 
 of the club-houses. Coffee", like tea, used to form a 
 refreshment by itself, some hours after dinner. It is 
 now taken as a digester, right upon that meal or the 
 wine ; and sometimes does not even close it ; for the 
 digester itself is digested by a liqueur of some sort, 
 called a chasse-caf'e, (coffee -chaser). We do not, 
 however, pretend to be learned in these matters. If 
 we find ourselves at a rich table, it is but as a stranger 
 in the land to all but its humanities. A custom may 
 change next year, and find us as ignorant of it as the 
 footman is othenvise.* 
 
 * We advert to the knowledge of this personage, out of no undue 
 feeling either to^vards himself, or those whom he serves. Both classes 
 comprise natures of all sorts like others. But fashion, in itself, is a poor 
 business, everlastingly shifting its customs because it has notliing but 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 9^ THE SEER. 
 
 As we claim the familiar intimacy of the reader in 
 this our most private public miscellany, and have had 
 it cordially responded to by fair and brown, (who will 
 not cry out as a critic did against Montaigne for say- 
 ing he liked sherry, "Who the devil cares whether he 
 liked sherry or not?") we shall venture to observe in 
 comment upon the thousand inaudible remarks on this 
 question which we hear on all sides of us, that, for 
 our parts, we like cofiee better than tea, for the taste, 
 but tea " for a constancy ; " and one after the other 
 makes a "pretty" variety (as Dr. Johnson, or Mr. 
 Pepys, would phrase it ) . To be perfect in point of 
 relish (we do not say of wholesomeness), coffee should 
 be strong and hot, with little sugar and milk. In the 
 East, they drink it without either ; which, we should 
 think, must be intolerable to any palates that do not 
 begin with it in childhood, or are not in want of as 
 severe stimulants as those of sailors ; (though, by the 
 way, we understand that tobacco-chewing is coming 
 into fashion !) It has been drunk after this mode in 
 some parts of Europe ; but the public have nowhere 
 (we believe) adopted it. The favorite way of taking 
 it as a meal, abroad, is with a great superfluity of 
 milk, — very properly called, in France, cafe-au-lait^ 
 coffee to the milk. One of the pleasures we receive 
 in drinking coffee is, that, being the universal drink in 
 the East, it reminds of that region of the " Arabian 
 Nights ; " as smoking does, for the same reason : 
 
 change to go upon ; and with all our respect for good people who wear 
 its liveries, whether master or footman, we own we have no sort of vene- 
 ration for the phases of neckcloths and coats, and the vicissitudes of 
 the modes of dining.
 
 BREAKFAST CONCLUDED. 99 
 
 though neither of these refreshments, which are now 
 identified with Oriental manners, is to be found in that 
 enchanting work. They had not been discovered 
 when it was written. The drink was sherbet, and its 
 accompaniments cakes and fruit. One can hardly 
 fancy wJiat a Turk or a Persian could have done 
 without coffee and a pipe, any more than the English 
 ladies and gentlemen, before the civil wars, without tea 
 for breakfast. As for chocolate, its richness, if made 
 good, renders it rather a food than a drink. Linnajus 
 seems to have been fond of it ; for it was he, we be- 
 lieve, who gave it its generic name of Theobroma, or 
 food of the gods. It is said to be extremely nourish- 
 ing,* but heavy for weak stomachs. Cocoa (cacao) is 
 a lighter kind of it, made of the shell instead of the 
 nut. They make German flutes of the wood of the 
 chocolate-tree. An Italian wit, who flourished when 
 tea, coftee, and chocolate had not long been intro- 
 duced into his country, treats them all three with great 
 contempt, and no less humor : — 
 
 " Non fia gii, che il Cioccolatte 
 V'adoprassi, ovvero il T6 : 
 Medicine cosi fatte 
 Non saran gianimai per me. 
 Beverei prima il veleno, 
 
 * "An acquaintance, on whose veracity we can rely," says Mr. Phil- 
 lips, in liis History of Fruits, " informed us, that, during tlie retreat of 
 Napoleon's army from tlie North, he fortunately liad a small quantity of 
 little chocolate cakes, in his pocket, which preserved the life of himself and 
 a friend for several days, when they could procure no other food what- 
 ever, and many of their brother officers perished for want." — Pcmariun 
 Britannicum, or Historical arul Botanical Account of Fruits known in GrecU 
 Britain. Third edition, p. 67; Colburn.
 
 lOO THE SEER. 
 
 Che un bicchier che fosse pieno 
 
 Del amaro e reo Caffe. 
 
 Col^ tra gli Arabi 
 
 E tra i Giannizzeri 
 
 Liquor si ostico, 
 
 Si nero e torbido, 
 
 Gli schiavi ingollino. 
 
 GiCi nel Tartaro, 
 
 Giii neir Erebo, 
 
 L'empie Belidi rinventarono. 
 
 E Tesifone, e I'altre Eurie, 
 
 A Proserpina il ministrarono. 
 
 E se in Asia 11 Musulmanno 
 
 Se lo cionca a precipizio, 
 
 Mostra aver poco giudizio." 
 
 Redi : Bacco in Toscana. 
 " Talk of chocolate ! talk of tea ! 
 Medicines made, ye gods, as they are. 
 Are no medicines made for me ! 
 I woiild sooner take to poison 
 Than a single cup set eyes on 
 Of that bitter and guilty stuff ye 
 Talk of by the name of coffee. 
 Let the Arabs and the Turks 
 Count it 'mongst their cruel works : 
 Eoe of mankind, black and turbid, 
 Let the throats of slaves absorb it. 
 Down in Tartarus, 
 Down in Erebus, 
 
 'Twas the detestable Fifty * invented it : 
 The Fm-ies then took it. 
 To grind and to cook it ; 
 And to Proserpina all three presented it. 
 If the jMussulman in Asia 
 Doats on a beverage so unseemly, 
 I differ with the man extremely." 
 
 * The daughters of Danaus, who killed their husbands.
 
 BREAKFAST CONXI.UDED. lOI 
 
 These vituperations, however, are put into the 
 mouth of the god of wine ; who may justly have re- 
 sented the introduction of — 
 
 *' The cups 
 Which cheer, but not inebriate." 
 
 Chocolate is a common refreshment in Italy, in a 
 solid shape. The pastry-cooks sell sweetmeats of it, 
 wrapped up in little papers with printed mottos, con- 
 taining some couplet of humor or gallantly. They 
 have made their appearance of late years in England, 
 owing, we believe, to the patronage of George the 
 Fourth, who is said to have given an order to a Paris 
 manufacturer, to tlie value of five hundred pounds. 
 
 Off, ye inferior goods, ye comparative sophistica- 
 tions, perhaps fleeting fashions, and let us bethink 
 ourselves of the everlasting virtues of beautiful milk 
 and bread ! 
 
 "Milk," says a venerable text, "is fit for children." 
 It is too often unfit for men, not because their stom- 
 achs are stronger than those of children, but because 
 they are weaker. Causes of various sorts, sorrow, too 
 much thinking, dissipation, shall render a man unable 
 to digest the good wholesome milk-bowl that delight- 
 ed him when a child. He must content himself with 
 his experience, and with turning it to the best account, 
 especially for others. A child over a milk-bowl is a 
 pleasant objeCl. He seems to belong to ever}' thing 
 that is young and innocent, — tlie morning, the fields, 
 the dairies. And no fear of indigestion has he, nor 
 of a spoiled complexion. He does not sit up till 
 twelve at night; nor is a beauty tight-lacing herself;
 
 I02 THE SEER. 
 
 noi" does he suspend his stomach in breathlessness 
 with writing " articles," and thinking of good and 
 evil. 
 
 Pleasant object also, nevertheless, is the milk-jug to 
 the grown man, whether sick or well, provided he 
 have " an eye." White milk in a white jug, or cream 
 in a cream-colored, presents one of these sympathies 
 of color, which are sometimes of higher taste than any 
 contrast, however delicate. Drummond of Hawthorn 
 den has hit it with a relishing pencil : — 
 
 " In petticoat of green, 
 With hair about her cine,* 
 Pliiliis, beneath an oak, 
 Sat milking lier fair flock : 
 
 'Mongst that sweet strained moisture (rare delight) 
 Her hand seemed milk, in milk it was so white." t 
 
 Anacreon beautifully compares a finely tinted cheek 
 to milk with roses in it. There is a richness of color- 
 ing, as well as of substance, in the happy scriptural 
 designation of an abundant country, — "a land over- 
 flowing with milk and honey." Milk and honey suit 
 admirably on the breakfast-table. Their colors, their 
 simplicity, their country associations, all harmonize. 
 We have a dairy and a bee-hive before us, — the breath 
 of cows, and the buzzing over the garden. 
 
 By the way, there is a very pretty design, in Cooke's 
 edition of Parnell's Poems, of a girl milking a cow, 
 by Kirk, a young Scotch ai'tist of great promise, who 
 died prematurely, which has wandered to the teacups, 
 and is to be found on some of the cheapest of them. 
 
 * Eine, een, — Scotch and old English for eyes. 
 
 t See Cunningham's edition of Drummond, lately published, p. 249.
 
 BREAKFAST CONCLUDED. I03 
 
 We happened to meet with it in Italy, and felt all our 
 old landscapes before us, — the meadows, tlie trees, 
 and the village church ; all which the artist has put 
 into the background. The face is not quite so good 
 on the teacup as in the engraving. In tliat, it is emi- 
 nently beautiful ; at least, in the work now before us. 
 We cannot answer for reprints. It is one of those 
 faces of sweetness and natural refinement which are 
 -to be met with in the humblest as well as highest 
 classes, \vhere the parentage has been genial, and tlie 
 bringing-up not discordant. The passage illustrated 
 is the pretty exordium of the poet's eclogue entitled 
 "Health:" — 
 
 "Now early shepherds o'er the meadow pass, 
 And print long footsteps in the glittering grass : 
 The cows, neglectful of their pasture, stand, 
 By turns obsequious to the milker's hand." 
 
 Is it not better to occupy the fancy with such recol- 
 lections as these over a common breakfast, than to be 
 lamenting that we have not an uncommon one ? which 
 perhaps also would do us a mischief, and, for the gain 
 of a little tickling of the palate, take health and good 
 temper out of us for the rest of the day. Besides, a 
 palate unspoilt has a relish of milks and teas, and 
 other simple foods, which a Nabob, hot from his mul- 
 ligatawny and his megrims, would envy. 
 
 We look upon it as a blessing, for our parts, that we 
 retain a liking for a very crust. We were educated at 
 a school where the food was poorer than the learn- 
 ing ; but the monks had lived in its cloisters, and left 
 us a spring of delicious water. Hence we have the 
 pleasure of enjoying a crust of bread and a draught of
 
 104 THE SEER. 
 
 water to this day. Oftentimes have we " spoilt our 
 dinner, " when it has not come up in time, with a 
 "hunk" of bread, choosing rather to spoil our dinner 
 than our spirits ; and sweet have been those mouthfuls 
 of the pure staff' of life, and relishing of the corn. 
 To our apprehensions, there is a sort of white taste in 
 bread, analogous to the color, and reminding us of the 
 white milkiness of the wheat. We have a respedl,' 
 both of self-love and sympathy, with the poor light- 
 hearted player in Gil Bias, who went singing along 
 the countiy road, dipping his crust in the stream. 
 Sorrow had no hold on him, with ninety-nine out of 
 her hundred arms. Carelessly along went he, safe 
 from her worst handling, in his freedom from wants. 
 She might have peered out of her old den, and grown 
 softened at his chant. But he went alone too : he had 
 none to care for ; which was a pleasure also. It 
 would be none to us, — one thing provided. There 
 are pains, when you get heartily acquainted with them, 
 which outvalue the reverse pleasures. Besides, we 
 must all get through our tasks as manfully and cheer- 
 fully as we can ; losing, if possible, no handsome plea- 
 sure by the vs^ay ; and sustaining ourselves by the 
 thought, that all will be for the best, provided we do 
 our best for all. It is not the existence of pain that 
 spoils the relish of the world ; but the not knowing 
 how to make the most of pleasures, and thereby redu- 
 cing the pains to their most reasonable size and their 
 most useful account. 
 
 You may make a landscape, if you will, out of your 
 breakfast-table, better than Mr. Kirk's pitSlure. Here, 
 wheie the bread stands, is its father, the field of cum,
 
 BREAKFAST CONCLUDED. I05 
 
 glowing in the sun, cut by the tawny reapers, and pre- 
 senting a path for lovers. The village church (where 
 tliey are to be married) is on a leafy slope on one 
 side ; and on the other is a woody hill, with fountains. 
 There, far over the water (for this basin of water, 
 with island lumps of butter in it, shall be a sea), are 
 our friends the Chinese, picking the leaves of their 
 tea-trees, — a beautiful plant; or the Arabs plucking 
 the berries of the coflce-tree, — a still more beautif :1 
 one, with a profusion of white blossoms, and an odor 
 like jessamine. For the sugar (instead of a bitterer 
 thought, not so harmonious to our purpose, but not to 
 be forgotten at due times), you may think of Waller's 
 Saccharissa ; * so named from the Latin word for sugar 
 {saccha7-ui)i)^ — a poor compliment to the lady: but 
 the lady shall sweeten the sugar, instead of the sugar 
 doing honor to the lady ; and she was a very knowing 
 as well as beautiful woman, and saw farther into love 
 and sweetness than the sophisticate court-poet ; so she 
 would not have him, notwithstanding his sugary verses, 
 but married a higher natiu'e. 
 
 Bread, milk, and butter are of venerable antiquity. 
 They taste of the morning of the world. Jael, to en- 
 
 * Saccharissa was l.ady Dorothy Sidney, of the preat and truly noble 
 family of the Sidneys. She married a sincere, ati'ectionate, and courage- 
 ous man, Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, who was killed, four years 
 afterwards, in a cause for which he thoujxht himself bound to quit the 
 arms of the woman he loved. Her second husband was of the Smythe 
 Family. In her old ape, meeting Waller at a card-table. Lady Sunder- 
 land asked him, in good-humored and not ungrateful recollection of his 
 fine verses, when he would write any more such upon her; to which the 
 "polite" poet, either from spite, or want of address, had the poverty 
 of spirit to repl}', " Oh ! madam, when your ladyship is as young 
 again."
 
 Io6 THE SEER. 
 
 tertain her guest, "brought forth butter in a lordly 
 dish." Homer speaks of a nation of milk-eaters, 
 whom he calls the " justest of men. " To " break 
 bread " was from time immemorial the Eastern signal 
 of hospitality and confidence. We need not add rea- 
 sons for respedling it, still more reverend. Bread is 
 the " staff' of life " throughout the greater part of the 
 civilized world ; and so accordant is its taste with the 
 human palate, that Natru-e, in some places, seems to 
 have grown it ready-made on pui'pose, in the shape of 
 the bread fruit-tree. There is also a milk-tree : but 
 we nowhere find a carniferous or flesh-bearing tree ; 
 nor has the city yet been discovered in which " the 
 pigs run through the sh^eets ready roasted, with knives 
 and forks stuck in their sides." Civilized nations eat 
 meat; but they can also do without it, living upon 
 milk, grain, and vegetables alone, as in India. None 
 but savasres live without those. And common break- 
 fasts, without any meat in them, have this advantage 
 over others, that you can recoiled: them without any 
 sort of doubt or disgust ; nor are their leavings of- 
 fensive to the eye. It is one of the perplexities of 
 man's present condition, that he is at once carnivorous, 
 and has very good reason for being so, and relishing 
 his chop and his steak, and yet cannot always reconcile 
 it to the rest of his nature. He would fain eat his 
 lamb, and pity it too ; which is puzzling. However, 
 there are worse perplexities than these ; and the lambs 
 lead pleasant flowery lives while they do live. Nor 
 could they have had this taste of existence, if they 
 were not bi-ed for the table. Let us all do our best to 
 get the world forward, and we shall see. We shall
 
 BREAKFAST CONCLUDED. IO7 
 
 either do away all we think wrong, or see better rea- 
 sons for thinking it right. Meanwhile, let us dine and 
 breakfast, like good-humored people ; and not " quar- 
 rel with our bread and butter."
 
 io8 
 
 ANACREON. 
 
 ilT has been said of ladies when they write 
 letters, tliat they put their minds in their 
 postscripts, — let out the real objedl of their 
 writing, as if it were a second thought, or a thing 
 comparatively inditl'erent. You very often know the 
 amount of a man's knowledge of an author by the re- 
 mark he makes on him after he has made the one 
 which he thinks proper and authorized. As for 
 example, you will mention Anacreon to your friend 
 A. in a tone which implies that you wish to know his 
 opinion of him ; and he shall say, — 
 
 "Delightful poet, Anacreon! — breathes the very 
 spirit of love and wine. His Greek is very easy." 
 
 All the real opinion of this gentleman respedting 
 Anacreon lies in what he says in these last words. 
 His Greek is easy ; that is, our scholar has had less 
 tfouble in learning to i^ead him than with other Greek 
 poets. This is all he really thinks or feels about the 
 " delightful Anacreon." 
 
 So with B. You imply a question to B. in the 
 same tone ; and he answers, "Anacreon ! Oh ! a most 
 delightful poet, Anacreon, — charming ; all love and 
 wine. The best edition oj" hi?n is Spaletti's."" 
 
 This is all that B. knows of Anacreon's " love and 
 wine." " The best edition of it is Spaletti's ; " that is
 
 ANACREON. IO9 
 
 to say, Spaletti is the Anacreon wine-merchant most 
 in I'epute. 
 
 So again with C. as to his knowledge of the transla- 
 tions of the " delightful poet." 
 
 " Translations of Anacreon ! Delightful poet ! — too 
 delightful, too natural and peculiar, to be translated ; 
 simplicity, naivete. Fawkes's translation is elegant ; 
 Mooi-e's very elegant, but diffuse. Nobody can trans- 
 late Anacreon. Impossible to give any idea of the 
 exquisite simplicity of the Greek." 
 
 This gentleman has never read Cowley's transla- 
 tions from Anacreon ; and, if he had, he would not 
 have known which part of them was truly Anacreon- 
 tic, and which not. He makes up his mind that it is 
 impossible to give " any idea of the exquisite simplicity 
 of the Greek ; " meaning, by that assertion, that he 
 himself cannot, and therefore nobody else can. His 
 sole idea of Anacreon is, that he is a writer famous for 
 certain beauties which it is impossible to translate. 
 As to supposing that the spirit of Anacreon may occa- 
 sionally be met with in poets who have not translated 
 him, and that you m.ay thus get an idea of him without 
 recurrinsf to the Greek at all, this is what never en- 
 tered his head : for Nature has nothing to do with his 
 head ; it is only books and translations. Love, na- 
 tiu-e, myrtles, roses, wine, have existed ever since the 
 days of Anacreon ; yet he thinks nobody ever chanced 
 to look at these things with the same eyes. 
 
 Thus there is one class of scholars who have no 
 idea of Anacreon, except that he is easy to read ; an- 
 other, who confine their notions of him to a particular 
 edition ; and a third, who look upon him as consisting
 
 no THE SEER. 
 
 in a certain elegant impossibility to translate. There 
 are more absurdities of pretended scholarship, on this 
 and all other writers, which the truly learned laugh at, 
 and know to be no scholarship at all. Our present 
 business is to attempt to give some idea of what they 
 think and feel with regard to Anacreon, and what all 
 intelligent men would think and feel if they under- 
 stood Greek terms for natural impressions. To be 
 unaffedtedly charmed with the loveliness of a cheek, 
 and the beauty of a flower, are the first steps to a 
 knowledge of Anacreon. Those are the grammar of 
 his Greek, and pretty nearly the dictionary too. 
 
 Little is known of the life of Anacreon. There is 
 reason to believe that he was born among the richer 
 classes ; that he was a visitor at the courts of princes ; 
 and that, agreeably to. a genius which was great 
 enough, and has given enough delight to the world, to 
 warrant such a devotion of itself to its enjoyments, he 
 kept aloof from the troubles of his time, or made the 
 best of them, and tempted them to spare his door. It 
 may be concluded of him, that his existence (so to 
 speak) was passed in a garden : for he lived to be old ; 
 which, in a man of his sensibility and indolence, im- 
 plies a life pretty free from care. It is said that he 
 died at the age of eighty-five, and was then choked 
 with a grape-stone ; a fate generally thought to be a 
 little too allegorical to be likely. He was born on the 
 coast of Ionia (part of the modern Turkey), at Teos, 
 a town south of Smyrna, in the midst of a country of 
 wine, oil, and sunshine ; and thus partook strongly 
 of those influences of climate which undoubtedly oc- 
 casion varieties in genius, as in other produ6lions of
 
 ANACREON. Ill 
 
 Nature. As to the obje<5lionable parts of his morals, 
 they belonged to his age, and have no essential or in- 
 separable connection with his poetry. We are, there- 
 fore, glad to be warranted in saying nothing about 
 them. All the objedlionable passages might be taken 
 out of Anacreon, and he would still be Anacreon ; 
 and the most vii'tuous might read him as safely as 
 they read of flowers and butterflies. Cowley, one of 
 the best of men, translated some of his most Anac- 
 reontic poems. We profess to breathe his air in the 
 same spirit as Cowley, and shall assuredly bring no 
 poison out of it to our readers. The truly virtuous 
 are as safe in these pages as they can be in their own 
 homes and gardens. But cheerfulness is a part of our 
 religion ; and we choose to omit not even grapes in it, 
 any more than Nature has omitted them. 
 
 Imagine, then, a good-humored old man, with silver 
 locks, but a healthy and cheerful face, sitting in the 
 delightful climate of Smyrna, under his vine or his 
 olive, with his lute by his side, a cup of his native 
 wine before him, and a pretty peasant girl standing 
 near him, who has perhaps brought him a basket of 
 figs, or a bottle of milk corked with vine leaves, and 
 to whom he is giving a rose, or jDrctending to make 
 love. 
 
 For we are not, with the gross literality of dull or 
 vicious understandings, to take for granted every thing 
 that a poet says on all occasions, especially when he is 
 old. It is mere gratuitous and suspicious assumption 
 in critics who tell vis, that such men as Anacreon 
 passed "whole lives" in the indulgence of "every ex- 
 cess and debauchery." They must have had, in tlie
 
 113 THE SErn. 
 
 first place, prodigious constitutions, if they did, to live 
 to be near ninety ; and, secondly, it does not follow, 
 that, because a poet speaks like a poet, it has therefore 
 taken such a vast deal to give him a taste, greater than 
 other men's, for what he enjoys. Redi, the author of 
 the most famous bacchanalian poem in Italy, di'ank 
 little but water. St. Evremond, the French wit, an 
 epicure professed, was too good an epicure not to be 
 temperate and preserve his relish. Debauchees, who 
 are fox-hunters, live to be old, because they take a 
 great deal of exercise ; but it is not likely that ina6tive 
 men should, unless they combined a relish for pleasure 
 with some very particular kinds of temperance. 
 
 There is generally, in Anacreon's earnest, a touch 
 of something which is not in earnest, — which plays 
 with the subje6t, as a good-humored old man plays 
 with children. There is a perpetual smile on his face, 
 between enthusiasm and levity. He truly likes the 
 obje6ts he looks upon (otherwise he could not have 
 painted them truly), and he will retain as much of his 
 youthful regard for them as he can. He does retain 
 much, and he pleasantly pretends more. He loves 
 wine, beauty, flowers, pictures, sculptures, dances, 
 birds, brooks, kind and open natures, every thing that 
 can be indolently enjoyed ; not, it must be confessed, 
 with the deepest innermost perception of their beauty 
 (which is more a characteristic of modern poetry than 
 of ancient, owing to the diffei^ence of their creeds), but 
 with the most elegant of material perceptions, — of 
 what lies in the surface and tangibility of objedls, — 
 and with an admirable exemption from whatsoever 
 does not belong to them, — from all false taste and die
 
 AXACRKOX. 113 
 
 mixture of impertinences. With regard to the rest, he 
 had all the sentiment which good-nature implies, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 Upon those two points of luxury and good taste, the 
 character of Anacreon, as a poet, wholly turns. He 
 is tlie poet of indolent enjoyment, in the best possible 
 taste, and with the least possible trouble. He will 
 enjoy as much as he can ; but he will take no more 
 pains about it than he can help, not even to praise it. 
 He would probably talk about it half the day long ; 
 for talking would cost him nothing, and it is natural to 
 old age : but, when he comes to write about it, he will 
 say no more than the impulse of the moment incites 
 hiin to put down ; and he will sa\' it in the very best 
 manner, both because the truth of his perception re- 
 quires it, and because an affe6ted style and superfluous 
 words would give him trouble. He would, it is true, 
 take just so much trouble, if necessary, as should 
 make his style completely suitable to his truth ; and, if 
 his poems were not so short, it would be difficult to a 
 modern writer to think that they could flow into such 
 excessive ease and spirit as they do, if he had not 
 taken the greatest pains to make them. But, besides 
 his impulses, he had the habit of a life upon him. 
 Hence the compositions of Anacreon are remarkable, 
 above all others in the world, for being " short and 
 sweet." They are the very thing, and nothing more, 
 required by the occasion ; for the animal spirits, 
 which would be natiaral in other men, and might lead 
 them into superfluities, would not be equally so to one 
 who adds the indolence of old age to the niceties of 
 natural taste : and therefore, as people boast, on other 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 114 "^^^^ SEER. 
 
 occasions, of calling things by their right names, and 
 " a spade, a spade ; " so, when Anacreon describes a 
 beauty or a banquet, or wishes to convey his sense to 
 you of a flower, or a grasshopper, or a head of hair, 
 there it is, as true and as free from every thing foreign 
 to it as the thing itself. 
 
 Look at a myrtle-tree or a hyacinth, inhale its fra- 
 grance, admire its leaves or blossom, then shut your 
 eyes, and tliink how exquisitely the myrtle-tree is 
 ivhat it is, and how beautifully unlike every thing 
 else, — how pure in simple yet cultivated grace. 
 Such is one of the odes of Anacreon. 
 
 This may not be a very scholastic description ; but 
 we wish it to be something better, and we write 
 to genial apprehensions. We would have them con- 
 ceive a taste of Anacreon as they would that of his 
 grapes, and know him by his flavor. 
 
 It inust be conceded to one of our would-be scholar- 
 ly friends above mentioned, that there is no translation, 
 not even of any one ode of Anacreon's, in the English 
 language, which gives you an entirely right notion 
 of it. The commonplace elegances of Fawkes (who 
 was best when he was humblest, as in his ballad of 
 "Dear Tom, this brown jug") are out of the question. 
 They are as bad as Hoole's " Ariosto." Mr. Moore's 
 translation is masterly of its kind : but its kind is not 
 Anacreon's ; as he would, perhaps, be tlie first to say, 
 now ; for it was a work of his youth. It is too Ori- 
 ental, difflise, and ornamented ; an Anacreon in Persia. 
 The best English translations are those which Cowley 
 has given us, although diftliseness is their fault also ; 
 but they have more of Anacreon's real animal spirits,
 
 AXACREON. 115 
 
 and his contentment with obje6ts themselves, apart 
 from what he can say about them. Cowley is most in 
 earnest. He thinks most of what his original was 
 thinking, and least of what is expelled from his 
 translator. 
 
 We will give a specimen of him presently. But it 
 is not to be supposed that we have no passages in the 
 writings of English poets that convey to an unlearned 
 reader a thorough idea of Anacreon. Prose cannot do 
 it, though far better sometimes as a translation of 
 verse than verse itself, since the latter may destroy the 
 original both in spirit and medium too. But prose, 
 as a translation of verse, wants, of necessity, that 
 sustained enthusiasm of poetry, which presents the 
 perpetual charm of a triumph over the obstacle of 
 metre, and turns it to an accompaniment and a dance. 
 Readers, therefore, must not expect a right idea of 
 Anacreon from the best prose versions ; though, keep- 
 ing in mind their inevitable deficiencies, thev may be 
 of great service and pleasure to him, especially if he 
 can superadd the vivacity which they want. And he 
 is pretty sure not to meet in them with any of the im- 
 pertinences of the translations in verse ; that is to say 
 (not to use the word offensively), any of the matter 
 which does not belo7ig to the original : for an imperti- 
 nence, in the literal, unoflensive sense of the word, 
 signifies that which does not belong to or form a part 
 of any thing.* 
 
 The following passage about Cupid bathing and 
 pruning his wings under the eyes of a weeping beauty 
 
 * The reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that this paper oa 
 Anacreon was originally addressed to the uneducated.
 
 Il6 T}IE SEER. 
 
 (the produdion either of Spenser, or of a friend wor- 
 thy of him) appears to us to be thoroughly Anacreon- 
 tic in one resped:, and without contradidion ; that is 
 to say, in clearness and delicacy of fancy : — 
 
 " The blinded archer boy, like larke in shower of raine, 
 Sat bathing of his wings ; and glad the time did spend 
 Under those cristall drops, which fell from her faire eyes, 
 And, at their brightest beams, him proyned in lovely wise." 
 
 Milton's address to May-morning would have been 
 Anacreontic but for a certain something of heaviness 
 or stateliness which he has mingled with it, and the 
 difierential changes of the measure : — 
 
 "Now the bright morning-star, day's harbinger, 
 Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her 
 The flowery May, who from her green lap throws 
 The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose." 
 
 The danci?2g of the star, the leading flowery May, 
 the green lap, and the straightforward simple style of 
 the words, are all Anacreontic ; but the measure is too 
 stately and serious. The poet has instindlively changed 
 it in the lines that follow these, which are altogether 
 in the taste of our author : — 
 
 " Hail, bounteous I\Iay ! that dost inspire 
 Mirth and youth and warm desire : 
 Woods and groves are of thy dressing ; 
 Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing." 
 
 Then a long line comes too seriously in : — 
 
 " Thus we salute thee with our early song, 
 And welcome thee, and wish thee long." 
 
 We will here obser\'e by the way, that Anacreon's 
 measures are always short and dancing. One of these
 
 ANACREOX. 1 1 7 
 
 somewhat resembles the shortei" ones of the above 
 
 poem : — 
 
 " Woods and groves are of thy dressing ; 
 Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing." 
 
 Every syllable, obsen'e, is pronounced : — 
 
 " Dote nioi lyren Homerou 
 Phonies aneuthe chordes." 
 
 The o's in the second line of the next are all pro- 
 nounced long, as in the word rose : — 
 
 " Hyacinthine me rhabdo 
 Chalepos Eros badizon 
 Ekeleuse syntrochazein." 
 
 There is a poet of the time of Charles the First, 
 Herrick, who is generally called, but on little grounds, 
 the English Anacreon, though he now and then has 
 no unhappy imitation of his manner. We wish we 
 had him by us, to give a specimen. There is one 
 beautiful song of his (which has been exquisitely 
 translated, by the way, into Latin, by one of the now 
 leading political writers*), the opening measure of 
 which, that is, of the first couplet, is the same as the 
 other common measure of Anacreon : — 
 
 " Their eyes the glowworms lend thee ; 
 The shooting stars attend thee ; 
 And the elves also, 
 Whose little eyes glow 
 Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee." 
 
 * See a periodical publication in two volumes called the " Ileflecfor," 
 which contained some of the first public essays of several eminent living 
 writers.
 
 Il8 THE SEER. 
 
 " He ge melaina pinei, 
 Pinei de dendre auten, 
 Pinei thalassa d 'auras, 
 Ho d'Helios thalassan." 
 
 Suckling, a charming off-hand writer, who stood be- 
 tween the days of Elizabeth and the Stuarts, and 
 partook of the sentiment of the one and the levity of 
 the other, would have translated Anacreon admirably. 
 And had Anacreon been a fine gentleman of the age 
 of Charles the First, instead of an ancient Greek, he 
 would have written Suckling's ballad on a wedding. 
 There is a touch in it, describing a beautiful pair of 
 lips, which, though perfe6lly original, is in the highest 
 Anacreontic taste : — 
 
 " Her lips were red ; and one was thin, 
 Compared with that was next her chin : 
 Some bee had stmig it newly." 
 
 Beauty, the country, a pi(5ture, the taste and scent of 
 honey, are all in that passage ; and yet Anacreon, in 
 the happy comprehensiveness of his words, has beaten 
 it. The thought has become somewhat hackneyed 
 since his time, — the hard though unavoidable fate of 
 many an exquisite fancy ; yet stated in his simple 
 words, and accompanied with an image, the very 
 perfe6lion of eloquence, it may still be read with a 
 new delight. In a direction to a painter about a por- 
 trait of his mistress, he tells him to give her " a lip like 
 Persuasion! s^' — 
 
 " Prokaloumenon philema ; " 
 " Provoking a kiss." 
 
 The word is somewhat spoilt in English by the very
 
 AXACREON. 119 
 
 piquancy which time has added to it ; because it 
 makes it look less in earnest, too much like the com- 
 mon language of gallantly. But p)-ovoking literally 
 raeans calling- yor^ asking, — forcing us, in common 
 gratitude for our delight, to give what is so exquisitely 
 deserved ; and, in that better sense, the word pro- 
 vokitig is still the right one. 
 
 Shakespeare's serenade in " Cymbeline " might have 
 been written by Anacreon, except that he would have 
 given us some luxurious image of a young female, 
 instead of the word " lady : " — 
 
 " Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings ; 
 
 And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
 His steeds to water at those springs 
 
 On chaliced flowers that lies ; 
 And winking mary-buds begin 
 
 To ope their golden eyes : * 
 
 With every thing that pretty been, 
 
 My lady sweet, arise." 
 
 Lilly, a writer of Shakespeare's age, who perverted 
 a naturally fine genius to the purposes of conceit and 
 fashion, has a little poem beginning, — 
 
 " Cupid and my Campaspe played 
 At cards for kisses," — 
 
 which Anacreon might have written, had cards ex- 
 isted in his time. But we have it not by us to quote. 
 Many passages in Burns's songs are Anacreontic, 
 inasmuch as they are simple, enjoying, and full of the 
 elegance of the senses ; but they have more passion 
 than the old Greek's, and less of his perfection of 
 grace. Anacreon never suffers but from old age or 
 the want of wine. Burns sutlers desperately, and as
 
 I30 THE SEER. 
 
 (iesperately struggles with his suffering, till we know 
 not which is the greater, he or his passion. There is 
 nothing of this robust-handed work in the delicate 
 Ionian. Nature is strong and sovereign in him, but 
 always in accommodating unison with his indolence 
 and old age. He says that he is transpoiied, and he 
 is so ; but somehow you always fancy him in the same 
 place, never quite carried out of himself. 
 
 Of Anacreon's drinking-songs, we do not find it so 
 easy to give a counterpart notion from the English 
 poets, who, though of a drinking country, have not 
 exhibited much of the hilarity of wine. Their port is 
 heavy, compared with Anacreon's Teian. Shake- 
 speare's — 
 
 " Plurapy Bacchus with pink eyne " — 
 
 will not do at all ; for Anacreon's Bacchus is the per- 
 fection of elegant mytholog}^, particularly cotnme II 
 faut in the waist, a graceful dancer, and beautiful as 
 Cheerfulness. In all Anacreon's manners, and turn 
 of thinking, you recognize what is called " the gen- 
 tleman." He evidently had a delicate hand. The 
 "cares" that he talks about consisted in his not having 
 had cares enough. . A turn at the plough, or a few 
 wants, would have given him pathos. He would not 
 have thought all the cares of life to consist in its being 
 short and swift, and taking him away from his plea- 
 sures. If he partook, however, of the effeminacy of 
 his caste, he was superior to its love of wealth and 
 domination. The sole business of his life, he said, was 
 to drink and sing, perfume his beard, and crown his 
 head with roses ; and he appears to have stuck reli-
 
 ANACREON. 121 
 
 giously to his profession. " Business," he thought, 
 " must be attended to." Plato calls him " wise ; " as 
 Milton calls the luxurious Spenser " sage and serious." 
 The greatest poets and philosophers sometimes " let 
 the cat out of the bag," when they are tired of conven- 
 tional secrets. 
 
 " This bottle's the sun of our table, 
 His beams are rosy wine ; 
 We, planets that are not able 
 Without his help to shine." 
 
 These verses of Sheridan's are Anacreontic. So is 
 that couplet of Burns's, — exquisitely so, except for the 
 homeliness of the last word : — 
 
 " Care, mad to see a man so happy, 
 E'en drowned liimself amidst the nappy." 
 
 One taste, like this, of the wine of the feelings, gives 
 a better idea of Anacreon's drinking-songs than hun- 
 dreds of ordinary specimens. 
 
 But we must hasten to close this long article with 
 the best Anacreontic piece of translation we are ac- 
 quainted with, — that of the famous ode to the grass- 
 hopper, by Cowley, Anacreon's grasshopper, it is to 
 be observed, is not properly a grasshopper, but the 
 Tettix^ as the Greeks called it from its cry, — the 
 Cicada of the Roman poet, and Cicala of modern 
 Italy, where it sings or cricks in the trees in summer- 
 time, as the grasshopper does with us in the grass. 
 It is a species of beetle. But Cowley very properly 
 translated his Greek insedt, as well as ode, into Eng- 
 lish ; knowing well that the poet's objedl is to be sym- 
 pathized with, and that, if Anacreon had written in 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 122 THE SEER. 
 
 England, he would have addressed tlie grasshopper 
 instead of the tettix. 
 
 We have marked in Italics the expressions, which, 
 though original in Cowley's version, are purely An- 
 acreontic, and such as the Grecian would have de- 
 lighted to write. The whole poem is much longer 
 than Anacre.on's, — double the size ; but this, perhaps, 
 only justly makes up for the prolongation afforded to 
 all ancient poems, by the music which accompanied 
 them. There is not a Cowleian conceit in the whole 
 of it, unless the thought about " farmer and landlord" 
 be one, which is quickly forgiven for its naturalness in 
 an English landscape ; and the whole, from beginning 
 to end, though not so perfectly melodious, runs on 
 with that natural yet regulated and elegant enthusiasm 
 betwixt delight in the obje6l, and indolent enjoyment 
 in the spe6tator, which has been noticed as charadter- 
 istic of the sprightly old bard. The repetition of the 
 word all is quite in the poet's manner ; who loved 
 thus to cram much into little, and to pretend to him- 
 self that he was luxuriously exoatiating : as in fadl 
 he was, in his feelings ; though, as to composition, he 
 did not choose to make " a toil of a pleasure." 
 
 " Happy insect ! what can be 
 In happiness compared to thee ? 
 Fed with nourishment divine, — 
 The dewy morning's gentle icine. 
 Nature waits upon thee still, 
 And thy verdant cup does fill : 
 'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread ; 
 Nature's self thy Ganymede. 
 Thou dost drink and dance and sing. 
 Happier than the happiest Ling.
 
 ANACREON. 1 23 
 
 All the fields which thou dost see, 
 
 All tlie plants, belong to tliee ; 
 
 All that summer hours produce, 
 
 Fertile made with early juice. 
 
 Mau for thee does sow and plough , 
 
 Farmer he, aud landlord thou ! 
 
 Thou dost innocently joy ; 
 
 Nor does thy luxury destroy. 
 
 The shepherd gladly' heareth thee. 
 
 More harmonious than he. 
 
 Thee country hinds with gladness hear, 
 
 Prophet of the. ripened year ! 
 
 Phoebus is himself thy sire ; 
 
 Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire : 
 
 To thee, of all things upon earth. 
 
 Life is no longer than thj mirth. 
 
 Happy insect ! happy thou ! 
 
 Dost neither age nor winter know ; 
 
 Bnt when thou'st drunk, and danced and sung 
 
 Thy Jill the flowery leaves among, 
 
 ( Voluptuous and ivise withal. 
 
 Epicurean animal!) 
 
 Sated with thy summer feast, 
 
 Thou retirest to endless rest."
 
 124 
 
 THE WRONG SIDES OF SCHOLARSHIP 
 AND NO SCHOLARSHIP. 
 
 (jHERE are two supposed (for they are not 
 real) extremes of pretension upon the strange 
 question, whether a knowledge of the learned 
 languages is or is not of use, against which it behooves 
 an uneducated man of sense and modesty to be on his 
 guard. One is the pretension of those who say that a 
 man can have no idea of the ancient writers, without 
 a deep intimacy with their language ; the other, of 
 those who affirm, with equal vehemence, that there is 
 no necessity to know the language at all, and that 
 translations do quite as well as the originals for giving 
 you all that you need be acquainted with of the au- 
 thor's genius. 
 
 The former of these pretenders is generally a shal- 
 lower man than the other, though sometimes it is pure 
 vanity and self-will that makes him talk as he does : 
 he has an over-estimation of his advantages, simply 
 because they are his. He is as proud of his learning 
 as another pompous man might be of his park and his 
 mansion. Such is the case, when he really has any 
 thing like an intimacy with his authors ; but in both 
 instances he would fain make out his possession to be 
 unapproachable by all who have not had the same
 
 SCHOLARSHIP AND NO SCHOLARSHIP. 1 25 
 
 golden key. The common run of the chiss consists of 
 men who really know nothing of their authors but the 
 words, and who unconsciously feel, that, on that ac- 
 count, they must make the best of their knowledge, 
 and pretend it is a wonderful matter. Such a man 
 smiles when you speak of getting some insight into the 
 charader of Homer's genius, or Virgil's, by dint of 
 some happy bit of version or some masterly criticism. 
 He says, triumphantly, that "even Pope" is acknowl- 
 edged not to give a right idea of him, much less 
 Chapman, and those other " old quaint writers : " for 
 " old," observe, is a term of contempt with him ; 
 though " ancient," he thinks, comprises every thing 
 that is respedable. But "old" means a man who 
 lived only a few hundred years back, and who did not 
 write either in Latin or Greek; whereas "ancient" 
 means a man who lived upwards of a thousand, and 
 wrote perhaps a dull book in one of tliose langviages 
 which has contrived to come down to us, owing to 
 some curious things it contains relative to customs and 
 manners, or to the influence of a succession of these 
 sort of critics, and the long fashion they have kept up 
 by dint of the conne(5tion that has hitherto subsisted 
 between the power of receiving a classical education 
 and the advantages of wealth and rank. When all 
 the world come to share in that education, some 
 singular questions will take place, both as to the 
 genius of the ancient writers, and the moral benefits 
 derivable from portions of them. If our friend of the 
 above class is a man of consequence, he looks upon 
 his learning as forming an additional barrier between 
 him and the uneducated. He quotes Greek in parlia-
 
 126 THE SEER. 
 
 ment, and takes it for an argument. Or he forgets 
 both his Greek and Latin, but thinks he could recover 
 it when he pleased ; and that is the same thing. If he 
 is a professed scholar, he is ignorant of every thing in 
 the world but scholarship, and therefore ignorant of 
 that too. He is a pompous schoolmaster, or a cap- 
 tious verbal critic, or, in his most respectable capacity, 
 a harmless and dreaming pedant, — a Dominie Samp- 
 son. If England had existed before Greece, he would 
 have been an idolater of Shakespeare and Milton, at 
 the expense of Homer and Euripides ; or he would 
 have known just as much of the former as he does of 
 the latter ; that is to say, nothing. In short, you may 
 describe him as a man who knows that there is an- 
 other man living on the upper side of his to\vn, of the 
 name of Ancient ; and a very wonderful gentleman he 
 takes Ancient to be, because he is rich, and has a 
 large library, and has given him access to it : but 
 what sort of a man Ancient really is, what is the 
 solidity of his understanding, the subtlety of his ima- 
 gination, or the contents of the books in his library, 
 except that they are printed in certain kinds of type, — 
 of all that our learned friend knows nothing ; and 
 therefore he concludes that nobody else can know. 
 
 Of the other extreme of pretenders who dogmatize 
 on this subje6t, — that is to say, who pronounce per- 
 emptory judgments of Yes and No, and Possible and 
 Impossible, without a due knowledge of the subje6l, — 
 the best and most intelligent portion sometimes con- 
 tains persons who know so much on other points, that 
 they ought to know better on this ; but, out of a resent- 
 ment of the very want of the other's advantages, aftect
 
 SCHOLARSHIP AND XO SCHOLARSHIP. IZJ 
 
 to despise them. For herein the exalters of a classical 
 education,' as the only thing needful, and the decriers 
 of it as a thing altogether unnecessary, set out from 
 precisely the same ground of self-sufficiency. The 
 former unduly trumpet up the education, merely be- 
 cause they have had it (or think they have) ; and the 
 latter as rudely decry it, merely because they have not. 
 These latter argue, that you may know all that is use- 
 ful in ancient books by means of translations ; and 
 that the poetry " and all that" may be got equally out 
 of them, or is of no consequence. Their ovv^n poetry, 
 meanwhile, such as it is, — that is to say, their caprices, 
 their imaginary advantages, and the coloring which 
 their humor and passions give to every thing near 
 them, — is in full blossom. 
 
 To cut short this question, which we feel more loath 
 to touch upon in the latter instance than in the former 
 (because more sympathy is due to the resentment of a 
 want than to the arrogance of a possession), we may, 
 perhaps, illustrate the point at once, to the reader's 
 satisfadiion, by the help of no greater a passage than a 
 jest out of "Joe Miller." 
 
 It is related of Archbishop Herring, that, when he 
 was at college, he fell one day into a gutter ; and that 
 a wag exclaimed as he got up, " Ah, Herrings you're 
 in a pretty fickle ! " Upon which a dull fellow went 
 away, and said, " So-and-so has been bantering poor 
 Herring. Herring fell into the gutter ; and so, says 
 Dick, says he, ' Ah, Herring, my boy, you're in a 
 pretty situation ! ' " 
 
 Now, the pedant, who is all for the original lan- 
 guage, and is of opinion that no version of their
 
 138 THE SEER. 
 
 writers or account of them can give you the least idea 
 of their spirit, is bound to maintain, on 'the same 
 principle, that it would be impossible to convey the 
 smallest real taste of this joke out of English into 
 Latin or Greek ; vv^hile every real scholar knovv^s that 
 the thing is very possible. 
 
 On the other side, the bigoted no-scholar is bound 
 to insist, that the stupid version of the joke is quite as 
 good as the original, or at any rate supplies us with 
 all that is really wanted of it ; that the word " situa- 
 tion " is as good as the word " pickle ; " and that, there- 
 fore, no utility is lost sight of, — no real information. 
 It is true, the whole joke is lost, the whole spirit of the 
 thing ; but that is no matter. As to confining the 
 notion of utility to matters of information, useful in 
 the ordinary sense of the word, however important, we 
 will not waste our room upon it at this time of day, 
 after all which has been said and understood to the 
 contrary. The more we really know of any thing, 
 languages included, the more, as it has been finely 
 said, do we "discipline" our "humanity;" that is, 
 teach our common nature to know what others have 
 thought, felt, and known before us, and so enable our 
 modesty and information to keep pace with each 
 other. 
 
 It will not be supposed by the refledling reader, that 
 we mean to compare the sufficiency of a translation 
 in the above instance with its being all that might be 
 wanted in others ; or that the spirit and peculiar fra- 
 grance (so to speak) of such poetiy as Shakespeare's 
 could be transferred through a Greek medium, without 
 losing any thing by the way ; unless a Shakespeare
 
 SCHOLARSHIP AXD NO SCHOLARSHIP. 1 29 
 
 himself were the operator, or even then. Undoubt- 
 edly the peculiarity of the medium itself, the vessel, 
 will make a dilTerence. All that we mean to say is, 
 that some real taste of the essence of ancient genius, 
 far better than what is afforded by the specimens 
 generally on sale, can be given by means of great care 
 and lovingness ; and that those who are so insanely 
 learned, as to take the vessel itself for the whole merit 
 of the contents, have no taste of it at all.
 
 i^o 
 
 CRICKET. 
 
 And Exercise in general. ( Written in May^ 
 
 HE fine, hard, flat, verdant floors are now 
 preparing in tlie cricket - grounds- for this 
 manly and graceful game ; and the village 
 greens (where they can) are no less getting ready, 
 though not quite so perfe6l. No matter for that. A 
 true cricketer is not the man to be put out by a trifle. 
 He sei"ves an apprenticeship to Patience after her 
 handsomest fashion. Henry the Fourth wished a 
 time might arrive in France, when every man should 
 have a pullet in his kettle. We should like to see 
 a time when every man played at cricket, and had a 
 sound sleep after it, and health, work, and leisure. It 
 would be a pretty world, if we all had something to 
 do, just to make leisure the pleasanter ; and green 
 merry England were sprinkled all over, " of after- 
 noons," with gallant fellows in white sleeves, who 
 threshed the earth and air of their cricket-grounds into 
 a crop of health and spirits ; after which they should 
 read, laugh, love, and be honorable and happy beings, 
 bringing God's work to its perfe6tion, and suiting the 
 divine creation they live in. 
 
 But to speak in this manner is to mix serious things 
 with mirthful. Well, and what true joy does not ?
 
 CRICKET. 
 
 131 
 
 Joy, if you did but know him thoroughl}', is a vciy 
 serious fellow, — on occasion ; and knows that happi- 
 ness is a very solid thing, and is zealous for Nature's 
 honor and glory. The power to be grave is the 
 proper foundation for levity itself to rejoice on. You 
 must have floor for your dancing, — good solid earth 
 on which to bother your cricket-balls. 
 
 The spring is monstrously said to be a sickly time 
 of the year ! Yes, for the sickly ; or rather (not to 
 speak irreverently of sickness which cannot be helped) 
 for those who have suffered themselves to become so 
 for want of stirring their bloods, and preparing for the 
 general movement in Nature's merry veins. People 
 stop in-doors, and render themselves liable to all " the 
 skyey influences ; " and then, out of the same thought- 
 less efleminacy of self-indulgence, they expose them- 
 selves to the catching of colds and fevers, and the 
 beautiful spring is blamed, and " fine Mays make fat 
 churchyards." The Gypsies, we will be bound, have 
 no such proverbs. The cricketer has none such. He 
 is a sensible, hearty fellow, — too wise not to take 
 proper precautions ; but, above all, too wise not to take 
 the best of all precautions ; which is, to take care of 
 his health, and be stirring. Nature is stirring, and so 
 is he. Nature is healthy, and so is he. Natui'e, in a 
 hundred thousand parts to a fradlion, is made up of 
 air and fields and country, and out of doors, and a 
 strong teeming earth, and a good-natured sky ; and so 
 is the strong heai't of the cricketer. 
 
 Do we, then, blame any of the sick, — even those 
 who are "blamable"? Not we ; we blame nobody: 
 what is the use of it? Besides, we don't like to be
 
 132 THE SEER. 
 
 blamed ourselves, especially when we are in the 
 wrong. We like to be coaxed, and called sensible, 
 and to have people wonder good-naturedly (not spite- 
 fully) how people so very shrewd can do any thing 
 erroneous ; and then we love them, and wish to be led 
 right by people so very intelligent, and know no 
 bounds to our wish to please them. So the measure 
 which we like ovirselves we would fain deal out to 
 others. You may do it without any insincerity, if the 
 patient have but one good or sensible quality, or one 
 sweet drop in his heart, from which comfort is to be 
 squeezed into the cup of advice. And who has not 
 this? But it may be said, it is not to be found. No? 
 Then the eyesight is very bad, or the patient is not to 
 be mended, — a case luckily as rare as it is melan- 
 choly, and to be looked upon as a madness. The best 
 step to be taken in that instance is to give him as 
 little advice, and see that he does as little harm, as 
 possible. For all reasonable care is to be taken of 
 the comfort even of those who give none. They are 
 a part of the human race. 
 
 As to our sickly friends before mentioned, all we 
 shall say to them is, — what was said by an abrupt but 
 benevolent friend of ours to the startled ears of a fine 
 lady, — " Get out ! " 
 
 " Well, I never ! " exclaimed the lady. 
 
 The reader knows the perfe6lion of meaning im- 
 plied by that imperfect sentence, " Well, I never ! " 
 However, the lady was not only a fine lady, but a 
 shrewd woman : so she " got out," and was a goer 
 out afterwards, and lived happily enough to benefit 
 others by her example.
 
 CRICKET. 133 
 
 Many people take no exercise at all, because they 
 cannot take, or think they cannot take, a great deal : 
 at least, this is the reason they give their consciences- 
 It is not always a sincere one. They had better say 
 to themselves at once, " I am too idle ; " or, " I am too 
 accustomed to sit still to make exercise pleasant." 
 Where the fault is aware of itself, there is better hope 
 of its mending. But the least bit of exercise is better 
 than none. A walk, five minutes before dinner, in a 
 garden, or down a street, is better than no walk at all. 
 It is some break, however small a one, into the mere 
 habit of sitting still, and growing stagnant of blood, 
 or corpulent of body. A little tiny bit of the sense 
 of doing one's duty is kept up by it. A glimpse of a 
 reverence is retained for sprightliness of mind, and 
 shapeliness of person ; and thus the case is not ren- 
 dered hopeless, should circumstances arise that tempt 
 tlie patient into a more adlive system. A fair kins- 
 woman of ours, once reckoned among the fairest of 
 her native cit}^, — a very intelligent woman as far as 
 books went, and latterly a very sharp observ-er into 
 tlie faults of other people, by dint of a certain exas- 
 peration of her own, — literally fell a sacrifice to 
 sitting in-doors, and never quitting her favorite pastime 
 of reading. The pastime was at once her bane and 
 her antidote. It would have been nothing but a bless- 
 ing, had she varied it. But her misfortune was, that 
 her self-will was still greater than her sense, and that, 
 being able to fill up her moments as pleasantly as she 
 wished din'ing health, she had persuaded herself I'.uit 
 she could go on filling them up as pleasantly hy 
 tlie same process, when she grew older ; and this
 
 134 "T^^^ SEER. 
 
 *' wouldn't do " ! For oui- bodies are changing, while 
 our minds are thinking nothing of the matter ; and 
 people in vain attribute the new pains and weaknesses 
 which come upon them to this and that petty cause, — 
 a cold, or a heat, or an apple ; thinking they shall 
 " be better to-morrow," and as healthy as they were 
 before. Time will not palter with the real state of 
 the case, for all our self-will and our over-weening 
 confidence. The person we speak of literally rusted 
 in her chair ; lost the use of her limbs, and died 
 paralytic, and ghastly to look upon, of pi^emature old 
 age. The physicians said it was a clear case. On 
 the other hand, we heard some years ago of a gentle- 
 man of seventy, a medical man (now most probably 
 alive and merry; we hope he will read this), who, 
 meeting a kinsman of ours in the street, and being 
 congratulated on the singular youthfulness of his 
 aspect, said that he was never better or more aclive in 
 his life ; that it was all owing to his having walked 
 sixteen miles a day, on an average, for the greater 
 part of it ; and that, at the age of seventy, he felt all 
 the lightness and cheerfulness of seventeen ! This is 
 an extreme case, owing to peculiar circumstances ; but 
 it shows of what our nature is capable, where favora- 
 ble circumstances are not contradi6led. This gentle- 
 man had cultivated a cheerful benevolence of mind, 
 as well as activity of body ; and the two together were 
 irresistible, even to old Time. The death of such a 
 man must be like going to sleep after a good journey. 
 
 The instindt which sets people in exercise is one of 
 the most natural of all instin6ts, and, where it is totally 
 stopped, must have been hurt by some very injudicious
 
 CRICKET. 135 
 
 circumstances in the bringing-up, either of pampered 
 will or prevented a6livity. The restlessness felt by 
 nervous people is Nature's kindly intimation that they 
 should bestir themselves. Motion, as far as hitherto 
 has been known, is the first law of the universe. The 
 air, the rivers, the world, move ; the very " fixed stars," 
 as we call them, are moving towards some unknown 
 point ; the substance, apparently the most unmoving, 
 the table in your room, or the wall of the opposite 
 house, is gaining or losing particles, — if you had eyes 
 fine enough, you would see its surface stirring : some 
 philosophers even hold that every substance is made 
 up of vital atoms. As to one's self, one must either 
 move away from death and disease, and so keep pleas- 
 antly putting them off, or they will move us with a 
 vengeance ; ay, in the midst of our most sedentary for- 
 getfulness, or while we flatter ourselves we are as still 
 and as sound as marble. Time is all the while draw- 
 ing lines in our faces ; clogging our limbs ; putting 
 ditch-water into our blood ; preparing us to mingle 
 with the grave and the rolling earth, since we will not 
 obey the great law, and move of our own accord. 
 
 Come, dear readers, now is the season, for such of 
 you as are vir^tuous in this matter, to pride and rejoice 
 yourselves ; and for such of you as have omitted the 
 virtue in your list, to put it there. It will grace and 
 gladden all the rest. A cricketer is a sort of glorifier 
 of exercise, and we respeft him accordingly: but it is 
 not in every one's power to be a cricketer ; and re- 
 spe6l attends a man in proportion as he does what he 
 is able. Come, then, be respectable in this matter as 
 far as you can ; have a whole mile's respedlability,
 
 136 THE SEER. 
 
 if possible, — or two miles', or four: let our homage 
 wait upon you into the fields, thinking of all the good 
 you are doing to yourselves, to your kindred, to your 
 offspring born or not born, and to all friends who love 
 you, and would be grieved to lose you. Healthy and 
 graceful example makes healthy and graceful children, 
 makes cheerful tempers, makes grateful and loving 
 friends. We know but of one inconvenience resulting 
 from the sight of such virtue ; and that is, that it 
 sometimes makes one love it too much, and long to 
 know it, and show our gratitude. A poet has said, 
 that he never could travel through different places, and 
 think how many agreeable people they probably con- 
 tained, without feeling a sort of impatience at not 
 being able to make their acquaintance. But he was a 
 rich poet, and his benevolence was a little pampered 
 and self-willed. It is enough for us that we some- 
 times resent our inability to know those whom we 
 behold, — who charm us visibly, or of whose exist- 
 ence, somehow or other, we are made pleasantly 
 certain, without going so far as to raise up exquisite 
 causes of distress after his fashion. Now, as we never 
 behold the cricketer or the horseman or the field- 
 stroller (provided we can suppose him bound on his 
 task with a liking of it) without a feeling of something 
 like respe6t and gratitude (for the twofold pleasurable 
 idea he gives us of Nature and himself) ; so we cannot 
 look upon all those fair creatures, blooming or other- 
 wise, who walk abroad with their friends or children, 
 whether in village or town, fine square or common 
 street, without feeling something like a bit of love, 
 and wishing that the world were in such condition
 
 CRICKET. 137 
 
 as to let people evince what they feel, and be more 
 like good, honest folks and chatty companions. If 
 we sometimes admire maid-sei-vants, instead of their 
 mistresses, it is not our fault, but that of the latter, 
 who will not come abroad. Besides, a real good- 
 humored maid-serv'ant, with a pretty face, playing 
 over the sward of a green square with her mistress's 
 children, is a very respectable as well as pleasant 
 obje6l. May no inferior of the other sex, under pre- 
 tence of being a gentleman^ deceive her, and render 
 her less so !
 
 I3S 
 
 A DUSTY DAY. 
 
 MONG the " Miseries of Human Life," as a 
 wit pleasantly entitled them, there are few, 
 while the rascal is about it, worse than a 
 great cloud of dust, coming upon you in street or 
 road, you having no means of escape, and the car- 
 riages, or flock of sheep, evidently being bent on im- 
 parting to you a full share of their besetting horror. 
 The road is too narrow to leave you a choice, even if 
 it had two pathways, which it has not : the day is 
 hot ; the wind is whisking. You have come out in 
 stockings, instead of boots ; not being aware that you 
 were occasionally to have two feet depth of dust to 
 walk in. JVow, now the dust is on you ; you are 
 enveloped ; you are blind ; you have to hold your 
 hat on against the wind : the carriages grind by, or 
 the sheep go pattering along, baaing through all the 
 notes of their poor gamut ; perhaps carriages and 
 sheep are together, the latter eschewing the horses' 
 legs, and the shepherd's dog driving against your own, 
 and careering over the woolly backs. Whew ! what 
 a dusting ! What a blinding ! What a whirl ! The 
 noise decreases ; you stop ; you look about you ; gath- 
 ering up your hat, coat, and faculties, after apologizing 
 to the gentleman against whom you have " lumped,"
 
 A DUSTY DAY. 1 39 
 
 and who does not look a bit the happier for your 
 apology. The dust is in your eyes, in your hair, in 
 your shoes and stockings, in your neck-cloth, in your 
 mouth. You grind your teeth in dismay, and find 
 them gritty. 
 
 Perhaps another carriage Is coming ; and you, find- 
 ing yourself in the middle of the road, and being 
 resolved to be master of at least this inferior horror, 
 turn about towards the wall or paling, and propose to 
 make your way accordingly, and have the dust behind 
 your back, instead of in front ; when, lo ! you begin 
 sneezing, and cannot see. You have taken involun- 
 tary snuff". 
 
 Or you suddenly discern a street, down which you 
 can turn, which you do with rapture, thinking to get 
 out of wind and dust at once ; when, unfortunately, 
 you discover that the wind is veering to all points of 
 the compass, and that, instead of avoiding the dust, 
 there is a ready-made and intense collection of it, then 
 in the a6t of being swept into your eyes by the attend- 
 ants on a — dust-cart ! 
 
 The reader knows what sort of a day we speak of. 
 It is all dusty, — the windows are dusty ; the people 
 are dust)^ ; the hedges in the roads are horribly 
 dusty, — pitiably, — you think they must feel it ; shoes 
 and boots are like a baker's ; men on horseback eat 
 and drink dust ; coachmen sit screwing up their eyes ; 
 the gardener finds his spade slip into the ground, 
 fetching up smooth portions of earth, all made of dust. 
 What is the poor pedestrian to do ? 
 
 To think of something superior to the dust, — 
 whether grave or gay. This is the secret of being
 
 140 THE SEER. 
 
 master of any ordinary, and of much exh'aordinary 
 trouble : bring a better idea upon it, and it is hard if 
 the greater thought does not do something against tlie 
 less. When we meet with any very unpleasant per- 
 son, to whose ways we cannot suddenly reconcile 
 ourselves, we think of some delightful friend, perhaps 
 tM'O hundred miles oft', — in Northumberland, or in 
 Wales. When dust threatens to blind us, we shut 
 our eyes to the disaster, and contrive to philosophize a 
 bit even then. 
 
 " Oh ! but it is not worth while doing that." 
 
 Good. If so, there is nothing to do but to be as 
 jovial as the dust itself, and take all gayly. Indeed, 
 this is the philosophy we speak of. 
 
 " And yet the dust is annoying too." 
 
 Well, take, then, just as much good sense as you 
 require for the occasion. Think of a jest ; think of a 
 bit of verse ; think of the dog you saw just now, 
 coming out of the pond, and frightening the dandy in 
 his new trousers. But, at all events, don't let your 
 temper be mastered by such a thing as a cloud of dust. 
 It will show, either tliat you have a very infirm temper 
 indeed, or no ideas in your head. 
 
 On all occasions in life, great or small, you may be 
 the worse for them, or the better. You may be made 
 the weaker or the stronger by them ; ay, even by so 
 small a thing as a little dust. 
 
 When the famous Arbuthnot was getting into his 
 carriage one day, he was beset witli dust. What did 
 he do ? Damn the dust or the coachman ? No : that 
 was not his fashion. He was a wit, and a good- 
 natured man : so he fell to making an epigram, which
 
 A DUSTY DAY. I4I 
 
 he sent to his friends. It was founded on scientific 
 knowledge, and consisted of the following pleasant 
 exaggeration : — 
 
 ON A DUSTY DAT. 
 
 The dust in smullcr particles arose 
 Tliau tliose wliich fluid bodies do compose. 
 Contraries in extremes do often meet : 
 Jt was so dry, that you might call it wet 
 
 Dust at a distance sometimes takes a burnished or 
 tawny aspe6l in the sun, almost as handsome as the 
 great yellow smoke out of breweries ; and you may 
 amuse your fancy with thinking of the clotids that 
 precede armies in the old books of poetry, — the 
 spears gleaming out ; the noise of the throng grow- 
 ing on the ear ; and, at length, horses emerging, and 
 helmets and flags, — the Lion of King Richard, or the 
 Lilies of France. 
 
 Or you may think of some better and more harm- 
 less palm of vidlory, " not without dust" {pahna non 
 sine pulvere), — dust such as Horace says the horse- 
 men of antiquity liked to kick up at the Olympic 
 games ; or, as he more elegantly phrases it, " collect " 
 {collcgisse juvat ; which a punster of our acquaint- 
 ance translated, " kicking up a dust at college ") ; or, 
 if you are in a very philosophic vein indeed, you may 
 think of man's derivation from dust, and his return to 
 it ; redeeming your thoughts from gloom by the hopes 
 beyond dust, and by the graces which poetry and the 
 affections have shed upon it in this life, like flowers 
 upon graves ; lamenting, with the tender Petrarch, 
 that " those eyes of which he spoke so warmly," and
 
 142 THE SEER. 
 
 that golden hair, and " the lightning of that angel 
 smile," and all those other beauties which made him a 
 lover " marked out from among men," — a being ab- 
 stradled " from the rest of his species," ■> — are now 
 "a little dust, without a feeling," — 
 
 " Poca polvere son che nulla sente ; " 
 
 or repeating that beautiful lyric of the last of the 
 Shakespearian men, Shirley, which they say touched 
 even the thoughtless bosom of Charles the Second : — 
 
 death's final conquest. 
 
 The glories of our birth and state 
 Are shadows, not substantial things : 
 Tiiere is no armor against fate ; 
 Death lays his iaj hand on kings : 
 
 Sceptre and crown 
 
 Must tumble down, 
 And in the dust be equal made 
 With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 
 
 Some men Avith swords may reap the field. 
 And plant fresh laurels where they kill : 
 But their strong nerves at last must yield ; 
 They tame but one another still. 
 
 Early or late 
 
 They stoop to fiite, 
 And must give up their murmuring breath, 
 W/ien they, pale captives, creep to death. 
 
 The garlands wither on your brow ; 
 Then boast no more your mighty deeds : 
 Upon Death's purple altar now 
 See where the victor-victim bleeds ! 
 
 All heads must come 
 
 To the cold tomb : 
 Only the actions of the just 
 Smell siceet, and blossom in the dust.
 
 A DUSTY DAY. 
 
 M3 
 
 ISIost true ; but, with the leave of the fine poet 
 (which he would gladly have conceded to us), 
 Death's conquest is not " final ; " for Heaven tri- 
 umphs over him, and love too, and poetry ; and thus 
 we can get through the cloud even of his dust, and 
 shake it, in aspiration, from our wings. Besides, we 
 know not, with any exaftitude, what or who Death 
 is, or whether there is any such personage, even 
 in his negative sense, except inasmuch as he is a 
 gentle voice, calling upon us to go some journey : 
 for the very dust that he is supposed to deal in is 
 alive ; is the cradle of other beings and vegetation ; 
 nay, its least particle belongs to a mighty life ; is 
 planetary ; is part of our star ; is the stufl' of which 
 the worlds are made, that roll and rejoice round the 
 sun. 
 
 Of these or the like reflecflions, serious or othei'wise, 
 are the cogitations of the true pedestrian composed : 
 such are the weapons with which he triumphs over 
 tlie most hostile of his clouds, whether material or 
 metaphorical ; and, at the end of his dusty walk, he 
 beholdeth, in beautiful perspective, the towel, and the 
 basin and water, with which he will render his eyes, 
 cheeks, and faculties as cool and fresh as if no dust 
 had touched them ; nay, more so ybr ^/ie contrast. 
 Never forget that secret of the reconcilements of this 
 life. To sit down, newly washed and dressed, after 
 a dusty journey, and hear that dinner is to be ready 
 "in ten minutes," is a satisfa6tion, — a crowning and 
 " measureless content," — which we hope no one will 
 enjoy who does not allow fair play between the harm- 
 less lights and shadows of existence, and treat his
 
 I^^ THE SEER. 
 
 dust with respedl. We defy him to enjoy it, at any 
 rate, like those who do. His ill-temper, somehow or 
 other, will rise in retribution against him, and find 
 dust on his saddle of mutton.
 
 H5 
 
 BRICKLAYERS, AND AN OLD BOOK. 
 
 T is a very hot day and a " dusty day : " you 
 are passing through a street in which there is 
 no shade, — a new street, only half built and 
 lalf paved ; the areas unfinished as you advance (it 
 is to be hoped no dnanken man will stray there) ; 
 the floors of the houses only raftered (you can't go in 
 and sit down) ; broken glass, at the turnings, on the 
 bits of garden wall ; the time, noon ; the month, 
 August ; the whole place glaring with the sun, and 
 colored with yellow brick, chalk, and lime. Occasion- 
 ally 3'ou stmnble upon the bottom of an old saucepan, 
 or kick a baked shoe. 
 
 In this very hot passage through life, you are long- 
 ing for soda-water or for the sound of a pump ; when 
 suddenly you — 
 
 " Hear a trowel tick against a brick," 
 
 and down a ladder by your side, which bends at 
 every step, comes dancing, with hod on shoulder, a 
 bricklayer, who looks as dry as his vocation ; his 
 eyes winking, his mouth gaping ; his beard grim with 
 a week's growth, the rest of his hair like a badger's. 
 You then, for the first time, see a liltle water by the 
 wayside, thick and white with chalk ; and are doubt- 
 ing whether to admire it as a liquid, or detest it for its 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 14^ THE SEER. 
 
 color ; when a quantity of lime is dashed against the 
 sieve, and you receive in your eyes and mouth a taste 
 of the dry and burning elements of mortar, w^ithout 
 the refreshment of the wet. Finally, your shoe is 
 burned ; and as the bricklayer says something to his 
 fellow in Irish, who laughs, you fancy that he is witty 
 at your expense, and has made some ingenious bull. 
 
 " A pretty pi(5ture, Mr. Seer ! and very refreshing, 
 this hot weather ! " 
 
 Oh ! but you are only a chance acquaintance of us, 
 my dear sir : you don't know what philosophies we 
 writers and readers of "The Seer" possess, which 
 render us " lords of ourselves," unencumbered even 
 with the mighty misery of a hot day, and the hod on 
 another man's shouldei. You, unfortunate easy man, 
 have been thinking of nothing: but tlie " agofravations " 
 of the street all this while, and are ready to enter your 
 house, after the walk, in a temper to kick off your 
 shoes into the servant's face. We, besides being in 
 the street, have been in all sorts of pleasant and 
 remote places ; have been at Babylon ; have been at 
 Bagdad ; have bathed in the river Tigris, the river of 
 that city of the " Arabian Nights ; " nay, have been in 
 Paradise itself! led by old Bochart and his vmdeniable 
 maps, where you see the place as "graphically set 
 forth " as though it had never vanished, and Adam 
 and Eve walking in it, taller than the trees. We are 
 writing upon the very book this moment, instead of a 
 desk, a fond custom of ours ; though, for dignity's sake, 
 we beg to say we /tave a desk : but we like an old 
 folio to write upon, written by some happy believing 
 hand, no matter whether we go all lengths or not with
 
 BRICKLAYERS, AND AN OLD BOOK. 1 47 
 
 his sort of proof, jorovided he be in earnest and a good 
 fellow.* 
 
 Let us indulge ourselves a moment, during this hot 
 subje6t, with the map in question. It is now before 
 us ; the river Euphrates running up thi'ough it in dark 
 fulness, and appearing through the paper on which 
 we are writing like rich veins. Occasionally we take 
 up the paper to see it better ; the garden of Eden, 
 however, always remaining visible below, and the 
 mountains of Armenia at top. The map is a small 
 folio size, darkly printed, with thick letters ; a good 
 stout sprinkle of mountains ; a great tower to mark 
 the site of Babylon ; trees, as formal as a park in 
 those days, to shadow forth the terrestrial paradise, 
 with Adam and Eve, as before mentioned ; Greek 
 and Hebrew names here and there mingled with the 
 Latin; a lion, towards the north-west, sitting in 
 Armenia, and bigger than a mountain ; some other 
 beast, " stepping west" from the Caspian Sea ; and a 
 great tablet in the south-west corner, presenting the 
 title of the map, the site of Eden, or the Terrestrial 
 Paradise (Edenis, scu Paradisi Terrestris Situs), sur- 
 mounted with a tree, and formidable with the Serpent, 
 who, suddenly appearing from one side of it with the 
 apple in his mouth, is startling a traveller on the other. 
 These old maps are as good to study as pictures and 
 books ; and the region before us is specially rich, — 
 reverend with memories of scripture, pompous with 
 Alexander's cities, and delightful with the " Arabian 
 
 * Our volume is the Geographia Snc.-^r, fivllnwed liy his <■( ninu'titarv 
 on Stephen of Byzantium, the treatise De Jure Begum, &c. &c. The 
 Leyden edition, 1707.
 
 I4S THE SEER. 
 
 Nights." You go up from the Persian Gulf at the 
 foot, passing (like Sindbad) the city of Caiphat, where 
 " bdellium " is to be had ; and the Island of Bahrim, 
 famous for its pearl-fishery (Bahrim Insula ^largarita- 
 rum Piscat. Celebris) ; then penetrate the garden of 
 Eden, with the river Euphrates, as straight as a canal ; 
 pass the Cypress-grove, which furnished the wood of 
 which the ark was made ; Mousal, one of our old 
 friends in the " Arabian Nights ; " Babylon, fiimous 
 for a hundi"ed fanes, the sublime of brick-btiilding ; 
 »2Tina the "Naarda of Ptolemy," — a "celebrated 
 school of the Jews ;" Ur (of the Chaldees), the coun- 
 try of Abraham ; Noah's city, Xu/zt? Qa/iavuv, the city of 
 Eight, so called from the eight persons that came out 
 of the ark ; Omar's Island, where there is a mosque 
 (says the map) made out of the relics of the ark ; 
 Mount Ararat, on the top of which it rested ; and 
 thence you pass the springs of the Tigris and the 
 Euphrates into Colchis with its Golden Fleece, leaving 
 the Caspian Sea on one side, and the Euxine on the 
 other, with Phasis the country of pheasants, and Cap- 
 padocia, whei^e you see the mild light shining on the 
 early Christian Church ; and you have come all this 
 way through the famous names of Persia and Arabia 
 and Armenia and Mesopotamia and Syria and As- 
 syria, with Arbela on the right hand, where Darius 
 was overthrown, and Damascus on the left, rich, from 
 time immemorial to this day, with almost every East- 
 ern association of ideas, sacred and profane. 
 
 In regions of this nature did sincere, book-loving, 
 scholarly Bochart spend i/ie days of his mind^ — by 
 far the greater portion of the aclual days of such a
 
 BRICKLAYERS, AND AN OLD BOOK. 149 
 
 man's life ; and, for that reason, we, who, though not 
 so scholarly, love books as well as he did, love to have 
 the folio of such a man under our paper for a desk ; 
 making his venerable mixture of truth and fidion a 
 foundation, as it were, for our own love of both, and 
 rendering the dream of his existence, in some measure, 
 as tangible to us as it was to himself, in the shape of 
 one of his works of love. Do people now-a-days — 
 do even we ourselves — love books as they did in 
 those times? It is hardly possible, seeing how the 
 volumes have multiplied to distradl choice and pas- 
 sion, and also how small in size they have become, — 
 octavos and duodecimos. A little book is indeed " a 
 love" (to use a modern phrase), and fitted to carry 
 about with us in our walks and pockets : but then a 
 great book, — a folio, — was a thing to look up to, 
 to build, — a new and lawful Babel ; and therefore it 
 had an aspe6l more like a religion. Well, love is 
 religion too, and of the best ; and so we will return 
 to our common task. 
 
 Now observe, O casual reader of "The Seer"! 
 what such of us as are habituated to it found in our 
 half-built street. You take a brick perhaps for an 
 ordinary bit of burnt clay, fit only to build No. 9, Golf 
 Street, Little Meadows ; and to become a brick-bat, 
 and be kicked to pieces in an old alley. O thou of 
 little book-stall ! Why, the very manufa6lure is illus- 
 trious with antiquity, — with the morning beams that 
 touched the house-tops of Shinaar : there is a clatter 
 of brick-making in the fields of Accad ; and the work 
 looks almost as ancient to this day, with its straw-built 
 tents and its earthy landscape. Not desolate therefore,
 
 150 THE SEER. 
 
 or vnirefreshed, were we in our new and hot street: 
 for the first brick, Hke a tahsman, ti'ansported us into 
 old Babylon, with its tower and its gardens ; and 
 there we drove our chariot on the walls, and com^ersed 
 with Herodotus, and got out of the way of Semiramis, 
 and i-ead, as men try to read at this day, the arrow- 
 headed letters on the bricks, — as easy to us at that 
 time as A. B. C. ; though what they mean now, 
 neither we nor Mr. Rich can tell. The said brick, as 
 our readci^s have seen, thence took us into paradise, 
 and so through all the regions of Mesopotamia and 
 the " Arabian Nights," with our friends Bochart and 
 Bedreddin Hassan ; and, returning home, what do we 
 descry ? The street itself alone ! No : Ben Jonson , 
 the most illustrious of bricklayers, handling his trowel 
 on the walls of Chancery Lane, and the obstinate rem- 
 nants of Roman brick and mortar lurking still about 
 London, and Spenser's celebration of — 
 
 " Those hrichj towers, 
 The which on Themines brode aged backe doe ride, 
 Where now the studious lawyers have tlieir bowres ; " 
 
 to wit, the Temple ; and then we think of our old 
 and pifture-learned friend, our lamented Hazlitt, who 
 first taught us not to think white cottages better than 
 red, especially among trees, — noting to us the finer 
 harmony of the contrast : to which we can bear 
 instant and curious testimony ; for passing the other 
 day through the gate that leads from St. James's Park 
 into the old court, betwixt Sutherland and Marlbo- 
 rough Houses, we mai-velled at what seemed to our 
 near-sighted eyes a shower of red colors in a ti^ee to
 
 BRICKLAYERS, AND AN OLD BOOK. 151 
 
 the right of us, at the corner ; which colors, upon 
 inspection, jDroved to be notliing better than those of 
 the very red bricks that bordered the windows of the 
 building behind the trees. We smiled at the mistake ; 
 but it was with pleasui^e : for it reminded us that even 
 defedls of vision may have their compensations ; and 
 it looked like a symbol of the pleasures witli which 
 fancy and commonplace may conspire to enrich an 
 observer willing to be pleased. 
 
 The most elegant houses in the world, generally 
 speaking, are built of clay. You have riches inside ; 
 costliness and beauty on the internal walls, — paint- 
 ings, papers, fine draperies, — themselves compounded 
 of the homeliest growths of the earth : but, pierce an 
 inch or two outwards, and you come to the stuft' of 
 which the hovel is made. It is nothing but mind at 
 last which throws elegance upon the richest as well as 
 the poorest materials. Let a rich man give a hundred 
 guineas for a daub., and people laugh at him and his 
 daub together. The inside of his wall is no better 
 than his out. But let him put Titian or Coireggio 
 upon it, and he puts viind there, — visible mind, and 
 therefore the most precious to all ; his own mind too, 
 as well as the painter's ; for love partakes of what it 
 loves : and yet the painter's visible mind is not a bit 
 different, except in degree, from the mind with which 
 every lover of the graceful and the fiossiblc may adorn 
 whatsoever it looks upon. The obje6l will be perhaps 
 rich in itself; but, if not, it will be rich, somehow or 
 other, in association ! And it cannot be too often 
 repeated, as a trutli in stridest logic, that every 
 impression is real which is a(5tually made upon us,
 
 152 THE SEER. 
 
 whether by fa6l or fancy. No minds entii-ely divorce 
 the two, or can divorce them, even if they evince the 
 spiritual part of their facidties in doing nothing bet- 
 ter than taking a fancy to a teacup or a hat : and 
 Nature, we may be assured, intended that we should 
 receive pleasure from the associations of ideas, as well 
 as from images tangible ; for all mankind^ more or 
 less^ do so. The great art is to cultivate impressions 
 of the pleasant sort ; just as a man will raise whole- 
 some plants in his garden, and not poisonous ones. 
 
 A bricklayer's tools may illustrate a passage in 
 Shakespeare. One of them is called a bevel., and is 
 used to cut the under-side of bricks to a required 
 angle. " Bevel " is a sort of irregular square. 
 
 " They that level 
 At my abuses, reckon up then: own. 
 I may be straight, though they themselves be hevd." 
 
 Sonnet cxxi. 
 
 We shall conclude this paper with two brick-laying 
 anecdotes, one of which has more manner than 
 matter ; but there is an ease in it, very comforting, 
 when we refledl upon the laboriousness of the occupa- 
 tion in a hot .day. And this reminds us, that, in 
 considering the bricklayer, we must not forget how 
 many of his hours he passes in a world of his own, 
 though in the streets, — pacing on scaffolding, de- 
 scending and ascending ladders, living on the outsides 
 of houses, betwixt ground-floors and garrets or the 
 sun, now catching a breeze unknown to us prisoners 
 of the pavement. We have heard of a bricklayer who 
 was a somnambulist by daytime, and used to go on
 
 BRICKLAYERS, AND AN OLD BOOK. 153 
 
 with his work in tliat state, along the precipices of 
 parapet- walls, overlooking us from the top, — now 
 burning in and the nice points of tops of ladders. But 
 to our anecdotes. 
 
 An acquaintance of ours was passing a street in 
 which Irish bricklayers were at work ; when he heard 
 one of them address, from below, another who was 
 sending him baskets down by a rope. " Lour asy, 
 wou'd you ? " said he ; meaning that his friend was to 
 loiver the baskets in a style less hasty and inconve- 
 nient. '■'• Lour asyl" exclaimed the other, in a tone 
 indignant at having the quiet perfe6lion of his move- 
 ments called in question, and in the very phraseology 
 of which we seem to hear the Hibernian elevation of 
 his eyebrows, as well as the rough lightness of his 
 voice, — " I lour so asy, I don't know how I lour." 
 
 The other story appears to us to exhibit the very 
 prince of bulls, — the prize animal in that species of 
 cattle. An Irish laborer laid a wager with another, 
 that the latter could not cai-iy him up the ladder to the 
 top of a house in his hod, without letting him fall. 
 Agreed. The hod is occupied, the ladder ascended : 
 there is peril at every step. Above all, there is life 
 and tlie loss of the wager at the top of the ladder ; 
 death and success below ! The house-top is reached 
 in safety : the wagerer looks humbled and disap- 
 pointed. " Well," said he, " you have won ; there is 
 no doubt of tliat : worse luck to you another time ! 
 But, at the third story, / had hopes."
 
 154 
 
 A RAINY DAY. 
 
 ^^^^ OUR, pour, pour ! There is no hope of 
 *^ its leaving off" says a lady, turning away 
 from the window : " you must make up your 
 mind, Louisa, to stay at home, and lose your romps, 
 and have a whole frock to sit in at dinner, and be very 
 vmhappy with mamma." 
 
 "No, mamma, not that; but don't you think it will 
 Jiold up ? Look, the kennels are not quite so bad ; 
 and those clouds — they are not so heavy as they were. 
 It is getting quite light in the sky." 
 
 " I am afraid not," says the lady, at once grave and 
 smiling. " But you are a good girl, Louisa : give me 
 a kiss. We will make the day as happy as we can at 
 home. I am not a very bad play-fellow, you know, 
 for all i am so mvich bigger and older." 
 
 " O mamma ! you know I never enjoy my cousins' 
 company half so much, if you don't go with me ; but 
 (here two or three kisses are given and taken, the 
 lady's hands holding the little girl's cheeks, and her 
 eyes looking fondly into hers, which are a little wet) 
 — but — but don't you think we really shall be able to 
 go? don't you think it will hold ?//f " And here the 
 child returns to the window. 
 
 " No, my darling : it is set in for a rainy day. It
 
 A RAINY DAV. 1 55 
 
 has been raining all tlie morning : it is now afternoon ; 
 Jiind we have, I fear, no chance whatever." 
 
 " The puddles don't dance quite as fast as they did," 
 says the little girl. 
 
 " But hark ! " says tlie lady : " there^s a furious dash 
 of water against the panes." 
 
 " Tl t ! " quoth the little girl against her teeth : 
 " dear me ! It's very bad indeed ! I wonder what 
 Charles and Mary are thinking of it." 
 
 " Why, they are thinking just as you are, I dare 
 say ; and doing just as you are, very likely, — making 
 tlieir noses flat and numb against the glass." 
 
 The little girl laughs, with a tear in her eye ; and 
 mamma laughs, and kisses her, and says, " Come : as 
 you cannot go to see your cousins, you shall have a 
 visitor yourself. You shall invite me and Miss Nayler 
 to dinner, and sit at the head of the table in the little 
 room ; and we will have your favorite pudding, and 
 no servant to wait on us. We will wait on ourselves, 
 little child, and behave well ; and you shall tell papa, 
 when he comes home, what a nice and I will try to 
 be a very great, good, big girl I was." 
 
 " Oh, dear, mamma ! that will be very pleasant. 
 What a nice, kind mamma you are ! and how afraid I 
 am to vex you, though you do play and romp with 
 me!" 
 
 "Good girl! But — ah! you need not look at the 
 window any more, my poor Louisa. Go, and tell 
 cook about the pudding; and we will get you to give 
 us a glass of wine after it, and drink the health of your 
 cousins, so as to fancy them partaking it with us ; and 
 Miss Nayler and I will make fine speeches, and re-
 
 156 THE SEER. 
 
 turn you their thanks ; and then you can tell them 
 about it, when you go next time.'' 
 
 " O dear, dear, dear mamma ! so I can ; and how 
 very nice that will be ! And I'll go this instant about 
 the pudding : and I don't think we could go as far as 
 Welland's now, if the rain did hold up ; and the 
 puddles are worse than ever." 
 
 And so ofl' runs little fond-heart and bright-eyes, 
 happy at dining in fancy with her mother and cousins 
 all at once, and almost feeling as if she had but ex- 
 changed one holiday for another. 
 
 The sight of mother and daughter has made us 
 forget our rainy day. Alas ! the lady was right, and 
 the little child wrong ; for there is no chance of to-day's 
 clearing up. The long-watched and interesting pud- 
 dles are not indeed " worse than ever," — not suddenly 
 hurried and exasperated, as if dancing with rage at 
 the flogging given them : they are worse even than 
 that ; for they are everlastingly the same, — the same 
 full, twittering, dancing, circle-making overflowings 
 of gutter which they have been ever since five in the 
 morning, and which they mean to be, apparently, till 
 five to-morrow. 
 
 Wash, wash, wash ! The window - panes, welter- 
 ing and dreary and rapid, and misty with the rain, 
 are like the face of a crying child who is afraid to 
 make a noise, but who is resolved to be as " aggra- 
 vating" as possible with the piteous ostentation of his 
 wet cheeks ; weeping with all his might, and breath- 
 ing, with wide-open mouth, a sort of huge, wilful, 
 evei-lasting sigh, by way of accompaniment. Occa- 
 sionally he puts his hand over to his ear, — hollow, —
 
 A RAINY DAY. 157 
 
 as though he feared to touch it, his master having 
 given him a gentle pinch ; and, at the same moment, 
 lie stoops with bent head and shrugged shoulders, and 
 one lifted knee, as if in the endurance of a w^rithing 
 anguish. 
 
 You involuntarily rub one of the panes, thinking to 
 see the better into the street, and forgetting that the 
 mist is made by the rain on the other side. On goes 
 the wet as ever, rushing, streaming, running down, 
 mingling its soft and washy channels ; and now and 
 then comes a clutter of drops against the glass, made 
 by a gust of wind. 
 
 Clack, meantime, goes the sound of pattens ; and, 
 when you do see, you see the street almost deserted, — 
 a sort of lay Sunday. The rare carriages drive as fast 
 as they can ; the hackney-coaches lumber along, glossy 
 (on such occasions only) with the wet, and looking as 
 old and rheumatic as the poor coachmen, whose hats 
 and legs are bound with straw ; the rain-spouts are 
 sputtering torrents ; messengers dart along in oil-skin 
 capes ; the cry of the old shrimp-seller is hoarse ; the 
 postman's knock is ferocious. 
 
 If you are out of doors, woe betide you, should you 
 have gone out unprepared, or relying on a coach ! 
 Your shoes and stockings are wet through, the latter 
 almost as muddy as the dog that ran by just now 
 without an owner ; the rain washes your face, gets 
 into the nape of your neck, makes a spout of your hat. 
 Close by your ears comes roaring an uml^rella, the 
 face underneath it looking astonislied at you. A 
 butcher's boy dashes along, and contrives to come with 
 his heel plump upon the exa<5l spot of a loose piece of
 
 I5S THE SEKR. 
 
 pavement, requisite for giving you a splash that shall 
 embrace the whole of your left leg. To stand up 
 under a gateway is impossible, because, in the state 
 you are in, you will catch your " death o'cold ; " and 
 the people underneath it look at you amazed, to think 
 how you could have come out " such a day, in such a 
 state." Many of those who are standing up have 
 umbrellas ; but the very umbrellas are wet through. 
 Those who pass by the spot, with their oil or silk 
 skins roaring as above (a sound particularly distress- 
 ing to the non-possessors), show that they have not 
 been out of doors so long. Nobody puts his hand out 
 from under the gateway to feel whether it is still 
 raining : there can be no question of it. The only 
 voluntary person visible in the street is a little errand- 
 boy, who, because his mother has told him to make 
 great haste, and not get wet feet, is amusing himself 
 M'ith double zest by kicking something along through 
 the gutter. 
 
 In private streets, the pavement is washed clean ; 
 and so it is for the moment in public : but horrible 
 will be the mud to-morrow. Horses are splashed up 
 to the mane : the legs of the rider's overalls are as if 
 he had been sitting in a ditch. Poor girls with band- 
 boxes trip patiently along, with their wet curls over 
 their eyes, and a weight of skirt. A carriage is com- 
 ing down a nari'ow street : there is a plenitude of mud 
 between you and the wheels, not to be eschewed. On 
 dash they, and give you tliree beauty spots, one right 
 on the nose. 
 
 Swift has described such a day as this in lines 
 which first appeared in the " Tatler," and which
 
 A RAINY DAY. 1 59 
 
 hearty, unenvying Steele introduces as written by one 
 " who treats of every subje6t after a manner that no 
 other author has done, and better than any other can 
 do." [In transcribing such woi'ds, one's pen seems to 
 partake the pleasure of the writer.] Swift, availing 
 himself of the license of a difterent age, is apt to bring 
 less pleasant images among his plpasant ones tlian 
 suit everybody now ; but here follows the greater part 
 of his verses : — 
 
 " Careful observers may foretell the hour, 
 By sure prognostics, wlien to dread a shower : 
 While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er 
 Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. 
 If you be wise, then go not far to dine : 
 You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. 
 A coming shower your shooting corns presage. 
 Old aches will tlirob, your hollow tooth will rage. 
 Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen : 
 He damns the climate, and complains of spleen. 
 
 Meanwhile the south, rising with dabbled wings, 
 A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings. 
 
 Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, 
 
 While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope : 
 
 Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean 
 
 Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean. 
 
 You fly ; invoke the gods ; then, turning, stop 
 
 To rail : she, sin(jin(j, still luhirls on her mop. 
 
 Not yet the dust liad shimned the unequal strife. 
 
 But, aided by the wind, fought still for life ; 
 
 And, wafted with its foe by violent gust, 
 
 'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust. 
 
 Ah ! where must needy poet seek for aid, 
 
 AVhen dust and rain at once his coat invade, — 
 
 His only coat, where dust, confused with rain. 
 
 Roughens the nap, and leaves a mingled stiiin ?
 
 l6o THE SEER. 
 
 Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down, 
 Threatening with deluge tliis devoted town. 
 To sliops in crowds the draggled females fly ; 
 Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. 
 The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach. 
 Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. 
 The tucked-up seamstress walks with hasty strides. 
 While streams run down her oiled mnbrella's sides. 
 There various kinds, by various fortunes led. 
 Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. 
 Trimnphant Tories and desponding Whigs 
 Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. 
 Boxed in a chair,* the beau impatient sits. 
 While spouts 7'un clattanng o'er tJie roof by Jits : 
 And ever and anon, with frightful din. 
 The leather sounds ; he trembles from witliin. 
 So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, 
 Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed, 
 (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do. 
 Instead oj" paying chairmen, ran them through,) 
 Laocoon struck the outside with his spear. 
 And each imprisoned hero q[uaked for fear." 
 
 The description concludes witli a triumphant ac- 
 count of a gutter, more civic than urbane. 
 
 How to make the best of a bad day has been 
 taught by implication in various pages throughout 
 our writings, especially in those where we have 
 studied tlie art of making every thing out of nothing, 
 and have delivered immense observations on rain- 
 drops. It may be learned in the remarks which 
 appeared in our article on a " Dusty Day." The 
 secret is short and comprehensive, and fit for trying 
 occasions of all sorts. Think of S07nethi7ig superior 
 
 • A sedan.
 
 A RAINY DAY. l6l 
 
 to it ; make it yield entertaining and useful reflec- 
 tion, as the rain itself brings out the flowers. Think 
 of it as a benignant enemy, who keeps you in-doors, 
 or otherwise puts your philosophy to a trial, for the 
 best of purposes, — to fertilize your fields ; to purify 
 your sti-eets against contagion ; to freshen your air 
 and put sweets upon your table ; to furnish life with 
 variety, your light with a shadow that sets it off', your 
 poets with similes and descriptions. When the sum- 
 mer rains, heaven is watering your plants. Fancy an 
 inse6t growling at it under his umbrella of rose-leaf. 
 No wiser is the man who grumbles under his gate- 
 way ; much less over his port wine. Very high-bred 
 ladies would be startled to learn that they are doing a 
 very vulgar thing (and hurting their tempers to boot), 
 when they stand at a window, peevishly obje6ling to 
 the rain, witli such phrases as " Dear me ! how tire- 
 some ! " My lady's maid is not a bit less polite, 
 when she vows and "purtests" that it is " quite con- 
 trary" — as if Heaven had sent it on purpose to 
 thwart her ladyship and her waiting-woman ! By 
 complaint we dwindle and subjedt ourselves, make 
 ourselves little-minded, and the slaves of circumstance. 
 By rising above an evil, we set it at a distance from 
 us, render it a small object, and live in a nobler air. 
 
 A wit, not unworthy to be named in the same page 
 with the Dean of St. Patrick's, has given a good 
 lesson on the subject, — Green, in his poem on the 
 "Spleen;" a teacher the fittest in the world to be 
 heard upon it, because he was subjedl to what he 
 writes about, and overcame it by the cultivation of 
 sense and good temper. Some bookseller with a taste, 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 l62 THE SEER. 
 
 who deals in that species of pubhcation, should give 
 us a new edition of this poem, with engravings. Wil- 
 kie, Mulready, and others, might find subje6ts enough 
 to furnish a design to every page. 
 
 " In rainy days keep double guard, 
 Or spleen will surely be too hard ; 
 Which, like those fish hy sailors met, 
 Fly highest when their wings are wet. 
 In such dull weather, so unfit 
 To enterprise a work of wit ; 
 When clouds one yard of azure sky 
 That's fit for simile deny, — 
 I dress my face with studious looks. 
 And shorten tedious hours with books : 
 But if dull fogs invade the head. 
 That memory minds not what is read, 
 I sit in windows dry as ark, 
 And on the drowning world remark ; 
 Or to some coffee-house I stray 
 For news, the manna of the day, 
 And from the hipped discourses gather 
 That pohtics go by the weather ; 
 Then seek good-humored tavern-chums. 
 And play at cards, but for small sums •, 
 Or with the merry fellows quaff. 
 And laugh aloud with them that laugh ; 
 Or drink a joco-serious cup 
 With souls who've took their freedom up ; 
 And let my mind, beguiled by talk. 
 In Epicurus' garden walk. 
 Who thought it heaven to be serene ; 
 Pain, hell ; and purgatory, spleen."
 
 163 
 
 THE EAST WIND. 
 
 ]ID any body ever hear of the east wind when 
 he was a boy? We remember no such 
 thing. We never heard a word about it all 
 the time we were at school. There was the school- 
 master with his yeriila ; but there was no east wind. 
 Our elders might have talked about it ; but such ca- 
 lamities of theirs are inaudible in the ears of the 
 juvenile. A fine day was a fine day, let the wind be 
 in what quarter it miglit. While writing this article, 
 we hear everybody complaining that the fine weather 
 is polluted by the presence of the east wind. It has 
 lasted so long as to force itself upon people's attention. 
 The ladies confess their exasperation with it, for mak- 
 ing free without being agreeable ; and as ladies' quar- 
 rels are to be taken up, and there is no other way of 
 grappling with this invisible enemy, we have put our- 
 selves in a state of editorial resentment, and have 
 resolved to write an article against it. 
 
 The winds are among the most mysterious of the 
 operations of the elements. We know not whence 
 they come, or whither they go ; how they spring up, 
 or how fall ; why they prevail so long, after such and 
 such a fashion, in certain quarters ; nor, above all, 
 why some of them should be at once so lasting and
 
 164 THE SEER. 
 
 apparently so pernicious. We know some of their 
 uses ; but there is a great deal about them we do not 
 know, and it is difficult to put them to the question. 
 As the sailor said of the ghosts, " We do not under- 
 stand their tackle." What is very curious is, there 
 seems to be one of tliem which prevails in some par- 
 ticular quarter, and has a character for malignity. In 
 the South, there is the Sirocco^ — an ugly customer, 
 dark, close, suffocating, making melancholy ; which 
 blots the sky, and deje6ts the spirits of the most lively. 
 In the Oriental parts of the earth, there is the Tifoon, 
 supposed by some to be the Typhon or Evil Principle 
 of the ancients ; and in Europe we have the East 
 Wind, whom the ancients reckoned among the sons 
 of Typhon. The winds, Mr. Keightley tells us, were 
 divided by the Greeks into '■'■ wholesome and noxious; 
 the former of which, Boreas (North Wind), Zephyrus 
 (West Wind), and Notus (South Wind), were, ac- 
 cording to Hesiod, the children of Astrjeus {Starry) 
 and Eos {Dawn). The other winds, he says (proba- 
 bly meaning only those who blow from the east), are 
 the race of Typhoeus, whom he describes as the last 
 and most terrible child of Earth. In Greece, as over 
 the rest of Europe, the East Wind was pernicious." 
 
 In England, the east wind is accounted pernicious 
 if it last long ; and it is calculated, we believe, that it 
 blows during three parts even of our fine weather. 
 We have known a single blast of it blight a long row 
 of plants in a greenhouse. Its effedls upon the veget- 
 able creation are sure to be visible, if it last any time ; 
 and it puts invalids into a very unpleasant state, by 
 drying the pores of the skin, and thus giving adlivity
 
 THE EAST WIND. " 165 
 
 to those numerous internal disorders, of which none 
 are more painful than what the moderns call nei"vous- 
 ness, and our fathers understood by the name of the 
 "vapors" or the " spleen," which, as Shenstone ob- 
 served, is often little else than obstiiidled perspiration. 
 An irritable poet exclaimed, — 
 
 " Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge 
 Our melting clime, except the baleful East 
 Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks 
 The fancy of the year. Our fathers talked 
 Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene : 
 Good Heaven ! for what imexpiated crimes 
 Tliis dismal change ? " 
 
 This terrible question we shall answer joresently. 
 Meantime, the suffering poet may be allowed to have 
 been a little irritated. It is certainly provoking to 
 have this invisible enemy invading a whole nation at 
 his will, and sending among us, for weeks together, 
 his impertinent and cutting influence ; drying up our 
 skins, blowing dust in our eyes, contradicting our 
 sunshine, smoking our suburbs, behaving boisterously 
 to our women, aggravating our scolds, withering up 
 our old gentlemen and ladies, nullifying the respite 
 from smoke at Bow, perplexing our rooms between 
 hot and cold, closing up our windows, exasperating 
 our rheumatisms, basely treating the wounds of our 
 old soldiers, spoiling our gardens, preventing our 
 voyages, assisting thereby our Bow - street runners, 
 hurting our tempers, increasing our melancholies, 
 deteriorating our night-airs, showing our wives' ankles, 
 disordering our little children, not being good for our 
 beasts, perplexing our pantaloons (to know which to
 
 l66 THE SEER. 
 
 put on), deranging our ringlets, scarifying our eyes, 
 thinning our apple - tarts, endangering our dances, 
 getting damned our weathercocks, barbarizing our 
 creditors, incapacitating our debtors, obstructing all 
 moist processes in the arts, hindering our astrono- 
 mers,* tiring our editors, and endangering our sales. 
 
 The poet asks what crimes could have brought upon 
 us the evils of our climate? He should ask the 
 schoolboy that runs about, the Gypsy who laughs at 
 the climate, or the ghost of some old English yeoman 
 before taxes and sedentary living abounded. An 
 east wind, like eveiy other evil, except folly and ill 
 intention, is found, when properly grappled with, to 
 be not only no evil, but a good, at least a negative 
 one, sometimes a positive ; and even folly and ill 
 intention are but the mistakes of a community in its 
 progress from bad to good. How evil comes at all, 
 we cannot say. It suffices us to believe, that it is in 
 its nature fugitive ; and that it is the nature of good, 
 when good returns, to outlast it beyond all calculation. 
 If we led the natural lives to which we hope and 
 believe that the advance of knowledge and comfort 
 will bring us round, we should feel the east wind as 
 little as the Gypsies do : it would be the same refresh- 
 ment to us that it is to the glowing schoolboy, after 
 his exercise ; and as to nipping our fruits and flowers, 
 some living creature makes a dish of them, if we do 
 not. With these considerations, we should be well 
 content to recognize the concordia discors that har- 
 monizes the inanimate creation. If it were not for 
 
 * During east winds, astronomers are unable to pursue their observa- 
 tions, on account of a certain hazy motion in the air.
 
 THE F.ASr WIND. 1 67 
 
 the east wind in this country, we should probably 
 have too much wet ; our winters would not dry up ; 
 our June fields would be unpassable ; we should not 
 be able to enjoy the west wind itself, the Zephyr 
 with his lap full of flowers. And, upon the supposi- 
 tion that tliere is no peril in the east wind that may 
 not ultimately be nullified, we need not trouble our- 
 selves with the question, why the danger of excessive 
 moisture must be counteradled by a wind full of dry- 
 ness. All the excesses of the elements will one day 
 be pastime for the healthy arms and discerning facul- 
 ties of discovering man. 
 
 And so we finish our vituperations in the way in 
 which such things ought generally to be finished, with 
 a discovery that the fault obje6led to is in ourselves, 
 and renewed admiration of the abundance of promise 
 in all the works of Nature.
 
 i6S 
 
 STRAWBERRIES. 
 Written in Jtine. 
 
 F our article on this subjedl should be woi'th 
 little (especially as we are obliged to be 
 brief, and cannot bring to our assistance much 
 quotation or other helps) , we beg leave to say, that we 
 mean to do little more in it than congratulate the 
 reader on the strawberry-season, and imply those plea- 
 sant interchanges of conventional sympathy which 
 give rise to the common expressions about the weather 
 or the state of the harvest, — things which everybody 
 knows what everybody else will say about them, and 
 yet upon which everybody speaks. Such a charm has 
 sympathy, even in its cominonest aspedl. 
 
 A. A fine day to-day. 
 
 B. Very fine day. 
 
 A. But I think we shall have rain. 
 
 B. I think we shall. 
 
 And so the two speakers part, all the better pleased 
 with one another merely for having uttered a few 
 words, and those words such as either of them could 
 have reckoned upon beforehand, and has interchanged 
 a thousand times. And justly are they pleased. 
 They are fellow-creatures living in the same world ; 
 and all its phases are of importance to them, and 
 themselves to one another. The meaning of the
 
 STRAWBERRIES. 169 
 
 words is, "I feel as you do ; " or, " I am interested in 
 the same subject, and it is a pleasure to me to let 
 you ^ee it." What a pity that mankind do not vent 
 the same feelings of good-will and a mutual under- 
 standing on fifty other subje6ls ! And many do ; but 
 all might, and, as Bentham says, " with how little 
 trouble ! " 
 
 There is strau^berry-zueather^ for instance, which is 
 as good a point of the weatlier to talk about as rain 
 or sun. If the phrase seems a little forced, it is per- 
 haps not so much as it seems ; for the weather and 
 fruit and color and the birds, &c., &c., all hang to- 
 gether : and, for our parts, we would fain think, and 
 can easily believe, that without this special degree of 
 heat (while we are writing), or mixture of heat and 
 fresh air, the strawberries would not have their special 
 degree of color and fragrance. The world answers to 
 the spirit that pla3S upon it, as musical instruments 
 to musician ; and if cloud, sunshine, and breeze (the 
 fine playing of Natiu-e) did not descend upon earth 
 precisely as they do at this moment, there is good 
 reason to conclude, that neither fruit, nor any thing 
 else, would be precisely what it is. The cuckoo 
 would want tone, and the strawberries relish. 
 
 Do you not like, reader, the pottle of strawberries? 
 and is it not manifest, from old habit and association, 
 that no other sort of basket would do as well for their 
 first arrival? It " carries " well ; it lies on your arm 
 like a length of freshness : then there is the slight 
 paper covering, the slighter rush tie, the inner cover- 
 ing of leaves ; and, when all these give place, fresh 
 and fragrant and red lie the berries, — the best, it is 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 lyo THE SEER. 
 
 to be feared, at the top. Now and then comes a half- 
 mashed one, sweet in its over-ripeness ; and, when the 
 fingers cannot conveniently descend further, tlie rest, 
 urged by a beat on the flat end, are poured out on 
 a plate, and perhaps agreeably surprise us with the 
 amount. Meantime, the fingers and nails have got 
 coloi^ed as with wine. 
 
 What matter of fadl is this ! And how everybody 
 knows it ! And yet, for that very reason, it is wel- 
 come ; like the antiquities about the weather. So 
 abundant is Nature in supplying us with entertain- 
 ment, even by means of simply stating that any thing is 
 what it is 1 Paint a strawberiy in oil ; and, provided 
 the representation be true, how willing is everybody 
 to like it ! And observe, even in a smaller matter, 
 how Nature heaps our resources one upon another, — 
 fust giving us the thing, then the representation of it 
 or power of painting it (for art is nature also), then 
 the power of writing about it, the power of thinking, 
 the power of giving, of receiving, and fifty others. 
 Nobles put the leaves in their coronets. Poets make 
 them grow for ever, where they are no longer to be 
 found. We never pass by Ely Place, in Holborn, 
 without seeing the street there converted into a garden ; 
 and the pavement, to rows of strawberries. 
 
 " My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, 
 I saw good strawberries in your garden there : 
 I do beseech you, send for some of them," — 
 
 quoth Richard the Third to the bishop, in that scene 
 of frightful calmness and smooth-speaking which pre- 
 cedes his burst of thunder against Hastings. Richard
 
 STRAWBERRIES. I^I 
 
 is gone with his bad passions, and the garden is 
 gone ; but the tyrant is converted into poetry, and the 
 strawberries also ; and here we have them both, 
 equally harmless. 
 
 Sir John Suckling, in his richly colored portrait of 
 a beautiful girl, in the tragedy of " Brennoralt," has 
 made their dying leaves precious : — 
 
 " Eyes full and quick, 
 Witli breath as sweet as double violets, 
 And wholesome as dying leaves of strawberries." 
 
 Strawberries deserve all the good things that can be 
 said of them. They are beautiful to look at, delicious 
 to eat, have a fine odor, and are so wholesome, that 
 they are said to agree with the weakest digestions, and 
 to be excellent against gout, fever, and all sorts of 
 ailments. It is recorded of Fontenelle, that he at- 
 tributed his longevity to them, in consequence of their 
 having regularly cooled a fever which he had every 
 spring ; and that he used to say, " If I can but reach 
 the season of strawberries ! " Boerhaave (Mr. Phillips 
 tells us in his " History of Fruits ") looked upon their 
 continued use as one of the principal remedies in cases 
 of obstrudlion and viscidity, and in putrid disorders ; 
 Hoffman furnished instances of obstinate disorders 
 cured by them, even consumptions ; and Linnteus says, 
 that, by eating plentifully of them, he kept liimself free 
 from the gout. They are good even for the teeth. 
 
 A fruit so very useful and delightful deserves a 
 better name ; though the old one is now so identified 
 with its beauty, that it would be a i^ity to get rid of it. 
 Nobody thinks of straw, when uttering the word
 
 172 THE SEER. 
 
 " strawberry," but only of color, fragrance, and sweet- 
 ness. The Italian name is -Fragola, — fragrant. The 
 English one originated in the custom of putting straw 
 between the fruit and the ground, to keep it dry and 
 clean ; or perhaps, as Mr. Phillips thinks, from a still 
 older practice, among children, of threading the wild 
 berries upon straws of grass. He says that this is 
 still a custom in parts of England where they abound, 
 and that so many " straws of berries " are sold for a 
 penny. 
 
 One of the most luxurious of simple dishes is straw- 
 berries and cream. The very sound of the words 
 seems to set one's page floating like a bowl. But 
 there is an Italian poet, who has written a whole 
 poem upon strawberries, and who, with all his love of 
 them, will not hear of them without sugar. He in- 
 vokes them before him in all their beauty, which he 
 acknowledges with enthusiasm ; and then tells them, 
 like some capricious sultan, that he does not choose to 
 see their faces. They must hide them, he says, — put 
 on their veils ; to wit, of sugar. " Sti^awberries and 
 sugar" are to him what "sack and sugar" was to 
 Falstaff, — the indispensable companions, the sover- 
 eign remedy for all evil, the climax of good. He finds 
 fault with Moliere's "Imaginary Sick Man" for not 
 hating them ; since, if he had eaten them, they would 
 have cured his hypochondria. As to himself, he talks 
 of them as Fontenelle would have talked, had he 
 written Italian verse : — 
 
 " lo per me d' esse, a boccon ricchi e doppi 
 Spesso rigonfio, e rinconforto il seno ; 
 E brontolando per dispetto scoppi
 
 STRAWBERRIES. 1 73 
 
 Quel Tecchio d' Ippocrasso e rli Galeno, 
 
 Clie i giulebbi, 1' essenzie, ed i sciloppi 
 
 Abborro, come 1' ostico veleno ; 
 
 E di Fragole un' avida satolla 
 
 Mi purga il sangue, e avviva ogni midolla." 
 
 "For my part, I confess I fairly swill 
 And stufl" myself with strawberries ; and abuse 
 The doctors all the wliile, draught, powder, and pill ; 
 And wonder how any sane head can choose 
 To have their nauseous jalaps and their bill ; 
 All which, like so much poison, I refuse. 
 Give me a glut of strawberries ; and, lo ! 
 Sweet through my blood, and very bones, they go." 
 
 Almost all the writers of Italy who have been wortli 
 any thing have been writers of verse at one time or 
 another. Prose-writers, historians, philosophers, doc- 
 tors of law and medicine, clergymen, — all have con- 
 tributed their quota to the sweet art. The poet of 
 the strawberries was a Jesuit, a very honest man too, 
 notwithstanding the odium upon his order's name ; 
 and a grave, eloquent, and truly Christian theologian, 
 of a life recorded as " evangelical." It is delightful 
 to see what playfulness such a man thought not in- 
 consistent with the most sacred aspirations. The 
 strawberry to him had its merits in the creation, as 
 well as the star ; and he knew how to give each its 
 due. Nay, he runs the joke down, like a humorist 
 who could do nothing else but joke if he pleased, but 
 gracefully withal, and with a sense of Nature above 
 his art, like a true lover of poetry. His poem is in 
 two cantos, and contains upwards of nine hundred 
 lines, ending in the following bridal climax, which 
 the good Jesuit seems to have considered the highest
 
 174 THE SEER. 
 
 one possible, and the very cream even of strawberries 
 and sugar. He has been aposti'ophizing two young 
 friends of his, newly married, of the celebrated Vene- 
 tian families jNIocenigo and Loredano ; and this is the 
 blessing with which he concludes, pleasantly smiling 
 at the end of his gravity : — 
 
 " A questa coppia la serena pace 
 Eternamente intorno scherzi e voli : 
 E la ridente sanitii vivace 
 La sua vita longhissima consoli ; 
 E la felicitk pura e verace, 
 Non dal suo fianco un solo di s' involi ; 
 E a dire che ogni cosa lieta vada, 
 Su le Fragole il zucchero le cada." 
 
 "Around this loving pair may joy serene 
 On wings of balm for ever wind and play; 
 And laughing Health her roses shake between, 
 Makmg their life one long, sweet, flowery way ! 
 May bliss, true bliss, pxire, self-possessed of mien, 
 Be absent from their side, no, not a day ! 
 Li short, to sum up all that earth can prize, 
 May they have sugar to tlieir strawberries ! "
 
 ^75 
 
 THE WAITER. 
 
 f^OING into tlie city the other day upon busi- 
 ness, we took a chop at a tavern, and renewed 
 our acquaintance, after years of interruption, 
 with that swift and untiring personage, yclept a 
 waiter. We mention tliis long interval of acquaint- 
 ance in order to account for an}^ deficiencies that may 
 be found in our description of him. Our readers, 
 perhaps, will favor us with a better. He is a charac- 
 ter before the public : thousands are acquainted with 
 him, and can fill up the outline. But we felt irresist- 
 ibly impelled to sketch him ; like a portrait-painter 
 who comes suddenly upon an old friend, or upon 
 an old sei'vant of the family. 
 
 We speak of the waiter properly and generally so 
 called, — the representative of the whole, real, official 
 race, — and not of the humorist or other eccentric 
 genius occasionally to be found in it, moving out of 
 the orbit of tranquil but fiery waiting, not absorbed, 
 not devout towards us, not silent or monosyllabical, 
 — fellows that affect a character beyond that of waiter, 
 and get spoiled in club-rooms, and places of theatrical 
 resort. 
 
 ^'our thorough waiter has no ideas out of the sphere 
 of his duty and tlie business ; and yet he is not nar-
 
 176 THE SEER. 
 
 row-minded either. He sees too much variety of 
 character for that, and has to exercise too much con- 
 sideration for the " drunken gentleman." But his 
 world is the tavern, and all mankind but its visitors. 
 His female sex are the maid-servants and his young 
 mistress, or the widow. If he is ambitious, he aspires 
 to marry one of the two latter : if otherwise, and 
 IMolly is prudent, he does not know but he may carry 
 her off some day to be mistress of the Golden Lion at 
 Chinksford, where he will " show off" in the eyes of 
 Betty Laxon, who refused him. He has no feeling 
 of noise itself but as the sound of dining, or of silence 
 but as a thing before dinner. Even a loaf with him 
 is hardly a loaf: it is so many "breads." His long- 
 est speech is the making-out of a bill viva voce, — 
 " Two beefs, one potatoes, three ales, two wines, six 
 and twopence," — which he does with an indifferent 
 celerity, amusing to new-comers who have been re- 
 lishing their fare, and not considering it as a mere set 
 of items. He attributes all virtues to everybody, 
 provided they are civil and liberal ; and of the exist- 
 ence of some vices he has no notion. Gluttony, for 
 instance, with him, is not only inconceivable, but looks 
 very like a virtue. He sees in it only so many more 
 " beefs," and a generous scorn of the bill. As to 
 wine, or almost any other liquor, it is out of your 
 power to astonish him with the quantity you call for. 
 His "Yes, sir," is as swift, indifferent, and official 
 at the fifth bottle as at the first. Reform and other 
 public events he looks upon purely as things in the 
 newspaper ; and the newspaper as a thing taken in at 
 taverns, for gentlemen to read. His own reading is
 
 THE WAITER. 1 77 
 
 confined to "Accidents and Offences," and the adver- 
 tisements for butlers ; which latter he peiTJses with an 
 admiring fear, not choosing to give up "a certainty." 
 When young, he was always in a hurry, and exasper- 
 ated his mistress by running against the other waiters, 
 and breaking the " neguses." As he gets older, he 
 learns to unite swiftness with caution ; declines wast- 
 ing his breath in immediate answers to calls ; and 
 knows, with a slight turn of his face, and elevation 
 of his voice, into what precise corner of the room to 
 pitch his " Coming, sir." If you told him, that, in 
 Shakespeare's time, waiters said, " Anon, anon, sir," 
 he would be astonished at the repetition of the same 
 word in one answer, and at the use of three words 
 instead of two ; and he would justly infer, that Lon- 
 don could not have been so large, nor the chop-houses 
 so busy, in those days. He would drop one of the 
 two syllables of his " Yes, sir," if he could ; but busi- 
 ness and civility will not allow it : and therefore he 
 does what he can by running them together in the 
 "swift sufficiency of his " Yezzir." 
 . " Thomas ! " 
 
 " Yezzir." 
 
 " Is my steak coming?" 
 
 " Yezzir." 
 
 "And the pint of port?" 
 
 "Yezzir." 
 
 " You'll not forget the postman? " 
 
 "Yezzir." 
 For, in the habit of his acquiescence, Thomas not 
 seldom says " Yes, sir," for " No, sir ; " tlie habit it- 
 self rendering him intelligible.
 
 178 THE SEER. 
 
 His morning dress is a waistcoat or jacket : his coat 
 is for afternoons. If the establishment is flourishing, 
 he likes to get into black as he grows elderly : by 
 which time also he is generally a little corpulent, and 
 wears hair-powder ; dressing somewhat laxly about 
 the waist, for convenience of movement. Not, how- 
 ever, that he draws much upon that part of his body, 
 except as a poise to what he carries ; for you may 
 observe that a waiter, in walking, uses only his low- 
 est limbs, from his knees downwards. The move- 
 ment of all the rest of him is negative, and modified 
 solely by what he bears in his hands. At this period 
 he has a little inoney in the funds, and his nieces look 
 up to him. He still carries, however, a napkin 
 under his arm, as well as a corkscrew in his pocket ; 
 nor, for all his long habit, can he help feeling a satis- 
 faction at the noise he makes in drawing a cork. He 
 thinks that no man can do it better ; and that Mr. 
 Smith, who understands wine, is thinking so too, 
 though he does not take his eyes oft' the plate. In his 
 right waistcoat-pocket is a snuff-box, with which he 
 supplies gentlemen late at night, after the shops are 
 shut up, and when they are in desperate want of 
 another fillip to their sensations, after the devil and 
 toasted cheese. If particularly required, he will 
 laugh at a joke, especially at that time of night ; justly 
 thinking that gentlemen towards one in the morn- 
 ing " will be facetious." He is of opinion it is in 
 "human nature" to be a little fresh at that period, 
 and to want to be jDut into a coach. 
 
 He announces his acquisition of property by a 
 bunch of seals to his watch, and perhaps rings on his
 
 THE WAITER. 
 
 179 
 
 fingers, — one of them a mourning-ring left him by 
 his Lite master ; the other a present, either from his 
 nieces' fother, or from some ultra-good-natured old 
 gentleman whom he helped into a coach one night, 
 and who had no silver about him. 
 
 To see him dine, somehow, hardly seems natural ; 
 and he appears to do it as if he had no right. You 
 catch him at his dinner in a corner, — huddled apart, 
 — '"Thomas dining!" instead of helping dinner. 
 One fancies that the stewed and hot meats and the 
 constant smoke ought to be too much for him, and 
 that he should have neither appetite nor time for such 
 a meal. 
 
 Once a year (for he has few holidays), a couple of 
 pedestrians meet him on a Sunday in the fields, and 
 cannot conceive for the life of them who it is ; till the 
 startling recollection occurs, " Good God ! — it's the 
 waiter at the Grogram ! "
 
 i8o 
 
 "THE BUTCHER." 
 
 Butchers and yurtes. — Butler's Defence of the 
 English Dra?na^ (&c. 
 
 T was observed by us tlie other day in a jour- 
 nal, that "butchei"s are wisely forbidden to 
 be upon juries ; not because they are not as 
 good as other men by nature, and often as truly kind ; 
 but because the habit of taking away the lives of sheep 
 and oxen inures them to the sight of blood and vio- 
 lence and mortal pangs." 
 
 The " Times," in noticing this passage, corrected 
 our error. There neither is, nor ever was, it seems, 
 a law forbidding butchers to be upon juries ; though 
 the reverse opinion has so prevailed among all classes, 
 that Locke takes it for granted, in his " Treatise on 
 Education ; " and our own authority was the author of 
 " Hudibras," a man of very exacft and universal knowl- 
 edge. The passage that was in our mind is in his 
 " Posthumous Works," and is worth quoting on other 
 accounts. He is speaking of those pedantic and 
 would-be classical critics who judge the poets of one 
 nation by those of another. Butler's resistance of their 
 pretensions is the more honorable to him, inasmuch as 
 the prejudices of his own education, and even the
 
 " THE BUTCHER." l8j 
 
 propensity of his genius, lay on the learned and anti- 
 impulsive side ; but his judgment was thorough-going 
 and candid. The style is of the off-hand, careless 
 order, after the fashion of the old satires and epistles, 
 though not so rough : — 
 
 " An English poet should be tried by his peers, 
 And not by pedants and pliilosophers, 
 Licompetent to judge poetic fury, 
 As butchers are forbid to be of a jury; 
 Besides the most intolerable wrong 
 To try their masters in a foreign tongue 
 By foreign jurymen like Sophocles, 
 Or tales* fiilser than Euripides ; 
 When not an English native dares appear 
 To be a witness for the prisoner ; 
 When all the laws they use to arraign and try 
 The innocent, and wronged delinquent by, 
 Were made by a foreign lawyer and his pupils. 
 To put an end to all poetic scruples ; 
 And, by the advice of virtuosi Tuscans, 
 Determined all the doubts of socks and buskins ; 
 Gave judgment on all past and future plays, 
 As is appaient by Speroni's case,t 
 Which Lope Vega first began to steal, 
 
 * Tales (Latin), — persons chosen to supply the place of men impan- 
 elled upon a jury or inquest, and not appearing when called. [We 
 copy this from a very useful and pregnant volume called the "Treasury 
 of Knowledge," full of such heaps of information as are looked for in 
 lists and vocabularies, and occupying the very margins with proverbs. 
 Mr. Disraeli, sen., objects to this last overflow of contents; but not, we 
 think, with his usual good sense and gratitude, as a lover of books. 
 These proverbial sayings, which are the most universal things in the 
 world, appear to us to have a particularly good effect in thus coming in 
 to refresh one among the technicalities of knowledge.] 
 
 t Speroni, a celebrated critic in the days of Tasso.
 
 l82 THE SEER. 
 
 And after him the French Jilou * Corneille ; 
 
 And, since, our EngHsh plagiaries nim 
 
 And steal their far-fetched criticisms from him. 
 
 And by an action, falsely laid of trover,^ 
 
 The lumber for their proper goods recover, 
 
 Enough to furnish all the lewd impeachers 
 
 Of witty Beaumont's poetry and Fletcher's, 
 
 Who for a few misprisions of wit, 
 
 Are charged by those who ten times worse commit, 
 
 And, for misjudging some unhappy scenes, 
 
 Are censured for it with more unlucky sense; 
 
 (How happily said !) 
 
 When all their worst miscarriages delight 
 
 And please more than the best that pedants write." 
 
 Having been guilty of this involuntary scandal 
 against the butchers, we would fain make them 
 amends by saying nothing but good of them and their 
 trade ; and, truly, if we find the latter part of the pro- 
 position a little difficult, they themselves are for the 
 most part a jovial, good-humored race, and can afford 
 the trade to be handled as sharply as their beef on the 
 block. There is cut and come again in them. Your 
 butcher breathes an atmosphere of good living. The 
 beef mingles kindly with his animal nature. He 
 grows fat with the best of it, perhaps with inhaling 
 its very essence ; and has no time to grow spare, 
 
 * Fihu, — " pickpocket " ! This irreverent epithet must liave startled 
 many of Butler's readers and brother-loyalists of the court of Charles 
 the Second ; but he suffered nothing to stand in the way of what seemed 
 to him a just opinion. 
 
 t Trover, — an action for goods found, and not delivered on demand. 
 — Treasury of Knowledge. Butler's wit dragged every species of infor- 
 mation into his net.
 
 " THE BUTCHER." 1S3 
 
 theoretical, and hypochondriacal, like those whose 
 more thinking stomachs drive them upon the appa- 
 rently more innocent but less easy and analogous 
 intercommunications of fruit and vegetables. For our 
 parts, like all persons wlio think at all, — nay, like 
 the butcher himself, when he catches himself in a 
 strange fit of meditation, after some doctor perhaps 
 has " kept him low," — we confess to an abstract dis- 
 like of eating the sheep and lamb that we see in the 
 meadow ; albeit our concrete regard for mutton is 
 considerable, particularly Welsh mutton. But Nature 
 .has a beautiful way of reconciling all necessities that 
 are unmalignant ; and as butchers at present must 
 exist, and sheep and lambs would not exist at all in 
 civilized countiies, and crop the sweet grass so long, 
 but for the brief pang at the end of it, he is as com- 
 fortable a fellow as can be, — one of the liveliest 
 ministers of her mortal necessities, — of the deaths 
 by which she gives and diversifies life ; and has no 
 more notion of doing any harm in his vocation than 
 the lamb that swallows the lady-bird on the thyme. 
 A very pretty insert is she, and has had a pretty time 
 of it ; a very calm, clear feeling, healthy, and there- 
 fore happy little woollen giant, compared with her, 
 is the lamb, — her butcher ; and an equally innocent 
 and festive personage is the butcher himself, notwith- 
 standing the popular fixllacy about juries, and the 
 salutary misgiving his beholders feel when they see 
 him going to take the lamb out of the meadow, or 
 entering the more tragical doors of the slaughter- 
 house. His thoughts, while knocking down tlie ox, 
 are of skill and strength, and not of cruelty ; and
 
 1S4 THE SEER. 
 
 the death, though It may not be the very best of deaths, 
 is, assuredly, none of the worst. Animals, tliat grow 
 old in an artificial state, would have a hard time of it 
 in a lingering decay. Their mode of life would not 
 have prepared them for it. Their blood would not 
 run lively enough to the last. We doubt even whether 
 the John Bull of the herd, when about to be killed, 
 would change places with a very gouty, irritable old 
 gentleman ; or be willing to endure a grievous being 
 of his own sort, with legs answering to the gout ; 
 much less if Cow were to grow old with him, and 
 plague him with endless lowings, occasioned by the 
 loss of her beauty, and the increasing insipidity of 
 the hay. A human being who can survive those 
 ulterior vaccinations must indeed possess some great 
 reliefs of his own, and desei^ve them ; and life may 
 reasonably be a wonderfully precious thing in his 
 eyes : nor shall excuse be wanting to the vaccinators, 
 and what made them such, especially if they will but 
 grow a little more quiet and ruminating. But who 
 would have the death of some old, groaning, aching, 
 effeminate, frightened lingerer in life, such as Mjecenas 
 for example, compared with a good, jolly knock-down 
 blow, at a reasonable period, whether of hatchet or of 
 apoplexy, — whether the bull's death or the butcher's? 
 Our own preference, it is true, is for neither. We 
 are for an excellent, healthy, happy life of the very 
 best sort ; and a death to match it, going out calmly 
 as a summer's evening. Our taste is not particular ; 
 but we are for the knock-down blow rather than the 
 death-in-life. 
 
 The butcher, when young, is famous for his health,
 
 " THE BUTCHER." 1 85 
 
 strength, and vivacity, and for his riding any kind of 
 horse down any sort of hill, witli a tray before him, 
 the reins for a whip, and no hat on his head. It was 
 a gallant of this sort that Robin Hood imitated, when 
 he beguiled the poor sheriff into the forest, and showed 
 him his own deer to sell. The old ballads apostro- 
 phize him well as the " butcher so bold," or better, — 
 with the accent on the last syllable, — "thou bold 
 butcher." No syllable of his was to be trifled with. 
 The butcher keeps up his health in middle life, not 
 only with the food that seems so congenial to flesh, 
 but with rising early in the morning, and going to 
 market with his own or his master's cart. When 
 more sedentary, and veiy jovial and good-humored, 
 he is apt to expand into a most analogous state of fat 
 and smoothness, with silken tones and a short bi-eath, 
 — harbingers, we fear, of asthma and gout ; or the 
 kindly apoplexy comes, and treats him as he treated 
 the ox. 
 
 When rising in the world, he is indefatigable on 
 Saturday nights ; walking about in the front of those 
 white-clothed and joint-abounding open shops, while 
 the meat is being half-cooked beforehand with the 
 gas-lights. The rapidity of his " What-d'ye-buy ? " on 
 tliese occasions, is famous ; and both he and the good 
 housewives, distraded with the choice before them, 
 pronounce the legs of veal " beautiful^ — exceed- 
 ingly." 
 
 How he endures the meat against his head as he 
 carries it about on a tray, or how we endure that 
 he should do it, or how he can handle the joints as he 
 does with that habitual indifference, or with what 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 1 86 THE SEER. 
 
 floods of hot water he contrives to purify himself of 
 the exoterical part of his philosophy on going to bed, 
 we cannot say ; but, take him all in all, he is a fine 
 specimen of the triumph of the general over tlie par- 
 ticular. 
 
 The only poet that was the son of a butcher (and 
 the trade may be proud of him) is Akenside, who 
 naturally resorted to the "Pleasures of Imagination." 
 As to Wolsey, we can never quite pi6ture him to 
 ourselves apart from the shop. He had the cardi- 
 nal butcher' s-virtue of a love of good eating, as his 
 pi6ture shows ; and he was foreman all his life to tlie 
 butcher Henry the Eighth. We beg pardon of the 
 trade for this application of their name ; and exhort 
 them to cut the cardinal, and stick to the poet.
 
 i87 
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 the reader take a pinch of snuff with us? 
 Reader. With pleasure. 
 Editor. How do you like it? 
 
 Reader. Extremely fine ! I never saiv such snuff. 
 
 Editor. Precisely so. It is of the sort they call 
 Invisible; or, as the French have it, tabac imagi- 
 naire, — imaginaiy snuff. No macuba equals it. The 
 tonquin bean has a coarse flavor in comparison. To 
 my thinking, it has the hue of Titian's orange-color, 
 and the very tip of the scent of sweet-brier. 
 
 Reader. In fadl, one may perceive in it just what 
 one pleases, or nothing at all. 
 
 Editor. Exactly that. 
 
 Reader. Those who take no snuff whatever, or 
 even hate it, may take this, and be satisfied. Ladies, 
 nay brides, may take it. 
 
 Editor. You apprehend the delicacy of it to a 
 nicet}\ You will allow, nevertheless, by virtue of 
 the same fineness of perception, that even when you 
 discern, or choose to discern, neither hue, scent, nor 
 substance in it, still there is a very s.-nsible pleasure 
 realized the moment the pinch is oflered. 
 
 Reader. True, the good-will., — that which is pass- 
 insT between us two now.
 
 iSS THE SEER. 
 
 Editor. You have it, — that which loosens the 
 tongues of people in omnibuses, and helps to thaw 
 even the frozen-heartedness of diplomacy. 
 
 Reader. I beg your pardon for a moment ; but 
 is t/iaw^ my dear sir, the best word you could have 
 chosen? Snuff can hai'dly be said to thaw. 
 
 Editor. {Aside. This it is to set readers upon 
 being critical, and help them to beat their teachers.) 
 You are right What shall we say? To dissipate, — 
 to scatter, — to make evaporate ? To blow up in a 
 sneeze? 
 
 Reader. I will leave you to judge of that. 
 
 Editor. {Aside. His politeness is equal to his 
 criticism. Oh, penny, twopenny, and three-halfpenny 
 " trash ! " You will end in ruining the trade of your 
 inventors !) My dear reader, 1 wish I could give you 
 snuff made of the finest Brazil in a box of diamond. 
 But good-will is the flower of all snuff-taking ; and 
 luckily a pinch of that may be taken equally as well 
 out of horn, or of invisible wood, as of the gifts of 
 emperors. This is the point I was going to speak of. 
 The virtues of snuff itself may be doubted ; but the 
 benevolence of an offered pinch and the gratitude of 
 an accepted one are such good things, and snuft-takers 
 have so many occasions of interchanging these, that 
 it is a question whether the harm of the self-indul- 
 gence (if any) is not to be allowed for the sake of 
 the social benefit. 
 
 A grave question ! Let us consider it a little with 
 the seriousness becoming snuff-takers, real or imagi- 
 nary. They are a refledting race : no men know bet- 
 ter that every thing is not a trifle which appears to be
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 1 89 
 
 such in uncleai-ed eyes, any more than every thing is 
 grand which is of serious aspe6l or dimensions, A 
 snuff-taker looks up at some mighty error, takes his 
 pinch, and shakes the imposture, Hke the remnant 
 of the pinch, to atoms, with one " flesh-quake " of 
 head, thumb, and indifference. He also looks into 
 some little nicety of question or of creation, — of tlie 
 intelledtual or visible world, — and having sharpened 
 his eyesight with another pinch, and put his brain 
 into proper cephalic condition, discerns it, as it were, 
 microscopically, and pronounces that there is " more 
 in it than the tcn-snuff-taklng would suppose." 
 
 We agree with him. The mere fancy of a pinch 
 of snuff, at this moment, enables us to look upon 
 divers worlds of mistake in the history of man but 
 as so many bubbles, breaking, or about to break ; 
 while the pipe out of which they were blown assumes 
 all its real superiority in the hands of the grown 
 smoker, — the superiority of peace and quiet over 
 war and childish dispute. An atom of good-will is 
 worth an emperor's snuff-box. We happened once 
 to be compelled to moot a point of no very friendly 
 sort with a stranger whom we never saw before, of 
 whom we. knew nothing, and whose appearance in 
 the matter we conceived to be altogether unwarrant- 
 able. At one of the delicatcst of all conjundures in 
 the question, and when he presented himself in his 
 most equivocal light, what should he do, but, with tlie 
 best air in the world, take out a snuff-box, and offer 
 us the philanthropy of a pinch ? We accepted it with 
 as grave a face as it was offered ; but, secretly, the 
 appeal was irresistible. It was as much as to say,
 
 190 THE SEER. 
 
 " Qiiestions may be mooted, doubts of all sorts en- 
 tertained, — people are thrown into strange situations 
 in this world ; but, abstra6tedly, what is any thing 
 worth compared with a quiet moment, and a resolution 
 to make the best of a perplexity ? " Ever afterwards, 
 whenever the thought of this dispute came into our 
 recolle<5tion, the bland idea of the snuff-box always 
 closed our account with it ; and our good-will sur- 
 vived, though our perplexity remained also. 
 
 But this is only a small instance of what must have 
 occurred thousands of times in matters of dispute. 
 Many a fierce impulse of hostility must have been al- 
 layed by no greater a movement. Many a one has 
 been caused by less ! A few years ago, a petition 
 was presented to the House of Commons on the sub- 
 jedl of duelling ; by which it appeared that people 
 have challenged and killed one another for words 
 about " geese " and " anchovies " and " a glass of 
 wine." Nay, one person was compelled to fight 
 about our very peace-maker, " a pinch of snuff." But, 
 if so small are the causes of deadly offence, how 
 often must they not have been removed by the judici- 
 ous intervention of the pinch itself? The geese, an- 
 chovies, glass of wine, and all, might possibly have 
 been made harmless by a dozen grains of Havana. 
 The handful of dust with which the Latin poet settles 
 his wars of the bees was the type of the pacifying 
 magic of the snuff-box : — 
 
 " ffi motus animoriun, atque haec certamina tanta, 
 Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent." 
 
 " These movements of high minds, these mortal foes, 
 Give but a pinch of dust, and you compose."
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. TQI 
 
 Yet snuff-taking is an odd custom. If we came 
 suddenly upon it in a foreign country, it would make 
 us split our sides wrth laughter. A grave gentleman 
 takes a little casket out of his pocket, puts a finger 
 and thumb in, brings away a pinch of a sort of pow- 
 der, and then, with the most serious air possible, as 
 if he was doing one of the most important actions 
 of his life (for even with the most indifferent snuff- 
 takers there is a certain look of importance), proceeds 
 to thrust and keep thrusting it at his nose ! after 
 which he shakes his head, or his waistcoat, or his 
 nose itself, or all three, in the style of a man who has 
 done his duty, and satisfied the most serious claims 
 of his well-being. What should we say to this cus- 
 tom among (he inhabitants of a newly discovered is- 
 land ? And to provoke tlie poor nose in tliis manner ! 
 and call people's attention to it ! A late physician, 
 whom we had the pleasure of knowing, and who had 
 a restless temperament, used to amuse us, as he sat 
 pondering in his chair, with taking up a pair of scis- 
 sors, and delicately poking the tip of his tongue with 
 it ; thus taking delight in the borders of an uneasy 
 sensation, for want of a better. We have often 
 thought, that a snuff-taker, fond of a potent snuff, 
 might as well addi6t himself to the dodor's scissors, 
 or pun6lure any other part of his face with a fork at 
 once. Elegant fork-takers might have boxes with 
 little instruments made accordingly, and politely offer 
 them to the company to poke their cheeks with ; or 
 they might hover about the eyes, or occasionally prac- 
 tise some slight scarification. Bleeding is accounted 
 cephalic.
 
 192 THE SEER. 
 
 It is curious to see the various modes in which 
 people take snuff. Some do it by little fits and starts, 
 and get over the thing quickly. These are epigram- 
 matic snuff-takers, who come to the point as fast as 
 possible, and to whom the pungency is every thing. 
 They generally use a sharp and severe snuff, — a sort 
 of essence of pins' points. Others are all urbanity 
 and polished demeanor : they value the style as much 
 as the sensation, and offer the box around them as 
 much out of dignity as benevolence. Some take snuff 
 irritably, others bashfully, others in a manner as dry 
 as the snuff itself, generally with an economy of the 
 vegetable ; others with a luxuriance of gesture, and 
 a lavishness of supply, that announces a moister ar- 
 ticle, and sheds its superfluous honors over neckcloth 
 and coat. Dr. Johnson's was probably a snuff of this 
 kind. He used to take it out of his waistcoat-pocket 
 instead of a box. There is a species of long-armed 
 snufi-taker, that performs the operation in a style of 
 potent and elaborate preparation, ending with a sud- 
 den a6tivity. But smaller and rounder men some- 
 times attempt it. He first puts his head on one side ; 
 then stretches forth the arm, with pinch in hand ; then 
 brings round his hand as a snuff-taking elephant might 
 his trunk ; and, finally, shakes snuff, head, and nose 
 together, in a sudden vehemence of convulsion. His 
 eyebrows all the while are lifted up, as if to inake the 
 more room for the onset ; and, when he has ended, he 
 draws himself back to his perpendicular, and gene- 
 rally proclaims the victory he has won over the insi- 
 pidity of the previous moment, by a sniff and a great 
 " Hah ! "
 
 193 
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 CONCLUDED. 
 
 ROM the respect which we showed in our 
 last to scented snufis, and from other indica- 
 tions which will doubtless have escaped us 
 in our ignorance of his art, the scientific snuff-taker 
 will have concluded that we are no brother of tlie box. 
 And he will be right. But we hope we only give the 
 greater proof thereby of the toleration that is in us, 
 and our wish not to think ill of a pra6lice merely be- 
 cause it is not our own. We confess we are inclined 
 to a charitable regard, nay, provided it be hand- 
 somely and cleanly managed, to a certain respedl, for 
 snuff-Liking, out of divers considerations : first, as al- 
 ready noticed, because it helps to promote good-will ; 
 second, because we have known some very worthy 
 snuff-takers ; third, out of our regard for tlie snufl-tak- 
 ing times of Queen Anne, and the wits of France ; 
 and last, because in the benevolence and imaginative- 
 ness and exceeding width of our philosophy (which 
 fine terms we apply to it in order to give a hint to 
 those who might consider it a weakness and supei- 
 stition), — because we have a certain veneration for 
 all great events and prevailing customs, that have 
 given a character to the history of society' in the course 
 of ages. It would be hard to get us to think con- 
 temptuously of the mummies of Eg}-pt, of the cere- 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 194 "^ME SEER. 
 
 momousness of the Chinese, of the betel-nut of the 
 Turks and Persians, nay, of the garlic of the south 
 of Europe ; and so of the tea-drinking, cofiee-drink- 
 ing, tobacco-smoking, and snuft-taking which have 
 come to us from the Eastern and American nations. 
 We know not what great providential uses there 
 might be in such customs, or what worse or more friv- 
 olous things they prevent, till the time comes for dis- 
 placing them. " The wind bloweth where it listeth ; " 
 and so, for aught we know, doth the "cloud" of the 
 tobacco-pipe. We are resolved, for our parts, not to 
 laugh with the " scorner," but even to make merry 
 with submission ; nay, to imdermine (when we feel 
 compelled to do so) with absolute tenderness to the 
 thing dilapidated. Let the unphilosophic lover of 
 tobacco (if there be such a person), to use a phrase 
 of his own, " put that in his pipe, and smoke it." 
 
 But there is one thing that puzzles us in the history 
 of the Indian weed and its pulverization ; and that is, 
 how lovers and ladies ever came to take snuft'. In 
 England, perhaps, it was never much done by the 
 latter, till they grew too old to be " particular," or 
 thought themselves too sure of their lovers ; but in 
 France, where the animal spirits think less of obstacles 
 in the way of inclination, and where the resolution 
 to please and be pleased is, or was, of a fancy less 
 nice and more accommodating, we are not aware that 
 the ladies in the time of the Voltaires and Du Chate- 
 lets ever thought themselves either too old to love, or 
 too young to take snufF. We confess, whether it is 
 from the pun(5lilios of a colder imagination or the 
 perils incidental to a warmer one, that, although we
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. I95 
 
 are interested in comprehending the former privilege, 
 we never could do the same with the latter. A bride- 
 groom in one of the periodical essayists, describing 
 his wife's fondness for rouge and carmine, complains 
 that he can never niake pure, unsophisticated way to 
 her cheek, but is obliged, like Pyramus in the story, 
 to kiss through a wall, — to salute through a crust of 
 paint and washes : — 
 
 " Wall, vile wall, which did those lovers sunder." 
 
 This is bad enough ; and, considering perhaps a due 
 healthiness of skin, worse : yet the objedl of paint is 
 to imitate health and loveliness ; the wish to look well 
 is in it. But snuff! — turtle-doves don't take snuff. 
 A kiss is surely not a thing to be " sneezed at." 
 
 Fancy two lovers in the time of Qiieen Anne, oi 
 Louis the Fifteenth, each with snuff-box in hand, who 
 have just come to an explanation, and who, in the 
 hurry of their spirits, have unthinkingly taken a pinch, 
 just at the instant when the gentleman is going to 
 salute the lips of his mistress ! He does so, finds his 
 honest love as frankly returned, and is in the a(5l of 
 bringing out the words, " Charming creature ! " when 
 a sneeze overtakes him ! — 
 
 " Cha - Clia - Cha - Charming creature ! " 
 
 What a situation ! A sneeze ! O Venus ! where is 
 such a thing in thy list? 
 
 The lady, on her side, is under the like malapropos 
 influence, and is obliged to divide one of the sweetest 
 of all bashful and loving speeches with the shock of 
 the sneeze respondent : —
 
 196 THE SEER. 
 
 " O Richard ! Sho - Sho - Sho - Should you 
 think ill of me for this ! " 
 
 Imagine it. 
 
 We have nothing to say against tlie sneeze abstradl. 
 In all nations it seems to have been counted of gi^eat 
 significance, and worth respeAful attention, whether 
 advising us of good or ill. Hence the " God bless 
 you ! " still heard among us when people sneeze ; and 
 the " Felicita ! " (" Good luck to you ! ") of the Itali- 
 ans. A Latin poet, in one of his most charming effu- 
 sions, though not, we conceive, witli the delicacy of a 
 Greek, even makes Cupid sneeze at sight of tlie 
 happiness of tw^o lovei^s : — 
 
 " Hoc ut dixit, Amor, sinistram ut ante, 
 
 Dextram stemuit approbationem." 
 
 Catullus. 
 " Love, at tliis charming speech and sight. 
 
 Sneezed his sanction fi-om the right." 
 
 But he does not make tlie lovefs sneeze. That omen 
 remained for the lovers of the snuff-box, — people more 
 social than nice. 
 
 We have no recolle6lion of any self-misgiving in 
 this matter, on the part of the male sex, dui-ing the 
 times we speak of. They are a race who have ever 
 thought themselves warranted in taking liberties 
 which they do not allow their gentler friends ; and we 
 cannot call to mind any passage in the writings of the 
 French or English wits in former days, implying the 
 least distrust of his own right and propriety and 
 charmingness, in taking snuff, on the part of the 
 gentleman in love. The " beaux," marquisses, men 
 of fashion. Sir Harry Wildairs, &c., all talk of and
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 1 97 
 
 use and pique themselves on their snuff-boxes, with- 
 out the slightest suspicion that there is any thing in 
 them to which courtship and elegance can objedl ; antl 
 we suppose this is the case still, where the snuff-taker, 
 though young in age, is old in habit. Yet we should 
 doubt, were we in his place. He cannot be certain 
 how many women may have refused his addresses on 
 that single account ; nor, if he marries, to what secret 
 sources of objection it may give rise. To be clean is 
 one of the first duties at all times ; to be the reverse, 
 or to risk it, in the least avoidable respect, is perilous 
 in the eyes of that passion, which, of all others, is at 
 once the most lavish and the most nice, — which 
 makes the greatest allowance for all that belongs to it, 
 and tlie least for whatever is cold or foreign, or 
 implies a coarse security. A very loving nature, 
 however, may have some one unlovely habit, which a 
 wise party on either side may corre6t, if it have any 
 address. The only passage which we remember 
 meeting with in a book, in which this license assumed 
 by the male sex is touched upon, is in a pleasant 
 comedy translated from the French some years ago, 
 and brought upon the stage in London, — the " Green 
 Man." Mr. Jones, we believe, was the translator. 
 He also enadled the part of the lover ; and very pleas- 
 antly he did it. It was one of his best performances. 
 Luckily for our present purpose, he had a very sweet 
 assistant in the person of Miss Blanchard, a young 
 a6lress of that day, who, after charming the town with 
 the sprightly delicacy of her style, and with a face 
 better than handsome, prematurely quitted it, to their 
 great regret, though, we believe, for tlie best of all
 
 198 THE SEER. 
 
 reasons. In the course of her lover's addresses, this 
 lady had to find fault with his habit of snuff-taking ; 
 and she did it with a face full of such loving and flat- 
 tering reasons, and in a voice also so truly accordant 
 with the words which the author had put into her 
 mouth, that we remeinber thinking how natural it 
 was for the gentleman to give up the point as he did, 
 instantly, and to pitch the cause of offence away from 
 him, with the exclamation, " Ma tabatiere, adieu ! " 
 (" Farewell, snuff-box ! ") Thus the French, who 
 were the greatest sinners in this matter, appear, as 
 they ought, to have been the first reformers of it, and 
 openly to have protested against the union of love and 
 snuff-taking in either sex. 
 
 We merely give this as a hint to certain snuff-takers 
 at a particular time of life. We are loath to interfere 
 with others, till we can find a substitute for the excite- 
 ment and occupation which the snuff-box affords ; fear- 
 ing that we should steal from some their very powers 
 of refledlion ; from some their good temper or pa- 
 tience or only consolation ; from others their helps to 
 wit and good fellowship. Whenever Gibbon was 
 going to say a good thing, it was observed that he 
 announced it by a complacent tap on his snuff-box. 
 Life might have been a gloomier thing, even than it 
 was, to Dr. Johnson, if he had not enlivened his views 
 of it with the occasional stimulus of a pinch. Napo- 
 leon, in his flight from Moscow, was observed one 
 day, after pulling a log on to a fire, impatiently seek- 
 ing for his last chance of a consoling thought ; and he 
 found it in the corner of his snuff-box. It was his last 
 pinch ; and most imperatively he joinched it ! digging
 
 A PINXH OF SNUFF. 1 99 
 
 it, and fetching it out from its intrenchment. Besides, 
 we have a regard for snuif-shops and tlieir j^i'oprie- 
 tors ; and never pass Pontet's or Killpack's or Tur- 
 ner's w^ithout wishing well to the companionable 
 people that frequent them, and thinking of the most 
 agreeable periods of English and French wit. You 
 might almost as soon divorce the idea of the Popes, 
 Steeles, and Voltaires, from their wigs and caps, as 
 from their snulf-boxes. Lady Mary Wortley took 
 snuft'; Madame du Bocage also, no doubt; we fear 
 even the charming Countess of Suffolk, and my Lady 
 Hai"vey. Steele, in the charadler of Bickerstaff, speak- 
 ing of his half-sister. Miss Jenny Distaff, who was a 
 blue-stocking and about to be married, thinks it desira- 
 ble that she should not continue to have a nose " all 
 over snuff" in future. He seems, in consideration of 
 her books, willing to compromise with a reasonable 
 beginning. Ladies are greatly improved in this re- 
 spe6t. No blue-stockings now-a-days, we suspedl, take 
 snuff, that have any pretensions to youth or bcautv. 
 They rather choose to realize the visions of their 
 books, and vindicate the united claims of mind and 
 person. Sure of their pretensions, they even disclaim 
 any pretence, except that of wearing stockings like 
 other people ; to prove which, like proper unaffected 
 women, they give into the fashion of short petticoats, 
 philosophically risking the chance of drawing inferior 
 eyes from the charms of their talk to those of their 
 feet and ankles. 
 
 In the batde of the "Rape of the Lock," Pope 
 makes his heroine, Belinda, conquer one of her gallant 
 enemies by chucking a pinch of snuff in his face ; nor
 
 200 THE SEER. 
 
 does he tell us that she borrowed it. Are we to con- 
 clude that even she, the pattern of youthful beauty, 
 took it out of her own pocket? 
 
 " But this bold lord, with manly strength endued, 
 She with one finger and a thumb subdued ; 
 Just where the breath of lite his nostrils drew, 
 A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw ; 
 The Gnomes direct, to every atom just, 
 The pimgent grains of titillating dust ; " 
 
 [A capital line !] 
 
 " Sudden with starting tears each eye o'erflows, 
 And the high dome re-echoes to his nose." 
 
 This mode of warfare is now confined to the shop- 
 lifters. No modern poet would tliink of making his 
 heroine throw snuff at a man. 
 
 An Italian wit has written a poem on Tobacco (La 
 Tabaccheide), in which, with the daring animal spirits 
 of his countrymen, he has ventured upon describing a 
 sneeze. We shall be bolder than he, considering the 
 less enthusiastic noses of the North, and venture to give 
 a free version of the passage : — 
 
 " Ma mi sento tutto mordere 
 E dentro e fuori 
 II meato degU odori, 
 E la piramide 
 Einocerontica ; 
 E via piu crescere 
 Quella prinigine, 
 Che non mai sazia, 
 Va stuzzicandomi, 
 "Va rimordendomi, 
 E inuggiolendomi, 
 E va gridandomi
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 20I 
 
 Fiuta, fiuta, annasa, annasa 
 
 Questa poca, ch'6 rimasa. — 
 
 Chi m'ajuta? su, finiamola, 
 
 Che non 6 giJl questa elloboro, 
 
 Ma divina quhitessenza, 
 
 Che da Bacco ha dipendenza, 
 
 Donatrice d' allegrl 
 
 D' allegrl . . . grl — gri — allegrl . . . 
 
 (Lo starnuto mel rapia), 
 
 Donatrice d' allegria." 
 
 There is more of it ; but we cannot stand sneezing all 
 night. (We write this towards bedtime). 
 
 " What a moment ! What a doubt ! — 
 All my nose, inside and out, 
 All my thrilling, tickling, caustic 
 Pyramid rhinocerostic, 
 Wants to sneeze, and cannot do it ! 
 Now it yearns me, thrUls me, stings me ; 
 Now with rapturous torment wrings me ; 
 Now says, ' Sneeze, you fool ! get through it.' 
 What shall help me — Oh, good Heaven ! 
 Ah — yes, thank ye — Tliirty-seven — 
 Shee — shee — Oh, 'tis most del-wAj 
 Ishi — ishi — most Ae\-ishi: 
 (Hang it ! I shall sneeze till spring :) 
 Suuif 's a most delicious thing." 
 
 Sneezing, however, is not a high snufT-taking evidence. 
 It shows the author to have been raw to the science, 
 and to have written more like a poet than a professor. 
 As snutT-taking is a practice inclining to reflection, 
 and therefore, to a philosophical consideration of the 
 various events of this life, grave as well as gay, we 
 shall conclude the present article with the only tragi- 
 cal story we ever met with in connexion witli a snull-
 
 203 THE SEER, 
 
 box. We found it in a very agreeable book, — "A 
 Week on the Loire." 
 
 " The younger Cathelineau, devoted with hereditary 
 zeal to the worn-out cause of the Bourbons, took up 
 arms for Madame la Duchesse de Berri ; associated in 
 his successes with M. de Suriac, M. Morriset, and M. 
 de la Soremere ; names dear in the annals of fidelity 
 and courage. Orders were given to arrest them at 
 Beaupreau : they took refuge in a chateau in the 
 neighborhood. The troops surrounded and searched 
 it, but all in vain : not a single human being was 
 found in it. Certain, however, that the objects of their 
 search were a6lually within the precin6ls of the cha- 
 teau, they closed the gates, set their watch, and al- 
 lowed no one to enter, except a peasant whom they 
 employed to show the hiding-places. This watch 
 they kept three days, till wearied by the non-appear- 
 ance of the parties, and the bellowing of the cattle, 
 who were confined without water and on short allow- 
 ance, they were on the point of quitting the spot. One 
 of the officers, however, thought, previous to doing so, 
 he would go over the chateau once more ; the peas- 
 ant followed close at his heels : suddenl}^ the officer 
 turned towards him, ' Give me a pinch of snuff", friend,* 
 said he. 
 
 " ' I have none,' replied the man, ' I do not take it.' 
 " ' Then who is there in this chateau that does?' 
 " ' No one that I know of: there is no one in the 
 chateau, as you see.' 
 
 " ' Then whence comes the snuff" which I see here?* 
 said the officer, pointing with his foot to some which 
 was scattered on the ground.
 
 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 203 
 
 " The mill turned pale, and made no reply. The 
 officer looked round again, examined the earth more 
 closely, stamped with his foot, and at last tJiought he 
 felt a vibration, as if the ground below were hollow. 
 He scrutinized every inch, and at length saw some- 
 thing like a loose board : he raised it up, and then, 
 alas ! he beheld Cathelineau, in front of his three 
 companions, with his pistols in his hand ready to fire. 
 The officer had not a moment to deliberate. He 
 fired : Cathelineau fell clead, and his companions were 
 seized. This story was told us by the keeper of 
 the JMusee, and afterwards confirmed by an officer 
 who was one of the party employed." 
 
 We almost regret to have closed a light article with 
 " so heavy a stone" as this. (" To tell him that he 
 shall be annihilated," saith Sir Thomas Browne, " is 
 the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a 
 man.") But the snufl-taker, with his magic box in 
 hand, is prepared for chances. As the Turk takes to 
 his pipe, and the sailor to his roll of tobacco, so he 
 to his pinch ; and he is then prepared for whatsoever 
 comes, — for a melancholy face with the melancholy, 
 or a laugh with the gay. 
 
 Another pinch, reader, before we part.
 
 204 
 
 WORDSWORTH AND MILTON. 
 
 T is allowed on all hands, now, that there 
 are no sonnets in any language comparable 
 with Wordsworth's. Even Milton must 
 yield the palm. He has written but about a dozen 
 or so, — Wordsworth some hundreds: and though no- 
 thing can surpass ' the inspired grandeur of that on 
 the Piedmontese Massacre, the tenderness of those on 
 his Blindness and on his Deceased Wife, the gi*ave 
 dignity of that to a Young Lady, or the cheerful and 
 Attic grace of those to Lawrence and Cyriac Skinner,' 
 as is finely said by the writer of an article in the 
 'Edinburgh Review' on Glassford's ' Lyrical Transla- 
 tions,' yet many of Wordsworth's equal even these ; 
 and the long and splendid array of his sonnets — 
 deploying before us in series after series — astonishes 
 us by the proof it affords of the inexhaustible riches of 
 his imaginative genius and his moral wisdom. One 
 series on the river Duddon, two series dedicated to 
 Liberty, three series on our Ecclesiastical History, 
 miscellaneous sonnets in multitudes, and those last 
 poured forth as clear and bright and strong as the 
 first that issued from the sacred spring ! " — Black- 
 wood's Magazine. 
 
 Most true is this. Wordsworth's untired exuber-
 
 WORDSWORTH AND MLLTON. 205 
 
 ance is indeed astonishing ; though it becomes a little 
 less so when we consider that his genius has been 
 fortunate in a long life of leisure, his opinions not 
 having rendered it necessary to him to fight with 
 difficulties, and daily cares, and hostile ascendencies, 
 as Milton's did, — 
 
 " Exposed to daily fraud, contempt, and wrong, 
 With darkness and with dangers compassed romid." 
 
 In that condition sate the great blind epic poet ; and, 
 after having performed an a6tive as well as contem- 
 plative part for his earthly sojourn, still combined 
 action with contemplation in a mighty narrative, and 
 built the adamantine gates of another world. In no 
 invidious regard for one great poet against another 
 do we say it, but in justice to fame itself, and in the 
 sincerest reverence of admiration for both. With the 
 exception of Shakespeare (who included everybody), 
 Wordsworth has proved himself the greatest contem- 
 plative poet this country has produced. His facility' is 
 wonderful. He never wants the fittest words for the 
 finest thoughts. He can express at will those innu- 
 merable shades of feeling which most other writers, 
 not unworthy too, in their degree, of the name of 
 poets, either dismiss at once as inexpressible, or find 
 so difficult of embodiment as to be content with 
 shaping them forth but seldom, and reposing from 
 their labors. And rhyme, instead of a hinderance, 
 appears to be a positive help. It serves to concentrate 
 his thoughts, and make them closer and more precious. 
 Milton did not pour forth sonnets in this manner, — 
 poems in hundreds of little channels, — all solid and
 
 2o6 THE SEER. 
 
 fluent gold. No ; but he was venting himself, instead, 
 in " Paradise Lost." " Paradise Lost," if the two 
 poets are to be compared, is the set-oft' against Words- 
 worth's achievement in sonnet-writing. There is the 
 "Excursion," to be sure; but the "Excursion" is 
 made up of the same purely contemplative matter. 
 It is a long - drawn song of the nightingale, as the 
 sonnets are its briefer warbles. There is no eagle- 
 flight in the " Excursion ; " no sustainment of a mighty 
 a6lion ; no enormous hero, bearing on his wings the 
 weight of a lost eternity, and holding on, nevertheless, 
 undismayed, — firm-visaged through faltering chaos, 
 — the combatant of all chance and all power, — a 
 vision, that, if he could be seen now, would be seen in 
 the sky like a comet, remaining, though speeding, — 
 visible for long nights, though rapidly voyaging, — a 
 sight for a universe, — an adtor on the stage of infinity. 
 There is no such robust and majestic work as this in 
 Wordsworth. Compared with Milton, he is but as a 
 dreamer on the grass, though a divine one ; and 
 worthy to be compared as a younger, a more fluent- 
 speeched, but less potent brother, whose business it is 
 to talk and think, and gather together his flocks of 
 sonnets like sheep (beauteous as clouds in heaven) ; 
 while the other is abroad, more a6tively moving in 
 the world, with contemplations that take the shape 
 of events. There are many points of resemblance 
 between Wordsworth and Milton. They are both 
 serious men ; both in earnest ; both maintainers of the 
 dignity of poetry in life and do6lrine ; and both are 
 liable to some objedions on the score of se6larianism, 
 and narrow theological views. But Milton widened
 
 WORDSWORTH AND MILTOX. 207 
 
 these as he grew old ; and Wordsworth, assisted by 
 the advancing light of the times (for the greatest 
 minds are seldom as great as the whole instinctive 
 mind of society), cannot help conceding or qualifying 
 certain views of his own, though timidly, and with 
 fear of a certain few, such as Milton never feared. 
 Milton, however, was never weak in his creed, what- 
 ever it was : he forced it into width enough to 
 embrace all jolace and time, future as well as present. 
 Wordsworth would fain dwindle down the possibilities 
 of heaven and earth within the views of a Church-of- 
 England establishment. And he is almost entirely a 
 retrospective poet. The vast future frightens him ; 
 and he would fain believe that it is to exist only in a 
 past shape, and that shape something very like one of 
 the smallest of the present, with a vestry for the 
 golden church of the New Jei-usalem, and beadles for 
 the " limitary cherubs." Now, we hope and believe 
 that the very best of the past will merge into the 
 future : how long before it be superseded b}^ a still 
 better, we cannot say. And we own that we can 
 conceive of nothing better than some things which 
 already exist, in venerable as well as lovely shapes. 
 But how shall we pretend to limit the vast flood of 
 coming events, or have such little fiiith in nahire, 
 providence, and the enlightened co-operation of hu- 
 manity, as to suppose that it will not adjust itself in 
 the noblest and best manner? In this respeCl, and in 
 some others, Mr. Wordsworth's poetry wants uni- 
 versality. He calls upon us to sympathize with his 
 churches, and his country flowers, and his blisses of 
 solitude ; and he calls well : but he wants one of the
 
 2oS 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 best parts of persuasion ; he is not reciprocal ; he 
 does not sufficiently sympathize with our towns and 
 our blisses of society, and our reformations of churches 
 (the consequences, after all, of his own. What would 
 he not have said, by the by, in behalf of Popery, had 
 he lived before a Reformation ?) And it may be said 
 of him, as Johnson said of Milton's " Allegi'o " and 
 " Penseroso," that " no mirth indeed can be found in 
 his melancholy ; " but it is to be feared there is always 
 " some melancholy in his mirth." His Muse invites 
 us to the treasures of his retirement in beautiful, noble, 
 and inexhaustible language : but she does it, after all, 
 rather like a teacher than a persuader ; and fails in 
 impressing upon us the last and best argiunent, that 
 she herself is happy. Happy she must be, it is tine, 
 in many senses : for she is happy in the sense of 
 power ; happy in the sense of a good intention ; happy 
 in fame, in words, in the consciousness of immortal 
 poetry : yet there she is, after all, not quite persuasive, 
 — more rich in the means than in the ends, — with 
 something of a puritan austerity upon her, — more 
 stately than satisfactory, — wanting in animal spirits, 
 in perfedl and hearty sympathy with our pleasures 
 and her own. A vaporous melancholy hangs over 
 his most beautiful landscapes. He seems alwa3's gird- 
 ing himself up for his pilgrimage of jov, rather than 
 enjoying it ; and his announcements are in a tone too 
 exemplary and didactic. We admire him ; ^ve vene- 
 rate him ; w^e would fain agree with him : but we feel 
 something wanting on his own part towards the large- 
 ness and healthiness of other men's wider experience ; 
 and we resent, for his sake as well as ours, that he
 
 WORDSWORTH AND MILTON. 209 
 
 should insist upon squaring all which is to come in 
 the interminable future with the visions that bound a 
 college cap. We feel that it will hurt the effect of his 
 genius with posterity, and make the most admiring of 
 his readers, in the third and fourth generation, lament 
 over his narrowness. In short, his poetry is the sunset 
 to the English Church, — beautiful as the real sunset 
 " with evening beam," gorgeous, melancholy, retro- 
 spedlive, giving a new and divine light to the lowliest 
 flowers, and setting the pinnacles of the churches 
 golden in the heavens. Yet nothing but a sunset and 
 a retrospection it is. A new and great day is coming, 
 — diviner still, we believe, — larger, more universal, 
 more equable, showing (manifestly) the heavens more 
 just, and making mankind more truly religious, be- 
 cause more cheerful and grateful. 
 
 The editor of "Blackwood" justly prides himself 
 on having appreciated this noble poet from the first : 
 but it is a pity, we think, that he looks back in anger 
 upon those whose literary educations were less for- 
 tunate ; who had been brought up in schools of a 
 different taste ; and who showed, after all, a natural 
 strength of taste singularly honorable to them, in be- 
 ing able to appreciate real poetry at last, even in 
 quai-tcrs to which the editor himself, we believe, has 
 never yet done justice, though no man could do it bet- 
 ter. For Wilson's prose (and we could not express 
 our admiration of it more highly) might stretch forth 
 its thick and rich territory by the side of Keats's 
 poetry, like a land of congenial exuberance, — a forest 
 tempest-tossed indeed, compared with those still valleys 
 and enchanted gardens, but set in the same identical 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 2IO THE SEER. 
 
 region of the remote, the luxuriant, the mythological ; 
 governed by a more wilful and scornful spirit, but 
 such as hates only from an inverted principle of the 
 loving, impatient of want of sympathy, and incapa- 
 ble, in the last resort, of denying the beautiful where- 
 soever existing, because tliereby it would deny the 
 divine part of itself. Why should Christopher North 
 revert to the errors of his critical brethren in past 
 times, seeing that they are all now agreed, and that 
 every one of them perhaps has something to forgive 
 himself in his old judgments (ourselves assuredly not 
 excepted, if we may be allowed to name ourselves 
 among them) ? Men got angry from political differ- 
 ences, and wei-e not in a temper to give dispassionate 
 poetical judgments. And yet Wordsworth had some 
 of his greatest praises from his severest political op- 
 ponents (Hazlitt, for instance) ; and out of the former 
 Scotch school of criticism, which was a French one, 
 or that of Pope and Boileau, came the first hearty 
 acknowledgment of the merits of Keats, for whom we 
 were delighted the other day to find that an enthu- 
 siastic admiration is retained by the chief of that 
 school (Jeffrey), whose natural taste has long had the 
 rare honor of triumphing over his educational one ; 
 and who ought, we think, now that he is a Lord of 
 Session, to follow at his leisure moments the exam- 
 ple set him by the most accomplished of all national 
 benches of judicature, and give us a book that should 
 beat, nevertheless, all the Kameses and Woodhouse- 
 lees before him : as it assuredly would.
 
 211 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 
 
 No. L 
 
 ]EOFFREY CHAUCER was born in Lon- 
 don, in the year 132S, apjoarently of a gentle- 
 man's family ; and was bred in the court of 
 Edward the Third. He married a sister of Catherine 
 Swynford, mistress, and afterwards wife, to the king's 
 son, John of Gaunt ; and was employed in court-offices, 
 and in a mission to Italy, where he is supposed to 
 have had an interview with Petrarch. In the sub- 
 sequent reign he fell into trouble, owing to his con- 
 nedlion with John of Gaunfs party and the religious 
 reformers of those days : upon which he fled to the 
 Continent, but returned ; and, after an imprisonment 
 of three years, was set at liberty, on condition of giv- 
 ing up the designs of his associates, — a blot on the 
 memory of this great poet, and apparently otherwise 
 amiable and excellent man, which he has excused as 
 well as he could by alleging that they treated him ill, 
 and would have plundered and starved him. He 
 died in the year 1400, and was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey, close to which he had had a house on the site 
 where Henry the Seventh's Chapel now stands : so 
 that the reader, in going along the pavement there, is 
 walking where Chaucer once lived.
 
 212 THE SEER. 
 
 His person, in advanced life, tended to corpulency ; 
 and he had a habit of looking down. In conversation 
 he was modest, and of few words. He was so fond 
 of reading, that he says he took heed of nothing in 
 comparison, and would sit at his books till he dimmed 
 his eyes. The only thing that took him from them 
 was a walk in the fields. 
 
 Chaucer (with Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton) is 
 one of the four great English poets ; and it is with 
 double justice that he is called the Father of English 
 Poetry ; for, as Dante did with Italian, he helped to 
 form its very language. Nay, it burst into luxuriance 
 in his hands, like a sudden month of May. Instead 
 of giving you the idea of an " old " poet, in the sense 
 which the word vulgarly acquires, there is no one, 
 upon acquaintance, who seems so young, consistently 
 with maturity of mind. His poetry rises in the land 
 like a clear morning, in which you see every thing 
 with a rare and crystal distinftness, from the moun- 
 tain to the minutest flower ; towns, solitudes, human 
 beings ; open doors, showing you the interior of 
 cottages and of palaces ; fancies in the clouds, fairy- 
 rings in the grass ; and in the midst of all sits the 
 mild poet alone, his eyes on the ground, yet with his 
 heart full of every thing round him, beating, perhaps, 
 with the bosoms of a whole city, whose multitudes 
 are sharing his thoughts with the daisy. His nature 
 is the greatest poet's nature, omitting nothing in its 
 sympathy (in which respe6t he is nearer to Shakespeare 
 than either of their two illustrious brethren) ; and he 
 combines an epic power of grand, comprehensive, 
 and primitive imagery, with that of being contented
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 213 
 
 with the smallest matter of fadl near him, and of 
 luxuriating in pure vague animal spirits, like a dozer 
 in a field. His gayety is equal to his gravity, and his 
 sincerity to both. You could as little think of doubt- 
 ing his word as the point of the pen that wrote it. 
 It cuts as clear and sharp into you as the pen on the 
 paper. His belief in the good and beautiful is child- 
 like ; as Shakespeare's is that of everlasting and manly 
 youth. Spenser's and Milton's are more scholarly 
 and formal. Chaucer excels in pathos, in humor, in 
 satire, character, and description. His graphic faculty, 
 and healthy sense of the material, strongly ally him 
 to the painter ; and perhaps a better idea could not 
 be given of his universality than by saying that he 
 was at once the Italian and the Flemish painter of his 
 time, and exhibited the pure expression of Raphael, 
 the devotional intensity of Domenechino, the color 
 and corporeal fire of Titian, the manners of Hogarth, 
 and the homely domesticities of Ostade and Teniers ! 
 His faults are coarseness, which was that of his age ; 
 and, in some of his poems, tediousness, which is to be 
 attributed to the same cause, — a book being a book 
 in those days, written by few ; and, when it was writ- 
 ten, tempting the author to cram into it every thing 
 that he had learned, in default of there being any 
 encyclopEedias. That tediousness was no innate fault 
 of the poet's, is strikingly manifest, not only from the 
 nature of his genius, but from the fad: of his throw- 
 ing it aside as he grew older and more confident, and 
 spoke in his own person. The " Canterbury Tales," 
 his last and greatest work, is almost entirely free from 
 it, except where he gives us a long prose discourse,
 
 214 THE SEER. 
 
 after the fashion of the day ; and in no respedl is his 
 " Palamon and Arcite " more remarkable than in the 
 exquisite judgment with which he has omitted every 
 thing superfluous in his prolix oi-iginal, " The Teseide," 
 — the work of the great and poetical-natured, but not 
 great poet, Boccaccio (for Boccaccio's heart and nature 
 were poems ; but he could not develop them well in 
 verse). 
 
 In proceeding to give specimens from the works 
 of the father of our verse, the abundance which lies 
 before us is perplexing ; and, in order to do any thing 
 like justice, we are constrained to be unjust to his con- 
 text, and to be more piecemeal than is desirable. Our 
 extra6ts are from the volumes lately given to the world 
 by Mr. Clarke, entitled the " Riches of Chaucer," in 
 which the spelling is modernized, and the old pro- 
 nunciation marked with accents, so as to show the 
 smoothness of the versification. That Chaucer is not 
 only a smooth, but a powerful and various versifier, is 
 among the wonders of his advance beyond his age : 
 but it is still doubtful whether his prosody was alwa}s 
 corre6t in the modern sense ; that is to say, whether 
 all his lines contain the regulated number of sylla- 
 bles, or whether he does not sometimes make time 
 stand for number ; or, in other words, a sti'ong and 
 hearty emphasis on one syllable perform the part of 
 two, as in the verse, which will be met with below, 
 about the monk on horseback ; of whom he says, 
 that — 
 
 " Men might his bridle hear 
 GingUng in a whistling wind as clear, 
 And eke as loud, as doth the chapel-bell."
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 215 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCEr's rORTRAIT-PAINTING AND HUMOR. 
 
 (From tlu set of Characters at the beginning of the Canterbury Tales.) 
 
 THE KNIGHT. 
 
 And evermore he had a sovereign prise; 
 
 And tliough tliat he was worthy, he was wise. 
 
 And of his port as meek as is a maid. 
 
 He never yet no villany ne said, 
 
 In all his life, unto no manner wight : 
 
 He was a very perfect gentle knight. 
 
 THE SQUIRE. 
 
 I 
 
 With him there was his son, a young6 squikr, 
 
 A lover and a lusty bacheler. 
 
 With lockes curled as they were laid in press ; 
 
 Of twenty years of age he was, I guess ; 
 
 Of his stature lie was of even length, 
 
 And wonderly deliver,* and great of strength : 
 
 And he had been some time in chevachie,t 
 
 In Flaunders, in Artois, and Picardie, 
 
 And borne him well, as of so little space. 
 
 In hope to standen in his lady's grace. 
 
 Embroidered was he, as it were a mead 
 All full of fresh6 flowres white and red ; 
 Singing he was or floytingj all the day ; 
 He was as fresh as is the month of May : 
 
 • ••••••• 
 
 Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable, 
 And carved before his father at the table. 
 
 [Which was the custom for sons in those days. 
 His attendant yeoman is painted in a line.] 
 
 THE YEOMAN. 
 
 A nut-head had he with a brown visdge. 
 
 * Agile. 
 
 t Clievauchee (French), — military service on horseback. 
 
 J Fluting.
 
 2l6 THE SEER. 
 
 THE PRIORESS. 
 
 There was also a nun, a prioress, 
 
 That of her smiling was full simple and coy, 
 
 Her greatest oath n'as but by " Saint Eloy ; " 
 
 And she was cleped Madam Eglantine. 
 
 Fxill well she sange the service divine, 
 
 Entuned in her nose full sweetely : 
 
 And French she spake full fair and fetisly, 
 
 After the school of Stratford alt6 Bow ; 
 
 For French of Paris was to her unknow : 
 
 [A touch of good satire that might tell now !] 
 
 At meate she was well ytaught withal ; 
 She let no morsel from her lippes fall, 
 Ne wet her fingers in her s nice deep : 
 Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep. 
 
 [These are the elegances which it was thought 
 necessary to teach in that age.] 
 
 But for to speaken of her conscience : 
 She was so charitable and so piteous. 
 She would6 wi ep if that she saw a mouse 
 Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled. 
 Of smalle hoimdes had she, that she fed 
 With roasted flesh and milk and wastel bread ; 
 But sore wept she if one of them were dead, 
 Or if men smote it with a yard6 smart: 
 And all was conscience and tender heaii. 
 
 [What a charming verse is that !] 
 
 THE MONK. 
 
 A monk there was, a fair for the mastery ; 
 
 An out-rider, that loved venery ; * 
 
 A manly man to been an abbot able : 
 
 Full many a dainty horse had he in stable ; 
 
 * Venery, — hunting.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 21 7 
 
 And, when he rode, men might his bridle hear 
 Gingling in a whistling wind as clear, 
 And eke as loud, as doth the chapel-hell, 
 There as this lord was keeper of the cell. 
 
 The rule of Saint Maure and of Saint Bene't, 
 Because that it was old, and somedeal strait, 
 This ilk6 monk let olde thinges pace, 
 And held after the newe world the trace. 
 He gave not of the text a pulled hen, 
 That saith that hunters be not holy men ; 
 Kor that a monk, when he is reckeless. 
 Is like to a fish that is waterless ; 
 This is to say, a monk out of his cloister : 
 This ilke text held lie not worth an oyster. 
 
 His head was bald, and shone as any glass, 
 And eke his face, as it had been anoint : 
 He was a lord full fat and in good point ; 
 His eyen steep, and rolling in his head, 
 That steam6d as a furnace of a lead ; 
 His booti-'s supple, his horse in great estate ; 
 Now certainly he was a fair prelate. 
 
 [Of tlie sly and accommodating friar we are told, 
 
 that] — 
 
 Fidl sweet6l'j heard he confessidn. 
 
 And pleasant was his absolution. 
 
 This was a couplet that used to delight the late Mr. 
 Hazlitt. To give it its full gusto, it should be read 
 with a syllabical precision, after the fashion of Dominie 
 Sampson. 
 
 THE BCHOLAK. 
 
 Him was lever* have at his bed's head 
 Twenty hookis, clothid in black or red, 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophy. 
 Than robes rich, or fiddle or psaltry. 
 
 * Rather. 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 2l8 THE SEER. 
 
 But all be that he was a philosopher. 
 
 Yet hadd6 he but little gold in coffer, 
 
 But all that he might of his friendes hent, 
 
 On book6s and on learning he it spent. 
 
 And busily 'gan for the soulis pray 
 
 Of them that gave him wherewith to scholay. 
 
 Of study took he most6 cure and heed ; 
 
 Not a word spake he more than was need ; 
 
 And that was said in form and reverence, 
 
 And short and quick, and full of high sentence : 
 
 Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, 
 
 And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach. 
 
 A noble verse, containing all the zeal and single- 
 heartedness of a true love of knowledge. The ac- 
 count of — 
 
 THE SERGEANT OF THE LAW 
 
 contains a couplet, which will do for time everlasting 
 to describe a bustling man of business. If Fielding 
 had read Chaucer, he would assuredly have applied 
 it to his Lawyer Dowling, who " wished he could cut 
 himself into twenty pieces," he had so much to do. 
 
 No where so busy a man as he there n'as,* 
 And tet he seemed busier than he was. 
 
 the sailor. 
 
 A shipman was there, woned far by west ; 
 For aught I wot, he was of Dartemouth : 
 He rode upon a rouncy as he couth, 
 
 [He rode upon a hack-horse as well as he could.] 
 
 All in a gown of falding to the knee. 
 
 A dagger hanging by a lace had he 
 
 About his neck under his arm adown : 
 
 The bote summer had made his hue all brown : 
 
 * Pronounced noz, was not.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 219 
 
 And certainly he was a good fellaw ; 
 
 Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw 
 
 From Bourdeaux ward, while that the chapmen sleep : 
 
 Of nice conscience took he no keep. 
 
 If that he fought and had the higher hand, 
 
 By water he sent them home to every land. 
 
 But of his craft to reckon well his tides. 
 
 His streames and liis strandes liim besides ; 
 
 His harberow, his moon, and his lodemanage, 
 
 There was none such from Hull unto Carthage. 
 
 Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake ; 
 
 With many a tempest had his beard been shake : 
 
 He knew well all the havens, as they were 
 
 From Gotliland to the Cape de Finistere ; 
 
 And every creek in Bretagne and in Spain ; 
 
 His barge ycleped was the Magdalen. 
 
 THE PABISH PRIEST. 
 
 Wide was his parish, and houses far asimder ; 
 But he ne left naught, for no rain nor thvmder, 
 In sickness and in mischief, to visit 
 The farthest in liis parish much and lite. 
 
 He sette not his benefice to Mre, 
 And let Ids sheep accumbred in the mire. 
 And ran unto London, unto Saint Poule's, 
 To seeken him a chantery of souls. 
 Or with a brotherhood to be withold ; 
 But dwelt at home, and kept6 well his fold, 
 So that the wolf he made it not miscarry ; 
 He was a shepherd, and no mercenary ; 
 
 He waited after no pomp or reverence, 
 Ne raak6d him no spic6 1 consciJ'nce, 
 But Christ6s love, and his apostles twelve 
 He taught, but first he followed it himself. 
 
 How admirably well expressed is spiced conscience t 
 — a conscience requiring to be kept easy and sweet 
 with drugs and luxurious living.
 
 220 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 
 No. II. 
 
 EVERAL of Chaucer's best poems are trans- 
 lations from the Italian and French ; but of 
 so exquisite a kind, so improved in charac- 
 ter, so enlivened w^ith fresh natural touches, and freed 
 from comparative superfluity (in some instances, 
 freed from all superfluity), that they justly take the 
 rank of originals. We are sorry that we have not 
 tlie poem of Boccaccio by us, from which he took the 
 " Knight's Tale," containing the passages that fol- 
 low, in order that we might prove this to the reader : 
 but it is lucky perhaps in other respedts, for it would 
 have led us beyond our limits ; and all that we profess, 
 in these extradts, is to give just so many passages of 
 an author as shall suffice for evidence of his various 
 characteristics. We take, from his garden, specimens 
 of the flowers for which he is eminent, and send them 
 before the public as in a horticultural show. To see 
 them in their due juxtaposition and abundance, we 
 must refer to the gardens themselves ; to which it is, 
 of course, one of our objedls to tempt the beholder. 
 
 PHYSICAL LIFE AND MOVESfENT. 
 
 A young knight going a-Mai/ing. 
 
 Compare the saliency and freshness and natural 
 language of the following description of Arcite going
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 221 
 
 a-Maying, with the more artificial version of the pas- 
 sage in Dryden. Sir Walter Scott says of it, that the 
 modern poet must yield to the ancient, in spite of 
 " tlie beauty of his versification." But, with all due 
 respedl to Sir Walter, here is the versification itself, 
 as superior in its impulsive melody, even to Dryden's, 
 as a tlioroughly unafledled beauty is to a beauty half 
 
 spoilt. 
 
 The busy lark, the messenger of day, 
 Salueth * in her song the morrow gray ; 
 And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright, 
 That all the orient laugheth of the sight, 
 And with liis streamds drieth in the greves t 
 The silver dropp^s hanging on the leaves : 
 And Arcite, that is in the court redl % 
 "With Theseus, the squier principal, 
 Is risen, and looketh on the merry day ; 
 And for to do his observance to May, 
 Eemembring on tlie point of his desire, 
 He on his courser, starting as thejire, 
 
 [An admirable image ! He means those sudden catches 
 and impulses of a fiery horse, analogous to the shifting 
 starts of a flame in action ;] 
 
 Is ridden to the field6s, him to play. 
 Out of the coiurt, were it a mile or tway ; 
 
 [These are the mixtures of the particular with the 
 general, by which natural poets come home to us ;] 
 
 And to the grove of which that I you told. 
 By dventure§ his way he gan to hold. 
 To maken him a garland of the greves, 
 Were it of woodbind or of hawthorn leaves ; 
 
 * Saluteth. t Groves. t Koyal. 
 
 § Per avenlura (Italian), — by chance.
 
 323 THE SEER, 
 
 And loud he sang against the sunny sheen : * 
 Mai/, — with all thy flowers and thy green, 
 Right welcome be thou, fair6 freshe May : 
 / hope that I some green here getten may. 
 
 [" I hope that I may get some green here," — an ex- 
 pression a little more off-hand and trusting, and fit 
 for the season, than the conventional commonplaces 
 of the passage in Dryden : — 
 " For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear ! " &c.] 
 
 PORTRAITS OF TWO WARRIOR-KINGS. 
 
 There mayst thou see, coming with Palamon, 
 Licurge himself, the greate King of Thrace : 
 Black was his beard, and manly was his face; 
 
 [Here was Dryden's and Pope's turn of line antici- 
 pated under its most popular form.] 
 
 The circles of his eyen in his head 
 They gloweden betwixen yellow and red ; 
 And like a griffon looked he about. 
 With combed hair^s on his browns stout ; 
 
 [That is to say, a forehead of the simplest, potent ap- 
 pearance, with no pains taken to set it out.] 
 
 His limbes great, his brawnes hard and strong. 
 His shoulders broad, his arm6s round and long ; 
 And, as the guis6 was in his countree, 
 Full high upon a car of gold stood he. 
 With foure white buUes in the trace 
 Instead of coat armour on his harnAce,t 
 With nailes yellow, and bright as any gold ; 
 He had a beare's skin, cole-black for old. 
 His longe hair was combed behind his back 
 As any raven's feather it shone for black ; 
 
 * The sunshine. t Harness.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 223 
 
 A wreath of gold arm-great, of hug6 weight, 
 Upon his head sate full of stonfes bright, 
 Of fine rubies and of diamonds. 
 About his car tliere wenten wliite alauns * 
 Twenty and more, as great as any steer, 
 To huntcn at the lion or the deer. 
 And followed him, with muzzle fast ybound, 
 Collared with gold, and tourettes t filed round. 
 A hundred lordes had he in his rout. 
 Armed full well with heartes stern and stout. 
 "With Arcita, in stories as men find. 
 The great Emetrius, the King of Ind, 
 Upon a steed6 bay, trapped in steel, 
 Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele. 
 Came riding like the god of annis, Mars ; 
 
 [There's a noble line, with the monosyllable for a 
 climax !] 
 
 His coat-armo6r was of a cloth of Tars ; 
 Couched J with pearles white and round and great ; 
 
 His crisp6 hair hke ring6s was y-run. 
 And that was yellow, and glittered as the sun ; 
 His nose was high, his eyen a bright citrine, § 
 His lippes round, his color was sanguine ; 
 A few frackness || in his face ysprent,^ 
 Betwixen yellow and black somdeal yment ; ** 
 And as a lion he his looking cast. 
 
 [He does not omit the general impression, notwith- 
 standing all these particulars. You may see his por- 
 trait close or at a distance, as you please.] 
 
 * Alano (Spanish), — a species of hound, 
 t Rings on the collars to leash by. 
 X Embedded. 
 
 § Citron-color. It seems to imply wh.it has been sometimes called 
 a green-eye, — a hazel dashed with a sort of sparkling yellow. 
 II Freckles. ^ Sprinkled. •* Mingled.
 
 224 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 Of five-and-twenty years his age I cast ; * 
 His beard was well beginning for to spring ; 
 His voice was as a trumpet thundering. 
 • •••••• 
 
 A hundred lordes had he with him there, 
 All arm6d save their heads, in all their gear ; 
 Full richely in alle manner thingcs ; 
 For trusteth wellt that earles, dukes, kinges, 
 Were gathered in this noble company. 
 For love, and for increase of chivalry. 
 About this king there ran on every part 
 Full many a tame lion and leopart. 
 
 * Reckon. — Chaucer, like the Italians and French, used the same 
 word for a rhyme, provided the meaning was different. 
 
 t Believe me. The third person singular had the force, in those 
 days, of the imperative.
 
 225 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 
 
 No. m. 
 
 His Pathos. 
 
 ]HAUCER'S pathos is true nature's: it goes 
 diredlly to its object. His sympathy is not 
 fashioned and clipped by modes and respedls ; 
 and herein, indeed, he was kicky in the comparatively 
 homely breeding of his age, and in the dearth of 
 books. His feelings were not rendered critical and 
 timid. Observe the second line, for instance, of the 
 following verses. The glossaries tell us that the word 
 *■'• swell" means yalfzled, — died. There may be a 
 Saxon word with such a meaning : but, luckily for 
 Nature and Chaucer, there is another Saxon word, 
 swell, of which swell'd is the past tense ; and most 
 assuredly this is the word here, as the reader will feel 
 instantly. No man, however much in love, faints 
 " full oft a day : " but he may swell, as the poet says ; 
 that is to say, heave his bosom and body with the 
 venting of his long-suspended breath, and say, "Alas !" 
 The fainting is unnatural ; the sigh and the heaving is 
 most natural, and most admirably expressed by tliis 
 homely word. We have, therefore, spelt it according- 
 ly, to suit the rest of the orthograpliy.
 
 236 THE SEER. 
 
 THE UNHAPPY LOVER. 
 
 {From the KnighVs Tale.) 
 
 When that Arcite to Thebes comen was, 
 
 Full oft a day he sivell'd, and said, " Alas I " 
 
 For see his lady shall he never mo.* 
 
 And shortly to concluden all his woe. 
 
 So muckle sorrow had never creituxe 
 
 That is, or shall he, while the world may dm-e : 
 
 His sleep, his meat, his drink, is him beraft, 
 
 That lean he waxed, and dry as is a shaft ; 
 
 His eyen hollow, and grisly to behold ; 
 
 His hue sallow, and pale as ashes cold ; 
 
 And solitary he was, and ever alone. 
 
 And waiUng all the night, making his moan ; 
 
 And if he heardd song or instrument, 
 
 Then would he weepe ; he mighti not he stent. 
 
 That is, could not be stopped : the wilful, washing, 
 self-pitying tears would flow. This touch about tlie 
 music is exquisite. 
 
 Dryden, writing for the court of Charles the Second, 
 does not dare to let Arcite weep, when he hears 
 music. He restri6ls him to a gentlemanly sigh : — 
 
 " He sighs when songs or instruments he hears." 
 
 The cold ashes, which have lost their fire (we have 
 the phrase still " as pale as ashes"), he turns to " sap- 
 less boxen leaves " (a classical simile) ; and far be it 
 from him to venture to say " swell." No gentleman 
 ever " swell'd ; " certainly not with sighing, whatever 
 he might have done with drinking. But, instead of 
 that, the modern poet does not mind indulging him 
 
 * More. " Mo " is still to be found in the old version of the Psalms.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 227 
 
 with a good canting commonplace, in the style of the 
 fustian tiMgedies : — 
 
 " He raved with all the madness of despair ; 
 He raved, he beat his breast, he tore his hair." 
 
 And then we must have a solid, sensible reason for the 
 lover's not weeping : — 
 
 " Dry sorrow in his stupid eyes appears ; 
 FoTy wanting nourishment, he wanted tears I " 
 
 It was not sufficient, tliat, upon the principle of ex- 
 tremes meeting, the excess of sorrow was unable to 
 weep, — that even self-pity seemed wasted. When 
 the fine gentleman of the court of Charles the Second, 
 and when Charles himself, wept (see Pepys), it was 
 when they gi-ew maudlin over their wine, and thought 
 how piteous it was that such good eaters and drinkers 
 should not have every tiling else to their liking. But 
 let us not run the risk of forgetting the merits of 
 Drj'den, in comparing him with a poet so much the 
 greater. 
 
 THE SAME LOVEK DTINO. 
 
 Alas the woe ! alas the paines strong 
 That I for you have suffered, and so long ! 
 Alas the death ! alas mine Emily ! 
 Alas, departing of our company ! 
 Alas mine heartus queen ! Alas my wife I 
 
 " Alas ! " it is to be observed, was the common expres- 
 sion of grief in those days ; and all these repetitions 
 of it only show the loud, wilful self- commiseration, 
 natural to dying people of a violent turn of mind, as 
 this lover was. But he was also truly in love, and a 
 gentleman. See how he continues: —
 
 228 THE SEER. 
 
 Mine heartes lady, ender of my life ! 
 What is this world? What ashen men to have? 
 Now with his love, now in his cold grave: 
 Alone, — withouten any company. 
 
 How admirably expressed the difference between 
 warm social life and the cold solitary grave ! How 
 piteous the tautology, "Alone, — withouten any com- 
 pany ! " 
 
 Farewell, my sweet ! farewell, mine Emily ! 
 And soft, — take me in your armds tway 
 For love of God, and hearken what I say. 
 
 He has had an unjust quarrel with his rival and once- 
 beloved friend, Palamon : — 
 
 I have here, with my cousin Palamon, 
 
 Had strife and rancour many a day agone. 
 
 For love of you, and for my jealousy ; 
 
 And Jupiter so wis my soule gie,* 
 
 To speken of a servant t properly 
 
 With alle circumstances truely. 
 
 That is to say, truth, honom-, and knigthead. 
 
 Wisdom, humblcss, estate, and high kindred. 
 
 Freedom, and all that longeth to that art, J 
 
 So Jupiter have of my soule part. 
 
 As in this world right now ne know I none 
 
 So worthy to be loved as Palamon, 
 
 That serveth you, and will do all his life ; 
 
 And, if that ever ye shall be a wife. 
 
 Forget not Palamon, the gentle man. 
 
 SIMILE OF A MAN LED TO EXECUTION. 
 
 (From the " Man of Law's Taie.") 
 
 The virtuous Constance, wrongfully accused, stands 
 pale, and looking about her, among a king's courtiers. 
 
 * So surely guide my soul, 
 t A lady's servant or lover. 
 J The art of ti-ulj' serving.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 229 
 
 Have ye not seen, sometime, a pale face 
 (Among a press) * of him that hath been led 
 Towilrd his death, where as lie getteth no grace, 
 And such a colour in his face hath had. 
 They mighten know him that was so bested 
 Amougest all the faces in that rout 1 
 So staut Custance, and looketh her about. 
 
 THE MOTHER AND CHILD PUT TO THE MERCY OF THE OCEAN. 
 
 The same Constance, accused by the king's mother of 
 having produced him a monstrous child, is treated as 
 above, against the will of the constable of the realm, 
 w^ho is forced to obey his master's orders. 
 
 Weepen both j'oung and old, in all that place. 
 When that the king this cursed letter sent, 
 And Custance, ivith a deadly pali face 
 The fourth day towdrd the ship she went: 
 But nathcless she tak'th in good intent 
 The will of Christ ; and, kneeling on the strond, 
 She said, " Lord, aye welcome be thy soiid.t 
 He that me kepti from the fahi blame 
 Whiles I was in the land amongds you, 
 He can me keep from harm, and eke from shame, 
 In the salt sea, althoiujli I see not how. 
 As stronfi as ever he was, he is yet now. 
 In hira trust I, and in his mother dear 
 That is to me my sail, and eke my steer." 
 Her little child lay weeping in her arm ; 
 And, kneeling piteotisly, to him she said, 
 " Peace, little son ! I will do thee no harm." 
 With that, her kerchief oflF her head she braid. 
 And over his little eyen she it laid. 
 And in her arm she lulleth it full fast. 
 And into the heaven her eyen up she cast. 
 
 • In a multitude. f Thy sending, — the lot thou sendest.
 
 230 THE SEER. 
 
 " Mother (quoth she) and maiden bright, Mary ! 
 
 Sooth is, that thorough womannes eggment* 
 
 Mankind was born, and damned aye to die, 
 
 For which thy child was on a cross yrent: t 
 
 Thy blissful eyen saw all his toniiint ; 
 
 Then is there no comparison between 
 
 Thy woe and any woe man may sustain. 
 
 The true piteous emphasis on the words of this line is 
 not to be surpassed. 
 
 Thou saw'st thy child yslain before thine eyen, 
 And yet now liveth my little child parfay. J 
 Now, Lady bright ! to whom all woeful crien, 
 Thou glory of womanhood, thou faire May ! 
 Thou haven of refuge, bright star of day. 
 Rue on my child, that of thy gentleness 
 Ruest on every rueful in distress. 
 
 O httle child, alas ! what is thy guilt. 
 That never wroughtest sin as yet, pardie ? 
 Why will thine hard father have thee spilt? 
 O mercy, dear6 constable (quoth she), 
 As let my little child dwell here with thee." 
 
 The silence of the pitying constable, here hurriedly- 
 passed over by poor Constance, as if she would not 
 distress him by pressing him for what he could not do, 
 is a specimen of those eloquent powers of omission 
 for which great masters in writing are famous. Con- 
 stance immediately continues : — 
 
 "An' if thou darest not saven him from blame, 
 So kiss him ones § in his father's name." 
 
 * Incitement. f Tom. 
 
 X By my faith. § Once.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 23! 
 
 Therewith she looketh backward to the land, 
 Aud said6, " Farewell, husband ruthless ! " 
 And up she rose, and walked down the strand 
 Toward the sliip : her foUoweth all the press : 
 And ever she praijeth her child to fiold his peace, 
 And tak'th her leave. 
 
 The mixture of natural kindliness, bewildered feeling, 
 and indelible good-breeding, in this perpetual leave- 
 taking, is excessively affe6ling. 
 
 And with a holy intent 
 She blesseth her, and into the ship she went. 
 
 Glorious, sainted Griselda in our next.
 
 232 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 Story of Grlselda. 
 
 HE famous story of Griselda, or patient 
 Grizel, who supposes her husband to kill her 
 children and to dismiss her finally from his 
 bed under circumstances of the greatest outrage, and 
 yet behaves meekly under all, was not long since 
 the most popular story in Europe, and still deeply 
 affedls us. Writers have asserted that there actually 
 was some such person. In vain has the husband been 
 pronounced a monster, and the story impossible. In 
 vain have critics in subsequent time, not giving suffi- 
 cient heed to the difference between civilized and 
 feudal ages, or to the beauties with which the narra- 
 tive has been mingled, declared it to be no better than 
 the sight of a " torment on the rack." The story has 
 had shoals of narrators, particularly in old France ; 
 and been repeated and dwelt upon by the greatest and 
 tenderest geniuses, — Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chau- 
 cer. The whole heail of Christendom has embraced 
 the heroine. She has passed into a proverb : ladies 
 of quality have called their children after her, the 
 name surviving (we believe) among them to this day, 
 in spite of its griesly sound ; and we defy the manliest 
 man, of any feeling, to read it in Chaucer's ov^n con-
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER, 233 
 
 secutive stanzas (whatever he may do here) without 
 feeling his eyes moisten. 
 
 How is this to be accounted for? The husband is 
 perfectly monsti'ous and unnatural, — there can be no 
 doubt of that, — he pursues his trial of his wife's 
 patience for twelve years, and she is supposed to love 
 as well as to obey him all the time, — him, the mur- 
 derer of her children ! This, also, is unnatural, — 
 impossible. A year, a montli, a week, would have 
 been bad enough. The lie was bad in itself. And 
 yet, in spite of that utter renouncement of the fi6lion, 
 to which civilization finally brings us, we feel for the 
 invincibly obedient creature ; we are deeply interested ; 
 we acknowledge instinftively, that the story had a 
 right to its fame; nay (not to speak it profanely), 
 that, like other permanent and popular stories of a 
 solemn cast, it is a sort of revelation in its way, at 
 once startling us with contrasts of good and evil, and 
 ending in filling us with hope and exaltation. How is 
 this? 
 
 The secret is, that a principle — the sense of duty — 
 is set up in it above all considerations ; that the duty 
 once believed in by a good and humble nature is 
 exalted by it, in consequence of its very torments, 
 above all torment and all weakness. We are not 
 expedted to copy it, much less to approve or be blind 
 to the hard-heartedness that fetches it out ; but the , 
 blow is struck loudly in the ears of mankind, in order 
 that they may think of duty itself, and draw their own 
 conclusions in favor of their own sense of it, when they 
 see what marvellous effe6l it can have even in its 
 utmost extravagance, and how unable we are to help 
 VOL. I. 20
 
 234 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 respedling it, in proportion to the very depth of its 
 self-abasement. We feel that the same woman could 
 have gone through any trial which she thought becom- 
 ing a woman, of a kind such as we should all admire 
 in the wisest and justest ages. We feel even her 
 weakness to be her strength, — one of the wonder- 
 fullest privileges of virtue. 
 
 We are travelling, at present, far out of the pro- 
 posed design of these specimens, which were intended 
 to consist of little more tlian extracts, and the briefest 
 possible summary of the author's charadleristics. But 
 the reader will pardon an occasional yielding to 
 temptations like these. Our present number shall 
 consist of as brief a sketch as we can give of the suc- 
 cessive incidents of Chaucer's story, which are man- 
 aged with a skill exquisite as the feeling ; and, when- 
 ever we come to an irresistible specimen, it shall be 
 extracted. 
 
 At Saluzzo in Piedmont, under the Alps, — 
 
 "Down at the root of Vesulus the cold," — 
 
 there reigned a feudal lord, a marquis, who was be- 
 loved by his people, but too much given to his amuse- 
 ment, and an enemy of marriage ; which alarmed 
 them, lest he should die childless, and leave his in- 
 heritance in the hands of strangers. They, therefore, 
 at last sent him a deputation which addressed him on 
 the subject ; and he agreed to take a wife, on condition 
 that they should respect his choice wheresoever it 
 might fall. 
 
 Now, among tlie poorest of the marquis's peo- 
 ple, —
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 235 
 
 " There dwelt a man 
 Which that was holden poorest of them all : 
 But highe God sometim6 senden can 
 His grace unto a little ox's stall ; 
 Janicola, men of that thorp him call ; 
 A daughter had he fair enough to sight, 
 And Grisildis tliis young6 maiden hight." 
 
 Tender of age was " Grisildis " or "Grisilda" (for 
 the poet calls her both) ; but she was a maiden of a 
 thoughtful and steady nature, and as excellent a daugh- 
 ter as could be, thinking of nothing but her sheep, her 
 si^inning, and her " old poor father," whom she sup- 
 ported by her labor, and waited upon with the greatest 
 duty and obedience. 
 
 " Upon Griseld', this i)oor6 creature, 
 Full often sitli tliis marquis set his eye. 
 As he on hunting rode perdventure ; 
 And, when it fell that he might her espy. 
 He not with wanton looking of folly 
 His eyen cast on her, but in sad wise 
 Upon her cheer he would him oft avise." 
 
 The marquis announced to his people that he had 
 chosen a wife, and the wedding-day arrived : but no- 
 body saw the lady ; at which there was great wonder. 
 Clothes and jewels were prepared, and tlie feast too ; 
 and the marquis, with a great retinue, and accompa- 
 nied by music, took his way to the village where 
 Griselda lived. 
 
 Griselda had heard of his coming, and said to her- 
 self, that she would get her work done faster than 
 usual, on purpose to stand at the door, like other 
 maidens, and see the sight : but, just as she was 
 going to look out, she heard the marquis call her ;
 
 236 TJIE SEER. 
 
 and she set down a water-pot she had in her hand, 
 and knelt down before him with her usual steady 
 countenance. 
 
 The marquis asked for her father ; and, going in- 
 doors to him, took him by the hand, and said, with 
 many courteous words and leave-asking, that he had 
 come to marry his daughter. The poor man turned 
 red, and stood abashed and quaking, but begged his 
 lord to do as seemed good to him : and then the mar- 
 quis asked Griselda if she would have him, and vow 
 to obey him in all things, be they what they might ; 
 and she answered trembling, but in like manner ; and 
 he led her forth, and presented her to the people as his 
 wife. 
 
 The ladies, now Griselda's attendants, took off her 
 old peasant's clothes, not much pleased to handle 
 them, and dressed her anew in fine clothes, so that 
 the people hardly knew her again for her beauty. 
 
 " Her hair^s have they combed that lay unti-essed 
 Full rudely, and with their fingers small 
 A coroune on her head they have ydress6d, 
 And set her full of nouches * great and small. 
 Thus Walter lowly, nay hut royally, 
 Wedded with fortunate honesty ; " 
 
 and Griselda behaved so well and discreetly, and 
 behaved so kindly to every one, making up disputes, 
 and speaking such gentle and sensible words, — 
 
 " And could6 so the people's heart embrace, 
 That each her lov'th that looketh on her face." 
 
 * JVoMcAes,-- nuts? — buttons in that shape made of gold or jeweller^-.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 237 
 
 In due time the marchioness had a daughter, and 
 the marquis had always treated his consort well, and 
 behaved like a man of sense and reflection : but now 
 he informed her that his people were dissatisfied at his 
 having raised her to be his wife ; and, reminding her 
 of her vow to obey him in all things, told her that she 
 must agree to let him do with the little child whatso- 
 ever he pleased. Griselda kept her vow to the letter, 
 not even changing countenance ; and shortly after- 
 wards an ill-looking fellow came, and took the child 
 from her. Intimating that he was to kill it. Griselda 
 asked permission to kiss her child ere it died ; and she 
 took it in her bosom, and blessed and kissed it with a 
 sad face, and prayed the man to bury its " little body" 
 in some place where the birds and beasts could not get 
 it. But the man said nothing. He took the child, 
 and went his way ; and the marquis bade him carry it 
 to the Countess of Pavia, his sister, with directions to 
 bring it up in secret. 
 
 Griselda lived on, behaving like an excellent wife ; 
 and four years afterwards she had another child, a son, 
 which the marquis demanded of her, as he had done 
 the daughter, laying his injunctions on her at the same 
 time to be patient. Griselda said she would ; adding, 
 — as a proof, nevertheless, what bitter feelings she had 
 to control, — 
 
 " I have not had no part of children twain ; 
 But first, sickness ; and after, woe and pain." 
 
 The same " ugly sergeant" now came again, and took 
 away the second child, carr}dng it like the former to 
 Bologna ; and twelve years after, to the astonishment
 
 238 THE SEER. 
 
 and itidignation of the poet, and the people too, but 
 making no alteration whatsoever in the obedience of 
 the wife, the marquis informs her, that his subje(5ls 
 are dissatisfied at his having her for a wife at all, and 
 that he had got a dispensation from the pope to marry 
 another, for whom she must make way, and be di- 
 vorced, and return home ; adding, insultingly, that she 
 might take back with her the dowry which she 
 brought him. Woefully, but ever patiently, does Gris- 
 elda consent ; not, however, witliout a tender exclama- 
 tion at the diflerence between her marriage-day and 
 this : and as she receives the insti-u6lion about the 
 dowry as a hint that she is to give up her fine clothes, 
 and resume her old ones, which she says it would be 
 impossible to find, she makes him the following 
 exquisite prayer and remonstrance. — If we had to 
 write for only a certain select set of readers, never 
 should we think of bespeaking their due reverence for 
 a passage like the following, and its simple, primitive, 
 and most afle(5ling thoughts and words. But a publi- 
 cation like the present must accommodate itself to the 
 chances of pei-usal in all quarters, either by alteration 
 or explanation ; and therefore, in not altering any of 
 these words, or daring to gainsay the sacred tender- 
 ness they bring before us, we must observe, that as 
 there is not a more pathetic passage to be found in 
 the whole circle of human writ, so the pathos and the 
 pure words go inseparably together ; and his is the 
 most refined heart, educated or uneducated, that re- 
 ceives them with the delicatest and profoundest emo- 
 tion.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 239 
 
 " My lord, ye wot that in my father's place 
 Ye did me strip out of my pooi6 weed," 
 
 [How much, by the way, this old and more length- 
 ened pronunciation of the word poor, poore (French, 
 pauvre)^ adds to the piteous emphasis of it !] 
 
 " And richt'ly ye clad me of yonr grace : 
 To you brought I nought elles out of drede,* 
 But faith and nakedness and ' womanhede ; ' 
 And here again your clothing I restore. 
 And eke your wedding ring, for evermore. 
 
 The remnant of your jewels ready be 
 Witliin your ' chamber,' I dare safely sain. 
 Naked out of my father's house {quoth she) 
 I came, and naked I must turn again." 
 
 [How beautifully is the Bible used here !] 
 
 " All your pleasanc6 would I follow fain ; 
 But yet I hope it be not your intent 
 That I smockless out of your palace went. 
 
 Ye could not do so dishonest a thinfj 
 That thilki t womb in which your children lay, 
 Shouidd bi fore the people, in my walking. 
 Be seen all bare : wherefore, I you pray. 
 Let me not like a worm go by the way. 
 Bemember you, mine owen lord so dear, 
 I ivas your wife, though I unworthy were. 
 
 "Wherefore in guerdon of my ' womanhede,* 
 "Which that I brought and ' yet ' again I bear, 
 As vouchesafe to give me to my meed 
 But such a smock as I was wont to wear, 
 That I therewith may wrie J the womb of her 
 That teas your irlfe. And here I take my leave 
 Of you, mine oweii lord, lest I you grieve." 
 
 * Out of drede, — without doubt, 
 t Thi[ke, — thi3. t Wrie, — cover.
 
 240 THE SEER. 
 
 " ' The smock/ quoth he, ' that thou hast on thy back. 
 Let it be still, and bear it forth with thee.' 
 But well unnethes * thilke word he spake. 
 But went his way for ruth and for pittie, 
 Before the folk herselven strippeth she, 
 And in her smock, with foot and head aU bare, 
 Toward her father's house, forth is she fare." 
 
 The people follow her weeping and wailing ; but 
 she went ever as usual, with staid eyes, nor all the 
 while did she speak a word. As to her poor father, 
 he cursed the day he was born. And so with her 
 father, for a space, dwelt " this flower of wifely pa- 
 tience ; " nor showed any sense of oflence, nor remem- 
 brance of her high estate. 
 
 At length arrives news of the coming of the new 
 marchioness, with such array of pomp as had never 
 been seen in all Lombardy ; and the marquis, who has, 
 in the mean time, sent to Bologna for his son and 
 daughter, once more desires Griselda to come to him, 
 and tells her that as he has not women enough in his 
 household to wait upon his new wife, and set every 
 thing in order for her, he must request her to do it ; 
 which she does with all ready obedience, and then 
 goes forth with the rest to meet the new lady. At 
 dinner, the marquis again calls her, and asks her 
 what she thinks of his choice. She commends it 
 heartily, and prays God to give him prosperity ; only 
 adding, that she hopes he will not try the nature of so 
 young a creature as he tried hers, since she has been 
 brought up more tenderly^ and perhaps could not 
 bear it. 
 
 * Unnethfis, — scarcely.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 24I 
 
 " And wl.en this Walter saw her patience, 
 Her g.al.le clieer, and no malice at all, 
 And he so often had her done offence, 
 And she aye sad* and constant as a wall. 
 Continuing aye her innocence over all. 
 This stiu'dy marquis 'gan his heartc dress 
 To rue upon her wifely stedfastness." 
 
 He gathers her in his arms, and kisses her ; but she 
 takes no heed of it, out of astonishment, nor hears 
 any thing he says : upon which he exclaims, that, as 
 sure as Christ died for him, she is his wife, and he will 
 have no other, nor ever had ; and with that he intro- 
 duces his supposed bride to her as her own daughter, 
 with his son by her side ; and Griselda, overcome at 
 last, faints away. 
 
 " When she this heard, aswoone down she falleth 
 For piteous joy ; and, after her swooning. 
 She both her young6 children to her calleth. 
 And in her armes, piteously weeping, 
 Embraceth them, and tenderly kissing 
 Full like a mother with her sake tears 
 She bathed both their visage and their hairs. 
 
 Oh ! such a piteous thing it was to see 
 
 Her swooning, aud her humble voice to hear! 
 
 ' Grand vmry ! Lord, God thank it you (quoth she), 
 
 That ye have sav6d me my children dear : 
 
 Now reckt I never to be dead right here. 
 
 Since I stand in your love and in your grace, 
 
 No force of death,!: nor when my spirit pace. 
 
 ' tender, O dear, O yoimg6 children mine ! 
 Your woful mother weened steadfastly, 
 That cruel houndes or some foul vermin 
 
 * Sad; composed in manner; unaltered, 
 t Reck; care. \ Xo force of rieath ; no matter for death. 
 
 VOL. I. 21
 
 242 THE SEER. 
 
 Had eaten you : but God of his mercy 
 
 And your benigi 6 father tenderly 
 
 Hath done you keep ; ' and in that sam6 stound 
 
 All suddenly she swapped adovvn to ground. 
 
 And in her swoon so sadly holdeth she 
 Her children two when she 'gan them embrace. 
 That with great sleight and great difficidly 
 The children from her arm theij 'gan arrace.* 
 Oh ! many a tear on many a piteous face 
 Down ran of them that stooden hei- beside; 
 Unnethe abouten her might they abide." 
 
 That is, they could scarcely remain to look at her, or 
 stand still. And so, with feasting and joy, ends this 
 divine, cruel story of Patient Griselda ; the happiness 
 of which is superior to the pain, not only because it 
 ends so well, but because there is ever present in it, 
 like that of a saint in a pi6ture, the sweet, sad face of 
 the fortitude of woman. 
 
 * A7-7-ace (French, arracher) ; " pluck."
 
 243 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 
 
 No. V. 
 JFurther Specimens of his Pleasantry and Satire. 
 
 THE FAIRIES SUPERSEDED BT THE FRIARS. 
 
 ]HAUCER was one of the reformers of his 
 time ; and, like the celebrated poets and wits 
 of most countries (Catholic included), took 
 pleasure in exposing the abuses of the Church ; not 
 because he was an ill-natin-ed man, and disliked the 
 Church itself (for no one has done gi'eater honor to 
 the true Christian pastor than he, in a passage already 
 quoted), but because his very good-nature, and love 
 of truth, made him the more dislike the abuses of the 
 best things in the most reverend places. He measures 
 his satire, however, according to its desert, and is se- 
 verest upon the severe and mercenary, — the holders of 
 such livings as give no life, but rather take it. In the 
 following exquisite banter, he rallies the more jovial 
 and plebeian part of the Church — the ordinary begging- 
 friars — with a sly good-humor. And observe how he 
 contrives to sprinkle the passage with his poetry. Tlie 
 versification, also, is obviously good, even to the most 
 modern ears : —
 
 244 "T^^ SEER. 
 
 " In okle dayes of the King Artour, 
 Of which that Britons speaken great hon6iir. 
 All was this land fulfilled of Faery : 
 The Elf-queen, with her jolly company, 
 Danced full oft in many a greene mead. 
 This was the old opinion, as I read : 
 I speak of many hundred years ago ; 
 But now can no man see none elves mo ; 
 For now the greate charity and prayers 
 Of Umiters and other holy freres. 
 That searchen every land and every stream, 
 As thick as inotis in the sunni beem, 
 Blessing halles, chambers, kitchenes, and bowers, 
 Cities and boroughs, castles high and towers, 
 Thorpes and barnes, shepenes and dairies, 
 Tliis maketh that there be no Faeries : 
 For there as wont to walken was an elf, 
 There walketh now the liniiter himself 
 In undermeal6s and in morrowings, 
 And saith his matins and his holy things 
 As he go'th in his limitation. 
 Women may now go safely up and down : 
 In every bush, and under every tree, 
 Tha-e is no other Incubus but he." 
 
 AN IMPUDENT, DEtTNEEN SELLER OF PARDONS AND INDUL- 
 GENCES CONFESSES FOR WHAT HE PREACHES. 
 
 Lordings, quoth he, in churche when I preach 
 I pain6 me to have an hautein speech. 
 
 (I do my best to speak out loud,) 
 
 And ring it out, as round as go'th a bell. 
 For I can all by rote that I tell : 
 
 (I learn all I say by heart :) 
 
 My theme is always one, and ever was, 
 Radix malorum est cupiditas.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 245 
 
 " Covetousness is tlie root of all evil." Chaucer has 
 fitted his Latin capitally well in with the measure, — u 
 nicety singularly ill obsei"ved by poets in general. 
 
 First I pronounce whemi^s that I come. 
 And then my bulles 
 
 (the pope's bulls) 
 
 show I, all and some ; 
 Or hege lord6's seal on my patent, 
 Tliat show I first, my body to warr6nt, 
 That no man be so bold, nor priest nor clerk. 
 Me to disturb in Christes holy work ; 
 And after that, then tell I forth my tales ; 
 Bulles of popes and cardmales, 
 Of patriarchs and of bishopes, I show ; 
 And in Latin I speak a wordes few, 
 To saffron with my predication, 
 
 (To give a color and relish to his sermon, like saffron 
 in pastry,) 
 
 And for to steer men to dev6tion. 
 
 The preacher here banters his own relics, and then 
 proceeds with the following ludicrous picture and ex- 
 quisitely impudent avowal : — 
 
 Then pain I me to stretchen forth my neck, 
 And east and west upon the people I beck, 
 As doth a dove silting upon a hum : 
 My handes and my tongue gone so yearn, 
 
 (Go so briskly together,) 
 
 That it is joy to see my business. 
 
 Of avarice and of such cursedness 
 
 Is all my preaching, for to make them free 
 
 To give their pence, and namely, — unto me ;
 
 246 ' THE SEER. 
 
 For mine intent is nought but for to win. 
 And notliing for correction of sin ; 
 I reck never, when that tliey be buried. 
 Though that their soules gone a blackberried. 
 
 (That is, though their souls go by bushels into the 
 lower regions, like so many blackberries.) 
 
 Therefore — 
 
 (repeats he, at the end of the next paragraph, varying 
 the note a little like a relishing musician) — 
 
 Therefore my theme is yet, and ever was. 
 Radix malorum est cupiditas. 
 
 IRONICAL BIT OP TRANSLATION. 
 
 In the story of the " Cock and tlie Fox," the gallant 
 bird, who has been alarmed by the fox, is compliment- 
 ing his favorite wife, and introduces some Latin, — 
 the real purport of which is, that the fair sex are the 
 " confusion of mankind ; " but which, he informs her, 
 signifies something quite the reverse. Sir Walter 
 Scott admired this passage. 
 
 But let us speak of mirth, and stint all this. 
 (Stop all this.) 
 
 Madani6 Partelot, so have I bliss, 
 
 Of one thing God hath sent me large grace ; 
 
 For when I see the beauty of your face. 
 
 Ye be so scarlet red about your eyen, 
 
 It maketh all my dreade for to dien ; 
 
 For all so siker as 
 
 (As sure as) 
 
 In principio, 
 Malier est hominis confusio : 
 Madam, the sentence of this Latin is, 
 " Woman is mannes joy and mannes bliss."
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 247 
 
 In principio^ inuUer est hominis confusio^ — 
 " Woman, from tlie first, was the confusion of man." 
 " In principio" obsen'es Sir Walter, in a note on the 
 passage in his edition of " Dryden," " refers to the be- 
 ginning of St. John's Gospel." And, in a note on the 
 word conftisio^ he says it is taken from a fabulous 
 conversation between the Emperor Adrian and the 
 Philosopher Secundus, reported by Vincent de Beau- 
 vais in his " Speculum Historiale." ^uid est inulier'? 
 Hominis confusio : insaturabilis bcstia, Sc. "What 
 is woman? The confusion of man, &c." " The Cock's 
 polite version (he adds) is very ludicrous." 
 
 How pleasant to hear one great writer thus making 
 another laugh, as if they were sitting over a table 
 together, though five centuries are between them ! 
 But genius can make the lightest as well as gravest 
 things the property of all time. Its laughs, as v.ell as 
 its sighs, are immortal.
 
 248 
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 
 
 No. VI. 
 
 3Iisccllaneotis Specitnens of Jiis Description^ 
 Portrait-paintings and Fine Sense. 
 
 BIEDS IN THE SPRING. 
 
 ULL lusty was the weather and benign ; 
 For which the fowls against the sunne sheen 
 (What for the season and the young6 green) 
 FuU loude sungen their affections : 
 Them seemed had getten them protecti(Sns 
 Against the sword of winter, keen and cold. 
 
 Squire's Tale. 
 
 PATIENCE AND EQUAL DEALING IN LOVE 
 
 For one thing, sirs, safely dare I say. 
 
 That friendes ever each other must ohey. 
 
 If they will long6 holden company : 
 
 Love will not be constrained by mastery : 
 
 When mastery cometh, the god of Love anon 
 
 Beateth his wings, and farewell ! he is gone. 
 
 [Compare the ease, life, and gesticulation of this — 
 the audible suddenness ?a\A. fareivell of it — with the 
 balanced and formal imitation by Pope : — 
 
 "Love, free as air, at sight of Iniman ties 
 Spreads his light wings, and in a nionient flies."] 
 
 Love is a thing as, any spirit, free. 
 Women of kind desiren liberty.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 249 
 
 And not to be constrained as a thrall ; 
 And so do men, if soothly I say shall. 
 Look, who that is most patient in love, 
 He is at his advantage all above. 
 
 (He has the advantage over others that are not so.) 
 
 Patience is a high virtue certdin ; 
 
 For it vanqiiisheth, as these devices sain, 
 
 Thingcs that rigour never should attain : 
 
 For every word men should not chide or plain. 
 
 Learnetk to suff'ren ; 
 
 (Learn to suffer ;) 
 
 or, so may I gone, 
 
 (So may I prosper,) 
 
 Ye shall it learn, whether ye will or nan. 
 
 The Franklin's Tale. 
 
 INA15ILITY TO DIE. 
 
 Three drunken rioters go out to kill Death, who 
 
 meets them in the likeness of a decrepit old man, and 
 
 diredls them to a treasure w^hich brings them to their 
 
 destruction. The old man only is given here : — 
 
 When they had gone not fully half a mile, 
 
 Right as they would have trodden o'er a stile, 
 
 An old man and a poore with them met : 
 
 This olde man full meekely them gret, 
 
 And said6 thus : " Now, lordes, God you see ! " 
 
 The proudest of those riotour^s three 
 
 Answered again : " What 1 churl, with sorry grace. 
 
 Why art thou all forwrapped save thy facel 
 
 Why Uvest thou so long in so great age 'J " 
 
 This olde man '<jan look in his visd<jc, 
 And saidc thus : " For I ne cannot find 
 A man, thoiu/h that I walked into Iml, 
 Keither in city nor in no village. 
 That woulde change his youthe for mine age ; 
 And therefore must I have mine age still 
 As long6 time as it is Godd6s will.
 
 250 THE SEER. 
 
 Ne Death, alas ! ne will not have my life : 
 Thus walk I, like a restoless caitiiF; 
 And on the ground, which is my mother's gate, 
 I knocke with my statf early and late, 
 And say to her, ' Leve mother, let me in, 
 Lo ! how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin ! 
 Alas ! when shall my bon^s be at rest? 
 Mother, with you would I change my chest. 
 That in my chamber longe time hath be, 
 Yea, for an hairy clout to wrap in me.' " 
 
 (That is, for a coffin and a winding-sheet of hair- 
 cloth.) 
 
 DESCRIPTION OP THE COCK. 
 
 {In the Story of the " Cock and the Fox.-'') 
 
 His comb was redder than the fine cordl, 
 Emhatteled as it were a castle wall ; 
 His bill was black, and as the jet it shone ; 
 Like azure were his leggis and his tone ; 
 
 (His toes ;) 
 
 His nailis lohiter than the lihj flower ; 
 And like the humid gold was his coldur. 
 
 Compare the above verses (taking care of the accent) 
 with the most popular harmonies of Pope, and see 
 into what a flowing union of strength and sweetness 
 the "old poet" could get when he chose. 
 
 He flew down from his beam. 
 For it was day, and eke his hennes all ; 
 And with a chuck he 'gau them for to call. 
 For he had found a corn lay in the yard : 
 Eoyal he was ; he was no more afeard. 
 
 (He had been frightened by a fox.) 
 
 He looketh, as it were a grim Uoan, 
 
 (Lion,)
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCER. 25 1 
 
 And on his tnes he roameth up and down ; 
 He deigneth not to set his foot to ground : 
 He chucketh when he hath a corn yfound ; 
 And to him runnen then his wivfes all. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE. 
 
 This is in the pure, unfaltering style of the old 
 Italian painters. The simile in the third line is one 
 of the quaintnesses of an age in which books were 
 rare, — the key to almost all the quaintnesses of Chau- 
 cer. The rest of them are conne6led with his adhe- 
 rence to tlie originals from which he translated, and 
 only appear strange from dift'erence of time or national 
 customs. A want of consideration to this eft'e6l led 
 Mr. Hazlitt into an error, when he instanced that 
 pleasant, scornful admonition to the sun in " Troilus 
 and Creseida" (to go and sell his light to them that 
 "engrave small seals") as an evidence of Chaucer's 
 minuteness and particularity. 
 
 The original of " Troilus and Creseida" was by an 
 Italian ; and in Italy the seal-engravers of those times 
 were famous, and in great employ ; nor was any thing 
 more natural for a lover, angry with the day-time, than 
 to tell the sun to go and give his light to those that so 
 notoriously needed it. 
 
 Among those other folk was Creseida 
 In widow's habit black ; but natheless 
 Right as our first letter is now an A, 
 In beauty first so stood she makeless : 
 
 (Matchless :) 
 
 Her goodly looTdng gladded all the press ; 
 
 " N'as never seen thing to be praised so dear, 
 
 Nor under cloudi black so bright a star,
 
 2152 THE SEER. 
 
 [What a pity this fine line did not terminate with a 
 full stop ! but he goes on,] 
 
 As was Creseid," they saiden evereach one. 
 That her behelden in her blacke weed ; 
 And yet she stood full low and still alone, 
 Behind all other folks in little brede, 
 
 (In small space,) ''^\ 
 
 And nigh the door, aye under shames drede, 
 
 (That is, not shame-faced, but apprehensive of being 
 put to shame, — put out of her self-possession,) 
 
 Simple of attire and debonnair of cheer ; 
 With full-assured looking and mannire. 
 
 Troilus, thus seeing her for the first time, looks 
 hard at her, like a town-gallant ; and she, being town- 
 bred herself, for all her unaftedledness, thinks it 
 necessary to let him understand that he is not to stare 
 
 at her. 
 
 She n'as not with the most of her statiire, 
 
 (Her stature was not of the tallest,) 
 
 But all her Umbes so well answering 
 Weren to womanhood, that creature 
 Was never lesse mannish in seeming, 
 And eke the pure wise of her meaning 
 She showed well, 
 
 (Her manner was so correspondent with her mean- 
 
 that men might in her guess 
 Honour, estate, and womanly nobless. 
 Then Troilus, right wonder well witha!, 
 'Gan for to like her meaning and her cheer, 
 Which somedeal deignous was ; 
 
 (Was a little haughty ;)
 
 SPECIMENS OF CIIAUCER. 253 
 
 for she let fall 
 Her look a little aside, in such mannere 
 Ascaunces, — " Whdt ! may I not standen here ? " 
 And after tliat her looking 'gan she light ; 
 
 (Began to lighten, — to restore to its former ease ;) 
 
 That never thought him see so good a sigiit. 
 
 Chaucer is very fond of painting these womanly 
 portraits, especially the face. Here is — 
 
 ANOTHER, 
 
 introduced to us with a piece of music. The succes- 
 sion of adverbs at the end of the first five lines makes 
 a beat upon the measure, analogous to the dance he is 
 speaking of: — 
 
 I saw her dance so comely, 
 
 Carol and sing so sweetly, 
 
 And laugh and play so luomanly, 
 
 And looken so debonairly, 
 
 So goodly speak and so friendly. 
 
 That eertes I trow that evermore 
 
 N'as seen so blissful a treasore. 
 
 For every haire on her head, 
 
 Me soth to say it was not red, 
 
 Ne neither yellow, nor brown it n'as ; 
 
 Methought most lilte to gold it was. 
 
 And which eyen my lady had, 
 
 Debonaire, good, and glad, and sad ; 
 
 (Sad is in earnest ;) 
 
 Simple, of good muchel, not too wide ; 
 Thereto her look was not aside 
 Nor overthawt, but beset so well, 
 It drew and took up every deal, 
 
 (Entirely,)
 
 254 '^^''^ SEER. 
 
 All which that on her 'gan behold ; 
 Her eyen seemed anon she would 
 Have mercy. Folly weenden so, 
 But it was ne'er the rather do : 
 
 (She looked so good-natured, that folly itself thought 
 she was at its service ; though folly was much mis- 
 taken :) 
 
 It was no counterfeited thing ; 
 
 It was her own pure looking. 
 
 A charming couplet ! And he need not have said any 
 more ; but, he was so fond of the face, he could not 
 help going on : — 
 
 Were she ne'er so glad, 
 Her looking ivas not foolish spread. 
 
 Though dulness itself, he tells us, was absolutely 
 " afraid of her style of life, it was so cheerful." 
 
 I have no wit that can suffice 
 To comprehenden her beauty. 
 
 (To describe it comprehensively.) 
 
 But thus much I dare say, that she 
 Was white, ruddy, fresh, Uvely hued, 
 And every day her beauty newid. 
 . . . Be it ne'er so dark, 
 Me thinketh I see her evermo. 
 
 (If all they, says the poet,) 
 
 That ever lived were now alive, 
 Ne would they have found to descrive 
 In all her face a wicked sign ; 
 For it was sad, simple, and benign. 
 
 The Book of the Duchess. 
 
 And there is a great deal more of the description.
 
 SPECIMENS OF CHAUCKR. 355 
 
 GOIXG TO SLEBP IN HEARING OF A NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 A nightingale upon a cedar green, 
 
 Under tlie chamber wall there as she lay. 
 
 Fall loud ysung again the nioone sheen. 
 
 Par 'venture, m his birdes wise, a lay 
 
 Of love, that made her hearte fresh and gay; 
 
 That hearkened she so long in good intent, 
 
 Till at the last the dead6 sleep her hent. 
 
 Troilus and Creseida. 
 
 EXQUISITE COMPAKISON OF A NIGHTINGALE, WITH CONFIDENCE 
 
 AFTER FEAR. 
 
 And as the new abashed nightingale, 
 That stinteth first when she beginneth sing, 
 Wlien that she heareth any herd&s tale, 
 
 (Herdsman counting his flock,) 
 
 Or in the hedges any wight stirring ; 
 
 And after, siker doth her voice outring : 
 
 (Siker is securely :) 
 
 Right so Creseidi, when that her aread stent, 
 Opened her heart, and told him her intent. 
 
 We conclude this long article, very unwillingly (hav- 
 ing to omit a hundred beautiful passages), with a 
 specimen of Chaucer's philosophy, particularly fit to 
 honor these pages : — 
 
 For thilkd ground that beareth the weedes wick 
 
 (Wicked or poisonous) 
 
 Bear'th eke these wholesome herbes as full oft ; 
 And next to the foul nettle, rough and thick. 
 The rose ywaxelh sate and smooth and soft ; 
 And next the valley is the hill alojl ; 
 And next the darkd night is the glad morrow. 
 And also joy is next the fine of sorrow.
 
 2 
 
 ^6 
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING 
 WOMEN. 
 
 HE "Adventures of Peter Wilkins" is a book 
 written about a hundred years back, purport- 
 ing to be the work of a shipwrecked voyager, 
 and relating the discoveiy of a l^eople who had wings. 
 It is mentioned somewhere, with great esteem, by Mr. 
 Southey, if our memory does not deceive us ; and has 
 been altogether so much adinired, and so popular, that 
 we ai-e surprised Mr. Dunlop has omitted it in his 
 " History of Fiaion." The name, " Peter Wilkins," 
 has, to the present perplexed and aspiring generation 
 (not yet knowing what to retain and what to get rid 
 of), a poor and vulgar sound. It is not Montreville or 
 Mordaunt or Montgomery. "Peter" is not the name 
 for a card. " Wilkins " hardly announces himself as a 
 diner with dukes. But, a hundred years ago, people 
 did not conceive that a gentleman's pretensions wei^e 
 nominal. What novelist now-a-days would call his 
 hero "Tom Jones"? Yet thus was his great work 
 christened by Fielding, — a man of noble family. 
 However, there is a " preferment " in the instinct of 
 this aspiration. Society has had a lift, and is inclined 
 to take every thing for an advantage and an elegance 
 which it sees in possession of its new company. By
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 257 
 
 and by, it will be content with the real elegances, and 
 drop the pretended. 
 
 It is a great honor to a writer to invent a being at 
 once new and delightful ; and the honor is not the 
 less for the apparent obviousness of the invention. 
 Let any one tiy to make a new combination of this 
 sort, and he will find how difficult it is. We will 
 venture to say, that, besides genius in the oi'dinary 
 sense of the word, there is a faith in it, and a remote- 
 ness from things worldly, that implies a virtue and a 
 child-like simplicity, not common but to minds of the 
 higher order. Some writers would think they were 
 going to be merely childish, and would very properly 
 desist. Others would be apprehensive of ridicule, 
 and would desist with like reason. Not that every- 
 body would succeed who fancied he should. Taste 
 and judgment are requisite to all good inventions, as 
 well as an imagination to find them : and there must 
 be, above all, a strong taste for the truth ; verisimili- 
 tude, or the likeness of truth, being the great charm 
 in the wildest of fictions. It is very difficult to unite 
 the imaginative with the worldly ; and men of real 
 genius sometimes make mistakes, in consequence, fit 
 only for the most literal or incoherent understandings. 
 
 We have headed our article " Flying Women," 
 instead of the " Flying People ; " because, though the 
 beings discovered by our friend Peter are of both 
 sexes, we could never quite persuade ourselves that 
 his males had an equal right to their graiindee. All, 
 however, that he says about the Flying Nation as a 
 people is ingenious. He has escaped, in particular, 
 in a most happ)' manner, from the difficulty of intro- 
 voL. I. 22
 
 25S THE SEER. 
 
 ducing his plain-backed hero among them without 
 lessening his dignity, by means of implicating him 
 with a prophecy important to their well-being : and 
 his speculations upon their religion and policy show 
 him to have been a man of an original turn of 
 reflecftion in every thing ; good-hearted, and zealous 
 for the advancement of mankind. But his lords, his 
 archite6ls, and his miners, violate the remoteness of 
 his invention, and bring it back to common-place ; 
 nor was tliis necessary to render his work useful. 
 The utility of a work of imagination consists in soft- 
 ening and elevating the mind generally ; and this is 
 the effedl of his Flying Woman. All that relates to 
 her is luckily set in a frame by itself; is remote, quiet, 
 and superior. She is as much above Peter's race in 
 sincerity as in her wings ; and yet there is nothing 
 about her, which, in a higher state of humanity, the 
 author does not succeed in making us suppose pos- 
 sible. Peter is even raised towards her by dint of his 
 admiration of her truth ; and the sweetness of her 
 disposition more than meets him half-way, and sets 
 them both on a level. 
 
 The author of this curious invention must have been 
 a very modest as well as clever man, or have had 
 some peculiar reasons for keeping his name a secret ; 
 for he was living when the work arrived at a second 
 edition. The dedication does not appear in the first ; 
 and the writer, who signs himself R. P., speaks in it 
 of the heroine as his property. It is observable, that, 
 in all the editions we have met with, tlie initials R. P. 
 are signed to the dedication, while R. S. is put in the 
 titlepage. This also looks like a negligence uncom-
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMKN, 259 
 
 moil in authors. The dedication is to Elizabeth, 
 Countess of Northumberland, — the lady to whom 
 Bishop Percy dedicated his " Reliques of Ancient 
 English Poetry." We have sometimes fancied that 
 Abraham Tucker wrote it, or Bishop Berkeley. It 
 has all the ease and the cordial delicacy of the best 
 days that followed the " Tatler," as well as their 
 tendency to theological discvission. The mediocrity 
 of the author's station in life might have been invent- 
 ed, to make the picture of a sea-faring philosopher 
 more real ; though the names of the children. Tommy 
 and Pedro^ hardly seem a contrast which a scholar 
 could have allowed himself to give in to. The turn of 
 words, invented for the flying people, is copied from 
 Swift, and cannot be called happy. There is a want 
 of analogy in them to the smoothness, and even the 
 energy, of flying. The ancient name of tlie country, 
 Nosmnbdsgrsutt^ is more fit for that of the Hou- 
 hynhyms. Armdrumstake^ Babhrindrugg^ Crash- 
 doorpt^ and Htinkun (marriage), and Gliumn (a 
 man), are words too ugly for any necessity of looking 
 natural. We are hardly reconciled to the name of 
 Youwarkee for the heroine. Gazvrey (a woman) is 
 hardly so good ; but the Graundee^ the name of the 
 flying apparatus, will do. There is a grandctir in it. 
 We see it expand, and " display its pomp," as Tasso 
 says of the peacock. The hero's name was most 
 likely suggested by that of a celebrated advocate of the 
 possibility of flying, — Wilkins, Bishop of Chester.* 
 Upon the whole, if we were in possession of the 
 
 * The bishop is said to have been asked by the flighty Duchess of 
 Newcastle how people who took a voyage to the moon were to manage
 
 26o THE SEER. 
 
 Berkeley Manuscripts, we should look hard to find a 
 memorandum indicative of the bishop's being the 
 author of this delightful invention. Even the miners 
 seem to belong to the author of the Bermuda scheme ; 
 and he had traversed the seas, and been conversant 
 with all honest paths of life. There would also have 
 appeared to him good reason for not avowing the 
 book, how Christian soever, when he came to be a 
 bishop. But these inquiries are foreign to our pages. 
 
 A peacock, with his plumage displayed, full of 
 " rainbows and starry eyes," is a fine objedl ; but 
 think of a lovely woman set in front of an ethereal 
 shell, and wafted about like a Venus. This is, 
 perhaps, the best general idea that can be given of 
 Peter Wilkins's bride. In the first edition of the work, 
 published in 1751 (at least, we know of none earlier), 
 there is an engraved explanation of the wings, or 
 rather drapery ; for such it was when at rest. It might 
 be called a natural webbed-silk. We are to pidture to 
 ourselves a nymph in a vest of the finest texture and 
 most delicate carnation. On a sudden, this drapery 
 parts in two, and flies back, stretched from head to foot 
 behind the figure, like an oval fan or umbrella ; and 
 the lady is in front of it, preparing to sweep blushing 
 away from us, and " winnow the buxom air." 
 
 It has been objected, that the wings of Peter's 
 woman consist rather of something laced and webbed 
 than proper angelical wings ; that this sometliing 
 serves her also for drapery ; that the drapery therefore 
 
 for " baiting-places." To which he replied, with great felicity, that he 
 wondered at such a question from her grace, " who had biiilt so many 
 castles in the air. "
 
 PETER AVILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 261 
 
 is alive, and that we should be shocked to find it 
 warm and stirring. The objedlion is natural in a 
 merely animal point of view ; and yet, speaking for 
 ourselves, we confess we have been so accustomed to 
 idealities, and to aspirations after the predominancy 
 of moral beauty in physical, that it is with an eflbrt we 
 allow it to be so. Supposing it, at first, to be some- 
 thing to which we should have to grow reconciled, we 
 conceive that pity for the supposed deformity would 
 only endear us the more to the charming and perfect 
 womanhood to which it was attached. We have 
 often thought that real tenderness for the sex would 
 not be so great or so touching — certainly it could not 
 be so well proved — if women partook less than they 
 do of imperfection. But the ethereal power as well as 
 grace belonging to our flying beauties could not long 
 permit us to associate the idea with deformity. Our 
 admiration of beauty, as it is (unless we hold, with 
 some philosophers, that it is a dire6l ordinance of the 
 Divine Being), is the effect of custom and kind offices. 
 It is true, there is something in mere smoothness and 
 harmony of form which appears to be sufficient of 
 itself to affedl us with pleasing emotions, distinct from 
 any reference to moral beauty ; but the last secrets of 
 pleasures the most material are in the brain and the 
 imagination. The lowest sensualist, if he were capa- 
 ble of reflection, would find that he was endeavoring 
 to grasp some shadow of grace and kindliness, even 
 when he fancied himself least given to such refine- 
 ments. The worst like to receive pleasures from the 
 best. The most hypocritical seducer, in the sorry 
 improvidence of his selfishness, seeks to be mistaken
 
 262 THE SEER. 
 
 for what he is not ; to enjoy innocence instead of 
 guilt ; to read in the eyes of simphcity what a trans- 
 port it is to be loved ; and to piece out the instin6live 
 consciousness of his own want of a just moral power 
 by the stealing of one that is unjust. Being a man, he 
 cannot help these involuntary tributes to the soul of 
 beauty. If it were otherwise, he would be an idiot, 
 or a fly on the wall. We think it, therefore, perfedtly 
 natural in our friend Peter, seeing of what lovely 
 elements the mind as well as the body of his new 
 acquaintance is composed, to feel nothing but admira- 
 tion for an appendage which doubles her power to do 
 him good, and which realizes what it is natural for us 
 all to long for in our dreams. The wish to fly seems 
 to belong instinctively to all imaginative states of 
 being, — to dreams, to childhood, and to love. Flying 
 seems the next step to a higher state of being. If we 
 could fancy human nature taking another degi'ee in 
 the scale, and displacing the present inhabitants of the 
 world by a new set of creatures personally improved, 
 the result of a climax in refinement, what we should 
 exped: in them would be wings to their shoulders. 
 
 We proceed to lay before our readers, from the 
 complete edition of this romance,* tlie passages de- 
 scribing our hei'o's first knowledge of the flying 
 people, and the accovuit of his bride and her behavior. 
 
 " As I lay awake (says oiu- voyager) one night or 
 day, I know not which, I very plainly heard the sound 
 
 * Some abridgments, purporting to be the entire work, afford almost 
 as inadeqiiate an idea of it in spirit as in letter. One or two of Stot- 
 hard's designs, in tlie edition in the "Novelist's Magazine," do justice 
 to the grace and delicacy of the heroine.
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 263 
 
 of several human voices, and sometimes very loud : 
 but, though I could easily distinguish the articulations, 
 I could not understand the least word that was said ; 
 nor did the voices seem at all to me like such as I had 
 anywhere heard before, but much softer and more 
 musical. This startled me ; and I arose immediately, 
 slipping on my clothes, and taking my gun in my 
 hand (which I always kept charged, being my con- 
 stant travelling companion) and my cutlass. I was 
 inclined to open the door of my ante-chamber ; but I 
 own I was afraid : besides, I considered that I could 
 discover nothing at any distance, by reason of the 
 thick and gloomy wood that enclosed me. 
 
 " I had a thousand different surmises about the 
 meaning of this odd incident ; and could not conceive 
 how any human creatures should be in my kingdom 
 (as I called it) but myself, as I never yet saw them, or 
 any trace of their habitation. 
 
 " These thoughts kept me still more within doors 
 than before ; and I hardly ever stirred out but for 
 water or firing. At length, hearing no more voices, 
 nor seeing any one, I began to be more composed in 
 my mind ; and at last grew persuaded it was all a 
 mere delusion, and only a fancy of mine without any 
 real foundation : so tl:ie whole notion was soon blown 
 over. 
 
 " I had not enjoyed my tranquillity above a week 
 before my fears were roused afresh, hearing the same 
 sound of voices twice in the same night, but not many 
 minutes at a time ; and I was resolved not to venture 
 out : but then I determined, if they should come again 
 any thing near my grotto, to open the door, see who
 
 264 THE SEER. 
 
 they were, and stand upon my defence, whatever 
 came of it. Thus had I formed my scheme : but I 
 heard no more of them for a great while ; so that, at 
 length, I became tranquil again. 
 
 " I passed tlie summer (though I had never yet 
 seen the sun's body) very much to my satisfa<5tion : 
 partly in the work I had been describing (for I had 
 taken two more seals, and had a great quantity of oil 
 from them) ; partly in building me a chimney in my 
 ante-chamber of mud and earth, burnt on my own 
 hearth into a sort of brick ; in making a window at 
 one end of the above-said chamber, to let in what 
 little light would come through the trees when I did 
 not choose to open my door ; in moulding an earthen 
 lamp for my oil ; and, finally, in providing and laying 
 stores, fresh and salt (for I had now cured and dried 
 many more fish), against winter. These, I say, were 
 my summer employments at home, intermixed w^ith 
 many agreeable excursions. But now, the winter 
 coming on, and the days growing very short, or indeed 
 there being no day, properly speaking, but a kind of 
 twilight, kept mostly in my habitation, though not so 
 much as I had done the winter before, when I had no 
 light within doors, and slept, or at least lay still, great 
 part of my time ; for now m}^ lamp was never out. 
 I also turned two of my seal-skins into a rug to cover 
 my bed ; and the third into a cushion, which I always 
 sat upon ; and a very soft, warm cushion it made. All 
 this together rendered my life very easy ; nay, even 
 comfortable : but, a little while after the darkness or 
 twilight came on, I frequentl}- heard the voices again,
 
 PETER AVIEKINS AND THE FEYING WOMEN. 265 
 
 sometimes in great numbers. This threw me into 
 new fears ; and I became as uneasy as ever, even to 
 the degree of growing quite melancholy. 
 
 " At length one night or day, I cannot say which, 
 hearing the voices very distinctly, and praying very 
 earnestly to be either delivered from the uncertainty 
 they had put me under, or to have them removed from 
 me, I took courage, and, arming myself with a gun, 
 listened to distinguish from whence the voices pro- 
 ceeded ; when I felt such a thump upon the roof of 
 my ante-chamber as shook the whole fabric, and set 
 me all over into a tremor. I then heard a sort of 
 shriek and a rustle near the door of my apartment : all 
 which together seemed very terrible. But I, having 
 before determined to see what and who it was, res-, 
 olutely opened my door, and leaped out. I saw 
 nobody : all was quite silent, and nothing that I could 
 perceive, but my own fears, a-moving. I went then 
 softly to the corner of my building ; and there, looking 
 down, by the glimmer of my lamp, which stood in the 
 window, I saw something in human shape lying at 
 my feet. I asked, ' Who's there?' No one answering, 
 I was induced to take a near view of the object. But 
 judge of my astonishment when I discovered tlie face 
 of the most lovely and beautiful woman eyes ever 
 beheld ! I stood for a few seconds transfixed with 
 astonishment, and my heart was ready to force its way 
 through my sides. At length, somewhat recovering, I 
 perceived her more minutely. But if I was puzzled 
 at beholding a woman alone in this lonely place, how 
 much more was I surprised at her appearance and 
 dress ! She had a sort of brown chaplet, like lace, 
 VOL. I. 23
 
 266 THE SEER. 
 
 round her head, under and about which her hair was 
 tucked up and twined ; and she seemed to me to be 
 clothed in a thin hair-colored silk garment, which, 
 upon trying to raise her, I found to be quite warm, 
 and therefore hoped there was life in the body it con- 
 tained. I then took her in my arms, and conveyed 
 her through the dooi-vvay into my grotto ; where I 
 laid her upon my bed. 
 
 " When I laid her down, I thought, on laying my 
 hand on her breast, I perceived the fountain of life had 
 some motion. This gave me infinite pleasure : so, 
 warming a drop of wine, I dipped my finger in it, and 
 moistened her lips two or tliree times ; and I imagined 
 they opened a little. Upon this I bethought me ; and, 
 taking a teaspoon, I gently poured a few drops of the 
 wine, by that means, into her mouth. Finding she 
 swallowed it, I poured in another spoonful and 
 another, till I brought her to herself so well as to be 
 able to sit up. 
 
 " I then spoke to her, and asked her divers ques- 
 tions, as if she luiderstood me : in return of which, she 
 uttered language I had no idea of, though in the most 
 musical tone, and with the sweetest accent I ever 
 heard. 
 
 "You may imagine we stared heartily at each other ; 
 and I doubted not but she wondered as much as I by 
 what means we came so near each other. I offered 
 her every thing in my grotto which I thought might 
 please her ; some of which she gratefully received, as 
 appeared by her looks and behavior. But she avoided 
 my lamp, and always placed her back towards it. I 
 observed that, and took care to set it in such a position
 
 PETER WILKIXS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 26/ 
 
 myself as seemed agreeable to her, though it deprived 
 me of a prospedl I very much admired. 
 
 " After we had sat a good while, — now and then, I 
 may say, chattering to one another, — she got up, and 
 took a turn or two about the room. When I saw her 
 in that attitude, her grace and motion perfectly 
 charmed me, and her shape was incomparable ; but 
 the straitness of her dress put me to a loss to conceive 
 either what it was, or how it was put on. 
 
 " Well, we supped togetlier, and I set the best of 
 every thing I had before her ; nor could either of us 
 forbear speaking in our own tongue, though we were 
 sensible neither of us understood the other. After 
 supper, I gave her some of my cordials, for which she 
 showed great tokens of thankfulness. When supper 
 had been some time over, I showed her my bed, and 
 made signs for her to go to it ; but she seemed very 
 shy of that, till I showed her where I meant to lie m}-- 
 self, by pointing to myself, then to that, and again 
 pointing to her and to my bed. When at length I had 
 made this matter intelligible to her, she lay down very 
 composedly ; and after I had taken cai^e of my fire, 
 and set the things I had been using for supper in their 
 places, I laid myself down too. 
 
 " I treated her for some time with all the respect 
 imaginable, and never suffered her to do the least part 
 of my work. It was very inconvenient to both of us 
 only to know each other's meaning by signs ; but I 
 could not be othenvise than pleased to see that she 
 endeavored all in her power to learn to talk like me. 
 Indeed, I was not behind-hand with her in that 
 respedl, striving all I could to imitate her. With this
 
 268 THE SEER. 
 
 we at last succeeded so well, that, in a few months, we 
 M^ere able to hold a conversation with each other. 
 
 " After my new love had been with me a fortnight, 
 finding my water run very low, I was greatly troubled 
 at the thought of quitting her to go for more ; and, as 
 well as I could, entreated her not to go away before 
 my return. As soon as she understood what I signi- 
 fied to her, she sat down with her arms across ; 
 leaning her head against the wall, to assure me she 
 would not stir. 
 
 " I took my boat, net, and water-cask, as usual, 
 desirous of bringing her home a ffesh-fish dinner ; and 
 succeeded so well as to catch enough for several 
 meals and to spare. What remained I salted, and 
 found that she liked that better than the fresh, after a 
 few days' salting ; though she did not so well approve 
 of that I had formerly pickled and dried. 
 
 " Thus we spent the remainder of the winter 
 together, till the days began to be light enough for me 
 to walk abroad a little in the middle of them ; for I 
 was now under no apprehensions of her leaving me, 
 as she had before this time many opportunities of 
 doing so, but never attempted it. 
 
 " I must here make one reflection upon our conduct, 
 which you will almost think incredible ; namely, that 
 we two, of different sexes, fully inflamed with love to 
 each other, and no outward obstacle to prevent our 
 wishes, should have been together under the same 
 roof for five months, conversing together from morn- 
 ing till night (for by this time she pretty well under- 
 stood English, and I her language), and yet I should 
 never have clasped her in my arms, or have shown
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 269 
 
 any farther feelings to her than what the deference I 
 all along paid her could give her room to surmise. 
 Nay, I can affirm that I did not even then know that 
 the covering she wore was not the work of art, but the 
 work of nature ; for I really took it for silk. Indeed, 
 the modesty of her carriage and sweetness of her 
 behavior to me had struck into me such a dread of 
 offending her, that, though nothing upon earth could 
 be more capable of exciting passion than her charms, 
 I could have died rather than have attempted to salute 
 her, only without a6tual invitation. 
 
 " When the weatlier cleared up a little, by the 
 lengthening of daylight, I took courage one afternoon 
 to invite her to walk with me to the lake ; but she 
 sweetly excused herself from it, whilst there was such 
 a glare of light ; but told me, if I would not go out of 
 the wood, she would accompany me : so we agreed to 
 take a turn only there. I first went myself over the 
 stile of the door, and, taking her in my arms, lifted her 
 over. But, even when I had her in this manner, I 
 knew not what to make of her clothing, it sat so true 
 and close ; but I begged she would let me know of 
 what her garment was made. She smiled, and asked 
 me if mine was not the same under my jacket. ' No, 
 lady,' answered I : ' I have nothing but skin under my 
 clothes.' — 'Why, what do you mean?' she replied 
 somewhat tartly ; ' but indeed I was afraid something 
 was the matter, by that nasty covering you wear, that 
 you might not be seen. Are not you a ghonmV — 
 'Yes, fair creature!' — 'Then,' continued she, 'I am 
 afraid you must have been a very bad glumm, and 
 have been crashee^ which I should be very sorry to
 
 2>-o THE SEER. 
 
 hear.' I replied, I hoped my faults had not exceeded 
 other men's: but I had suffered abundance of hard- 
 ships in my time ; and that at last Providence having 
 settled me in this spot, from" whence I had no prospeA 
 of ever departing, it was none of the least of its mer- 
 cies to bring to my knowledge and company the most 
 exquisite piece of all his works in her, which I should 
 acknowledge as long as I lived. She was surprised at 
 this discourse, and said, 'Have not you the same 
 prospea that I or any other person has of departing ? 
 You don't do well ; and really I fear you are slit, or 
 you would not wear this nasty cumbersome coat (tak- 
 ing hold of my jacket-sleeve), if you were not afraid 
 of showing the signs of a bad life upon your natural 
 clothing.' 
 
 " I could not for my heart imagine what way there 
 was to get out of my dominions : and as to my jacket, 
 I confess she made me blush ; and, but for shame, I 
 would have stripped to my skin to have satisfied her. 
 'But, madam,' said I, 'pray, pardon me; for you 
 really are mistaken : I have examined every nook and 
 corner of this island, and can find no possible outlet.' — 
 'Why,' replied she, 'what outlets do you want? If 
 you are not slit, is not the air open to you as well as 
 other people? I tell you, sir, I fear you have been slit 
 for your crimes ; and though you have been so good to 
 me, that I can't help loving you heartily for it, yet, if I 
 thought you had been slit, I would not stay a moment 
 longer with you, though it should break my heart to 
 leave you.' 
 
 "I found myself now in a strange quandar)'-, — long- 
 ing to know what she meant by being slit. But,
 
 PETEIl VriLKIXS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 2/1 
 
 seeing her look a little angrily upon me, I said, ' Pray, 
 madam, don't be offended if I take the liberty to ask 
 you what you mean by the word crasJiec^ so often 
 repeated by you ; for I am an utter stranger to what 
 you mean by it.' — 'Sir,' replied she, 'pray, answer 
 me first how you came here.' — ' Madam,' i^eplied I, 
 ' if you will please to take a walk to the verge of the 
 wood, I will show you the very passage.' — 'Well,' 
 replied she, ' now this odious dazzle of light is les- 
 sened, I don't care if I do go with you.' 
 
 "When we came far enough to see the bridge, — 
 ' There, madam,' said I, ' there is my entrance, where 
 the sea poui^s into this lake from yonder cavern.' — ' It 
 is not possible,' answered she : ' this is another untruth ; 
 and as I see you would deceive me, and are not to be 
 believed, farewell ! I must be gone. But, hold ! let 
 me ask you one thing more ; that is, by what means 
 did you come through that cavern? You could not 
 have used to come over the rock.' — ' Bless me, mad- 
 am ! ' said I : 'do you think I and my boat could fly? 
 Come over the rock, did you say ? No, inadam : I 
 sailed from the great sea, in my boat, through that 
 cavern, into this very lake.' — ' What do you mean by 
 your boat? ' said she : ' you seem to make two things of 
 your boat you saileu wicii and yourself.' — 'I do so,' 
 replied I : ' for I take myself to be good flesh and 
 blood ; but my boat is made of wood and other mate- 
 rials.' — 'Is it so? And pray where is this boat that 
 is made of wood and other materials? under your 
 jacket? ' — ' Lord, madam ! ' said I : ' what ! put a boat 
 under my jacket ! No, madam : my boat is in the 
 lake.' — ' What, more untruths ! ' said she. ' No,
 
 272 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 madam,' I replied : ' if you would be satisfied of what 
 I say (every word of which is as tme as that my boat 
 now is in the lake), pray walk with me thither, and 
 make your own eyes judges what sincerity I speak 
 with.' To tliis she agreed, it growing dusky ; but 
 assured me, if I did not give her good satisfaction, I 
 should see her no more. 
 
 "We arrived at the lake; and going to my wet- 
 dock, ' Now, madam, pray satisfy yourself whether I 
 spoke true or no.' She looked at my boat, but could 
 not yet frame a proper notion of it till I stepped into 
 it, and, pushing from the shore, took the oars in my 
 hand, and sailed along the lake by her as she walked 
 on the shore. At last she seemed so well reconciled 
 to me and my boat, tliat she desired I would take her 
 in. I immediately did so, and we sailed a good way ; 
 and, as we retm-ned to my dock, I described to her 
 how I procured the water we drank, and brought it to 
 the shore in that vessel. 
 
 " ' Well,' said she, 'I have sailed, as you call it, many 
 a mile in my lifetime, but never in such a thing as 
 this. I own it will serve, where one has a great many 
 things to carry from place to place ; but to be laboring 
 thus, when one intends pleasure in sailing, is in my 
 mind most ridiculous.' — ' Why, pray, madam, how 
 would you have me sail? for getting into the boat 
 only will not carry us this way or that, without using 
 some force.' — 'But, pray, where did you get this 
 boat, as you call it?' — 'O madam!' I ansvv'ered, 
 ' that is too long a story to begin upon now ; but I 
 will make a faithful relation of all to yovi ^^•hen we 
 get home'
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 273 
 
 " I now perceived, and wondered at it, that, the 
 later it grew, the moi'e agreeable it seemed to her ; * 
 and, as I had now brought her into a good humor 
 again by seeing and sailing in my boat, I was not 
 willing to prevent its increase. I told her, if she 
 pleased, we would land ; and, when I had docked my 
 boat, I would accompany her where and as long as 
 she liked. As we talked and walked by the lake, she 
 made a little run before me, and sprung into it. 
 Perceiving this, I cried out ; whereupon she merrily 
 called on me to follow her. The light was then so 
 diin as prevented my having more than a confused 
 sight of her when she jumped in ; and, looking earnest- 
 ly after her, I could discern nothing more than a small 
 boat on the water, which skimmed along at so great a 
 rate, that I almost lost sight of it presently : but, run- 
 ning along the shore for fear of losing her, I met her 
 gravely walking to meet me, and then had entirely 
 lost sight of the boat upon the lake. ' This,' accosting 
 me with a smile, ' is my way of sailing, which, I per- 
 ceive by the fright you were in, you were altogether 
 unacquainted with ; and, as you tell me you came from 
 so many thousand miles off, it is possible you mav be 
 made differently f -^""e ; and I suspedl from all your 
 discourse, to which I have been very attentive, it is 
 possible you may no more be able to fly than to sail 
 as I do.' — ' No, charming creature ! that I cannot, I'll 
 assure you.' She then stei^ped to the edge of the lake, 
 for the advantage of a descent before, sprung up into 
 
 * Peter subsequently' learns, that, in the regions of the Flyini^ People, 
 it is always twilight, which makes them tender-eyed in places where tho 
 day is brighter.
 
 274 '^^^ SEER. 
 
 the ail*, and away she went, farther than my eyes 
 could follow her. 
 
 " I was quite astonished : but I had very little time 
 for refledlion ; for, in a few minutes after, she alighted 
 just by me on her feet. 
 
 " Her return, as she plainly saw, filled nie with a 
 transport not to be concealed, and which, as she after- 
 wards told me, was very agreeable to her. Indeed, I 
 was some moments in such an agitation of mind from 
 these unparalleled incidents, that I was like one thun- 
 der-struck ; but coming presentl}^ to myself, and clasp- 
 ing her in my arms with as much love and passion as 
 I was capable of expressing, ' Are you returned again, 
 kind angel ! ' said I, ' to bless a wretch who can only 
 be happy in adoring you? Can it be, that you, who 
 have so many advantages over me, should quit all the 
 pleasures that Natin-e has formed you for, and all your 
 friends and relations, to take an asylum in my arms? 
 But I here make you a tender of all I am able to 
 bestow, — my love and constancy.' — 'Come, come,' re- 
 plied she, ' no more raptures. I find you are a worthier 
 man than I thought I had reason to take you for ; and 
 I beg your pardon for my disti'ust, whilst I was igno- 
 rant of your imperfeftions : but now I verily believe 
 all you have said is true ; and I promise you, as you 
 have seemed so much to delight in me, I will never 
 quit you, till death, or some other fatal accident, shall 
 part us. But we will now, if you please, go home : 
 for I know you have been for some time uneasy in 
 this gloom, though agreeable to me ; for, giving my 
 eyes the pleasure of looking eagerly on you, it conceals 
 my blushes from vour sio-ht.'
 
 PETER WILKINS AND THE FLYING WOMEN. 275 
 
 " In this manner, exchanging mutual endearments 
 and soft speeches, hand in hand, we arrived at the 
 grotto." 
 
 The author here proceeds to give an account of his 
 nuptials ; which, though given in the veiy best taste 
 of the time, and evincing great purity, as well as plea- 
 surability of nature, is better left in its place than 
 brought forward out of the circumstances which in- 
 vest it. 
 
 But are not such of our readers, as did not know her 
 befoi'e, glad of their new acquaintance ?
 
 276 
 
 ENGLISH AND FRENCH FEMALES. 
 TTieir Costumes and Bearing. 
 
 HE writer of the following letter Is very un- 
 t^iiS^I merciful on the ribbons, plumes, and other 
 enormities of the present mode of dress ; and, 
 having torn these to pieces, proceeds to rend away 
 veils and gowns, and fall plumb down upon the pretty 
 feet of the wearers, and their mode of walking : but 
 when our fair readers see what he says of their faces, 
 and call to mind how Momus found fault with the 
 steps of Venus herself, we trust they will forgive his 
 fury for the sake of his love, and consider whether so 
 fond an indignation does not contain something worth 
 their reflexion. 
 
 FKENCH LADIES VERSUS ENGLISH. 
 To the Editor. 
 
 Sir, — It is Mrs. Gore, I think, in one of her late nov- 
 els, who says that ninety-nine English women out of 
 a hundred dress infinitely worse than as many French ; 
 but that the hundredth dresses with a neatness, ele- 
 gance, and propriety which is not to be paralleled on 
 the other side of the channel. On my relating this 
 to a fair relation of mine, she replied, " Very true : 
 only I never saw that hundredth.''' Nor has any one 
 else. Without exception, the English women wear
 
 EXGI.ISH AND FRENCH FEMALKS. 277 
 
 tlie prettiest faces and the ugliest dresses of any in the 
 known world. A Hottentot hangs her sheep - skin 
 car OSS on her shoulders with more effed; ; and it is 
 from what I see every day of my life that I come to 
 this conclusion. 
 
 I was the other day at a large shop at tlie west end 
 of the town, where, if an3where, we may expedl to 
 meet with favorable specimens of our countrywomen. 
 Not a bit of it ! There were a couple of French ladies 
 there, dressed smartly and tidily, one in blue and the 
 other in rose-colored silk, with snug little scutty bon- 
 nets, guiltless of tawdry ribbons or dingy plumes ; and 
 great was their astonishment at beholding the nonde- 
 script figures which ever and anon passed by. First 
 came gliding out of her carriage, with a languishing 
 air, a young miss, all ringlets down to the knees ; 
 feathers drooping on one side of her bonnet, flowers 
 on the other, and an immense Brussels veil (or some 
 such ti'ash) hanging behind ; her gown pinned to her 
 back, like rags on a Guy Fawkes ; a large warming- 
 pan of a watch, secured round her neck by as many 
 chains — gold, silver, and pinchbeck — as an Italian 
 brigand ; with divers other articles, as handkerchiefs, 
 boas, &c., which, however costly and beautiful indi- 
 vidually, formed all together an unbecoming and cook- 
 maidish whole. Then came the tsvo old ladies ; but 
 I give tJiein up, as too far gone in their evil wa^-s of 
 dressing to hope for amelioration. Ditto for tlie 
 widows in their hideous black bonnets, with a foot 
 and a half of black crape tacked to each side, like 
 wings to a paper kite : the horned caps of Edward 
 the Confessor are nothing to them. The French
 
 27S THE SEER. 
 
 damsels, alluded to above, eyed one or two of these 
 jnac/iines (they can go by no other name) with con- 
 siderable attention, as if doubting the sanity of the 
 wearer. 
 
 " One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead," 
 
 says Pope's Nai'cissa. I might address a similar ques- 
 tion to English widows : — 
 
 " One would not, sure, be frightful when one mourns." 
 
 I looked from one end to the other of the crowded 
 shop, in hopes of finding some happy lady to retrieve 
 the honor of her country ; but in vain. All wore the 
 same ngly garment, more akin to a night-shift than a 
 gown ; the same warming-pan watch and chains ; the 
 same fly-flapping bonnet with bunches of ugly ribbons. 
 Altogether they formed an awkward contrast to the 
 " tight, reg'lar-built French craft," as Mathews's Tom 
 Piper calls them. This time, however, it was the 
 English who were " rigged so rum." 
 
 And then their walk ! O quonda77t Indicator ! 
 quondam Tatler ! quondam and present lover of all 
 that is good and graceful! could you not "indicate" 
 to our English ladies the way to walk? In what 
 absurd book was it that I read the other day that 
 French women walk ill, because, from the want of 
 trottoirs in France, they get a habit of "picking" 
 with one foot, which gave a jerking air to the gait? 
 The aristocratic noodle ! whose female relations shuffle 
 about on smooth pavements, till they forget how to 
 walk at all ! I would not have them cross my grass- 
 plat for the world. They would decapitate the very
 
 ENGLISH AND FRENCH FEMALES. 279 
 
 daisies. How infinitely superior is the French wo- 
 man's brisk, springy step (albeit caused by a most 
 plebeian and un-English want of causeways) to the 
 languid, sauntering gait of most English dames ! Na- 
 ture teaches the one : the drill-sergeant can do noth- 
 ing with the other. I wonder how they walked in the 
 days of Charles 11. Surely Nell Gwynne and my 
 Lady Castlemaine walked well ; and, if they did, they 
 walked differently from what they do now. 
 
 I hope that some good creature like the " London 
 Journalist," who believes in the unprovability of all 
 tilings, will take up this subje6l. A word from him 
 would set English ladies upon trying, at least, to 
 improve both in dressing and walking. There are 
 models enough : look at the French, the Spanish, the 
 Italians. They have not better opportunities for dress- 
 ing well than we, and yet they beat us hollow. Why 
 can't we have a basqtiina or nia7itilla as well as any 
 one else? Let us endeavor. 
 
 Above all, let no one suppose that the writer of 
 
 these desultory remarks is in the least deficient in love 
 
 and duty to his fair countrywomen. If he offends any 
 
 of them, they must imagine that it has been caused by 
 
 excess of zeal for their interests. Bless their bonnie 
 
 fixces ! — if we could screw English heads on French 
 
 figures, what women there would be, sure/}// 
 
 An Old Cront. 
 July 7, 1834. 
 
 To enter properly into this subje(5l, however trifling 
 it may appear (as indeed is the case with almost every 
 subject so called), would be to open a wide field of
 
 2So THE SEER. 
 
 investigation into morals, laws, climates, &c. Per- 
 haps climate alone, by reason of the variety of habits 
 it generates in consequence of its various heats, colds, 
 and otlier influences, w^ill ever prevent an entire 
 similarity of manners, whatever may be the approxi- 
 mation of opinion ; but taking for granted, as is not 
 unreasonable, that the pi'ogress of knowledge and 
 intercourse will not be without its efledl in bringing 
 the customs of civilized countries nearer to one an- 
 other, and that each will be for availing itself of what 
 is best and pleasantest amongst its neighbors, it be- 
 comes worth anybody's while to consider in what 
 respedl it is advisable or otherwise to modify the 
 behavior or manners accordingly. We can say little, 
 from personal experience, how the case may be in the 
 present instance with regard to French manners. We 
 have a great opinion of Mrs. Gore, both as a general 
 observer, and one that particularly understands what 
 is charming in her own sex. On the other hand, from 
 books, and from a readiness to be pleased with those 
 who wish to please, and even from merely having 
 passed through France in our way from another 
 country, we have got a strong impression, that the 
 " hundredth" French woman, as well as the hundredth 
 English woman, nay, the hundredth Italian, — that is 
 to say, the one that carries the requisite graces, the 
 beau-ideal of any country to its height, — is likely to 
 be so charming a person, in dress and every thing else, 
 to her own countrymen, that what Mrs. Gore says of 
 the perfectly dressing English woman is precisely the 
 same thing that would be said of the perfecSlly dress- 
 ing French woman by the French, and of her Italian
 
 E>fGLI3II AND FREXCH FEMALES. 28 1 
 
 counterpart by the Italians. It is impossible, unless 
 we are half-foreigners, or unless our own nation is 
 altogether of an inferior grade (and then perhaps our 
 prejudices and irritation would render it equally so), 
 to get rid of some one point of national preference in 
 forming judgments of this kind. Our friend, the " Old 
 Crony," we see, for all his connoisseurship and crony- 
 ism, — his regard for a certain piquancy of perfedtion 
 in the French dress and walk, and his wish that his fair 
 counti-ywomen would " take steps" after their fashion, 
 — cannot get rid of the preference in which he was 
 brought up for the beauty of the English countenance. 
 We have a similar feeling in fovor even of a certain 
 subjected manner, a bending gentleness, (how shall 
 we term it?) in the bearing of the sweetest of our 
 counti-j^vomen, not exactly connedted with decision of 
 step, nor perhaps with variety of harmony ; for all 
 pleasures run into one another, if they are of a right 
 sort, and the ground of them true. Look at the paint- 
 ings of the French, and you will find in like manner 
 that their ideal of a face, let them try to universalize it 
 as they can, is a French one ; and so it is with tlie 
 Spanish and Italian paintings and with the Greek 
 statues. The merry African girls shriek with horror 
 when they first look upon a white traveller. Their 
 notion of a beautiful complexion is a skin shining like 
 Warren's blacking. 
 
 It is proper to understand in any question, great or 
 small, the premises from which we set out, the point 
 which is required. In the dress and walk of females, 
 as in all other matters in which they are concerned, 
 the point of perfection, we conceive, is that which 
 VOL. I. 24
 
 282 THE SEER. 
 
 shall give us the best possible idea of perfedl woman- 
 hood. Vv e are not to consider the dress by itself, nor 
 the walk by itself; but as the dress and the walk of 
 the best and pleasantest woman, and how far, there- 
 fore, it does her justice. This produces the considera- 
 tion of what we look upon as a perfect female : people 
 will vary in tlieir opinions on this head ; and hence 
 even so easy a looking question as the one before us 
 becomes invested with difficulties. The opinion will 
 depend greatly on the temperament as well as the 
 understanding of the judge. Our correspondent, for 
 instance, is evidently a lively fellow, old or young, and 
 given a good deal rather to the material than to the 
 spiritual ; and hence his notion of perfection tends 
 towards a union of the trim and the lively, the impul- 
 sive, and yet withal to the self-possessed. He is one, 
 we conceive, who would " have no nonsense," as the 
 phrase is, in his opinion of the possible or desirable ; 
 and who is in no danger of the perils either of 
 sentimentality or sentiment ; either of an affedted 
 refinement of feeling, or any very serious demand of 
 any sort. He is not for bringing into the walks of 
 publicity, male or female, the notions of sequestered 
 imaginations, nor to have women glancing and bashful 
 like fawns. He is for having all things tight and 
 convenient as a dressing-case ; " neat as imported ; " 
 polished, piquant, well packed ; and with no more 
 flowers upon it than ser\'e to give a hint of the smart 
 pungency within, like a bottle of attar of roses, or 
 Jleur-d'ephze. We do not quarrel with him. Chacun 
 a so7t gout., — "Every man to his taste." Nay, his 
 taste is our own, as for as concerns the improvement
 
 EXGI.ISII AND FRENCH FEMALES. 2S3 
 
 of female manners in ordinary. We do think that the 
 general style of female English dressing and walking 
 would be benefited by an inoculation of that which 
 we conceive him to recommend. We have no pre- 
 diledlion in favor of shuffling and shouldering and 
 lounging, — of a mere moving onwards of tlie feet, 
 and an absence of all grace and self-possession. We 
 can easily believe, that the French women surpass the 
 English in this respe6t, because their climate is live- 
 lier, and themselves better taught and respe6led. 
 People may start at that last word ; but there is no 
 doubt that the general run of French females are 
 better taught, and therefore more respedled, than the 
 same number of English. They read more, they 
 converse more, they are on more equal terms with the 
 other sex (as they ought to be) ; and hence the other 
 sex have more value for their opinions, ay, and for 
 their persons : for the more sensible a woman is, 
 supposing her not to be masculine, the more attradlive 
 she is in her proportionate power to entertain. But 
 whether it is that we are English, or fonder of poetry 
 in its higher sense than of ve7's de societe or the poetry 
 of polite life, we cannot help feeling a prejudice in 
 favor of Mrs. Gore's notion about the "hundredth" 
 English woman; though perhaps the "hundredth" 
 French woman, if we could see her, or the hun- 
 dredth Italian or Spanish woman, would surpass all 
 others, by dint of combining the sort of private man- 
 ner, which we have in our eye, v\^ith some exquisite 
 implication of a fitness for general intercourse, which 
 we have never yet met Avith. 
 
 Meantime, we repeat that we give up to our corre-
 
 2i>4 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 spondent's vituperations the gait of English females in 
 general, and their dress also ; though it is a little hard 
 in him to praise the smallness of the French bonnet at 
 the expense of the largeness of the English, when it is 
 recolleded that the latter are copied from France, and 
 that our fair countrywomen were ridiculed, on their 
 first visit there after the war, for the very reverse 
 appearance. But it is to the spirit of our mode of 
 dressing and walking that we objedl ; and both are 
 unfit, either for the private or public "walk" of life ; 
 because both are alike untaught and unpleasing, — 
 alike indicative of minds not properly cultivated, and 
 of habitual feelings that do not care to be agreeable. 
 The walk is a saunter or shuffle, and the dress a lump ; 
 or, if not a lump throughout, it is a lump at both ends, 
 with a horrible pinch in the middle. A tight-laced 
 English woman is thus, from head to foot, a most 
 painful sight : her best notion of being charming is 
 confined to three inches of ill-used ribs and liver ; 
 while her head is either grossly ignorant of the harm 
 she is doing herself, or her heart more deplorably 
 careless of the consequences to her offspring. 
 
 Are we of opinion, then, that the dress and walk of 
 English women would be bettered, generally speaking, 
 by taking the advice of our correspondent? Most 
 certainly we are ; and for this reason, that there is 
 soi7ie sense of grace, at all events, in the attire and 
 bearing of the females of the Continent ; some evi- 
 dence of mind, and some testimony to the proper 
 claims of the person ; whereas the only idea in the 
 heads of the majority with us is that of being in 
 fiishion merely because it is the foshion, or of dressing
 
 ENGLISH AND FRENCH FEMALES. 2o^ 
 
 in a manner to show how much they can afford. 
 This is partly owing, no doubt, to our being a com- 
 mercial people, and also to the struggles which every- 
 body has been making for the last forty years to seem 
 richer than they are, some for the sake of concealing 
 how they have decreased in means, and others to show 
 how they have risen ; but a nation may be commercial, 
 and yet have a true taste. The Florentines had it, 
 when they were at once the leaders of trade and of 
 the fine arts, in the time of Lorenzo de Medici. It is 
 to our fine arts and our increasing knowledge that we 
 ourselves must look to improvement even in dress, in 
 defiiult of being impelled to it by greater liveliness of 
 spirit or a more convenient climate. We shall then 
 learn to oppose even the climate better, and to furnish 
 it with the grace and color which it wants. In France, 
 the better temperature of the atmosphere, as well as 
 intelle6lual and moral causes, impels people to a 
 livelier and happier way of walking. They have no 
 reason to look as if they were uncomfortable. In the 
 south of Europe, where every thing respires animal 
 sensibility, and love and music divide the time with 
 business, the most unaflefted people acquire an appa- 
 rent consciousness and spring in the gait, which in 
 England would be thought ostentatious. It gave no 
 such idea to the severe and simple Dante, when (in 
 the poetical spirit of the image, and not of course in 
 the letter) he praised his mistress for moving along 
 like "a peacock" and a "crane." 
 
 " Soave a guisa va di un bel pavone, 
 Diritta sopra se come una grue."
 
 2S6 THE SEER. 
 
 " Sweetly she goes, like the bright peacock ; strait 
 Above herself, like to the lady crane." 
 
 Petrarch, speaking of Laura, does not venture upon 
 these primeval images ; but still he shows how much 
 he thought of the beauty of a woman's steps. Laura, 
 too, was a French woman, not an Italian ; and proba- 
 bly had a different kind of walk. Petrarch expresses 
 the moral graces of it. 
 
 •' Non era 1' andar suo cosa mortale, 
 Ma d' angelica forma." 
 " Her walk was like no mortal tiling, but shaped 
 After an angel's." 
 
 In English poetry, the lover speaks with the usual 
 enthusiasm of his mistress's eyes and lips, &c. ; but he 
 scarcelv ever mentions her walk. The fa6l is re- 
 markable, and the reason too obvious. The walk is 
 not worth mention. Italian and (we believe) Spanish 
 poetry abound with the reverse. Milton, deeply 
 iinbued with the Italian, as well as with his own 
 perceptions of beauty, as a great poet, did not forget, 
 in his description of Eve, to say, that — 
 
 " Grace teas in all her steps ; heaven in her eye ; 
 In every gesture, dignity and love." 
 
 This moving and gesticulating beauty was not 
 English ; at least, she is not the English woman of our 
 days. Mrs. Hutchinson, perhaps, might have been 
 such a woman ; or the ladies of the Bridgewater 
 Family, for whom he wrote his Comus. In Virgil, 
 ^neas is not aware that his mother Venus has been 
 speaking with him in the guise of a wood-nymph, till 
 she begins to move awa}' : the "divinity" then be- 
 came apparent.
 
 EXOIJSH AND FRE^XII FIIMAI-ES. zS/ 
 
 " Et vera incessfi patuit dea." 
 
 "And by her walk the Queen of Love is known." 
 
 Dkyden. 
 
 The women of Spain and Spanish America are 
 celebrated throughout the world for the elegance of 
 their walking, and for the way in which they carry 
 their veil, or jnantilla, as alluded to by our correspond- 
 ent. Knowing it only from books, we cannot say 
 precisely in what the beauty of their walk consists ; 
 but we take it to be something between stateliness and 
 vivacity, — between a consciousness of being admired, 
 and that grace which is natural to any human being 
 who is well made, till art or diffidence spoils it. It is 
 the perfection, we doubt not, of animal elegance. 
 We have an English doubt, whether we should not 
 require an addition or modification of something, not 
 indeed diffident, but perhaps not quite so confident, — 
 something which, to the perfedlion of animal elegance, 
 should add that of intelledual and moral refinement, 
 and a security from the chances of coarseness and 
 violence. But all these are -matters of breeding and 
 bringing-up, — ay, of "birth, parentage, and educa- 
 tion ; " and we should be grateful when we can get any 
 one of them. Better have even a good walk than 
 nothing ; for there is some refinement in it, and moral 
 refinement too, though we may not always think the 
 epithet very applicable to the possessor. Good walk- 
 ing and good dressing, truly so called, are ahke 
 valuable, only inasmuch as they afibrd some external 
 evidence, however slight, of a disposition to orderli- 
 ness and harmony in the mind within, — of shapeliness 
 and grace in the habitual movements of the soul.
 
 2S8 
 
 ENGLISH MALE COSTUME. 
 Suggested by Mr. Planch'e's Book on Costutne. 
 
 R. PLANCHl&'S book, besides being sensi- 
 bly and amusingly written, in a clear, unaf- 
 te<5led style, contains more than would be 
 expected from its title. It narrates the military as 
 well as civil history of British costume, giving us not 
 only the softer vicissitudes of silks and satins, but 
 ringing the changes of helms, hauberks, and swords, 
 from the earliest period of the use of armor till the 
 latest; and it will set the public right, for the first 
 time, upon some hitherto mistaken points of character 
 and manners. We have been surprised, for instance, 
 to learn that our " naked ancestors" (as we supposed 
 them), the ancient Britons, were naked only when 
 they went to battle ; and it turns out, that Richard the 
 Third, instead of being one who thought himself — 
 
 " Not made to court an amorous looking-glass," 
 
 was a dandy in his dress, and as particular about his 
 wardrobe and coronation-gear as George the Fourth. 
 This trait in his character is confirmative, we think, of 
 the traditions respeding his deformity ; men who are 
 under that disadvantage being remarkable either for 
 a certain nicety and superiority of taste, moral and 
 personal, if their dispositions are good, or for all sorts
 
 ENGLISH MALE COSTUME. 289 
 
 of mistakes the other way, under the reverse predica- 
 ment. Two persons of the greatest natural refinement 
 we ever met with have had a crook in the shoulder. 
 Richard was a usurper, a man of craft and violence ; 
 and his jealousy of the respeft of his fellow-men took 
 the unhappier and more glaring turn. He thought 
 to overcome them with his fine clothes and colors, as 
 he had done with his tyranny. Richard partook, it 
 seems, of the effeminate voluptuousness of his bi"other, 
 Edward the Fourth, as Edward partook of Richard's 
 cruelty. 
 
 Mr. Planche is of opinion that " the most elegant 
 and pidliu-esque costume ever worn in England " was 
 that of the reign of Charles the First, commonly 
 called tlie Vandyke dress, from its frequency in tlie 
 portraits of that artist. The dresses of few periods, 
 we think, surpass those of the Anglo-Saxon times, 
 and of some of the Norman. (See the engravings in 
 the book, at pages 22, 103, 121, and 127.) Some of 
 the Anglo-Saxon ladies were dressed with almost as 
 elegant a simplicity as the Greeks. But whatever Mr. 
 Planche may think of the extreme gallantry and pic- 
 turesqueness of the Vandyke dress, with its large hat 
 and feathers, its cloak and rapier, and its long 
 breeches meeting the tops of the wide boots, its supe- 
 riority may surely be at least contested by the jewelled 
 and plumed caps, the long locks, the vests, mantles, 
 and hose of the reign of Henry the Seventh ; espe- 
 cially if we recolledl that they had the broad hats and 
 feathers too, when they chose to wear them, and that 
 they had noi the " peaked" beard, nor a steeple crown 
 to the hat. (See the figures, at pages 220 and 222 ; 
 VOL. I. 25
 
 290 THE SEER. 
 
 and imagine them put into as gallant bearing as those 
 in the pictures of Vandyke. See also the portrait of 
 Henry himself, at the beginning of the volume ; and 
 the cap, cloak, and vest of the Earl of Surrey, the 
 poet, in the Holbein portrait of him in Lodge's 
 Illustrations.) 
 
 It is a curious fa<5l, that good taste in costume has 
 by no means been in proportion to an age's refinement 
 in other respefts. Mere utility is a better teacher 
 than mere will and power ; and fashions in dress have 
 generally been regulated by those who had power, 
 and nothing else. Shakespeare's age was that of rufis 
 and puffs ; Pope's, that of the most execrable of all 
 coats, cocked-hats, and waistcoats, — lumpish, formal, 
 and useless ; a miserable affe6lation of ease with the 
 most ridiculous buckram. And yet the costume of 
 part of George the Third's reign was perhaps worse, 
 for it had not even the garnish ; it was the extreme of 
 mechanical dulness : and the women had preposterous 
 tresses of curls and pomatum on their head, by way 
 of setting off" the extremity of dull plainness with that 
 of dull cajDrice. For the hoop, possibly, something 
 may be said, not as a dress, nor as an investment, but 
 as an enclosure. It did not seem so much to disfigure 
 as to contain the wearer, — to be not a dress, but a 
 gilding shell. The dancers at Otaheite, in the pictures 
 to Captain Cook's voyages, have some such lower 
 houses ; and look well in them for the same reason. 
 The body issued from the hoop, as out of a sea of 
 flounce and furbelow. It was the next thing to a 
 nymph half hidden in water. The arm and fan re- 
 posed upon it as upon a cloud or a moving sphere ;
 
 ENGLISH MALE COSTUME. 29 1 
 
 the fair angel looking serene and superior above it. 
 Thus much we would say in defence of the hoop, 
 properly so called, when it was in its perfe6lion, large 
 and circular, and to be approached like a " hedge of 
 divinity," or the walls of Troy, — 
 
 "Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious />e«/coa</" 
 
 not for those mashed and minor shapes of the phe- 
 nomenon, which degenerated into mere appendages, 
 panniers, or side lumps, and reminded you of nothing 
 but their deformity. But it was always a thing fantas- 
 tic, and fit only for court and ceremony. 
 
 Mr. Planche justly cautions one generation against 
 lauerhingr at the fashions of another. He advises such 
 ladies as would "scream" at the dresses of the four- 
 teenth or even eighteenth centviry, to look into a 
 fashionable pocket-book or magazine for the year 1815 
 or 20, and then candidly compare notes. Appendages 
 or enclosures are one thing ; positive, clinging disfigure- 
 ments, another. The ugliest female dress, in oiu" 
 opinion, \vithout exception, was that which we con- 
 ceive Mr. Planche to allude to ; and which confounded 
 all ages and shapes by girdling the gown under the 
 arm-pits, and sticking a little pad at the pack, almost 
 between the shovdders ! It reduced all figures to 
 lumps of absurdity. No well-shaped woman, we may 
 be sure, invented it. A history of the real origin of 
 many fashions w^ould be a curious document. We 
 should find infirmity and unsightliness cheating youth 
 and beauty into an imitation of them, and beaux and 
 belles piquing themselves on resembling the worst 
 points about their cunning elders.
 
 292 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 As long as a man wears the modern coat, he has no 
 right to despise any dress. What a thing it is, though 
 so often taken for something "exquisite"! What a 
 horse-collar for a collar ! What snips at the collar 
 and lapels ! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut 
 about the flaps ! What buttons in front that are never 
 meant to button, and yet are no ornament ! And 
 what an exquisitely absurd pair of buttons at the 
 back ! gravely regarded nevertheless, and thought as 
 indispensably necessaiy to every well-conditioned coat, 
 as other bits of metal or bone are to the bodies of 
 savages whom we laugh at. There is absolutely not 
 one iota of sense, grace, or even economy, in the 
 modern coat. It is an article as costly as it is ugly, 
 and as ugly as it is useless. In winter it is not 
 enough, and in hot weather it is too much. It is the 
 tailors' i-emnant and cabbaging of the coats formerly 
 in use, and deserves only to be chucked back to them 
 as an imposition in the bill. It is the old or frock coat, 
 cut away in front and at the sides, mounted with a 
 horse-collar, and left with a ridiculous tail. The 
 v>^aistcoat or vest, elongated, and with the addition of 
 sleeves, might supersede it at once, and be quite suf- 
 ficient in warm weather. A vest reaching to the 
 mid-thigh is a graceful and reasonable habit, and, with 
 the addition of a scarf or sash, would make as hand- 
 some or even brilliant a one as anybody could desire. 
 In winter-time, the same cloaks would do for it as are 
 used now ; and there might be lighter cloaks for 
 summer. But the coat, as it now exists, is a mere 
 nuisance and expense, and disgraces every other part 
 of the dress, except the neck-cloth. Even the hat is
 
 ENGLISH MALE COSTUME. 293 
 
 too good for it ; for a hat is good for something, 
 though there is more chimney-top than beauty in it. 
 It furnishes shade to the eyes, and has not always an 
 ill look, if well-proportioned. The coat is a sheer 
 piece of mechanical ugliness. The frock-coat is an- 
 other matter, except as to the collar, which, in its 
 present rolled or bolstered shape, is always ugly. As 
 to the great-coat, it makes a man look either like a 
 man in a sack, or a shorn bear. It is cloth upon 
 cloth, clumsiness made clumsier, sometimes thrice 
 over, — cloth waistcoat, cloth coat, cloth great-coat, — 
 a "three-piled hypei'bole." It is only proper for 
 tra\'ellers, coachmen, and others who require to have 
 no drapery in the way. A cloak is the only handsome 
 over-all. 
 
 The neck-cloth is worthy of the coat. What a 
 heaping of monstrosity on monstrosit}^ ! The woollen 
 horse-collar is bad enough ; yet, as if this were not 
 sufficient, a linen one must be superadded. Men must 
 look as if they were twice seized with symbols of 
 apoplexy, — the horse-collar to shorten the neck, and 
 the linen-collar to squeeze it. Some man with a 
 desperately bad throat must have invented the neck- 
 cloth, especially as it had a faddi7ig or pudding in 
 it when it first came up. His neck could not have 
 been fit to be seen. It must have been like a pole, or 
 a withered stalk ; or else he was some faded fat dandy, 
 ashamed of his double chin. There can be no objec- 
 tion to people's looking as well as they can contrive, 
 young or old ; but it is a little too much to set a 
 fashion, which, besides being deformed, is injurious. 
 The man was excusable, because he knew no better ;
 
 294 THE SEER. 
 
 but it is no wonder if painters and poets, and young 
 Germans, and other romantic personages, have at- 
 tempted to throw oft" the nuisance, especially such as 
 have lived in the South. The neck-cloth is ugly, is 
 useless, is dangerous to some, and begets effeminate 
 fear of colds with all. The English, in consequence 
 of their living more in-doors than they used, fancy 
 they have too many reasons for muffling themselves 
 up, — not aware that the more they do so, the more 
 they subject themselves to what they dread ; and that 
 it is by a general sense of warmth in the person they 
 are to be made comfortable and secure, and not by 
 filling up every creek and cranny of their dress to the 
 very chin. 
 
 But some may tell us they cannot feel that general 
 warmth, without thus muffling themselves up. True, 
 if they accustom themselves to it ; but it is the cus- 
 tom itself which is in fault. They can have the 
 warmth without it, if they please ; just as well as they 
 can without muffling up their eyes. " How can you 
 go with your body naked?" said a not very wise per- 
 son to an Indian. " How can you go with your face 
 naked?" said the Indian. "I am used to it," replied 
 the man. "Well, and I am used to the other," 
 rejoined the Indian: "I am all face'' Now it will 
 not exaaiy do to be " all face " in a civilized country ; 
 the police would objeft : Piccadilly is not Paradise. 
 But then it is not necessary to be " all muffle." 
 
 The ladies in the reign of Edward I. once took to 
 wearing a cloth round their throats and ears, in a way 
 which made a poet exclaim, '■'• Par Dieul I have 
 often thought in my heart, when I have seen a lady so
 
 EXCI.ISH MALE COSTUME. 295 
 
 closely tied up, that her neck-cloth was nailed to her 
 chin." There is a figure of her in Mr. Planche's 
 book, p. 115. Now this was the precise appearance 
 of a neck-cloth some years back, when it was worn 
 witli a pad or stiflener, and the point of the chin 
 reposed in it ; nay, it is so at present with many. 
 The stock looks even more stiff and apopledlic, espe- 
 cially if there is a red face above it. When dandies 
 faint, the neck-cloth is always the first thing loosed, as 
 the stays are with a lady. 
 
 By the way, the dandies wear stays too ! We have 
 some regard for these gentlemen, because they have 
 reckoned great names among them in times of old, 
 and have some very clever and amiable ones now, and 
 manly withal too. They may err, we grant, from an 
 excess of sympathy with what is admired, as well as 
 from mere folly or effeminacy. But whatever approxi- 
 mates a man's shape to a woman's is a deformit}'-. 
 We have seen some of them with hips, upon which 
 they should have gone carrying pails, and cried 
 " milk ! " And who was it that clapped those mon- 
 strous protuberances upon the bosoms of our brave 
 life-guards? No masculine dandy, we may be sure. 
 A man's breast should look as if it would take a 
 hundred blows upon it, like a glorious anvil, and not 
 be deformed with a frightened wadding; still less 
 resemble the bosom that tenderness peculiarly encir- 
 cles, and that is so beautiful because it is so different 
 from his own.
 
 296 
 
 ENGLISH WOMEN VINDICATED. 
 
 LENDER, complaining of the masquerade 
 trick that had been put on him at the close 
 of the comedy, says that he had " married 
 Anne Page," and " she was a great lubberly boy." 
 Far better were a surprise of the reverse order, which 
 should betray itself in some tone of voice, or senti- 
 ment, or other unlooked-for emanation of womanhood, 
 while we were thinking ourselves quietly receiving the 
 visit of lubberly himself, or rather some ingenious 
 cousin of his ; and of some such pleasure we have 
 had a taste, if not in the shape of any Viola or Julia, 
 or other such flattering palpabilit}', yet in that of a fair 
 invisible ; for we recollect well our Indicator friend, 
 "Old Boy," who sends us the following letter; but 
 what if we have discovered, meanwhile, that " Old 
 Boy " is no boy at all, nor man neither, but a pretty 
 woman, and one that we think this a pretty occasion 
 for unmasking ; since, in the hearts of the male sex, 
 English women will find defenders enough : but few 
 of themselves have the courage to come forward. 
 Even our would-be " Old Boy" cannot do it but in 
 disguise ; which though a thing very well for her to 
 assume, it is no less becoming in us, we think, on 
 such an occasion to take off', seeing that it gives the
 
 ENGLISH WOMEN VINDICATED. 29/ 
 
 right touching effect to that pretty petuhince in her 
 letter, and that half-hiughing tone of ill-treatment, 
 which somehow has such a feminine breath in it, and 
 must double the wish to be on her side. 
 
 Wonderful is the effe<5l produced in a letter by the 
 tone in which we read it or suppose it written, and 
 by the knowledge of its being male or female. The 
 one before us would be a good "defiance" to "Old 
 Crony," were its signature true ; but to know that it is 
 written by a woman gives it a new interest, and quite 
 another sort of music. Cannot we see the face glow, 
 and the dimples playing with a frown ; and hear 
 the light, breathing voice bespeaking the question in 
 its favor? Does it not make "Old Crony" himself 
 glad to be "defied to the uttermost?" 
 
 TO THE EDITOR. 
 
 Dear old Friend with a new face, — Your corre- 
 spondent, " Old Crony," seems as deficient in temper 
 as in judgment, in his brusque remarks upon the dress 
 and gait of our fair countrywomen ; nor can it be 
 allowed him that he has chosen the best place to study 
 the finest specimens of English women, either as 
 regards refinement in dress or bearing. The women 
 who most frequent bazaars and fashionable drapers' 
 are generally the most vacant-minded and petty crea- 
 tures in existence ; who wander from one lounge to 
 another, seeking to dispel the ejuiui which torments 
 them, by any frivolous kill-time. I really loathe the 
 sight of such places, and think they have done much 
 mischief among the idle and ignorant part of my 
 countryAVomen. But, to return to the subjedl, I main-
 
 2C)8 THE SEER. 
 
 tain, in opposition to " Old Crony," that in no other 
 country can we see assembled together so much 
 beauty and grace, good dressing, and elegance of 
 carriage, as in our fashionable promenades, our bril- 
 liant assemblies, and still more in those delightful 
 hojne-parties^ where sprightliness and intelligence 
 combine to give grace and fascination. Nothing 
 parallel, I am sure, is to be found in the celebrated 
 Loiigchamfs^ or the gardens of the Tuileries at Paris, 
 or in the Graben at Vienna, or " under the Lindens " 
 of Berlin, or in any of the numerous public gardens 
 on the Continent, wherever I have been : and I call 
 upon all my bi-other and sister tourists to bear testi- 
 mony with me on this mighty question ; and further- 
 more, like a good and faithful champion in the cause 
 of the fair dames and damsels of Old England, I do 
 defy " Old Crony" to the uttermost, more especially 
 for his inhuman wish of screwing English faces on to 
 French figures, which would be a fearful " dove- 
 tailing" of lovely faces upon parchment skeletons; 
 si^eing that the generality of French females are 
 terribly deficient in that plumpness and roundness 
 which are usually considered desirable in womanhood. 
 I agree with you, dear Ci-devant Indicator, that 
 French women are generally more respedled and are 
 on more equal terms with the male sex than our 
 countrywomen ; but I must differ as to their reading 
 more, or being better informed. It is true that in 
 society they will bear their part well in general or 
 political conversation ; but, when alone with a Fi-ench 
 woman, she would be grievously offended if you 
 chose an_v other subjeft than her own personal attrac-
 
 ENGLISH WOMEN VINDICATED. 299 
 
 tions, and did not conclude by making a tender 
 " declaration^ These are the eternal themes by 
 which alone you can please the young and the old, 
 the ugly and the pretty ; and of this truth many will 
 assure you, besides your old friend, admirer, and 
 correspondent, Old Boy. 
 
 July the 23d. 
 
 P.S. — In defending the dress of my countrywomen, 
 I except the poorer and working orders. Every other 
 nation has a peculiar and piduresque costume foi 
 theirs : ours is remarkable only for its sluttish, 
 draggle-tailed appearance, at least in London. In 
 country-places the peasant's dress is comfortable, if 
 not very piquant. 
 
 We suspe6l that in this, as in most controversies, 
 there is less real ditference of opinion between the 
 fair and unfair parties than might be thought. Our 
 fair correspondent gives up the bazaar and shop- 
 hunting people, and those too whose dresses are of 
 the " poorer sort ; " and betwixt these classes, or 
 rather including them, are to be found, we conceive, 
 all the dresses and the walks to which " Old Crony " 
 would find himself objeding. The residue might 
 prove its claims to a participation in the general 
 refinement of Europe, without giving up a certain 
 colorinsr of manners as natural to it as the color to 
 its sky. And, as to what is "delightful" and "fas- 
 cinating," do not all people make that for themselves, 
 more or less, out of the amount of their own sympa- 
 thy and imagination? and does not each nation", as we
 
 300 THE SEER. 
 
 said before, think the elite of its own charmers the 
 most charming? No parties are so dehghtful to our 
 fair correspondent as those in her own country. Is 
 not this precisely what would be said by a cordial 
 French woman, of French parties ; by an Italian, of 
 Italian ; and so on? Custom itself is a good thing, if 
 it is an innocent one. We feel easy in it as in a form 
 and moultl to which we have grown ; but when, in 
 addition to this easiness, we think of all the feelings 
 with which we have colored it, all the pleasure we 
 have given and received, all our joys, sorrows, friend- 
 ships, loves, and religions, we may conceive how 
 difficult it is to give up the smallest and most super- 
 ficial forms in which they appear, or to learn how to 
 admit the superiority of any thing which is foreign to 
 them. 
 
 Brusq2ic attacks — sharp and loud outcries — may 
 sometimes be desirable in order to beget notice to a 
 question ; but, undoubtedly, the way to persuade is to 
 approve as much as one can ; to maintain, by loving 
 means, a loving attention. If we do not, we run a 
 chance, instead of mending the mistakes of other peo- 
 ple, of having our own cast in our teeth. See, for in- 
 stance, what " Old Crony " has done for himself and his 
 fair French women with our correspondent, who does 
 not deny perhaps that the French "middle classes" 
 walk better, "generally" speaking, than the English, 
 — at least we find this nowhere surely stated or im- 
 plied, — but she avails herself of his error in using the 
 word "figures" instead of "carriage," to taunt him 
 with the want of plumpness and womanhood in tlie 
 composition of his favorites, and accuse the universal
 
 F-XvlMSH WOMEN VINDICATKD. 3OI 
 
 French feminity of being "parchment skeletons"! 
 Here is the comparative French thinness, and want of 
 red and white, made the very worst of, because its 
 panegyrist made the worst of the appearance of the 
 other parties. For, as to his coniphment to their hand- 
 some faces, this, it seems, is not enough in these 
 intelledlual days. 
 
 "Mind, mind alone, (bear witness earth and heaven !) 
 The living fountain in itself contains 
 Of beauteous and sublime ! " 
 
 There must be soul from head to foot, — evidence of 
 thorough gracefulness and understanding ; othenvise 
 the ladies will have none of his good word. Well, 
 here is the principle admitted on both sides. Let 
 those who wish to see it thoroughly in a6tion set 
 lovingly about the task. The loving will soonest per- 
 suade, and soonest become perfed:. Had " Old Crony," 
 instead of expressing his " inhuman wish of screwing 
 English faces on to French figures," observed that the 
 latter are better in spirit than in substance, and shown 
 his anxiety to consult the feelings and enumerate the 
 merits of his countrywomen, we suspe(5t that nobody 
 would have been readier than his fair antagonist to do 
 justice to what is attra6live in her French sister- 
 hood. 
 
 That there are, and have always been, numbers of 
 beautiful women in France as well as in England, 
 and beautiful in figure too, and plump withal, no Anti- 
 gallican, the most pious that ever existed, could take 
 upon him to deny ; though the praise conveyed by their 
 word ejnbonpoifii (in good case), which means " fleshy
 
 303 TIIK SEER. 
 
 and fattish" (as the poet has it), would imply that the 
 beaut}' is not apt to be of that order. The country of 
 Diana de Poitiers, of Agnes Sorel, and of all the 
 charmers of the reigns of Valois and the Bourbons, is 
 not likely to lose its reputation in a hurry for " bevies 
 of bright dames." Charming they were, that is certain, 
 whether plump or not ; at least in the eyes of the 
 princes and wits that admired them : and French 
 admiration must go for something, and have at least 
 a geographical- voice in the world, whatever Germany, 
 or Goethe himself, may think of the matter. On the 
 other hand, far are we from abusing all or any of the 
 dear plump Germans who have had graceful and loving 
 souls, whether fifteen, like poor Margaret, or " fat, 
 fair, and forty," like Madame Schroeder-Devrient. We 
 have been in love with them time out of mind, in the 
 novels of the good village pastor, the reverend and 
 most amatory Augustus La Fontaine. The Peninsular 
 and South-American ladies, albeit beautiful walkers, 
 and well-grounded in shape, are understood not to 
 abound in plump figin-es ; yet who shall doubt the 
 abundance of their fascinations that has read what 
 Cei-vantes and Camoens have said of them, and what is 
 said of their eyes and gait by all enamoured travellers? 
 Is not Dorothea for ever sitting by the brook-side, beau- 
 tiful, and bathing her feet in the pages of the immortal 
 Spaniard? And was not Inez de Castro taken out of 
 the tomb, in order to have her very coffin crowned 
 with a diadem, — so triumphant was the memory of 
 her love and beauty over death itself ? Italian beauties 
 are almost another word for Italian paintings, and for 
 the muses of Ariosto and of song. And yet, admiring
 
 EXGLISH WOMEN VINDICATED. 303 
 
 all these as we do, are we for that reason traitors to 
 the beauties of our own country ? or do we not rather 
 the more admire the charmers that are nearest to us, 
 and that perpetuate the train of living images of grace 
 and afle6tion which runs through the whole existence 
 of any loving obsei'ver, like a frieze across the tem- 
 ple of a cheerful religion? 
 
 And yet all this does not hinder us from wishing that 
 the generality of our countrywomen walked better 
 and dressed better, and even looked a little less reserved 
 and misgiving. A Frenchman is not bound to wish 
 the generality of his country-women plumper, because 
 he admires them for other beauties, or sees plumpness 
 enough in his friends. A Spaniard may reasonably 
 wish his a little more red and white, if it be only for 
 the sake of their health ; and if a jovial table-loving 
 Viennese desired after all a little less plumpness in 
 his adorable, for the same reason (and in himself too), 
 we should not quarrel with his theory, however we 
 might objedl to his pradlice. 
 
 The hatidsomesi female we ever beheld was at Turin : 
 she was a maid-servant, crossing a square. The most 
 ladylike-looking female ift h7(mble life was a French 
 girl, the daughter of a small innkeeper. We heard 
 one of her humble admirers speak of her as having 
 the air d'ufie petite diichcsse (of a little duchess). 
 But the most char7ning face that ever furnished us 
 with a vision for life (and we have seen many) was 
 one that suddenly turned round in a concert-room in 
 England, — an Englisli girl's, radiant with truth and 
 goodness. All expressions of that kind make us love 
 tliem, and here was the height of materi:d charmingncss
 
 ^O} THE SEER. 
 
 added. And we thought the figure equal to the face. 
 We know not whether we could have loved it for ever, 
 as some faces can be loved without being so perfeft. 
 Habit, and loving-kindness, and the knowledge of the 
 heart and soul, could alone determine that. But, if not, 
 it was the divinest imposition we ever met with.
 
 305 
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 T is astonishing what a deal of good stuff, of 
 some sort or another, inherent or associated, 
 there is in every joossible thing that can be 
 talked of^ and how it will look forth out of the dullest 
 windows of commonplace, if sj'mpathy do but knock 
 at the door. 
 
 There is that house for instance, this very Sunday, 
 No. 4, Ballycroft-row, in the Smithy : did you ever see 
 such a house, — so dull, so drearily insipid, so very 
 rainy-bad-Sunday like ? Old, yet not so old as to be 
 venerable ; poor, yet not enough so to be pitied ; the 
 bricks black ; the place no thoroughfare ; no chance of 
 a hackney-coach going by ; the maid-serv^ant has just 
 left the window, yawning. But, now, see who is turn- 
 ing the corner, and comes up the row. Some eminent 
 man, perhaps? Not he. He is eminent for nothing, 
 except among his fellow-apprentices for being the best 
 hand among them at turning a button. But look how 
 he eyes, all the way, the house we have been speaking 
 of, — see how he bounds up the steps, — Asith what a 
 face ! now cast down the area, and now raised to the 
 upper windows, he gives his humble, yet impressive 
 knock ; and, lo ! now look at the maid-servant's face, 
 as she darts her head out of the window, and instantly 
 VOL. I. 26
 
 3o6 THE SEER. 
 
 draws it back again, radiant with delight. It is Tom 
 Hicks, who has come up from Birmingham a week 
 before she expelled him. The door is opened almost as 
 soon as the face is seen ; and now is tliere love and joy 
 in that house, and consequently a grace in the street ; 
 and it looks quite a different place, at least in the eyes 
 of the loving and the wise. 
 
 This is our secret for making the dullest street in the 
 metropolis, nay, the squalidest and worst, put forth 
 some flower of pleasantness (for the seeds of good 
 find strange corners to grow in, could people but culti- 
 vate them) : and, if our secret is not produ6live to every- 
 body, it is no fault of ours, — nay, for that matter, it is 
 none of theirs ; but we pity them, and have I'eason to 
 think ourselves richer. We happened to be walking 
 through some such forlorn-looking street with the late 
 Mr. Hazlitt, when we told him we had a charm 
 against the melancholy of such places ; and, on his 
 asking what it was, and being informed, he acknow- 
 ledged, with a look between pleasure and sorrow, that 
 it was a true one. The secret came home to him ; but 
 he could have understood though he had not felt it. 
 Fancy two lovers living in the same street, either 
 of whom thinks it a delight to exist in the same 
 spot, and is happy for the morning if one look is given 
 through the window-pane. It puts your thoughts in 
 possession of the highest and most celestial pleasure 
 on earth. No " milk-white thorn, that scents the even- 
 ing gale," is necessary to it, though it is a very fitting 
 accompaniment. The dullest street, the dullest room, 
 upon earth, is sufficient, and becomes a spot radiant 
 beyond the dreams of princes. Think of George the
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 307 
 
 Fourth, in the midst of all the splendor of Windsor 
 Castle, and then of this poor maid-servant, with her 
 health, her youth, and her love, looking in the eyes of 
 the man she is fond of, and hardly able to speak for 
 gratitude and joy. We grant that there is no compari- 
 son, in one sense, between the two individuals, — the 
 poor old king, with his efforts at being fine and happy, 
 and the poor young girl, with her black worsted stock- 
 ings and leaping bosom, as happy as her heart can 
 make her. But the contrast may sen^e to remind us 
 that we may attribute happiness wrongly in fine places, 
 and miss it erroneously in common ones. Windsor 
 Castle is sufficient beauty to itself, and has poetical 
 memories ; but, in the commonest street we see, there 
 may be the richest real joy.* 
 
 Love is not peculiar to London on Sundays. They 
 have it even in Edinburgh, notwithstanding what a 
 fair charmer in " Tait's Magazine " tells us, with such 
 a staid countenance, of the beatitudes of self-reflcdlion 
 into which her countrymen retire on tliat day. Other- 
 wise, out of love alone, we might render our dull- 
 looking metropolitan sabbath the brightest day in the 
 week. And so it is, and in Edinburgh too ; and all 
 the sabbath -day world over: for though, seriously 
 speaking, we do not deny the existence of the tranquil 
 and solitary contemplations just alluded to, yet assur- 
 edly they are as nothing compared to the thoughts 
 connedted with everv-dav matters ; and love, fortun- 
 ately, is an every-day matter, as well as money. Our 
 
 * There is now, thank God, love as well as splendor in Windsor 
 Castle. One may fancy the praces of Mr. Keats's " Eve of Saint Agnes " 
 realized there, without the troubles of it.
 
 3nS THE SEER. 
 
 Sunday streets look dull enough, heaven knows, especi- 
 ally in the more trading parts of the metropolis. At 
 the west end of the town, in Marylebone, and the 
 squares, it looks no duller than it does on other daj-s ; 
 and, taking the spirit of the thing, there is no real 
 vSunday among the rich. Their going to church is a 
 lounge and a show ; their meals are the same as at 
 other times ; their evenings the same ; there is no dif- 
 ference in the look of their houses outside. But in 
 the city, the Strand, &c., the shutting-up of the shops 
 gives an extreme aspedl of dulness and melancholy 
 to the streets. Those windows, full of gayety and color 
 and bustle, being shut, the eyes of the houses seem put 
 out. The clean clothes, and comparatively staid de- 
 meanor of the passengers, make no amends for the loss ; 
 for, with the exception of special friends and visitors, — 
 lovers in particular, — it is well understood in London, 
 that Sunday is really a dull day to most people. They 
 have outlived the opinions which gave it an interest of 
 a peculiar sort ; and their notions of religion have 
 become either too vitilitarian or too cheerful to admire 
 the old fashion of the day any longer. Rest, with 
 insipidity, is its chara6ler in the morning, newspaper 
 reading excepted. Church is reckoned dull, perhaps 
 attended out of mere habit, " and for the sake of ex- 
 ample ; " or avoided froin day to day, till non-attendance 
 becomes another habit. Dinner, under any circvim- 
 stances, is looked to with eagerness as the great relief: 
 the day then brightens up, with the help of an extra 
 dish, pudding, or friend ; and the visits of friends help 
 1o make the evening as lively as it well can be, without 
 the charm of business and money-taking. Should there
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 309 
 
 be no visitors, the case is generally helpless. The man 
 and wife yawn, or are quiet, or dispute : a little bit of 
 book is read, till the reader complains of " weak eyes," 
 or says that it is unaccountable how sleepy reading 
 makes him, considering he is so " fond " of it ; bibs 
 are pulled up about the gentleman's chin, and gowns 
 admired by their fair wearers ; and the patients lounge 
 towards the window, to wonder whether it is fine, or 
 is clearing-up, or to look at the raindrops, or see what 
 Mrs. Smith is doing over the way. The young gentle- 
 men or ladies look at the Bible, or the calendar, or the 
 army-list, or the last magazine, or their trinkets, and 
 wonder whether Richard will come ; and the little chil- 
 dren are told not to sing. 
 
 But the lovers ! 
 
 These, however, we shall keep till the last, agi^eeably 
 to the demands of climax. 
 
 But stay a moment. 
 
 So tender, or rather, according to Mr. Bentham's 
 philosophy, so " extra-regarding prudent," and so " feli- 
 city-maximizing," is our heart, that we fear we may 
 have been thought a little hard by those whom we have 
 described as uniting a sleepiness over their books, with 
 a profession of astonishment at their tendency, con- 
 sidering they are " so fond of books." But mistake us 
 not, dear non-readers, who happen to be reading us, or 
 who read a newspaper, though you read little else. 
 Nothing would we ever willingly say to the useless 
 mortification of anybody, much less of those who love 
 any thing whatsoever, especially a newspaper ; and all 
 the fault we find with you is for thinking it necessary 
 to vindicate your reputation for sense and sympathy on
 
 3IO THE SEER. 
 
 one particular score, when you might do it to better 
 advantage by regretting the want of the very fondness 
 you hiy claim to. For, in claiming to be fond of books 
 when you are not, you show yourselves unaware of 
 the self-knowledge which books help us to obtain ; 
 whereas, if you boldly and candidly expressed your 
 regret at not being fond of them, you would show that 
 you had an understanding so far superior to the very 
 want of books, and far greater than that of the mechan- 
 ical scholar who knows the words in them, and nothing 
 else. You would show that you knew what you wanted, 
 and were aware of the pleasures that you missed ; and 
 perhaps it would turn out, on inquiry, that you had 
 only been indifterent to books in the gross, because 
 you had not met with the sort of reading suitable to 
 your turn of mind. Now, we are not bound to like 
 books unsuitable to us, any more than a poet is bound 
 to like law-books, or a lawyer the study of Arabic, or 
 a musician any books but his own feelings ; nor is any 
 one, more than the musician, bound to like books at 
 all, provided he loves the things which books teach us 
 to love, and is for sowing harmony and advancement 
 around him, in tones of good-huinor and encourage- 
 ment, to the kindly dance of our planet. 
 
 One of the pleasantest sights on a Sunday morning 
 in the metropolis — to us of course particularly so, but 
 justly also to all well-disposed and thinking Christians 
 — is the nmnerous shops exhibiting weekly papers for 
 sale, — the placards of our hebdomadal brethren, blue, 
 yellow, and white, vociferous with large types, and 
 calling the passenger's attention to parliamentary in- 
 vestigations, monstrous convi(?tions, horrible murders,
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 31I 
 
 noble philanthropies, and the humanities of books, 
 theatres, and the fine arts. Justly did the divine Heart, 
 who suftered his disciples to pluck the ears of corn, 
 and would have the sheep extricated from the ditch on 
 a sabbath, refuse to disconnedt the day of worship 
 with works of necessity and mercy ; and what so ne- 
 cessary for the poor, the especial objedls of his regard, 
 as a knowledge of what can be done for them ? What 
 so merciful as to help them to supply their wants, both 
 of body and mind ? Leaving this more serious part of 
 the subje6l (which, however, is not inharmoniously 
 mixed up with our lighter matter ; for the gi^eatest 
 gravity and the most willing cheerfulness have but one 
 objedl), we pass by the other open or peeping shops 
 (such as the pastry-cooks', who keep up the supply of 
 indigestion, and the apothecary's, who is conveniently 
 ready against the consequences), and stop a moment 
 at our friend the barber's, who provides a newspaper 
 for his waiting customers, as men of his trade formerly 
 provided a lute or a guitar. The solace is not so 
 elegant. There must have been something very pecu- 
 liar, and superior to the occasion, in the sound of a 
 guitar in a barber's shop, — of "beauty, retire," grace- 
 fully played into the face of a long-visaged old gentle- 
 man under the soap-suds ; or, — 
 
 " Since first I saw your face, I resolved 
 To honor and renown you ; " 
 or,— 
 
 " In this pleasant place, retired j " 
 or,— 
 
 " Come, if you dare ; " 
 
 just as the operator's fingers were approaching the 
 patient's nose. The newspaper, however, though not
 
 312 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 SO choice, or furnishing opportunities to the poor polite 
 to show the seleclness and segregation of their accom- 
 plishments, shows a higher refinement, on the part of 
 the poor in general, or the many. But we must be 
 moving onward. 
 
 There is the bell going for church. Forth come 
 Mrs. and Miss A ; then the Mr. B's, in their new 
 brown coats, and staid gloves ; then Mr., Mrs., and the 
 Miss C's, in a world of new bonnets and ribbons. Oh, 
 ho ! young Mr. D, from over the way, joins them, and 
 is permitted to walk with Miss C by herself: so the 
 thing is certain. See ! she explains to him that she 
 has forgotten her prayer-book — by accident, and he 
 joyfully shows her his own ; which means, that he 
 means to read the collect with her, out of the same 
 book ; which makes her blush and smile, and attempt 
 to look gratefully indiiferent, which is impossible : so 
 she does not much endeavor it, and they are both as 
 happy as if the church were made of tarts and cheese- 
 cakes. We are passing the church now ; so we see no 
 more of them. But there is the beadle, in his laced 
 hat, taking the apple from the charity-boy, and looking 
 very angry, for it is not a good one ; and there come 
 the E's, quarrelling up to the church-door about which 
 walks the heaviest ; and F, making his sisters laugh 
 beforehand, at the way in which the clerk opens his 
 mouth ; and G, who hates the parson ; and the parson, 
 who hates G ; and H, I, J, K, and L, who are indiffer- 
 ent about the matter, and are thinking of their dinner, 
 boots, neck- cloths, and next day; and, not to go 
 through the whole alphabet, here is M dashing up in 
 his carriage, which the coachman is to keep for him
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 313 
 
 till he has "walked humbly with his God," and is 
 ready to strut forth again. 
 
 In childhood, the church bells used to make us 
 melancholy. They have not that efle6l now. The 
 reason we take to be, that they sounded to us then 
 from the remote regions of the whole world out of 
 doors, and of all the untried hopes and fears and 
 destinies which they contain. We have since known 
 them more familiarly, and our regard is greater, and 
 even more serious, though mixed with cheerfulness ; 
 and is not at all melancholy, except when the bell tolls 
 for a funeral ; which custom, by the way, is a nuisance, 
 and ought to be abolished, if only out of consideration 
 for the sick and sorrowful. One of the reasons why 
 church bells have become cheerful to us, is the having 
 been accustomed to hear them among the cheerful 
 people of Tuscany. The Catholic countries' bells are 
 ringing at all seasons, not always to the comfort of 
 those who hear them ; but the custom has associated 
 them in our minds with sunshine and good-nature. 
 We also like them on account of their frequency in 
 colleges. Finally, they remind us of weddings, and 
 other holidays ; and there is one particular little jingle 
 in some of them which brings to our memory the 
 walking to church by the side of a parent, and is very 
 dear to us. 
 
 VOL. I. 27
 
 3H 
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 ARD is it, tliou coming kindness, and hard, 
 thou ah-eady-existing knowledge and kindness 
 too of Christian philanthropists and philoso- 
 phers, not to feel a wish to take the cane out of the 
 hands of the beadle yonder, who is tyrannizing over 
 barrow-women and little boys, and lay it about his 
 own hat. In the name of God, what sort of Christian- 
 ity would the law have, if it is not to be Christian? 
 if it is not to prefer " spirit" to " letter"? There are 
 some men, according to whose notions it would appear 
 as if heaven itself ought to shut up shop on Sundays, 
 and afibrd us no light and sunshine. We verily believe, 
 that they think the angels go to church on that day, 
 and put on clean wings ; and that St. Paul preaches a 
 sermon. 
 
 See, now, here comes a little fellow whom they would 
 suppress, — clean as a pink, far happier than a prince, 
 a sort of little angel himself, making allowance for the 
 pug-nose ; but innocence and happiness are in his face, 
 and before him (not to speak it profanely) is the beatific 
 vision of the piece of hot mutton which he is caiTying 
 home from the baker's, and devouring with his eyes. 
 He is an honest boy, for his mother has trusted him 
 with carrying the meat and the baked potatoes ; and it
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 315 
 
 is the only bit of meat which he or she, or his father, 
 can get to eat all the week round ; and his little sisters 
 are to have some of it, for they have all been good, and 
 helped to earn it ; and so here is a whole, good, hard- 
 working, honest family, whom the religious eaters of 
 hot meat every day would prevent from having their 
 bit on Sundays, — because why? Because it would do 
 the poor souls any harm? No ; but because it would 
 do their rich dictators the harm of seeing their own 
 pragmatical will and pleasure opposed, — humors, the 
 very result perhaps of their own stuffing and indiges- 
 tion. 
 
 A Sunday evening in London, with its musical and 
 other social meetings, such as cannot take place be- 
 tween men in business during the rest of the week, 
 has parties enough to render it much livelier than it 
 appears. But the lovers — the lovers are the thing. 
 With them we begin, and with them we conclude ; 
 for what so good to begin, or to end with, as love? 
 We loved as early as we can recoUedl ; we love now ; 
 and our death will be a loving one, let it be colored 
 otherwise as it may. 
 
 When we speak of lovers on a Sunday evening, we 
 mean, of course, lovers who cannot well visit on any 
 other day in the week ; and whose meetings, therefore, 
 are rendered as intense as they can be by the infre- 
 quency. What signify the circumstances that may 
 have hindered them ! Let them be button-making, 
 bread-making, or a clerkship, or servitude, or any other 
 chance or condition of life, what care we, provided 
 the love be genuine, and the pleasure truly felt ! Burns 
 was a ploughman ; Allan Ramsay, a hair-dresser ; Gay,
 
 31 6 THE SEER. 
 
 at one time, a mercer ; Richardson, a printer ; Dods- 
 ley, a footman. Do we suppose that the authors of 
 " Sir Charles Grandison," " Black-eyed Susan," and 
 the finest love-songs in the world, did not make as 
 cordial and exquisite lovers as the best-bred gentlemen 
 about town? and that their misti"esses and they did 
 not worship each other with a vivacity and a passion 
 infinite ? 
 
 Our Sunday lover, then, is an apprentice or a clerk, 
 and his mistiness is a tradesman's daughter ; and they 
 meet only on Sundays and Sunday evenings, counting 
 every minute till the time arrives, listening to every 
 knock, trying to look calm, when tlie other joins the 
 family party : for they seldom see one another alone, 
 even then. But now they are at least in the same 
 room, and happiness is with them. They see and 
 hear each other ; they see the little manoeuvres to get 
 a nearer seat ; at length they sit close together. The 
 parents are not displeased, and let things take their 
 course. This is, perhaps, the happiest time of court- 
 ship, when lovers feel secure of one another's affec- 
 tions, and only have just sufficient doubt of otlier 
 security to make every thing seem dependent on them- 
 selves and the result of their own will and choice. 
 By degrees, as the family divide in their talk, they 
 are suffered to talk exclusively together. Every word 
 is precious ; every question the most indifferent has a 
 meaning : it is sufficient for one to say, " I like this," 
 or "I like that;" and the other thinks it a charming 
 observation, — a proof of fine sense, or feeling, or taste, 
 or, above all, of love : for the eyes, or the quivering lips, 
 or the panting bosom, speak with it ; and the whole
 
 SUNDAY IN LONDON. 317 
 
 intercourse, whether speaking or silent, is one of 
 intense acquiescence and delight. A gentleman comes 
 up, and gallantly addresses some smiling remark to the 
 lady : the lover, if he is not quite sure of her mind, 
 begins to be jealous. The gentleman moves off, and 
 a remark at his expense prostrates the lover's soul 
 with gratitude. The lady leaves the room to put a 
 child to bed, or speak to a sister, or look after the 
 supper, and darkness falls upon the place. She re- 
 turns ; and her footsteps, her face, her frock, her sweet 
 countenance is thrice blessed, and brings happiness 
 back again. She resumes her chair, with a soft 
 " thank ye," as he elaborately, and for no need what- 
 soever, puts it in its best position for being resumed ; 
 and never, he thinks, did soul, breath, and bosom go 
 so sweetly together as in the utterance of that simple 
 phrase. For her part, she has, secretly, hardly any 
 bounds to her gratitude ; and it is lucky that they are 
 both excellent good people, otherwise the very virtues 
 of one or other of them might be their destrudlion. 
 (Ah ! they will think of this in aftertimes, and not 
 look with severe countenances on the vi6tims of the 
 less honorable.) At length they sit looking over some 
 pidlures together, or a book which they are as far 
 from reading as if they did not see it. They turn over 
 the leaves, however, with a charming hypocrisy, and 
 even carry their eyes along the lines ; their cheeks 
 touch ; his hand meets hers, by favor of the table- 
 cloth or the handkerchief; its pressure is returned; 
 you might hear their hearts beat, if you could listen. 
 
 Oh ! welcome, war ; welcome, sorrow ; welcome, 
 folly, mistake, per\'erseness, disease, deatli, disap-
 
 3l8 THE SEER. 
 
 pointment, all the ills of life, and the astonishments of 
 man's soul ! Those moments, nay, the recolleftions 
 of them, are worth the whole payment. Our children 
 will love as we have loved, and so cannot be wholly 
 miserable. To love, even if not beloved, is to have 
 the sweetest of faiths, and riches fineless, which noth- 
 ing can take from us but our own unworthiness. And 
 once to have loved truly is to know how to continue 
 to love every thing which unlovingness has not had a 
 hand in altering, — all beauties of nature and of mind ; 
 all truth of heart ; all trees, flowers, skies, hopes, and 
 good beliefs ; all dear decays of person, fading towards 
 a twofold grave ; all trusts in heaven ; all faiths in the 
 capabilities of loving man. Love is a perpetual proof 
 that something good and earnest and eternal is meant 
 us, such a bribe and foretaste of bliss being given us 
 to keep us in the lists of time and progression ; and, 
 when the world has realized what love urges it to 
 obtain, perhaps death will cease ; and all the souls 
 which love has created, crowd back at its summons to 
 uihabit their perfected world. 
 
 Truly we have finished our Sunday evening with a 
 rapt and organ-like note. Let the reader fancy he has 
 heard an organ indeed. Its voice is not unapt for the 
 produ6tion of svich thoughts in those who can rightly 
 listen to its consummate majesty and warbling modu- 
 lations. 
 
 [Something yet remains to be said of " Sunday in 
 the Suburbs."]
 
 3^9 
 
 SUNDAY IN THE SUBURBS. 
 
 Being more JLast Words on " Su7iday in London;** 
 Tjuith a Digression on the Name of Smith. 
 
 fN writing our articles on this subjedl, we have 
 been so taken up, first with the dull look of 
 the Siuiday streets, and afterwards with the 
 lovers who make their walls lively on the hidden side, 
 that we faii'ly overlooked a feature in our metropolitan 
 sabbath, eminently sabbatical ; to wit, the suburbs 
 and their holiday-makers. What a thing to forget ! 
 What a thing to forget, even if it concerned only 
 Smith in his new hat and boots ! Why, he has been 
 thijiking of them all the week ; and how could we, 
 who sympathize with all the Smith-ism and boots in 
 existence, forget them? The hatter did not bring 
 home his hat till last night ; the boot-maker, his boots 
 till this morning. How did not Smith (and he is a 
 shrewd fellow too, and reads us) pounce upon the hat- 
 box, undo its clinging pasteboard lid, whisk oft' the 
 silver paper, delicately develop the dear beaver, and 
 put it on before the glass ! The truth must be owned : 
 he sat in it half supper -time. Never was such a 
 neat fit. All Aldersgate, and the City Road, and the 
 New Road, and Camden and Kentish towns, glided 
 already before him as he went along in it, — hatted in
 
 320 THE SEER. 
 
 thought. He could have gone to sleep in It, — if it 
 would not have spoiled his nap, and its ovv^n. 
 
 Then his boots! Look at him. There he goes — 
 up Someistown. Who vs^ould suspedl, from the ease 
 and superiority of his countenance, that he had not 
 had his boots above two hovirs ; that he had been a 
 good fourtli part of the time laboring and fetching the 
 blood up in his face with pulling them on with his 
 boot-hooks ; and that, at this moment, they horribly 
 pinch him? But he has a small foot — has Jack 
 Smith ; and he would squeeze, jam, and damn it into 
 a thimble, rather than acknowledge it to be a bit 
 larger than it seems. 
 
 Do not think ill of him, especially you that are 
 pinched a little less. Jack has sympathies ; and, as 
 long as the admiration of the community runs towards 
 little feet and well-polished boots, he cannot dispense, 
 in those quarters, with the esteem of his fellow-men. 
 As the sympathies enlarge, Jack's boots will gi^ow 
 wider ; and we venture to prophesy, that at forty he 
 will care little for little feet, and much for his corns 
 and the public good. We are the more bold in this 
 anticipation, from certain reminiscences we have of 
 boots of our own. We shall not enter Into details, for 
 fear of compromising the dignity of literature ; but the 
 good-natured may think of them what they please. 
 Non ignara mail (said Dido), miser Is succurrere 
 disco; that Is, having known what it was to wear 
 shoes too small herself, she should never measure, for 
 her part, the capabilities of a woman's head by the 
 pettiness of her slippers. 
 
 Napoleon was proud of a little foot ; and Caesar, in
 
 SUNDAY IN THE SUUURBS. 32I 
 
 his youth, was a dandy. So go on, Smith, and bear 
 your tortures Hke a man ; especially towards one 
 o'clock, when it will be hot and dusty. 
 
 Smith does not carry a cane with a twist at the top 
 of it for a handle. That is for an inferior grade of 
 holiday-maker, who pokes about the suburbs, gaping 
 at the new buildings, or treats his fellow-ser\-ant to a 
 trip to White Conduit-house, and an orange by the 
 way, — always too sour. Smith has a stick or a whan- 
 ghee ; or, if he rides, a switch. He is not a good 
 rider : and we must say it is his own fault ; for he 
 rides only on Sundays, and will not scrape acquaint- 
 ance with the ostler on other days of the week. You 
 may know him on horseback by the brisk forlornness 
 of his steed, the inclined plane of his body, the ex- 
 treme outwardness or inwardness of his toes, and an 
 expression of face betwixt ardor, fear, and indifference. 
 He is the most without a footman of any man in the 
 world ; that is to say, he has the most excessive desire 
 to be taken for a man who ought to have one ; and 
 therefore the space of road behind him pursues him, 
 as it were, with the reproach of its emptiness. 
 
 A word, by the way, as to our use of the generic 
 name " Smith." A correspondent wrote to us the 
 other day, intimating that it would be a good-natured 
 thing if we refrained in future from designating classes 
 of men by the name of " Tomkins." We know not 
 whether he was a Tomkins himself, or whether he 
 only felt for some friend of that name, or for the 
 whole body of the Tomkinscs : all we know is, that 
 he has taken the word out of our mouth for ever. 
 How many paragraphs he may have ruined by it, we
 
 322 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 cannot say ; but the truth is, he has us on our weak 
 side. We can resist no appeal to our good-nature 
 made by a good-natured man. Besides, we Hke him 
 for the seriousness and good faith with which he took 
 the matter to heart, and for the niceness of his sym- 
 pathy. Adieu, then, name of Tomkins ! Jenkins 
 also, for a like respectful reason, we shall abstain from 
 in future. But let nobody interfere in behalf of Smith ; 
 for Smith does not want it. Smith is too universal. 
 Even a John Smith could not regard the use of his 
 name as personal ; for John Smith, as far as his name 
 is concerned, has no personality. He is a class, a 
 huge body : he has a good bit of the Directory to 
 himself. You may see, for pages together (if our 
 memory does not deceive us), John Smith, John 
 Smith, John Smith ; or, rather, — 
 
 Smith, John, 
 Smith, John, 
 Smith, John ; 
 
 Smith, John, 
 Smith, John, 
 Smith, John, 
 
 and so on, with everlasting Smith-Johnism, like a set 
 of palisades or iron rails ; almost as if you could 
 make them clink as you go, with drawing something 
 along them. The repetition is dazzling. The mo- 
 notony bristles with sameness. It is a chevaux-de- 
 Smith. John Smith, in short, is so public and multi- 
 tudinous a personage, that we do not hesitate to say 
 we know an excellent individual of that name, whose 
 regard we venture thus openly to boast of, without 
 fearing to run any danger of offending his modesty ; 
 for nobody will know whom we mean. An Italian 
 poet says he hates his name of John ; because, if any-
 
 SUNDAY IN THE SUBURBS. 323 
 
 body calls him by it in the street, twenty 2)eoplc look 
 out of window. Now, let anybody call "John Smith ! " 
 and half Holborn will cry out, "Well?" 
 
 As, to other and famous Smiths, they are too 
 strong-ly marked out by their fame — sometimes by their 
 Christian names, and partly, indeed, by the uncommon 
 lustre they attain through their very commonness — to 
 make us at all squeamish in helping ourselves to their 
 generic appellation at ordinary times. Who will 
 ever think of confounding Smith, in the abstradt, with 
 Adam Smith, or Sir Sidney Smith, or the Reverend 
 Sidney Smith, or James and Horace Smith, or Dr. 
 Southwood Smith, or any other concretion of wit, 
 bravery, or philosophy? 
 
 By this time, following, as we talk, our friend Jack 
 up the road, we arrive at the first suburb tea-gardens, 
 which he, for bis part, passes with disdain : not our 
 friend, John Smith, be it obsei-ved, for his philosophy 
 is as universal as his name ; but Jack Smith, our 
 friend of the new hat and boots. And yet he will be 
 a philosopher too, by and by ; and his boots shall 
 help him to philosophize ; but all in good time. 
 Meanwhile, we, who are old enough to consult our 
 inclination in preference to our grandeur, turn into 
 the tea-gardens, where there is no tea going forward, 
 and not much garden, but worlds of beer and tobacco- 
 pipes and alcoves ; and, in a corner behind some 
 palings, there is (we fear) a sound of skittles. May 
 no unchristian Christian hear it, who is twirling his 
 thumbs, or listening to the ring of his wine-glasses ! 
 How hot the people look ! how unpinned the goodly 
 old dames ! how tired, yet untired, the children ! and
 
 324 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 how each alcove opens upon you as you pass, with Its 
 talk, smoke, beer, and bad paint ! Then what a feast 
 to their eyes is the grass-plat ! Truly, without well 
 knowing it, do they sit down almost as much J:o the 
 enjoyment of that green table of Nature's in the midst 
 of them, as to their tobacco and " half-and-half." It 
 is something which they do not see all the rest of the 
 week ; the first bit of grass, of any size, which they 
 come to from home ; and here they stop and are 
 content. For our parts, we wish they would go fur- 
 ther, as Smith does, and get fairly out in the fields ; 
 but they will do that as they become freer and wiser 
 and more comfortable, and learn to know and love 
 what the wild flowers have to say to them. At pres- 
 ent, how should they be able to hear those small 
 angelic voices, when their ears are ringing with stock- 
 ing-frames and crying children, and they are but too 
 happy in their tired-heartedness to get to the first bit 
 of holiday ground they can reach ? 
 
 We come away, and mingle with the crowds return- 
 ing home, among whom we recognize our friend of 
 the twisted cane, and his lass ; who looks the reddest, 
 proudest, and most assured of maid - sei'vants, and 
 sometimes " snubs" him a little, out loud, to show her 
 power ; though she loves every blink of his eye. 
 Yonder is a multitude colledled round a Methodist 
 preacher, whom they think far " behind his age," 
 extremely ignorant of yesterday's unstamped, but 
 "well-meaning," a "poor mistaken fellow, sir;" and 
 they will not have him hustled by the police. Lord 
 X. should hear what they say. It might put an idea 
 in his head.
 
 SUNDAY IN THE SUBURBS. 325 
 
 The gas-lights begin to shine ; the tide of the crowd 
 grows thinner ; chapel-windows are lit up ; maid- 
 sei^vants stand in door-ways ; married couples carry 
 their children, or dispute about them ; and children, 
 not carried, cry for spite, and jumble their souls out. 
 
 As for Smith, he is in some friend's room, very 
 comfortable, with his brandy and water beside him, 
 his colored handkerchief on his knee, and his boots 
 hitermitte7it.* 
 
 * Intermit ; " to grow mild between the fits or paroxysm." — Johnson.
 
 326 
 
 A HUMAN BEING AND A CROWD. 
 
 HE reader will allow us to relate him an 
 apologue. A seer of visions, walking out 
 one evening just before twilight, saw a being 
 standing in a corner by the way-side, such as he never 
 remembered to have seen before. It said nothing, 
 and threatened him no harm : it seemed occupied with 
 its own thoughts, looking in an earnest manner across 
 the fields, where some children were playing ; and its 
 aspedl was inexpressibly affecting. Its eyes were very 
 wonderful, — a mixture of something that was at once 
 substance and no substance, body and spirit ; and it 
 seemed as if there would have been tears in them, but 
 for a certain dry-looking heat, in which nevertheless 
 was a still stranger mixture of indiflerence and pa- 
 tience, of hope and despair. Its hands, which it no\v 
 and then lifted to its head, appeared to be two of the 
 most wonderful instruments that were ever beheld. 
 Its cheeks varied their size in a remarkable manner, 
 being now sunken, now swollen, or apparently 
 healthy, but always of a marvellous formation ; and 
 capable, it would seem, of great beauty, had the 
 phenomenon been hajopy. The lips, in particular, 
 expressed this capability ; and now and then the crea- 
 ture smiled at some thought that came over it ; and
 
 A HUMAN BEING AND A CROWD. 337 
 
 then it looked sorrowful, and then angry, and then 
 patient again ; and, finally, it leaned against the tree 
 near which it stood, with a gesture of great weariness, 
 and heaved a sigh which went to the very heart of the 
 beholder. The latter stood apart, screened from its 
 sight, and looked towards it with a deep feeling of 
 pity, reverence, and awe. At length the creature 
 moved from its place, looked first at the fields, then at 
 the setting sun, and after putting its hands together in 
 an attitude of prayer, and again looking at the fields 
 and the children, drew down, as if from an unseen 
 resting-place, a huge burthen, of some kind or other, 
 w^hich it received on its head and shoulders ; and so 
 with a tranquil and noble gesture, more afte<5ling than 
 any symptom it had yet exhibited, went gliding on- 
 wards toAvards the sunset, at once bent with weakness, 
 and magnificent for very power. The seer, then, 
 before it got out of sight, saw it turn round yearning 
 towards the children ; but what was his surprise, 
 when, on turning its eyes upon himself, he recognized, 
 for the first time, an exadl countei'part of his own face ; 
 in fadt, himself looking at himself! 
 
 Yes, dear reader, the seer was the phenomenon, and 
 the phenomenon is a human being, — any care-worn 
 7na7i ; you, yourself, if you are such ; or the Seer of 
 tlie other sights in this book, — with this difference, 
 liowever, as far as regards you and us, that, inasmuch 
 as we are readers and writers of things hopeful, we 
 are more hopeful people, and possess the twofold faith 
 wliich the phenomenon seems to have thought a 
 divided one, and not to be united ; tliat is to say, we 
 think hopefully of heaven and hopefully of earth ;
 
 328 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 we behold the sunset shining towards the fields and 
 the little children, in all the beauty of its double 
 encouragement. 
 
 A human being, whatever his mistakes, whatever 
 his cares, is, in the truest and most literal sense of the 
 word, a respedlable being (pray believe it) ; nay, an 
 awful, were he not also a loving being ; a mystery 
 of wonderful frame, hope, and capacity, walking be- 
 tween heaven and earth. To look into his eyes is 
 to see a soul. He is surely worth twice, thrice, and 
 four times looking at and considering,* — worth think- 
 ing what we can do for him, and he for us, and all 
 for each other. Our general impressions of things 
 (as the reader knows) are cheerful, and ready to 
 receive abundance of pleasure. Our greatest sorrow, 
 when we look abroad, is to think that mankind do not 
 extra6t a millionth part of the pleasure they might 
 from the exceeding riches of Nature ; and it is 
 speedily swallowed up by a convidlion, that Nature 
 being so rich, and inciting them to find it out, find it 
 out they will. But, meanwhile, we look upon the 
 careful faces we meet, — upon the human phenomenon 
 and his perplexities ; and, as long as our sorrow lasts, 
 an indescribable emotion seizes us, of pity and respedl. 
 
 We feel a tenderness for every man when we con- 
 sider that he has been an infant, and a respe(5l for him 
 when we see that he has had cares. And, if such be 
 the natural feelings of reflection towards individual 
 faces, how much more so towards a multitude of them, 
 — towards an assemblage, — a serious and anxious 
 crowd ? 
 
 * Respectable; respectaiiUs (Latin), worth again looking at.
 
 A HUMAN BEING AND A CROWD. 329 
 
 We believe, that, without any reference to poHtics 
 whatsoever, no man of refledlion or sensibiHty looked 
 upon the great and moving mass and succession of 
 human beings, which assembled a little while ago in 
 London, witliout being consciously or unconsciously 
 moved with emotions of this kind. How could they 
 help it? A crowd is but the reduplication of our- 
 selves, — of our own faces, fears, hopes, wants, and 
 relations, — our own connedlions of wives and chil- 
 dren, — our own strengths, weaknesses, formidable 
 power, pitiable tears. We may differ with it, we may 
 be angry with it, fear it, think we scorn it ; but we 
 must scorn ourselves first, or have no feeling and 
 imagination. All the hearts beating in those bosoms 
 are palpitations of our own. We feel them somehow 
 or other, and glow, or turn pale. We cannot behold 
 ourselves in that shape of power or mighty want, and 
 not feel that we are men. 
 
 We have only to fancy ourselves born in any par- 
 ticular class, and to have lived, loved, and suffered in 
 it, in order to feel for the mistakes and circumstances 
 of those who belong to it, even when they appear to 
 sympathize least with ourselves : for that also is a 
 part of what is to be pitied in them. The less they 
 feel for us, the less is the taste of their own pleasures, 
 and the less their security against a fall. Who that 
 has any fancy of this kind can help feeling for all 
 those aristocrats^ especially the young and innocent 
 among them, that were brought to the scaffold during 
 the French Revolution? — who for all those democrats^ 
 not excepting the fiercest that were brought there 
 also ; some of whom surprised the bystanders with 
 VOL. I. 28
 
 330 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 the tenderness of their domestic recollc6tions, and the 
 faltering ejaculations they made towards the wives and 
 children they left behind them? Who does not feel 
 for the mistaken popish conspirators, the appalling 
 story of whose execution is told in one of Disraeli's 
 books, with that godlike woman in it, who is never to 
 be passed over when it is mentioned ? Who does not 
 feel for the massacres of St. Bartholomew, of Ireland, 
 of Sicily, of any place ; and the more because they are 
 perpetrated by men upon their fellow-creatures, the 
 victims and victim-makers of pitiable mistake? The 
 world are finding out that mistake ; and not again in a 
 hurry, we trust, will any thing like it be repeated 
 among civilized people. All are learning to make 
 allowance for one another ; but we must not forget, 
 among our lessons, tliat the greatest allowances are to 
 be made for those who suffer the most. Also, the 
 greatest number of refle(5tions should be made for 
 them. 
 
 Blessings on the progress of refledlion and knowl- 
 edge, which made that great meeting we speak of as 
 quiet as it was ! We have received many letters from 
 friends and con^espondents on the setting-up of this 
 paper, for which we have reason to be grateful ; but 
 not one which has pleased us so much (nor, we are 
 sure, with greater leave from the rest to be so pleased) 
 than a communication from our old "Tatler" friend, 
 S. W. H., in which he tells us that he saw a copy of it 
 in the hands of "one of the sturdiest" of the trades' 
 unions, who was "reading it as he marched along;" 
 and who (adds our correspondent) " could hardly be 
 thinking of burning down half London, even if the
 
 A HUMAN BEING AND A CROWD. 33I 
 
 government did continue bent upon not receiving his 
 petition." 
 
 May we ever be found in such hands on such 
 occasions ! It will do harm to nobody in the long- 
 run ; will prevent no final good ; and assuredly 
 encourage no injustice, final or intermediate. " To 
 sympathize with all" is an old motto on our flag. 
 None, therefore, can be omitted in our sympathy ; and 
 assuredly not those who compose the greatest part of 
 all. If we did not feel for them as we do, we should 
 not feel for their likenesses in more prosperous 
 shapes. 
 
 We had thought of saying something upon crowds 
 under other circumstances, such as crowds at theatres 
 and in churches, crowds at executions, crowds on 
 holidays, &c. ; but the interest of the immediate 
 ground of our reflecSlions has absorbed us. We will 
 close this article, however, with one of the most appall- 
 ing descriptions of a crowd under circumstances of 
 exasperation, that our memory refers us to. On 
 sending for the book that contains it to the circulating 
 library (for though too, like the truth, it is a work of 
 fi6tion), we find that it is not quite so well written, or 
 simple in its intensity, as our recollecflion had fancied 
 it. Nothing had remained in our memory but the 
 roar of the multitude, the violence of a moment, and 
 a shapeless remnant of a body. But the passage is 
 still very striking. Next to the gratification of find- 
 ing ourselves read by the many, is the discovery that 
 our paper finds its way into certain accomplished and 
 truly gentlemanly hands, very fit to grapple, in the 
 best and most kindly manner, with those many ; and
 
 332 THE SEER. 
 
 to these, an extradl, at this time of day, from Monk 
 Lewis's novel, will have a private as well as public 
 interest. 
 
 The author is speaking of an abbess who has been 
 guilty of the destru6lion of a nun, under circumstances 
 of great cruelty. An infuriated multitude destroy her, 
 under circumstances of great cruelty on their own 
 parts ; and a lesson, we conceive, is here read, both to 
 those who exasperate crowds of people, and to the 
 crowds that, almost before they are aware of it^ 
 reduce a fellow-creature to a mass of unsightliness. 
 For though vengeance was here intended, and per- 
 haps death (which is what we had not exadlly 
 supposed, from our recolle6lion of the passage), yet it 
 is not certain that the writer wished us to understand 
 as much, however violent the mob may have become 
 by dint of finding they had gone so far ; and what we 
 wish to intimate is, that a human being may be 
 seized by his angry fellow-creatures, and by dint of 
 being pulled hither and thither, and struck at, even 
 with no dirfedl mortal intentions on their parts, be 
 reduced in the course of a few frightful moments to a 
 condition, which, in the present refledling state of the 
 community, would equally fill with remorse the 
 parties that regarded it, on either side^ — the one 
 from not taking care to avoid giving oflience, and the 
 other from not considering how far their resentment 
 of it might lead ; a mistake from which, thank Heaven, 
 the good sense and precautions of both parties saved 
 them on the occasion we allude to. 
 
 " St. Ursula's narrative," says Mr. Lewis, speaking 
 of a nun who had taken part against the abbess, and
 
 A HUMAN BEING AND A CROWD. 333 
 
 who was relating her cruelty to the people, " created 
 hoiTor and surprise throughout ; but, when she re- 
 lated the inhuman murder of Agnes, the indignation 
 of the mob was so audibly testified, that it was scarcely 
 possible to hear the conclusion. This confusion in- 
 creased with every moment. At length a multitude 
 of voices exclaimed, that the prioress should be given 
 up to their fury. To this Don Ramirez positively 
 refused to consent. Even Lorenzo bade the people 
 remember that she had undergone no trial, and 
 advised them to leave her punishment to the Inqui- 
 sition. All representations were fruitless : the dis- 
 turbance grew still more violent, and the populace 
 more exasperated. In vain did Ramirez attempt to 
 convey his prisoner out of the throng. Wherever he 
 turned, a band of rioters barred his passage, and 
 demanded her being delivered over to them more 
 loudly tlian before. Ramirez ordered his attendants to 
 cut their way through the multitude. Oppressed by 
 numbers, it was impossible for them to draw their 
 swords. He threatened the mob with the vengeance 
 of tlie Inquisition ; but, in this moment of popular 
 frenzy, even this dreadful name had lost its efiedl. 
 Though regret for his sister made him look upon the 
 prioress with abhorrence, Lorenzo could not help 
 pit^'ing a woman in a situation so terrible ; but in 
 spite of all his exertions and those of the duke, of Don 
 Ramirez and the archers, the people continued to 
 press onwards. They forced a passage through the 
 guards who protected their destined vi6lim, dragged 
 her from her shelter, and proceeded to take upon her 
 a most summary and cruel vengeance. Wild with
 
 334 
 
 THE SEER. 
 
 ten'or, and scarcely knowing what she said, the 
 wretched woman shrieked for a moment's mercy : she 
 protested tliat she was ignorant of the death of Agnes, 
 and could clear herself from suspicion beyond the 
 power of doubt. The rioters heeded nothing but the 
 gratification of tlieir barbarous vengeance. They 
 refused to listen to her : they showed her every sort 
 of insult, loaded her with mud and filth, and called 
 her by the most opprobrious appellations. They tore 
 her one from another ; and each new tormentor was 
 more savage than the former. They stifled, with 
 howls and execrations, her shriJl cries for mercy ; and 
 dragged her through the streets, spurning her, tram- 
 pling her, and treating her with every species of 
 cruelty which hate or vindictive fury could invent. At 
 length, a flint, aimed by some well-direded hand, 
 struck her full upon the temple. She sank upon the 
 ground, bathed in blood ; and, in a few minutes, ter- 
 minated her miserable existence. Yet, though she no 
 longer felt their insults, the rioters still exercised their 
 impotent rage upon the lifeless body. They beat it, 
 trod upon it, and ill-used it, till it became no more 
 than a mass of flesh, unsightly, shapeless, and dis- 
 "giisting." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 Boston : Priuted by John Wilson and Son,
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
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