ory, because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer- here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary to movement, till upon my looking grave, it desisted the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her 15 good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how 20 she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said those innocents would do her no harm'; and how 25 she might be said to love their uncle, frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his 30 would mount the most mettlesome horse eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve Cæsars, that had been emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the

or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me

or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along 5 with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmthor in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fishpond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings,- I had more pleasure in these busyidle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner

John L because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he

he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out 35- and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was hand4° some, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy for he was a good bit older than

gilding almost rubbed out sometimes in 45 me many a mile when I could not walk

the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which
I had almost to myself, unless when now
and then a solitary gardening man would
cross me and how the nectarines and
peaches hung upon the walls without my 50
ever offering to pluck them, because they
were forbidden fruit, unless now and then,
- and because I had more pleasure in
strolling about among the old melancholy-
looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking 55
up the red berries, and the fir apples, which
were good for nothing but to look at

for pain; and how in after-life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but after

exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and (architectually speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne me. 5-I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously provided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets - those indispensable side-intelligencers.

Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which constrained him to draw upon assurance to feel quite unabashed,' and at ease upon that article. I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ever should be.

wards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed.him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarreling with him (for we quarreled sometimes), rather than not have him 10 again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on 15 was not for uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope some- 20 times, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W―n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in 25 maidens - when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or 30 whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the utter- 35 most distance, which without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects. of speech: We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. 40 that absorbing sentiment, which was We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name and 45 immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for 50

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will understand me to mean for music.- To say that this heart never melted at the concourse of sweet sounds. would be a foul self-libel.—'Water parted from the sea' never fails to move it strangely. So does 'In infancy.' But they were used to be sung at her harpsi chord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman

the gentlest, sure, that ever merited the appellation the sweetest why should I hesitate to name Mrs. Sonce the blooming Fanny Weatheral of the Temple who had power to thrill the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long coats; and to make him glow. tremble, and blush with a passion, that not faintly indicated the day-spring of

afterwards destined to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite, for Alice W-n.

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising God save the King' all my life; whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary corners; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.

I am not without suspicion that I have an undeveloped faculty of music within 55 me. For, thrumming, in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other morning. while he was engaged in an adjoining

5

parlor, on his return he was pleased to
say, he thought it could not be the
maid!' On his first surprise at hearing
the keys touched in somewhat an airy
and masterful way, not dreaming of me,
his suspicions had lighted on Jenny.
But a grace snatched from a superior
refinement, soon convinced him that some
being, technically perhaps deficient, but
higher informed from a principle common 10
to all the fine arts,- had swayed the keys
to a mood which Jenny, with all her
(less-cultivated) enthusiasm, could never
have elicited from them. I mention this
as a proof of my friend's penetration, and 15
not with any view of disparaging Jenny.

Scientifically I could never be made to
understand (yet have I taken some pains)
what a note in music is; or how one note
should differ from another. Much less 20
in voices can I distinguish a soprano from
a tenor. Only sometimes the thorough
bass I contrive to guess at from its being
supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I
tremble, however, for my misapplication 25
of the simplest terms of that which I dis-
claim. While I profess my ignorance, I
scarce know what to say I am ignorant
of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sos-
tenuto and adagio stand in the like rela- 30
tion of obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi,
Re, is as conjuring as Baralipton.

its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life sounds; - and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise.

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the cheerful playhouse watching the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!) immovable, or affecting some faint emotion,till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in some cold theater in Hades, where some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoyment; or like that

Party in a parlor,

All silent, and all DAMNED!

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehension.

Words are something; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty

It is hard to stand alone - in an age like this,-(constituted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious com- 35 binations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut) to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art which is said to have 40 such an especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. Yet, rather than break the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have received a great deal more 45 frames, and be forced to make the picpain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty.

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than 50 midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. The ear is passive to those single strokes; willingly enduring stripes, while it hath no task to 55 con. To music it cannot be passive. will strive mine at least will — spite of

It

tures for yourself; to read a book all
stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal
matter; to invent extempore tragedies to
answer to the vague gestures of an in-
explicable rambling mime - these
faint shadows of what I have undergone
from a series of the ablest-executed pieces
of this empty instrumental music.

are

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable: - afterwards followeth the languor, and the op

5

pression. Like that disappointing book
in Patmos; or, like the comings on of
melancholy, described by Burton, doth
music make her first insinuating ap-
proaches: Most pleasant it is to such
as are melancholy given, to walk alone in
some solitary grove, betwixt wood and
water, by some brook side, and to meditate
upon some delightsome and pleasant sub-
ject, which shall effect him most, am-10
abilis insania, and mentis gratissimus er-
ror. A most incomparable delight to
build castles in the air, to go smiling to
themselves, acting an infinite variety of
parts, which they suppose, and strongly 15
imagine, they act, or that they see done.
-So delightsome these toys at first, they
could spend whole days and nights without
sleep, even whole years in such contemp-
lations, and fantastical meditations, which 20
are like so many dreams, and will hardly
be drawn from them-winding and un-
winding themselves as so many clocks,
and still pleasing their humors, until at
last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and 25
they being now habitated to such medita-
tions and solitary places, can endure no
company, can think of nothing but harsh
and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow,
suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, 30
cares, and weariness of life, surprise them
on a sudden, and they can think of noth-
ing else: continually suspecting, no sooner
are their eyes open, but this infernal
plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and 35
terrifies their souls, representing some
dismal object to their minds; which now,
by no means, no labor, no persuasions,
they can avoid, they cannot be rid of,
they cannot resist.'

sion (whether it be that, in which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, wisheth to himself dove's wingsor that other which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind) — a holy calm pervadeth me.— I am for the time

rapt above earth,

And possess joys not promised at my birth

censers,

But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive - impatient to overcome her earthly' with his heavenly,- still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride. those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant Tritons Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wit's end; clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me priests, altars, dazzle before me the genius of his religion hath me in her toils - a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend. late so naked, so ingenuous he is Pope, — and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too,-tri-coroneted like himself!-I am converted, and yet a Protestant; at once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand heresiarch: or 40 three heresies center in my person: 1 am Marcion, Ebion, and CerinthusGog and Magog-what not?- till the coming in of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith; and restores to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasant

Something like this 'SCENE-TURNING I have experienced at the evening parties, at the house of my good Catholic friend Nov; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of play- 45 ers, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week days into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.1

When my friend commences upon one
of those solemn anthems, which perad- 50 countenanced host and hostess.
venture struck upon my heedless ear,
rambling in the side aisles of the dim
abbey, some five-and-thirty years since,
waking a new sense, and putting a soul
of old religion into my young apprehen- 55

1 I have been there, and still would go;
'Tis like a little heaven below. Dr. Watts.

(1821)

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST

PIG

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough

15

them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's 5 life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted-crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued.

to read and explain to me, for the first
seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw,
clawing or biting it from the living ani-
mal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this
day. This period is not obscurely hinted
at by their great Confucius in the second
chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where
he designates a kind of golden age by the
term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' holi-
day. The manuscript goes on to say, 10
that the art of roasting, or rather broiling
(which I take to be the elder brother)
was accidentally discovered in the man-
ner following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti,
having gone out into the woods one morn-
ing, as his manner was, to collect mast
for his hogs, left his cottage in the care
of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly
boy, who being fond of playing with fire,
as younkers of his age commonly are, let 20
some sparks escape into a bundle of
straw, which kindling quickly, spread the
conflagration over every part of their
poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes.
Together with the cottage (a sorry ante- 25
diluvian makeshift of a building, you may
think it), what was of much more im-
portance, a fine litter of new-farrowed
pigs, no less than nine in number, per-
ished. China pigs have been esteemed 30
a luxury all over the East from the re-
motest periods that we read of. Bo-bo
was in the utmost consternation, as you
may think, not so much for the sake of
the tenement, which his father and he 35
could easily build up again with a few
dry branches, and the labor of an hour
or two, at any time, as for the loss of the
pigs. While he was thinking what he
should say to his father, and wringing
his hands over the smoking remnants of
one of those untimely sufferers, an odor
assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent
which he had before experienced. What
could it proceed from?-not from the 45
burnt cottage
- he had smelt that smell
before indeed this was by no means
the first accident of the kind which had
occurred through the negligence of this
unlucky young firebrand. Much less did 50
it resemble that of any known herb, weed,
or flower. A premonitory moistening at
the same time overflowed his nether lip.
He knew not what to think. He
next stooped down to feel the pig, if there 55
were any signs of life in it. He burnt
his fingers, and to cool them he applied

'You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what what have 40 you got there, I say?'

O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats.'

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig.

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste,- O Lord,'- with suchlike barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke.

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering