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Maria was already gone: her body was found as cold as if she had been dead for some hours. The flower had been snapped in the storm, before the scythe of violence could come near it.

ESSAY II.

The History of Times representeth the magnitude of actions
and the public faces or deportment of persons, and passeth
over in silence the smaller passages and motions of men
and matters. But such being the workmanship of God,
that he doth hang the greatest weight upon the smallest
wires, maxima e minimis suspendens: it comes therefore to
pass, that Histories do rather set forth the pomp of business
than the true and inward resorts thereof. But Lives, if
they be well written, propounding to themselves a person
to represent in whom actions both greater and smaller, pub-
lic and private, have a commixture, must of necessity con-
tain a more true, native, and lively representation.
LORD BACON.

MANKIND in general are so little in the habit of looking steadily at their own meaning, or of weighing the words by which they express it, that the writer, who is careful to do both, will sometimes mislead his readers through the very excellence which qualifies him to be their instructor: and this with no other fault on his part, than the modest mistake of supposing in those, to whom he addresses himself, an intellect as watchful as his own. The inattentive Reader adopts as unconditionally true, or perhaps rails at his Author for having stated as such, what upon examination would be found to have been duly limited, and would so have been understood, if opaque spots and false refractions were as rare in the mental as in the bodily eye. The motto, for instance, to this Paper has more than once served as an excuse and authority for huge volumes of biographical minutiæ, which renders the real character almost invisible, like clouds of dust on a portrait, or the counterfeit frankincense which smoke-blacks the favorite idol of a Catholic village. Yet Lord Bacon, by the words which I have marked in italics, evidently confines the Biographer to such facts as are either susceptible of some useful general inference, or tend to illustrate those qualities which distinguish the subject of them from ordinary men; while the passage in general was meant to guard the Historian against considering, as trifles, all that might appear so to those who recognize no greatness in the mind, and can conceive no dignity in any incident, which does not act on their senses by its external accompaniments. Things apparently insignificant are recommended to our notice, not for their own sakes, but for their bearings or influences on things of importance; in other words, when they are insignificant in appearance only.

An inquisitiveness into the minutest circumstances and casual sayings of eminent contemporaries, is indeed quite natural; but so are all our follies, and the more natural they are, the more caution should we exert in guarding against them. To scribble trifles even on the perishable glass of an inn window, is the

mark of an idler; but to engrave them on the mar ble monument, sacred to the memory of the departed Great, is something worse than idleness. The spirit of genuine Biography is in nothing more conspicuona, than in the firmness with which it withstands the cravings of worthless curiosity, as distinguished from the thirst after useful knowledge. For, in the firs place, such anecdotes as derive their whole and sole interest from the great name of the person concer ing whom they are related, and neither illustrate ha general character nor his particular actions, wond scarcely have been noticed or remembered except by men of weak minds; it is not unlikely therefore, that they were misapprehended at the time, and it is most probable that they have been related as incorrectly as they were noticed injudiciously. Nor are the cosequences of such garrulous Biography merely neg tive. For as insignificant stories can derive no real respectability from the eminence of the person who happens to be the subject of them, but rather an additional deformity of disproportion, they are apt to have their insipidity seasoned by the same bad per sions that accompany the habit of gossiping in gene ral; and the misapprehension of weak men meeing with the misinterpretations of malignant men, have not seldom formed the ground of the most grieva calumnies. In the second place, these trifles are b versive of the great end of Biography, which is to f the attention, and to interest the feelings, of men those qualities and actions which have made a part cular life worthy of being recorded. It is, no doubt the duty of an honest Biographer, to portray the pr minent imperfections as well as excellencies of bi Hero; but I am at a loss to conceive how this can be deemed an excuse for heaping together a multitude of particulars, which can prove nothing of any that might not have been safely taken for granted of all men. In the present age (emphatically the age of personality!) there are more than ordinary motives for withholding all encouragement from this mana of busying ourselves with the names of others, which is still more alarming as a symptom, than it is trochie some as a disease. The Reader must be still less ac quainted with contemporary literature than myselfa case not likely to occur if he needs me to infun him, that there are men, who trading in the silliest anecdotes, in unprovoked abuse and senseless cult gy, think themselves nevertheless employed both worthily and honorably, if only all this be done is good set terms," and from the press, and of public che racters: a class which has increased so rapidly of late, that it becomes difficult to discover what cha racters are to be considered as private. Alas! if these wretched misusers of language, and the mess of giving wings to thought, the means of multiplying the presence of an individual mind, had ever known how great a thing the possession of any one simple truth is, and how mean a thing a mere fact is, excep as seen in the light of some comprehensive truth: they had but once experienced the unborrowed com placency, the inward independence, the home-bred strength, with which every clear conception of the reason is accompanied: they would shrink from the

own pages as at the remembrance of a crime. For a crime it is, (and the man who hesitates in pronouncng it such, must be ignorant of what mankind owe o books, what he himself owes to them in spite of is ignorance) thus to introduce the spirit of vulgar candal and personal inquietude into the Closet and the Library, environing with evil passions the very Sanctuaries, to which we should flee for refuge from them! For to what do these Publications appeal, whether they present themselves as Biography or as anonymous Criticism, but to the same feelings which the scandal-bearers and time-killers of ordinary life seek to gratify in themselves and their listeners? And both the authors and admirers of such publications, in what respect are they less truants and deserters from their own hearts, and from their appointed task of understanding and amending them, than the most garrulous female Chronicler, of the goings-on of yesterday in the families of her neighbors and

townsfolk?

EXTRACT FROM NORTH'S EXAMEN.

THE Lord Chief Justice Saunders succeeded in the room of Pemberton. His character, and his beginning were equally strange. He was at first no better than a poor boy, if not a parish-foundling, without knowing parents or relations. He had found a way to live by obsequiousness in Clement's Inn, as I remember, and courting the attorneys' clerks for scraps. The extraordinary observance and diligence of the boy, made the society willing to do him good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write, and one of the attorneys got a board knocked up at a window on the top of a stair-case; and that was his desk, where he sat and wrote after copies of court, and other hands the clerks gave him. He made himself so expert a writer that he took in business, and earned some pence by hackney-writing. And thus by degrees he pushed his faculties and fell to forms, and by books that were lent him, became an exquisite entertaining clerk; and by the same course of improvement of himself, an able counsel, first in special pleading, then at large: after he was called to the Bar, had practice in the King's Bench Court equal with any there. As to his person he was very corpulent and beastly, a mere lump of morbid flesh. He used to say, by his troggs, (such an humorous way of talking he affected) none could say he wanted issue of his body, for he had nine in his back. He was a fetid mass, that

THE FRIEND has reprinted the following Biographical sketch, partly indeed in the hope that it may be the means of introducing to the Reader's knowledge, in case he should not have formed an acquaintance with them already, two of the most interesting biographical Works in our language, both for the weight of the matter, and the incuriosa felicitas of the style. I refer to Roger North's Examen, and the Life of his brother, the Lord Chancellor North. The pages are all alive with the genuine idioms of our mother-offended his neighbors at the bar in the sharpest detongue.

A fastidious taste, it is true, will find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang, which not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of Charles the Second, seem to have affect ed as a mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are but a trifling drawback. They are not sought for, as is too often and too plainly done by L'Estrange, Collyer, Tom Brown, and their imitators. North never goes out of his way either to seek them or to avoid them; and in the main his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, healthy conversational English.

This is THE FRIEND's first reason for the insertion of this Extract. His other and principal motive may be found in the kindly, good-tempered spirit of the passage. But instead of troubling the Reader with the painful contrast which so many recollections force on my own feelings, I will refer the character-makers of the present day to the Letters of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More to Martin Dorpius, that are commonly annexed to the Encomium Moris; and then for a practical comment on the just and affecting sentiments of these two great men, to the works of Roger North, as proofs how alone an English scholar and gentleman will permit himself to delineate his contemporaries even under the strongest prejudices of party spirit, and though employed on the coarsest subjects. A coarser subject than L. C. J. Saunders cannot well be imagined; nor does North use his colors with a sparing or very delicate hand. And yet the final impression is that of kindness.

gree. Those whose ill-fortune it was to stand near him, were confessors, and in the summer time, almost martyrs. This hateful decay of his carcase came upon him by continual sottishness; for to say nothing of brandy, he was seldom without a pot of ale at his nose, or near him. That exercise was all that he used; the rest of his life was sitting at his desk or piping at home; and that home was a tailor's house, in Butcher Row, called his lodging, and the man's wife was his nurse or worse; but by virtue of his money, of which he had made little account, though he got a great deal, he soon became master of the family; and being no changeling he never removed, but was true to his friends, and they to him to the last hour of his life. So much for his person and education. As for his parts, none had them more lively than he; wit and repartee in an affected rusticity were natural to him. He was ever ready and never at a loss; and none came so near as he to be a match for sergeant Mainerd. His great dexterity was in the art of special pleading, and he would lay snares that often caught his superiors who were not aware of his traps. And he was so fond of success for his clients, that rather than fail, he would set the court with a trick; for which he met, sometimes, with a reprimand which he would ward off, so that no one was much offended with him. But Hales could not bear his irregularity of life; and for that, and suspicion of his tricks, used to bear hard upon him in the court. But no ill-usage from the bench was too hard for his hold of business, being such as scarce any could do but himself. With all this he had a goodness of nature and disposition in

so great a degree, that he may be deservedly styled a Philanthrope. He was a very Silenus to the boys, as in this place I may term the students of the law, to make them merry whenever they had a mind to it. He had nothing of rigid or austere in him. If any near him at the bar grumbled at his stench, he ever converted the complaint into content and laughing with the abundance of his wit. As to his ordinary dealing, he was as honest as the driven snow was white; and why not, having no regard for money, or desire to be rich? And for good-nature and condescension there was not his fellow. I have seen him for hours and half-hours together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, with an audience of Students over against him, putting of cases, and debating so as suited their capacities, and encouraged their industry. And so in the Temple, he seldom moved without a parcel of youths hanging about him, and he merry and jesting with them.

It will be readily conceived that this man was never cut out to be a Presbyter, or any thing that is

ESSAY III.

Proinde si videbitur, fingant isti me latrunculis interim animi
causa lusisse, aut si malint, equitasse in arundine winga.
Nam quæ tandem est iniquitas, cum omni vite instal
suos lussus concedamus, studiis nullum omcino lusum per
mittere: maxime si ita tractentur ludicra, ut ex he s
quando plus frugis referat lector non omnino mars ebesa !
quam ex quorundum tetricis ac splendidis argumentis
ERASMI, Pref. ad Mer. Enz

Translation.-They may pretend, if they like, that I amuse
myself with playing Fox and Goose, or, if they prefer t
equitasse in arundine longa, that I ride the cock-borse o
my grandam's crutch. But wherein, I pray, consists the
unfairness or impropriety, when every trade and profession
is allowed its own spot and travesty, in extending the sume
permission to literature: especially if trifles are so handied,
that a reader of tolerable quickness may occasiona y de-
rive more food for profitable reflection than from many a
work of grand or gloomy argument?

IRUS, the forlorn Irus, whose nourishment con

severe and crabbed. In no time did he lean to fac-sisted in bread and water, whose clothing of one taltion, but did his business without offence to any. He put off officious talk of government or politics with jests, and so made his wit a catholicon or shield to cover all his weak places or infirmities. When the court fell into a steady course of using the law against all kinds of offenders, this man was taken into the king's business; and had the part of drawing, and perusal of almost all indictments and informations that were then to be prosecuted, with the pleadings thereon, if any were special; and he had the settling of the large pleadings in the quo Warranto against London. His Lordship had no sort of conversation ⚫ with him but in the way of business and at the bar; but once, after he was in the king's business, he dined with his Lordship, and no more. And there he showed another qualification he had acquired, and that was to play jigs upon an harpsichord; having taught himself with the opportunity of an old virginal of his landlady's; but in such a manner, not for defect, but figure, as to see him were a jest. The king observing him to be of a free disposition, loyal, friendly, and without greediness or guile, thought of him to be Chief Justice to the King's Bench at that nice time. And the ministry could not but approve of it. So great a weight was then at stake, as could not be trusted to men of doubtful principles, or such as anything might tempt to desert them. While he sat in the Court of King's Bench, he gave the rule to the general satisfaction of the lawyers. But his course of life was so different from what it had been, his business incessant and withal crabbed; and his diet and exercise changed, that the constitution of his body, or head rather, could not sustain it, and he fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which numbed his parts; and he never recovered the strength of them. He outlived the judgment in the quo Warranto; but was not present otherwise than by sending his opinion by one of the judges, to be for the king, who at the pronouncing of judgment, declared it to the court accordingly, which is frequently done in like cases.

tered mantle, and whose bed of an arm-full of straw. this same Irus, by a rapid transition of fortune, be came the most prosperous mortal under the sun. It pleased the Gods to snatch him at once out of the dust, and to place him by the side of princes. "He beheld himself in the possession of incalculable treesures. His palace excelled even the temple of the gods in the pomp of its ornaments; his least sumpteous clothing was of purple and gold, and his table might well have been named the compendium of luxury, the summary of all that the voluptuous inge nuity of men had invented for the gratification of the palate. A numerous train of admiring dependant followed him at every step: those to whom be vouchsafed a gracious look, were esteemed already in the high road of fortune, and the favored individ ual who was permitted to kiss his hand, appeared 10 be the object of common envy. The name of Irus sounding in his ears an unwelcome memento and perpetual reproach of his former poverty, he for this reason named himself Ceraunius, or the Lightningflasher, and the whole people celebrated this splencia change of title by public rejoicings. The poet, who a few years ago had personified poverty itself under his former name of Irus, now made a discovery which had till that moment remained a profound secret, but was now received by all with implicit faith and warmest approbation. Jupiter, forsooth, had become enamored of the mother of Ceraunius, and assumed the form of a mortal in order to enjoy her love. Henceforward they erected altars to him, they swore by his name, and the priests discovered in the entrails of the sacrificial victim, that THE GREAT CERAUNIS this worthy son of Jupiter, was the sole pillar of the western world. Toxaris, his former neighbor, a man whom good fortune, unwearied industry, and rational frugality, had placed among the richest of zens, became the first victim of the pride of this new demi-god. In the time of his poverty, Irus had repined at his luck and prosperity, and irritable from

getting up in the morning before day-light, &c. Then on the evening before Christmas day one of the parlors is lighted up by the children, into which the pa rents must not go. A great yew bough is fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a mul titude of little tapers are fastened in the bough, but so as not to catch it till they are nearly burnt out, and coloured paper, &c. hangs and flutters from the twigs Under this bough the children lay out in great order the presents they mean for their parents, still conceal

distress and envy, had conceived that Toxaris had looked contemptuously on him; and now was the time that Ceraunius would make him feel the power of him whose father grasped the thunder-bolt. Three advocates, newly admitted into the recently established order of the Cygnet gave evidence that Toxaaris had denied the gods, committed peculations on the sacred Treasury, and increased his treasure by acts of sacrilege. He was hurried off to prison and sentenced to an ignominious death, and his wealth confiscated to the use of Ceraunius, the earthly re-ing in their pockets what they intend for each other presentative of the deities. Ceraunius now found nothing wanting to his felicity but a bride worthy of his rank and blooming honors. The most illustrious of the land were candidates for his alliance. Euphorbia, the daughter of the noble Austrius, was honored with his final choice. To nobility of birth nature had added for Euphorbia a rich dowry of beauty, a nobleness both of look and stature. The flowing ringlets of her hair, her lofty forehead, her brilliant eyes, her stately figure, her majestic gait, had enchanted the haughty Ceraunius: and all the bards told what the inspiring muses had revealed to them, that Venus more than once had pined with jealousy at the sight of her superior charms. The day of espousal arrived, and the illustrious son of Jove was proceeding in pomp to the temple, when the anguish-stricken wife of Toxaris, with his innocent children, suddenly threw themselves at his feet, and with loud lamentations entreated him to spare the life of her husband. Enraged by this interruption, Ceraunius spurned her from him with his feet and-Irus awakened, and found himself lying on the same straw on which he had lain down, and with his old tattered mantle spread over him. With his returning reason, conscience too returned. He praised the gods and resigned himself to his lot. Ceraunius indeed had vanished, but the innocent roxaris was still alive, and Irus poor yet guiltless.

Can my reader recollect no character now on earth, who sometime or other will awake from his dream of empire, poor as Irus, with all the guilt and impiety of Ceraunius?

P. S. The reader will bear in mind, that this fable was written and first published at the close of 1809. έχθεν δὲ τε νήπιος ἔγνω.

CHRISTMAS WITHIN DOORS, IN THE
NORTH OF GERMANY.
EXTRACTED FROM SATYRANE'S LETTERS.
Ratzeburg.

There is a Christmas custom here which pleased and interested me.-The children make little presents to their parents, and to each other; and the parents to their children. For three or four months before Christmas the girls are all busy, and the boys ave up their pocket-money, to make or purchase taese presents. What the present is to be is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it-such as working when they are out on visits and the others are not with them;

Then the parents are introduced-and each presents his little gift-and then bring out the rest one by one from their pockets, and present them with kisses and embraces.-Where I witnessed this scene, there were eight or nine children, and the eldest daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped all his children so tight to his breast-it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within him,—I was very much affected.-The shadow of the bough and its appendages on the wall, and arching over on the ceiling, made a pretty picture-and then the raptures of the very little ones, when at last the twigs and their needles began to take fire and snap-O it was a delight for them!-On the next day, in the great parlor, the parents lay out on the table the presents for the children; a scene of more sober joy succeeds, as on this day, after an old custom, the mother says privately to each of her daughters, and the father to his sons, that which he has observed most praise-worthy and that which was most faulty in their conduct.-Formerly, and still in the smaller towns and villages throughout North Germany, these presents were sent by all the parents to some one fellow who in high buskins, a white robe, a mask, and an enormous flax wig, personates Knecht Rupert, i. e. the servant Rupert. On Christmas night he goes round to every house and says, that Jesus Christ his master sent him thither-the parents and elder children receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones are most terribly frightened-He then inquires for the children, and according to the character which he hears from the parent, he gives them the intended present-as if they came out of heaven from Jesus Christ.-Or, if they should have been bad children, he gives the parents a rod, and in the name of his master recommends them to use it frequently.-About seven or eight years old the children are let into the secret, and it is curious how faithfully they keep it!

CHRISTMAS OUT OF DOORS.

The whole Lake of Ratzeburg is one mass of thick transparent ice-a spotless mirror of nine miles in extent! The lowness of the hills, which rise from the shore of the lake, preclude the awful sublimity of Alpine scenery, yet compensate for the want of it by beauties, of which this very lowness is a necessary condition. Yester-morning I saw the lesser lake completely hid by mist; but the moment the sun peeped over the hill, the mist broke in the middle, and in a

few seconds stood divided, leaving a broad road all across the lake; and between these two walls of mist the sunlight burnt upon the ice, forming a road of golden fire, intolerably bright! and the mist-walls themselves partook of the blaze in a multitude of shining colors. This is our second frost. About a month ago, before the thaw came on, there was a storm of wind; during the whole night, such were the thunders and howlings of the breaking ice, that they have left a conviction on my mind, that there are sounds more sublime than any sight can be, more absolutely suspending the power of comparison, and more utterly absorbing the mind's self-consciousness in its total attention to the object working upon it. Part of the ice which the vehemence of the wind had shattered, was driven shore-ward and froze anew. On the evening of the next day, at sun-set, the shattered ice thus frozen, appeared of a deep blue and in shape like an agitated sea; beyond this, the water, that ran up between the great islands of ice which had preserved their masses entire and smooth, shone of a yellow green: but all these scattered ice-islands, themselves, were of an intensely bright blood colorthey seemed blood and light in union! On some of the largest of these islands, the fishermen stood pulling out their immense nets through the holes made in the ice for this purpose, and the men, their net-poles, and their huge nets, were a part of the glory; say rather, it appeared as if the rich crimson light had shaped itself into these forms, figures, and attitudes, to make a glorious vision in mockery of earthly things.

The lower lake is now all alive with skaters, and with ladies driven onward by them in their ice cars. Mercury, surely, was the first maker of skates, and the wings at his feet are symbols of the invention. In skating there are three pleasing circumstances: the infinitely subtle particles of ice which the skate cuts up, and which creep and run before the skate like a low mist, and in sun-rise or sun-set become colored; second, the shadow of the skater in the water, seen through the transparent ice; and third, the melancholy undulating sound from the skate, not without variety; and when very many are skating together, the sounds and the noises give an impulse to the icy trees, and the woods all round the lake tinkle.

Here I stop, having in truth transcribed the preceding in great measure, in order to present the lovers of poetry with a descriptive passage, extracted, with the author's permission, from an unpublished Poem on the Growth and Revolutions of an Individual Mind, by WORDSWORTH.

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By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human Soul,
Nor with the mean and vulgar works of man
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With Life and Nature: purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.

Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days
When vapors rolling down the valleys made
A lonely scene more lonesome; among wooda
At noon, and 'mid the calm of summer nights,
When by the margin of the trembling lake,
Beneath the gloomy hills I homeward went
In solitude, such intercourse was mine;
'Twas mine among the fields both day and night
And by the waters all the summer long.

And in the frosty season when the sun
Was set, and, visible for many a mile
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not the summons:-happy time
It was indeed for all of us, to me

It was a time of rapture! clear and loud
The village clock toll'd six! I wheel'd about,
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse
That cared not for its home.-All shod with steel
We hiss'd along the polish'd ice, in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase

And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle: with the din
Meanwhile the precipices rang aloud,
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron, while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound

Of melancholy-not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng
To cut across the image of a star
That gleam'd upon the ice: and oftentimes
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I reclining back upon my heels
Stopp'd short: yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheel'd by me even as if the earth had roll'd

With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watch'd
Till all was tranquil as a summer sea.

ESSAY IV.

Es ist fast traurig zu sehen, wie man von der Hebraischen Quellen so ganz sich abgewendet hat. In Ægyptens selbst dunkeln unentrathselbaren Hieroglyphen hat man den Schlus sel alter Weisheit suchen wollen; jetzt ist von nichts al Indiens Sprache und Weisheit die Rede; aber die Rabbi ische Schriften liegen unerforscht. SCHELLING. Translation. It is mournful to observe, how entirely we have turned our backs upon the Hebrew sources. In the obscure insolvable riddies of the Egyptian Hieroglyphic the Learned have been hoping to find the key of ancient doctrine, and now we hear nothing but the language and wisdom of India, while the writings and traditions of the Rabbins are consigned to neglect without examination.

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