chuckling over the fall of a brother into a trap set artfully for him in the fair guise of liberal pleading-now whispering a joy past joy in a stumble of the Lord Chief Justice himself, among the filmy cords drawn about his path! When the first bottle was despatched, arrived the time for his wary host to produce his papers in succession, to be drawn or settled by the joyous pleader. The well-lauded inspi with which he then was gifted. All his nice discernment-all his vast memory—all his skill in drawing analogies and discerning principles in the "great obscurity" of the Year Books-were set in rapid and unerring action. On he went-covering page after page, his pen "in giddy mazes running," and his mind growing subtler and more acute with every glass. How dextrously did he then glide through all the strange windings of the case, with a sagacity which never failed, while he garnished his discourse with many a legal pun and learned conceit, which was as the light bubble on the deep stream of his know pect as when, in my boyish days, I felt my heart beating with a strange feeling of mingled pride and reverence on becoming one of its members. The fountain yet plays among the old trees, which used to gladden my eye in spring for a few days with their tender green, to become so prematurely desolate. But the front of the Inner Temple hall, upon the terrace, is sadly altered for the worse. When I first knew it, the noble solidity of its appear-ration of a poet is not more genuine than that ance, especially of the figure over the gateway, cut massively in the stone, carried the mind back into the deep antiquity of the scene. Now the whole building is white-washed and plastered over, the majestic entrance supplied by an arch of pseudo-gothic, and a new library added, at vast cost, in the worst taste of the modern antique. The view from the garden is spoiled by that splendid nuisance, the Waterloo Bridge. Formerly we used to enjoy the enormous bend of the river, far fairer than the most marvellous work of art; and while our eyes dwelt on the placid mirror of water, our imagination went over it, through calm and majestic windings, into sweet rural scenes, and far in-ledge! He is gone!-and I find none to reland bowers. Now the river appears only an oblong lake, and the feeling of the country once let into the town by that glorious avenue of crystal, is shut out by a noble piece of mere human workmanship! But nature never changes, and some of her humble works are In the greater world, I have observed, with ever found to renew old feelings within us, not-sorrow, a prevailing disregard of the past, and withstanding the sportive changes of morial a desire to extol the present, or to expatiate in fancy. The short grass of the Temple garden is visionary prospects of the future. I fear this the same as when forty years ago I was accus- may be traced not so much to philanthropy as tomed to refresh my weary eyes with its green-to self-love, which inspires men with the wish ness. There I have strolled again; and while I bent my head downwards and fixed my eyes on the thin blades and the soft daisies, I felt as I had felt when last I walked there-all between was as nothing, or a feverish dream-is common to all. They would fain persuade and I once more dreamed of the Seals, and of the living Sophia!-I felt-but I dare not trust myself on this subject farther. The profession of the law is strangely altered since the days of my youth. It was then surely more liberal, as well as more rational, than I now find it. The business and pleasure of a lawyer were not entirely separated, as at present, when the first is mere toil, and the second lighter than vanity. The old stout-hearted pleaders threw a jovial life into their tremendous drudgeries, which almost rendered them delightful. Wine did but open to them the most curious intricacies of their art: they rose from it, like giants refreshed, to grapple with the sternest difficulties, and rejoiced in the encounter. Their powers caught a glow in the severity of the struggle, almost like that arising from strong exertion of the bodily frame. Nor did they disdain to enjoy the quaint jest, the far-fetched allusion, or the antique fancy, which sometimes craftily peeped out on them amidst their laborious researches. Poor TW was one of the last of the race.. He was the heartiest and most romantic of special pleaders. Thrice happy was the attorney who could engage him to a steak or broiled fowl in the old coffee room in Fleet-street, were I have often met him. How would he then dilate, in the warmth of his heart, on all his professional triumphs-now semble him in this generation-none who thus can put a spirit into their work, which may make cobweb-sophistries look golden, and change a laborious life into one long holi day! personally to distinguish themselves as the teachers and benefactors of their species, instead of resting contented to share in the vast stock of recollections and sympathies which us that mankind, created "a little lower than the angels," is now for the first time "crowned. with glory and honour;" and they exultingly point to institutions of yesterday for the means to regenerate the earth. Some, for example, pronounce the great mass of the people, through all ages, as scarcely elevated above the brutes which perish, because the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, were not commonly diffused among them; and on the diffusion of these they ground their predictions of a goldenage. And were there then no virtuous hardi hood, no guileless innocence, no affections stronger than the grave, in that mighty lapse of years which we contemptuously stigmatize as dark? Are disinterested patriotism, conjugal love, open-handed hospitality, meek selfsacrifice, and chivalrous contempt of danger and of death, modern inventions? Has man's great birth-right been in abeyance even until now? Oh, no! The Chaldæan shepherd did not cast his quiet gaze through weeks and years in vain to the silent skies. He knew not, indeed, the discoveries of science, which have substituted an immense variety of figures on space and distance, for the sweet influences of the stars; yet did the heavens tell to him the glory of God, and angel faces smile on him from the golden clouds. Book-learning is, perhaps, the least part of the education of the species. Nature is the mightiest and the such a change as shall make the printed Bible kindliest of teachers. The rocks and unchang-alone the means of regenerating the species. ing hills give to the heart the sense of a dura-"An age of Bibles" may not be an age of tion beyond that of the perishable body. The Christian charity and hope. The word of God flowing stream images to the soul an everlast-may not be revered the more by becoming a ing continuity of tranquil existence. "The common book in every cottage, and a drug in brave o'er-hanging firmament," even to the the shop of every pawnbroker. It was surely most rugged swain, imparts some conscious-neither known nor revered the less when it ness of the universal brotherhood of those over was a rare treasure, when it was proscribed whom it hangs. The affections ask no leave by those who sat in high places, and its torn of the understanding to "glow and spread and leaves and fragments were cherished even kindle," to shoot through all the frame a tre- unto death. In those days, when a single mulous joy, or animate to holiest constancy. copy chained to the desk of the church was We taste the dearest blessedness of earth in alone in extensive parishes, did it diffuse less our childhood, before we have learned to ex-sweetness through rustic hearts than now, press it in mortal language. Life has its uni- when the poor are almost compelled to possess versal lessons far beyond human lore. Kind-it? How then did the villagers flock from disness is as cheering, sorrow as parifying, and tant farms, cheered in their long walks by the aspect of death as softening to the ignorant thoughts not of this world, to converse for a in this world's wisdom, as to the scholar. The short hour with patriarchs, saints, and apostles! purest delights grow beneath our feet, and all How did they devour the venerable and wellwho will stoop may gather them. While sages worn page with tearful eyes, or listen delighted lose the idea of the Universal Parent in their to the voice of one gifted above his fellows, subtleties, the lowly "FEEL after Him and find who read aloud the oracles of celestial wisdom! Him." Sentiment precedes reason in point of What ideas of the Bible must they have entime, and is a surer guide to the noblest reali-joyed, who came many a joyful pilgrimage to ties. Thus man hopes, loves, reveres, and en-hear or to read it! Yet even more precious was joys, without the aid of writing or of the press the enjoyment of those who, in times of perseto inspire or direct him. Many of his feelings cution, snatched glances in secret at its pages, are even heartier and more genuine before he and thus entered, as by stealth, into the parahas learned to describe them. He does not disiacal region, to gather immortal fruits and perpetually mistake words for things, nor cul- listen to angel voices. The word of God was tivate his faculties and affections for a dis-dearer to them than house, land, or the "ruddy cerning public. His aspirations "are raised, not marked." If he is gifted with divine imagination, he may "walk in glory and in joy beside his plough upon the mountain side," without the chilling idea that he must make the most of his sensations to secure the ap-Testament and the parables of the New. They plause of gay saloons or crowded theatres. heard with revering sympathy of Abraham reThe deepest impressions are worn out by the ceiving seraphs unawares-of Isaac walking multiplication of their copies. Talking has out at eventide to meditate, and meeting the almost usurped the place of acting and of feel-holy partner of his days-of Jacob's dream, and ing; and the world of authors seem as though their hearts were but paper scrolls, and ink, instead of blood, were flowing in their veins. The great events with which old story rings, seem vain and hollow." If all these evils will not be extended by what is falsely termed the Education of the Poor, let us at least be on our guard lest we transform our peasantry from men into critics, teach them scorn instead of humble hope, and leave them nothing to love, to revere, or to enjoy! drops which warmed their hearts." Instead of the lamentable weariness and disgust with which the young now too often turn from the perusal of the Scriptures, they heard with mute attention and serious joy the histories of the Old of that immortal Syrian Shepherdess, for whose love he served a hard master fourteen years, which seemed to him but a few days-of Joseph the beloved, the exile, the tempted, and the forgiver-of all the wonders of the Jewish story-and of the character and sufferings of the Messiah. These things were to them at once august realities, and surrounded with a dream-like glory from afar. "Heaven lay about them in their infancy." They preserved the purity-the spirit of meek submission-the The Bible Society, founded and supported, patient confiding love of their childhood in no doubt, from the noblest motives, also puts their maturest years. They, in their turn, inforth pretensions which are sickening. Its ad-stilled the sweetness of Christian charity, drop vocates frequently represent it as destined to by drop, into the hearts of their offspring, and change all earth into a paradise. That a com-left their example as a deathless legacy. plete triumph of the principles of the Bible would bring in the happy state which they look for can never be disputed; but the history of our religion affords no ground for anticipating such a result from the unaided perusal of its pages. Deep and extensive impressions of the truths of the gospel have never been made by mere reading, but always by the exertions of living enthusiasm in the holy cause. Providence may, indeed, in its inscrutable wisdom, impart new energy to particular instruments; but there appears no sufficient indication of Surely this was better than the dignified patronage now courted for the Scriptures, or the pompous eulogies pronounced on them by rival orators! The reports of anniversaries of the Bible Society are often, to me, inexpressibly nauseous. The word of God is praised in the style of eulogy employed on a common book by a friendly reviewer. It is evidently used as a theme to declaim on. But the praise of the Bible is almost overshadowed by the flatteries lavished on the nobleman or county member who has condescended to preside, and the soul. We see them too with gentle interest, because we have always seen them, and were accustomed to relieve them in the spring-time of our days. And if some of them are what the world calls imposters, and literally "do beguile us of our tears," and our alms, those tears are not shed, nor those alms given, in vain. If they have even their occasional revellings and hidden luxuries, we should rather rejoice to believe that happiness has every where its nooks and corners which we do not see; that there is more gladness in the earth than meets the politician's gaze; and that fortune has her favours, "secret, sweet, and precious," even for those on whom she seems most bitterly to frown. Well may that divinest of philosophers, Shakspeare, make Lear reply to his daughters, who had been speaking in the true spirit of modern improvements: which it is the highest ambition of the speak- from entirely forming an ossified crust about ers ingeniously to introduce and to vary. Happy is he who can give a new turn to the compliment, or invent a new alliteration or antithesis for the occasion! The copious nonsense of the successful orators is even more painful than the failures of the novices. After a string of false metaphors and poor conceits, applauded to the echo, the meeting are perhaps called on to sympathize with some unhappy debutant, whose sense of the virtues of the chairman proves too vast for his powers of expression; and with Miss Peachum in the Beggars' Opera, to lament "that so noble a youth should come to an untimely end." Alas! these exhibitions have little connection with a deep love of the Bible, or with real pity for the sufferings of man. Were religious tyranny to render the Scriptures scarce, and to forbid their circulation, they would speedily be better prized and honoured than when scattered with gorgeous profusion, and lauded by nobles and princes. The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity is another boasted institution of these coldhearted days. It would annihilate the race of beggars, and remove from the delicate eye the very form and aspect of misery. Strange infatuation! as if an old class of the great family of man might be cut off without harm! "All are but parts of one stupendous whole," bound together by ties of antique sympathy, of which the lowest and most despised are not without their uses. In striking from society a race whom we have, from childhood, been accustomed to observe, a vast body of old associations and gentle thoughts must necessarily be lost for ever. The poor mendicants whom we would banish from the earth, are the best sinecurists to whose sustenance we contribute. In the great science-the science of humanity -they not rarely are our first teachers they affectingly remind us of our own state of mutual dependance; bring sorrow palpably before the eyes of the prosperous and the vain; and prevent the hearts of many from utterly "losing their nature." They give, at least, a salutary disturbance to gross selfishness, and hinder it "O reason not the need: our basest beggars There are many other painful instances in Your hearty well-wisher, A CHAPTER ON "TIME.” BEING AN ATTEMPT TO THROW NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SUBJECT. [NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.]. * We know what we are," said poor Ophelia, but we know not what we may be." Perhaps she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy had she said, "we know what we have been." Of our present state we can, strictly speaking, Know nothing. The act of meditation on our selves, however quick and subtle, must refer to the past, in which alone we can truly be said to live. Even in the moments of intensest enjoyment, our pleasures are multiplied by the quick-revolving images of thought; we feel the past and future in each fragment of the in stant, even as the flavour of every drop of some delicious liquid is heightened and prolonged on the lips. It is the past only which we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible of duration. Each bygone instant of delight becomes rapidly present to us, and "bears a glass which shows us many more." This is the great privilege of a meditative being-never properly to have any sense of the present, but to feel the great realities as they pass away, casting their delicate shadows on the fu ture. Time, then, is only a notion-unfelt in its passage-a mere measure given by the mind to its own past emotions. Is there, then, any abstract common measure by which the infinite variety of intellectual acts can be meted any real passage of years which is the same to all-any periodical revolution, in which all who have lived, have lived out equal hours Is chronology any other than a fable, a "tale that is told?" Certain outward visible actions have passed, and certain seasons have rolled over them; but has the common idea of time, as applicable to these, any truth higher or surer than those infinite varieties of duration which have been felt by each single heart? Who shall truly count the measure of his own days-much more scan the real life of the millions around him? of a being which should have no end. When this sense has been weakened, as it was amidst all the exquisite forms of Grecian mythology, the brevity of life has been forgotten. There is scarcely an allusion to this general sentiment, so deep a spring of the pathetic, throughout all the Greek tragedies. It will be found also to prevail in individuals in proportion as they meditate on themselves, or as they nurse in solitude and silence the instinct of the Eternal. The doctrine that Time exists only in remembrance, may serve to explain some apparent inconsistencies in the language which we use respecting our sense of its passage. We hear persons complaining of the slow passage of time, when they have spent a single night of unbroken wearisomeness, and wondering how speedily hours, filled with pleasure or engrossing occupations, have flown; and The ordinary language of moralists respect- yet we all know how long any period seems ing time shows that we really know nothing which has been crowded with events or feelrespecting it. They say that life is fleeting ings leaving a strong impression behind them. and short; why, humanly speaking, may they In thinking on seasons of ennui we have nonot as well affirm that it is extended and last- thing but a sense of length-we merely reing? The words "short" and "long" have member that we felt the tedium of existence; only meaning when used comparatively; and but there is really no space in the imagination to what can we compare or liken this our hu- filled up by the period. Mere time, unpeopled man existence? The images of fragility-thin with diversified emotions or circumstances, is vapours, delicate flowers, and shadows cast but one idea, and that idea is nothing more from the most fleeting things-which we em- than the remembrance of a listless sensation. ploy as emblems of its transitoriness, really A night of dull pain and months of lingering serve to exhibit its durability as great in com- weakness are, in the retrospect, nearly the same parison with their own. If life is short, com- thing. When our hands or our hearts are busy, pared with the age of some fine animals, how we know nothing of time-it does not exist for much longer is it than that of many, some of us; but as soon as we pause to meditate on whom pass through all the varieties of youth, that which is gone, we seem to have lived long maturity, and age, during a few hours, accord-because we look back through a long series ing to man's reckoning, and, if they are endowed with memory, look back on their early minutes through the long vista of a summer's day! An antediluvian shepherd might complain with as much apparent reason of the brevity of his nine hundred years, as we of our threescore and ten. He would find as little to confute or to establish his theory. There is nothing visible by which we can fairly reckon the measure of our lives. It is not just to compare them with the duration of rocks and hills, which have withstood "a thousand storms, a thousand thunders;" because where there is no consciousness, there is really no time. The power of imagination supplies to us the place of ages. We have thoughts which "date be-size reduces all intermediate events to nothing; yond the pyramids." Antiquity spreads around us her mighty wings. We live centuries in contemplation, and have all the sentiment of six thousand years in our memories: "The wars we too remember of King Nine, And old Assaracus and Ibycus divine."' Whence, then, the prevalent feeling of the brevity of our life? Not, assuredly, from its comparison with any thing which is presented to our senses. It is only because the mind is formed for eternity that it feels the shortness of its earthly sojourn. Seventy years, or seventy thousand, or seven, shared as the common lot of a species, would seem alike sufficient to those who had no sense within them of events, or feel them at once peering one above the other like ranges of distant hills. Actions or feelings, not hours, mark all the backward course of our being. Our sense of the nearness to us of any circumstance in our life is determined on the same principles-not by the revolution of the seasons, but by the relation which the event bears in importance to all that has happened to us since. To him who has thought, or done, or suffered much, the level days of his childhood seem at an immeasurable distance, far off as the age of chivalry, or as the line of Sesostris. There are some recollections of such overpowering vastness, that their objects seem ever near; their and they peer upon us like "a forked mountain, or blue promontory," which, being far off, is yet nigh. How different from these appears some inconsiderable occurrence of more recent date, which a flash of thought redeems for a moment from long oblivion;-which is seen amidst the dim confusion of half-forgotten things, like a little rock lighted up by a chance gleam of sunshine afar in the mighty waters! What immense difference is there, then, in the real duration of men's lives! He lives longest of all who looks back oftenest, whose life is most populous of thought or action, and on every retrospect makes the vastest picture. The man who does not meditate has no real consciousness of being. Such a one ge death as to a drunken sleep; he parts with ex- | fortune, or the events which have called forth istence wantonly, because he knows nothing their affections. Their first parting from home of its value. Mere men of pleasure are, there- is indelibly impressed on their minds-their fore the most careless of duelists, the gayest school-days seem to them like one sweet April of soldiers. To know the true value of being, of shower and sunshine-their apprenticeship yet to lay it down for a great cause, is a pitch is a long week of toil;-but then their first of heroism which has rarely been attained by love is fresh to them as yesterday, and their man. That mastery of the fear of death which marriage, the births of their children, and of is so common among men of spirit, is nothing their grand-children, are events which mark but a conquest over the apprehension of dying. their course even to old age. They reach their It is a mere victory of nerve and muscle. infancy again in thought by an easy process, Those whose days have no principle of conti- through a range of remembrances few and nuity-who never feel time but in the shape simple, but pure, and sometimes holy. Yet of ennui-may quit the world for sport or for happier is the lot of those who have one great honour. But he who truly lives, who feels the aim; who devote their undivided energy to a past and future in the instant, whose days are single pursuit; who have one idea of practical to him a possession of majestic remembrances or visionary good, to which they are wedded. and golden hopes, ought not to fancy himself There is a harmony, a proportion, in their bound by such an example. He may be in- lives. The Alchemist of old, labouring with spired to lay down his life, when truth or vir- undiminished hope, cheering his solitude with tue shall demand so great a sacrifice; but he dreams of boundless wealth, and yet working on, will be influenced by mere weakness of reso- could not be said to live in vain. His life was lution, not by courage, if he suffer himself to continuous-one unbroken struggle-one arbe shamed, or laughed, or worried out of it! dent sigh. There is the same unity of interest in the life of a great verbal scholar, or of a true miser; the same singleness of purpose, which gives solidity to floating minutes, hours, and years. Besides those who have no proper consciousness of being, there are others even perhaps more pitiable, who are constantly irritated by the knowledge that their life is cut up into melancholy fragments. This is the case of all The great Lawyer deserves an eminent rank the pretending and the vain; those who are among true livers. We do not mean a politiever attempting to seem what they are not, or cal adventurer, who breathes feverishly amidst to do what they cannot; who live in the lying the contests, the intrigues, and petty triumphs breath of contemporary report, and bask out a of party; nor a dabbler in criticism, poetry, sort of occasional holiday in the glimmers of or the drama; nor even a popular nisi-prius public favour. They are always in a feverish advocate, who passes through a succession of struggle, yet they make no progress. There hasty toils and violent excitements to fortune is no dramatic coherence, no unity of action, and to oblivion. But we have respect to the in the tragi-comedy of their lives. They have real dull plodder-to him who has bidden an hits and brilliant passages perhaps, which early "Farewell to his Muse," if he ever had may come on review before them in straggling one: who anticipates years of solitary study, succession; but nothing dignified or massive, and shrinks not back; who proceeds, step by tending to one end of good or evil. Such are step, through the mighty maze with a cheerful self-fancied poets and panting essayists, who heart, and counts on his distant success with live on from volume to volume, or from ma- mathematical precision. His industry and gazine to magazine, who tremble with nervous self-denial are powers as true as fancy or elodelight at a favourable mention, are cast down quence, and he soon learns to take as hearty a by a sly alliteration or satirical play on their pleasure in their exercise. His retrospect is names, and die of an elaborate eulogy "in aro- vast and single-of doubt solved, stoutest books matic pain." They begin life once a quarter, mastered, nicest webs disentangled, and all or once a month, according to the will of their from one intelligible motive which grows old publishers. They dedicate nothing to poste- with him, and, though it "strengthened with rity; but toil on for applause till praise sick- his strength," will not diminish with his deens, and their "life's idle business" grows too cline. It is better in the end to have had the heavy to be borne. They feel their best days pathway of life circumscribed and railed in by passing away without even the effort to build forms and narrow observances, than to have up an enduring fame; and they write an elegy strayed at will about the vast field open to on their own weaknesses! They give their human enterprise, in the freest and most gracethoughts immaturely to the world, and thus ful wanderings; because in the latter case we spoil them for themselves for ever. Their cannot trace our road again, or call it over; own earliest, and deepest, and most sacred while in the first, we see it distinctly to the feelings become at last dull common-places, end, and can linger in thought over all the which they have talked of and written about spots where our feet have trodden. The "old till they are glad to escape from the theme. names" bring back the "old instincts" to our Their days are not "linked each to each by hearts. Instead of faint sympathies with a natural piety," but at best bound together in multitude of things, a kind of small partnerforgotten volumes. Better, far better than this, ship with thousands in certain general dogmas is the lot of those whose characters and pre- and speculations, we have all our own past intensions have little "mark of likelihood;"-dividual being as a solid and abiding posseswhose days are filled up by the exercises of honest industry, and who, on looking back, recognise their lives only by the turns of their sion. A metaphysician who thinks earnestly and intensely for himself, may truly be said to live |