II. Delights like these, to the poor unknown, And think that a guinea, To hear Paganini Or warbling Rubini, Is well bestow'd; Since then, only then, they the pleasures share III. But the peasant at home, in gratuitous boon, Whenever frequented, With flowers it is scented, Its scenes all invented And painted by Him, Who suspended its blazing lamps on high, IV. Oh! what can compare with the concert sublime, On the spray as it swingeth, A torrent of song,— Till the transports of music, devotion, and love, MUSICIANS-Machines for producing sounds; human instruments, generally so completely absorbed by their own art, that they are either ignorant of all others, or undervalue them. In a company at Vienna, where the conversation was nearly engrossed by the praises of Göethe, Catalani exclaimed, with great naïveté, "Who is this Göethe?-I have never heard any of his music!" A poor German composer being introduced to Mozart, whom he considered the greatest man in the world, was so overcome with awe, that he dared not lift his eyes from the ground, but remained, for some time, stammering—“ Ah, Imperial Majesty! Ah, Imperial Majesty !" In the same spirit Cafarielli, when told that Farinelli had been made a sort of Prime Minister in Spain, replied— "No man deserves it better, for his voice is absolutely unrivalled." MYSTERY.-To him who has been sated and disappointed by the actual and the intelligible, there is a profound charm in the unattainable and the inscrutable. Infants stretch out their hands for the moon; children delight in puzzles and riddles, even when they cannot discover their solution; and the children of a larger growth desire no better employment than to follow their example, however it may lead them astray. The mystery of the Egyptian hieroglyphics was a frequent source of idolatry; the type being taken for the prototype, until leeks and onions received the homage originally meant for their divine Giver. The attractive mystery of Irving's unknown tongues has engendered a fanaticism, at which we need the less wonder, if we remember the confession of the pious Baxter, that, in order to awaken an interest in his congregation, he made it a rule, in every sermon, to say something that was above their capacity. There is a glorious epoch of our existence, wherein the comprehensible appears common and insipid, and in abandoning ourselves to the enthusiasm of imagination, we attain a middle state between despair and deification; a beatific ecstacy, when the spirit longs to fly upward-when the finite yearns for the infinite, the limited in intellect for the omniscient, the helpless for the omnipotent, the real for the impossible. Thus to flutter above the world, on the extended wings of fancy, is to be half a deity. And yet the forwardspringing and ardent mind, which, running a-head of its contemporaries, stands upon the forehead of the age to come, only renders itself the more conspicuous mark for obloquy and assault. Like a Shrovetide cock, tethered to the earth, it can but partially raise itself, when it again sinks down, amid the sticks and stones of its cruel persecutors. NAMES.-The character of different æras may, to a certain extent, be discovered by the various ways in which our ambitious nobility, and others, have endea voured to achieve an enduring celebrity. When chivalry was the rage, they gave their names to new inventions in arms and armour :-now-a-days, they court notoriety by standing godfathers to some new fashion in clothes and cookery, and eclipsing all competitors in their coats, cabs, and castors. A ducal Campbell, whose ancestors were always spilling hot blood, endeavours to win celebrity in another way, by inventing an Argyle for preserving hot gravy;—a Sandwich embalms his name between two slices of bread and ham;-a Pembroke immortalises himself in a table;-a Skelmersdale goes down to future ages, like an Egyptian divinity, in a chair;-a Standish, surpassing the bottle conjuror, creeps into an inkstand, by which means "he still keeps his memory BLACK in our souls ;"-a Stanhope expects to be wheeled down to posterity, by harnessing his name to a gig of a peculiar construction;-a Petersham, hitting upon the easiest device by which he could prove to after ages that he wore a head, gives his title to a hat. Another nobleman, clarum et venerabile nomen, one who was said to have driven all the tailors into the suburbs, by compelling them to live on the skirts of the town, wraps up his name in the mummy-cloth of a Spencer, and secures a long-enduring fame by inventing a short coat. It is not generally known, that names may be affected, and even completely changed, by the state of case. the weather. Such, however, is, unquestionably, the The late Mr. Suet, the actor, going once to dine about twenty miles from London, and being only able to get an outside place on the coach, arrived in such a bedraggled state, from an incessant rain, and so muffled up in great coats and pocket-handkerchiefs, that his friend inquired, doubtingly-" Are you Suet ?" "No!" replied the wag-" I'm dripping!" Contracting a name sometimes lengthens the idea. Kean mentions an actor of the name of Lancaster, whom his comrades usually called Lanky, for shortness. NEGRO-A human being treated as a brute, because he is black, by inhuman beings, and greater brutes, who happen to be white. The Ethiopians paint the devil white; and they have much better reason for making him look like an European, than we have for giving him an African complexion. NOBLEMAN-One who is indebted to his ancestors for a name and an estate, and sometimes to himself, for being unworthy of both. It was said of an accomplished and amiable Earl, who was weak enough to be always boasting his title and his birth— "What a pity he is a nobleman; he really deserves to have been born a commoner.' NON-RESIDENCE and PLURALITIES |