poetry and right feeling. None but a man of genius could have struck off such stanzas upon such a theme. But when you wrote upon humanity at home, the useful reflection might have occurred that patriotism has no business abroad. Whatever cause there may be to wish for amendment in the government and institutions of other countries, keep aloof from all revolutionary schemes for amending them, lest you should experience a far more painful disappointment in their success than in their failure. No spirit of prophecy is required for telling you that this must be the result. Lay not up that cause of remorse for yourself, and time will ripen in you what is crude, confirm what is right, and gently rectify all that is erroneous: it will abate your political hopes, and enlarge your religious faith, and stablish both upon a sure foundation. My good wishes and sincere respects to you, Mr. Bowring!

INTERCHAPTER II.

ABALLIBOOZOBANGANORRIBO.

Io'l dico dunque e dicol che ognun m'ode.

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

WHETHER the secret of the freemasons be comprised in the mystic word above is more than I think proper to reveal at present. But I have broken no vow in uttering it.

And I am the better for having uttered it.

Mohammed begins some of the chapters of the Koran with certain letters of unknown signification; and the commentators say that the meaning of these initials ought not to be inquired. So Gelaleddin says; so sayeth Taleb. And they say truly. Some begin with A. L. M.; some with K. H. I. A. S.; some with T. H.; T. S. M.; T. S. or I. S.; others with K. M.; H. M. A. S. K.; N. M.; a single Kaf, a single Nun, or a single Sad-and sad work would it be either for Kaffer or Mussulman to search for meaning where none is. Gelaleddin piously remarks that there is only One who knoweth the import of these letters: I reverence the name which he uses too much to employ it upon this occasion. Mohammed himself tells us that they are the signs of the book which teacheth the true doctrine; the book of the wise; the book of evidence; the book of instruction. When he speaketh thus of the Koran, he lieth, like an impostor as he is: but what he has said falsely of that false book may be applied truly to this. It is the book of instruction inasmuch as every individual reader, among the thousands and tens of

thousands who peruse it, will find something in it which he did not know before. It is the book of evidence, because of its internal truth. It is the book of the wise, because the wiser a man is the more he will delight therein; yea, the delight which he shall take in it will be the measure of his intellectual capacity. And that it teacheth the true doctrine is plain from this circumstance; that I defy the British Critic, the Antijacobin, the Quarterly and the Eclectic Reviews— ay, and the Evangelical, the Methodist, the Baptist, and the Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, with the Christian Observer to boot, to detect any one heresy in it. Therefore, I say again—

Aballiboozobanganorribo;

and, like Mohammed, I say that it is the sign of the bookand therefore it is that I have said it:

Nondimen ne' la lingua degli Hebrei
Nè la Latina, ne la Greca antica,

Ne' quella forse ancor degli Aramei.*

Happen it may-for things no less strange have happened; and what has been may be again-for may be and has been are only tenses of the same verb, and that verb is eternally being declined-happen, I say, it may-and, peradventure, if it may it must, and certainly if it must it will: but, what with indicatives and subjunctives, presents, preterperfects, and paulo-postfutura, the parenthesis is becoming too long for the sentence, and I must begin it again. A prudent author should never exact too much from the breath or the attention of his reader-to say nothing of the brains.

Happen then it may that this book may outlive Lord Castlereagh's peace, Mr. Pitt's reputation, (we will throw Mr. Fox's into the bargain,) Mr. Locke's metaphysics, and the regent's bridge in St. James's Park. It may outlive the eloquence of Burke, the discoveries of Davy, the poems of Wordsworth, and the victories of Wellington. It may outlive the language in which it is written; and, in Heaven knows what year of Heaven knows what era, be discovered by some learned inhabitant of that continent which the insects that make coral and madrepore are now, and from the beginning of the world have been, fabricating in the Pacific Ocean. It may be dug up among the ruins of London, and considered as one of the sacred books of the sacred island of the west; for I cannot but hope that some reverence will always be attached to this most glorious and most happy island when its power, and happiness, and glory, like those of Greece, shall have passed away. It may be deciphered and interpreted, and give occasion to a new religion called

* Molza.

Dovery, or Danielism; which may have its chapels, churches, cathedrals, abbeys, priories, monasteries, nunneries, seminaries, colleges, and universities; its synods, consistories, convocations, and councils; its acolytes, sacristans, deacons, priests, archdeacons, rural deans, chancellors, prebends, canons, deans, bishops, archbishops, prince bishops, primates, patriarchs, cardinals, and popes; its most Catholic kings, and its kings most Dovish, or most Danielish. It may have commentators, and expounders, (who can doubt that it will have them?) who will leave unenlightened that which is dark, and darken that which is clear. Various interpretations will be given, and be followed by as many sects. Schisms must ensue; and the tragedies, comedies, and farces, with all the varieties of tragi-comedy, and tragi-farce, or farcico-tragedy, which have been represented in this old world, be enacted in that younger one. Attack on the one side, defence on the other; high Dovers and low Dovers; Danielites of a thousand unimagined and unimaginable denominations; schisms, heresies, seditions, persecutions, wars-the dismal game of puss-catch-corner played by a nation instead of a family of children, and in dreadful earnest, when power, property, and life are to be won and lost!

But without looking so far into the future history of Dovery, let me exhort the learned Australian to whom the honour is reserved of imparting this treasure to his countrymen, that he abstain from all attempts at discovering the mysteries of Aballiboozobanganorribo! The unapocalyptical arcana of that stupendous vocable are beyond his reach; so let him rest assured. Let him not plunge into the fathomless depths of that great world, let him not attempt to soar to its unapproachable heights. Perhaps and surely no man of judgment will suppose that I utter anything lightlyperhaps, if the object were attainable, he might have cause to repent its attainment. If too "little learning be a dangerous thing," too much is more so;

Il saper troppo qualche volta nuoce.*

"Curiosity," says Fuller, "is a kernel of the forbidden fruit, which still sticketh in the throat of a natural man, sometimes to the danger of his choking.'

There is a knowledge which is forbidden because it is dangerous. Remember the apple! Remember the beautiful tale of Cupid and Psyche! Remember Cornelius Agrippa's library; the youth who opened in unhappy hour his magical volume; and the choice moral which Southey, who always writes so morally, hath educed from that profitable story! Remember Bluebeard! But I am looking far into futurity. Bluebeard may be forgotten; Southey may be for

• Molza

gotten; Cornelius Agrippa may be no more remembered; Cupid and Psyche may be mere names which shall have outlived all tales belonging to them; Adam and Eve enough. Eat beans, if thou wilt, in spite of Pythagoras. Eat bacon with them, for the Levitical law hath been abrogated: and indulge in black puddings, if thou likest such food, though there be Methodists who prohibit them as sinful. But abstain from Aballiboozobanganorribo.

CHAPTER XVII. P. I.

THE HAPPINESS OF HAVING A CATHOLIC TASTE.

There's no want of meat, sir;
Portly and curious viands are prepared
To please all kinds of appetites.

MASSINGER.

A FASTIDIOUS taste is like a squeamish appetite; the one has its origin in some disease of mind, as the other has in some ailment of the stomach. Your true lover of literature is never fastidious. I do not mean the helluo librorum, the swinish feeder, who thinks that every name which is to be found in a title page, or on a tombstone, ought to be rescued from oblivion; nor those first cousins of the moth, who labour under a bulimy for black letter, and believe everything to be excellent which was written in the reign of Elizabeth. I mean the man of robust and healthy intellect, who gathers the harvest of literature into his barns, thrashes the straw, winnows the grain, grinds it at his own mill, bakes it in his own oven, and then eats the true bread of knowledge. If he bake his loaf upon a cabbage leaf, and eat onions with his bread and cheese, let who will find fault with him for his taste-not I!

The Doves, father as well as son, were blessed with a hearty intellectual appetite, and a strong digestion: but the son had the more catholic taste. He would have relished caviare; would have ventured upon laver undeterred by its appearance and would have liked it.

What an excellent thing did God bestow on man
When he did give him a good stomach !*

He would have eaten sausages for breakfast at Norwich, Sally Luns at Bath, sweet butter in Cumberland, orange marmalade at Edinburgh, Findon haddocks at Aberdeen,

and drunk punch with beef steaks to oblige the French if they insisted upon obliging him with a dejeuner à l'Angloise.

A good digestion turneth all to health.*

He would have eaten squab pie in Devonshire, and the pie which is squabber than squab in Cornwall; sheep's head with the hair on in Scotland, and potatoes roasted on the hearth in Ireland; frogs with the French, pickled herrings with the Dutch, sourkrout with the Germans, maccaroni with the Italians, anise-seed with the Spaniards, garlic with anybody; horse flesh with the Tartars; ass flesh with the Persians; dogs with the northwestern American Indians, curry with the Asiatic East Indians, birds' nests with the Chinese, mutton roasted with honey with the Turks, pismire cakes on the Orinoco, and turtle and venison with the lord mayor; and the turtle and venison he would have preferred to all the other dishes, because his taste, though catholic, was not indiscriminating. He would have tried all, tasted all, thriven upon all, and lived contentedly and cheerfully upon either, but he would have liked best that which was best. And his intellectual appetite had the same happy catholicism. He would not have said with Euphues, "If I be in Crete, I can lie; if in Greece, I can shift; if in Italy, I can court it:" but he might have said with him, "I can carouse with Alexander; abstain with Romulus; eat with the epicure; fast with the stoic; sleep with Endymion; watch with Chrysippus."

The reader will not have forgotten, I trust, (but if he should I now remind him of it,) that in the brief inventory of Daniel's library there appeared some odd volumes of that "book full of Pantagruelism," the inestimable life of the great Gargantua. The elder Daniel could make nothing of this book; and the younger, who was about ten years old when he began to read it, less than he could of the Pilgrim's Progress. But he made out something.

Young Daniel was free from all the isms in Lily, and from rhotacism to boot; he was clear too of schism, and all the worse isms which have arisen from it: having by the blessing of Providence been bred up not in any denomination ending in ist or inian, or erian or arian, but as a dutiful and contented son of the church of England. In humour, however, he was by nature a Pantagruelist. And, indeed, in his mature years he always declared that one of the reasons which had led him to reject the old humoral pathology was that it did not include Pantagruelism, which he insisted depended neither upon heat nor cold, moisture nor dryness, nor upon any combination of those qualities; but was itself a peculiar and elementary humour; a truth, he said, of which

* Herbert.