All affectation but creates disgust, And even in speaking we may seem too just. 4. In vain for them the pleasing measure flows, 5. Some plăcid natures fill the allotted scene 6. More nature oft and finer strokes are shown 7. He who in earnest studies o'er his part In the white handkerchief and mournful drawl, LLOYD. LXVIII. THE RETURN OF THE DOVE. 1. THERE was hope in the Ark at the dawning of day, 2. When Peace has departed the care-stricken breast, Reliance on God is the Dove to our Ark, 1. BEING allowed for once to speak, I would fain take the oppor tunity to set forth how ill, in all respects, we stomachs are used. From the beginning to the end of life, we are either afflicted with too little or too much, or not the right thing, or things which are horribly disagreeable to us; or are otherwise thrown into a state of discomfort. I do not think it proper to take up a moment in bewailing the Too Little, for that is an evil which is never the fault of our masters, but rather the result of their misfortunes; and indeed we would sometimes feel as if it were a relief from other kinds of distress, if we were put upon short allowance for a few days. But we conceive ourselves to have matter for a true bill against mankind in respect of the Too Much, which is always a voluntarily-incurred evil. líne by, i 2. What a pity that in the progress of discovery we can not establish some means of a good understanding between mankind and their stomachs; for really the effects of their non-acquaintance are most vexatious. Human beings seem to be, to this day, completely in the dark as to what they ought to take at any. time, and err almost as often from ignorance as from depraved appetite. Sometimes, for instance, when we of the inner house are rather weakly, they will send us down an article that we only could deal with when in a state of robust, health. Sometimes, when we would require mild semi-farinaceous or vegetable diet, they will persist in all the most stimulating and irritating of viands. that kind 3. What sputter Poor stomachs have when mistakes of masters What's this, now?" will a stomach-genius say; masters! What this remarks we indulge in, regarding our détestable stuff! What an everlasting fool that man is! Will he never learn? Just the very thing I did not want. If he would only send down a bowl of fresh leek soup, or barley broth, there would be some sense in it:" and so on. If we had only been allowed to give the slightest hint now and then, like faithful servants as we are, from how many miseries might we have saved both our masters and ourselves! 4. I have been a stomach for about forty years, during all of which time I have endeavored to do my duty faithfully and puno tually. My master, however, is so reckless, that I would defy fail to exceed the down stairs. Scarcely on any day does he ought to be, ΕΙ 5. My greatest trial takes place in the evening, when my master has dined. If you only saw what a mess this said dinner is, - soup, fish, flesh, fowl, ham, curry, rice, potatoes, table-beer, sherry, tart, pudding, cheese, bread, all mixed up together. I am accustomed to the thing, so don't feel much shocked; but my master himself would faint at the sight. The slave of duty in all circumstances, I call in my friend Gastric Juice, and to it we set, with as much good-will as if we had the most agreeable task in the world before us. But, unluckily, my master has an impres sion very firmly fixed upon him that our business is apt to be vastly promoted by an hour or two's drinking; so he continues at table amongst his friends, and pours me down some bottle and a half of wine, perhaps of various sorts, that bothers Gastric Juice and me to a degree which no one can have any conception of. Trought 6. In fact, this said wine undoes our work almost as fast as we do it, besides blinding and poisoning us poor genii into the bargain. On many occasions I am obliged to give up my task for the time altogether; for while, this vinous shower is going on I - would defy the most vigorous 7. I am a lover of early hours-as are my brethren gene- my master never scruples to rouse me up from my first sleep, and give me charge of an entirely new meal, after I thought I was to be my own master for the night. This is a hardship of the most grievous kind. ΕΙ 8. Only imagine an innocent stomach-genius, who has gathered his coal, drawn on his night-cap, and gone to bed, rung up and made to stand attention to receive a succession of things, all of them super fluous and in excess, which he knows he will not be able to get off his hands all night. Such, O mankind, are the woes which befall our tribe in consequence of your occasionally yielding to the temptation of "a little supper." I see turkey and tongue in grief and terror. Macaroni fills me with frantic alarm. I behold jelly and trifle follow in mute despair. O that I had the power of standing beside my master, and holding his unreflecting hand, as he thus prepares for my torment and his own! 9. Here, too, the old mistaken notion about the need of some thing stimulating besets him, and down comes a deluge of hot spirits and water, that causes every villicle in my coat to writhe in agony, and almost sends Gastric Juice off in the sulks to bed. Nor does the infatuated man rest here. If the company be agreeable, rummer will follow upon rummer, while I am kept standing, as it were, with my sleeves tucked up, ready to begin, but unable to perform a single stroke of work. 10. I feel that the strength which I ought to have had at my present time of life has passed from me. I am getting weak, and peevish, and evil-disposed. A comparatively small trouble sits long and sore upon me. Bile, from being my servant, is becoming my master; and a bad one he makes, as all good servants ever do. I see nothing before me but a premature old age of pains and groans, and gripes and grumblings, which will, of course, not last over long; and thus I shall be cut short in my career, when I should have been enjoying life's tranquil evening, without a single vexation of any kind to trouble me. 11. Were I of a rancorous temper, it might be a consolation to think that my master the cause of all my woes — must suffer and sink with me; but I don't see how this can mend my own case; and, from old acquaintance, I am rather disposed to feel sorry for him, as one who has been more ignorant and imprudent than ill-meaning. In the same spirit let me hope that this true and unaffected account of my case may prove a warning to other persons how they use their stomachs; for they may depend upon it that whatever injustice they do to us in their days of health and pride will be repaid to themselves in the long-runfriend Madam Nature being an inveterately accurate accountant, who makes no allowance for revokes or mistakes. our CHAMBERS. EI 41, AN eloquent but extravagant writer has hazarded the assertion that "words are the only things that last forever." Nor is this merely a splendid saying, or a startling paradox, that may be qualified by explanation into commonplace; but with respect to man and his works on earth it is literally true. Temples and palaces, amphitheatres and catacombs,-monuments of power, and magnificence, and skill, to perpetuate the memory, and preserve even the ashes, of those who lived in past ages, must, in the revolutions of mundane events, not only perish themselves by violence or decay, but the very dust in which they perished be so scattered as to leave no trace of their material existence behind. 2. There is no security beyond the passing moment for the most permanent or the most precious of these; they are as much in jeopardy as ever, after having escaped the changes and chances of thousands of years. An earthquake may suddenly ingulf the pyramids of Egypt, and leave the sand of the desert as blank as the tide would have left it on the sea-shore. hammer in the hand of an idiot may break to pieces the Apollo Belvidere, or the Venus de Medici, which are scarcely less worshipped as miracles of art in our day than they were by idolaters of old as representatives of deities. ΕΙ A 3. Looking abroad over the whole world, after the lapse of nearly six thousand years, what have we of, the past but the words in which its history is recorded? What beside a few mouldering and brittle ruins, which time is imperceptibly touching down into dust, what, beside ese, remains of the glory, the grandeur, the intelligence, the supremacy, of the Grecian republics, or the empire of Rome ? Nothing but the words of poets, historians, philosophers, and orators, who, being dead, yet speak, and in their immortal works still maintain their dominion over inferior minds through all posterity. And these intellectual Sovereigns not only govern our spirits from the tomb by the power of their thoughts, but their very voices are heard by our living ears in the accents of their mother-tongues. 4. The beauty, the eloquence, and art, of these collocations of sounds and syllables,70 the learned alone can appreciate, and that only (in some cases) after long, intense, and laborious invest gation; but, as thought can be made to transmigrate from one body of words into another, even through all the languages of William Hazlitt See Index. |