One unfortunate event, however, threw a considerable damp and gloom over this excellent institution. One of its reverend and most popular preachers, in an infatuated and ill-fated moment, committed himself in a manner which must have deeply affected the noble patrons of the charity and Alderman Cadell, his friend and publisher. This person was the Rev. Septimus Hodson, formerly of Caius College, Cambridge. He married a relation of Admiral Affleck, and obtained, through the interest of the late Lord Sandwich, the rectory of Thrapstone, Northamptonshire, and became chaplain and secretary to the Asylum, and chaplain in ordinary to the Prince of Wales.

happiness to extreme misery. The situation of the poor curate was that of a paradise compared to it. That my readers may form some idea of the Rev. Mr. Hodson and his labours, I present them with the subjoined sketch:

he appears to have had some obstacles to con"Notwithstanding Mr. Hodson's popularity, tend with in his outset; for, in a sermon preached in the chapel of the Asylum, on Sunday, March 29, 1789, he was charged with a plagiarism from Ogden's Sermons, on which the Monthly Review, vol. 80, page 568, thus comments: In an address to the reader, Mr. Hodson declares that he should not have published this very humble composition, if he had not been charged with plagiarism, which charge Never shall I forget calling on the above- appears to us to be false, from this circummentioned gentleman, upwards of forty stance, viz., that if he had known it to be true, years since, on behalf of a poor country he would not have called upon his accusers to curate who was anxious to come to London have proved their accusation.' However, in on literary pursuits, and to fill the situation the Monthly Review, vol. 81, page 76, the of assistant reader, then vacant at the critic retracts from his former opinion in reAsylum. I was introduced to the Rev. Mr.lustration of the Probationary Sermon, preached Extracts, in Ilviewing a pamphlet, entitled " Hodson, in his peculiarly neat and hand- at the Asylum; and an Answer to Mr. Hodson's some apartments, where his accomplished and pretended Refutation of the Charge of Plagiarism, beautiful wife, and I think the finest family by an Admirer of (Ogden's) Sermons.' The reof children I ever saw, were partaking of a viewer remarks:-' On perusing this pamphlet, dessert. He politely asked me to partake, we have altered our opinion, that the charge of and pressed me to take wine, which I did; plagiarism was unjustly brought against Mr. and from his easy and graceful manner, his these extracts are taken, were not at hand when ‹ Dr. Ogden's Sermons, from which handsome form and figure, and animated the article here referred to was drawn up.' countenance, added to those of his smiling cherubs of children, on whom my eyes were fixed, I thought I never witnessed so much conjugal happiness and domestic felicity in my life. He told me, with some degree of pomp, that he could not serve my friend, who was really an indefatigable and industrious curate. He performed divine service at several churches in and about Salisbury on each Sunday for several years; he wrote and compiled upwards of twenty various publications. I published his Naval Gazetteer in 1796; it cost several hundred pounds, and subsequently passed through a second edition.

A very short period elapsed after my calling upon the Rev. Mr. Hodson when he was hurled from his elevated position, where he was admired by multitudes of families of the first distinction in the metropolis. Set adrift upon the world, with his lovely wife and children, as an outcast from society, he crossed the great Atlantic, and I never heard of him afterwards. Alas! thought I, what a melancholy and sad reverse-to be dashed at once from the summit of human

Hodson.

"His next sermon was preached on the 25th October, 1789, on the anniversary of his late Majesty's (George III.) accession to the throne; it was very favourably noticed by the same review.

"In 1792, a volume of his sermons on the state of religion in this country was published, of which the reviewers also speak favourably, but observe,-'It has long been remarked, as a proof of the gloomy temper of our countrymen, that an Englishman is never better pleased than when told that his country is ruined. This disposition to view every object on the unfavourable side is not confined to the subject of policy. O tempore! O mores! is a lamentation which has been repeated in every age, and which is still heard, not only within the gloomy walls of the cloister and conventicle, but from the pulpits of our churches and chapels. Mr. Hodson, in these discourses, echoes the complaint; and adopting the tone of a popular tract, Hannah More's "Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World," deplores the degene racy of the times.’

"In the same year (1792) he wrote 'An Address to the different Classes of Persons in Great Britain on the high Price of Provisions,' at that period; this pamphlet met with a favourable reception, and increased his popularity.

"In the following year, 1793, Mr. Hodson preached a sermon at the Asylum against WAR -under any circumstances; but the critics did not acquit him so sparingly as on other occasions, for they remark:- Although Mr. Hodson declaims, in strong terms, against war in general, and thinks it a circumstance which forms the most atrocious national crime, and invokes the most awful national judgments, that Christians "have not yet beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into reaping hooks;" yet he finds means to exculpate his country in the instance of the present war, and to satisfy himself that the national conscience is, in this case, unpolluted. In proof, he

asserts, we have been forced into the conflict by the conduct of our enemies, who invaded all private property and commenced a war of plunder. Further to soften the regret which Christians must feel, at the taking up arms even on the greatest provocation, he represents the French as a set of wretches, whose daring infidelity, savage ferocity, and frightful enormities have even released us from the obligations of pity. In what part of the benevolent code, which requires us to love our enemies, does this Christian preacher find the exception, which releases him, in any case, from the obligation of compassion?" ADIEU.

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF A LIVING POET.

BY MISS PARDO E.

Minstrel! thou art to me what the glad sky
Is to the gentianella; that pale flower,
By raising to heaven's azure vault its eye,
Drinks the deep blue as its most lovely dower :
So I, by looking on thy glowing page,

Catch faintly its reflection, till I dream
That I too am a poet-and the dream
Serves many a passing sorrow to assuage.

For as Linnæus' daughter, in the mist
Of evening twilight, saw bright sparks exude
From the nasturtium's golden cup, I wist,

Have I in thy most witching fancies view'd
Gleams of a brightness which I learn 'mid sighs,
If not to emulate, at least to prize.

Oh! leave me then my dream-as the glad sun
Leaves to the flowers the light they live upon!

THE SAILOR'S SONG.

There's a tempest stern low'ring in wrath o'er the heavens,
The winds shout their warrior song;

The thunder is crashing, the lightnings are flashing,

The ocean rolls foaming, and whelming, and strong;
Yet I weep, through the deep, from my far native shore,
Though my heart it is there, with the girl I adore.

There's a calm on the breast of the musical wavelets;
The sun smiles amid the blue skies;

The dolphins are playing, the flying fish straying,
The petrels no more on the green billows rise:
Yet I keep, on the deep, calmed afar from my shore,
Though my heart it is there, with the girl I adore.

There's the voice of a land-bird heard charming the ocean;
The sea-weeds our bark dashes past;

Each heart is warm burning, each aching eye turning-
"Hurrah! we can see our old England at last!"
And leap from the deck, on her white cliffy shore,
And clasp to our bosoms the girls we adore!

J. G. B.

THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING BLIND.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART II.

OUR next argumentum, or secondary pro- | siveness, and attaining a like temperament, position, respects those who are lost to the outward and visible world by accident.

though with far more painful reminiscences and a bitterer ordeal, that we shall be brief in our observations.

We deny not, in the first instance, the fearful calamity of sight suddenly departed It is a most remarkable coincidence, that to those who have for years participated in the greatest of the ancient and of the modern the bounties and blessings of light; no poets were both blind, and both school maslonger to look upon the rising sun, to wor- ters. Homer is stated to have established a ship the grandeur and beauty of nature, to school at Chios in his latter days, by which contemplate the visible beauties of earth, to it may fairly be presumed that he was not gaze upon the rainbow-blossomed flowers, born blind, but became so. Milton, we all the woods, rivers, mountains and oceans of know, was similarly circumstanced he also beneficence; never more at night to survey" taught the young idea how to shoot"the constellations burning like lamps before the throne of divine intelligence, or the multitudinous stars emblazoning the peopled darkness, as if the seraphim of Heaven were stooping down from their empyreal beatitudes, to worship the majestic evidences around them of the unbounded mercies of Him, who with darkness mantles his throne; for

66 How oft amidst

Thick cloud and dark doth Heaven's all-ruling
-sire

Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne."

These deprivations, with the additional
withdrawal of the "old familiar faces"-the
beloved, the beautiful, and the venerated
are doubtlessly most bitter; but it cannot
be denied, that in very proportion to their
primal intensity, and with bountiful celerity,
are suddenly aroused feelings that had hi-
therto lain dormant, and which most mys-
teriously operate upon the mind, breaking
through the dark without by the increased
illumination within, and calling forth all
those adjuncts, which appear to be benefi-
cently stored up in the human heart, for the
express intent of moderating, tranquilizing,
and finally overpowering the heaviest afflic-
tion with which man may be visited.

We have dilated so fully upon the first class of blind objects, to which this, the second, is so intimately allied, by degrees becoming imbued with similarity of submis

and eventually being shut from the light of
Heaven, summoned forth the light within,
with a majesty, holiness, and sublimity-and
endured his calamity with a patience, which
nothing but those peculiarly alleviating prin-
ciples, that seem to appertain especially to
the blind, could have otherwise enabled him
to evince. These principles are clearly
derivable from mental elements more or less
developed, but invariably operating upon
those faculties which are more connected
with morality and virtue than with vice, or
the
of it. It is the immediate exer-
memory
cise of these singularly merciful dispensa-
tions which affords consolation, otherwise
apparently impossible, to be administered;
and not only affords it, but converts a posi-
tive wilderness into a Paradise, radiating with
greater glory and goodness those whose in-
tellects have been cultivated, and whose
original powers are great, and with lesser,
those whose minds possess not these advan-
tages; but with equal contentedness, and
submissiveness, and equanimity, either the
one class or the other-the very regrets and
remembrances that awaken thoughts of the
sunny morn and dewy eve, seem born only
to magnify gratitude, augment thankfulness
and unsubduing patience. How melancholy,
and how beautiful, are Milton's outpourings
of spirit upon his calamity; but there is no
repining! his whole soul seems suffused and
overflowing with gratitude, when he so nobly
opens his 3d. Book of Paradise Lost with

"Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first born!"

We cannot forget the melancholy magnificence with which he proceeds in allusion to himself, and the ultimate reconciliation of his depressed, and yet exalted spirit

"Thee I revisit safe,

And feel thy sov'reign vital lamp; but Thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song, &c.
"Thus with the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the Book of Knowledge fair
Presented with an universal blank

Of Nature's works, to me expunged and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out;
So much the rather thou, celestial Light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her

powers

Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight."

Having offered these celebrated examples of blind men eloquent, whom we must submit as the representatives of their class, not having space for more, we shall conclude this portion of our subject by briefly alluding to two ludicrous samples, as an illustration not only of blindness, but of what may also be denominated The Bathos precipitate ;the one old, the other modern.

"None

But such as are good men can give good
And that which is not good, is not delicious
things,
To a well governed and wise appetite ;"

and so instructed by an evil instruction,
poor Tom, in an unhappy moment, gazed
upon her who went forth in the firm faith
that,

Surprised by unjust force, but not inthrall'd;
"Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt,

Yea even that which mischief meant most harm,
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory :
But evil on itself shall back recoil,
And mix no more with goodness, when at last,
Gather'd like scum and settled to itself,
It shall be in eternal, restless change,
Self-fed and self-consumed: if this fail,
The pillar'd firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble."

His punishment was immediate: he lost his
sight, and we fear the momentary glance
afforded him did not aid to the tranquiliza-
tion of his mind under his calamity, in either
so rapid or agreeable a manner as if he had
closed his eyes on the world without so
abusing them. However, we doubt not he
became calm" by degrees and beauti-
fully more," and was gathered to his fore-
fathers a happy and resigned man.

Of the second named illustrious personage we will say little; he is alive, and we rejoice in it; he cannot upon twenty-one thousand a year afford to drink tea, and we regret it; he has been blind, but has recovered his sight-we earnestly congratulate him upon it; he did not become blind for the same cause Peeping Tom did, and we triumph in such princely virtue; the son of Coventry boasts of her Peeping Tom, who a king yet a radical; he is a fool for his lived and looked upon the Lady Godiva one pains; if he lives longer he'll grow older, thousand years ago; and Kensington, the and if he grows wiser he'll be the better for Princely Belisarius, who will live for a thou-it-if he does not, he'll die blinder than he sand years to come, should the Royal Society and Empire of Tea be then in existence.

The former illustrious and more ancient individual, the victim of his wicked, but somewhat natural curiosity, but more so of Earl Leofric's outrageous insult to virtue apparelled in her own bright innocence, was clearly not one of those,

"That lend their ears To those budge doctors of the stoic fur, And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub, Praising the lean and sallow abstinence." And we very shrewdly suspect his morals were not of that high order, or his self-denial so great, as to induce him to believe,

was born, and the fame of his folly will be embalmed, by posterity, in as distinguished a manner as was Tom of Coventry's curiosity -we shall see!

The disadvantages of blindness to this second class being similar to those of the first, we deem it unnecessary to extend this part of our subject.

The last subject of our essay will be the blindness" unnatural;" this blindness is the worst of all, and withal the most comical and grave by turns-it is not deprivation of sight external, but internal; the sufferer has eyes, but cannot see-ears, and cannot hear; he is a sort of darkness visible; a

and as he that cannot be guided by reason is generally governed by passion, so persons of this description find their ultimate re

lamp in broad day whose light is useless, because it shines not; were all the subjects of all the blind asylums in the world concentrated into one dense, impenetrable one-source in the presence of an adversary with

whom they cannot cope, by having recourse to this last infirmity of purblind fools.

We apprehend it will not be necessary for us to enter into all the varieties of this species of the "unnaturally blind;" they will present themselves to our reader's notice; he will, in the course of his life, have met with them continually, and will be able to furnish himself with as many examples as we could; their colours and shapes, lights and shadows, the simple and the complex, with all the other ramifications of character, are so obviously before us in daily life, it would be an act of supererogation to discourse of them dissectionally; and if our reader should himself be one of them, why then as "none but himself can be his equal,” to himself will we leave himself, and cry

ness of perpetual gloom, there would in in-
tensity of blindness be not the smallest ap-
proach to that we are now speaking of; this
seeing-darkness we will now mention-
mental blindness! the parent of self-decep-
tion and terrible deformity. The unhappy
victim of this malady is generally, whilst
the dupe and scorn of others, the delight
and idolizer of himself; he who is mentally
blind is generally a blundering blockhead;
and very frequently a most amusing one, by
the humpbacked absurdity of his distorted
and limping intelligence-a sort of Richard
the Third with his brains picked out; he is
a mental harlequin, for ever changing and
for ever the same; anon, he is as grave a
jest as the grave-digger in Hamlet, with
his skull as empty as poor Yorick's. His
wit is like to-morrow, for ever coming and" God speed.”
never present; he has no thought but of one
object, and that is not worth one thought;
he is your mental mole, with his little eyes
so far set in his head, they are invisible to
every one but himself, and unto himself are
so microscopic, that, by magnifying small
insignificance, they preclude him from seeing
objects of real importance, yet, nevertheless,
make him believe there is nothing in the
world so consequential as that which he does
see. He is not only the dupe of himself,
but invariably the dupe of others, for his
mind is so minute, and his vanity so great,
he exalts into unerring tests of truth all he
utters, and he believes all he does is an ex-
emplum magnum of excellence. He is a
novum organum,' not of Lord Bacon but
of himself; Hudibras, Sancho Panza, and
Don Quixote, moulded into one compound,
would not be his equal; his mind is as heavy
and fat as Falstaff's body, and his wit as
lean as the half-starved apothecary; in short,
he who is mentally blind is infinitely more in
the dark than he who is actually without
sight; for he has an intellect pauperised,
without modesty and humility to acknow-
ledge it, but only the possession of pride,
vanity, and selfishness, to render it more
conspicuous and laughably contemptible;

It will be recollected that, on the commencement of this paper, we set out with the proposition of the advantages of being blind; in this last class we have not attempted to exhibit them, and our reasons are soon given: we might by pursuing an ingenious train of argument have proved, beyond doubt, that even this species of sight extinguished was not without its conveniences-to be blind to one's own failings, weaknesses, and deficiencies, is not altogether an inconvenient commodity; but the disadvantages are so obviously the major, whilst the advantages are the minor proposition, that it would be a foolish endeavour to exhibit the latter in opposition with the infinite superiorities of the former; for these reasons we will desist, admitting the hopelessness of our case, and the extreme destitution of the object of our argument.

We now conclude; whether our reflections are right or wrong, they who honour us with their attention must be the judges, feeling perfectly assured there is no position in life, howsoever apparently painful, which will not invariably tend "to justify the ways of God to man."

H. C. D.