For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains, After the moon. If thou art rich thou'rt poor ; For like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey; Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age, But as it were an after dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both for all thy blessed youth Of palsied eld; and when thou'rt old and rich, Isabella. Oh, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, Claud.-Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot: This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, The weariest and most loathed worldly life, To what we fear of death. VII.-MARIE ANTOINETTE. Ir is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have. to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom ; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness. VIII. LIVING to one's self. WHAT I mean by living to one's self is, living in the world, as in it, not of it; it is as if no one knew there was such a person, and you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It is such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an interest as it might take in the affairs of mencalm, contemplative, passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at their follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubled by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once dreamed of by them. He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart, looks at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray. "He hears the tumult and is still." He is not able to mend it, nor willing to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interest him, without putting himself forward to try what he can do to fix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt! He reads the clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the seasons, the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moaning of the wind, pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this while he is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He relishes an author's style, without thinking of turning author. He is fond of looking at a print from an old picture in the room, without teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret himself to death with trying to be what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He hardly knows what he is capable of, and is not in the least concerned, whether he shall ever make a figure in the world. He looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of nature, and takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general humanity. He is free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he first begins to think what others say of him. While a man is contented with himself and his own resources, all is well. When he undertakes to play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will find nothing but briers and thorns, vexation and disappointment. IX.-MERCY. THE quality of mercy is not strain'd; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings; It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's, When mercy seasons justice. We do pray for mercy; X. DESCRIPTION OF QUEEN MAB. Он, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs; Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love: |