CHARMS OF RETIREMENT.

141

JULY 17TH.

REMINDED this evening of that beautiful expression of Milton, about pluming the wings of thought, after being ruffled in the crowd. The mind revives in solitude. Fresh airs blow down

upon it from the green hills and gardens of fancy. It gets its health and colour again. But I would not quite recommend the advice of Cowley, for he considered that man the happiest, who had not only quitted the metropolis, but abstained from visiting the next market-town of his county. We owe a debt to our brethren; and, however fierce the lions may be in the wilderness, we are not to surround ourselves with a wall of fire, and go to sleep in the centre. Let me be just to this most delightful writer. He knew how few people are fit for the solitariness which he loved. In his essay on Solitude he says:-"They must have enough knowledge of the world to see the vanity of it, and enough virtue to despise all vanity; if the mind be possessed with any lust or passions, a man had better be in a fair, than in a wood alone. They may, like petty thieves, cheat us, perhaps, and pick our pockets in the midst of company; but, like robbers, they use to strip, and bind, or murder us, when they catch us alone. This is but to retreat from men, and fall into the hands of devils."

But some sequesterment is needful for our intellectual, as for our spiritual nature. A bird is shut up and darkened before it learns a tune; trees and sun draw off its attention. The music of fancy is taught in a similar manner. The loneliness, however, must be fed; and the kind of nourishment is soon discovered. The purple feather of the bird tells us of the seed. So it is in literature. The violets of Colonos peep out under the hedges of Milton's Eden.

JULY 18TH.

MOST poetical readers know by heart Mr. Wordsworth's charming portraiture of womanly sweetness, which is able to cheer and bless us in all weathers of life. He has written nothing tenderer

or truer

I saw her, upon nearer view,

A spirit, yet a woman too.

Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet.
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food,

For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

The thought has been often uttered; as by our excellent friend Goldsmith, introducing Dr. Primrose: "I had scarcely taken orders a year, before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but for such qualities as would wear well;" and by Shenstone, in his Progress of Taste:

For humble ease, ye powers, I pray,
That plain warm suit for every day!
And pleasure and brocade bestow,
To flaunt it once a month or so.

The first for constant wear we want;
The first, ye powers! for ever grant.
But constant wear the last bespatters,
And turns the tissue into tatters.

In Much Ado About Nothing (Act ii. sc. 5), Pedro asks Beatrice, "Will you have me, Lady?" and she answers, "No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days. Your Grace is too costly to wear every day." To Wordsworth belongs the praise of bringing out the full charm of the sentiment.

A rainy day is a winter-luxury. A cold, wet, hazy, blowing night in December, gates swinging, trees crashing, storm howling

-that is enjoyable-it is the weather to finish Christabel in. How full of heat, light, and comfort everything is within doors! The flickering fire, beaten into a blaze, the bubbling urn, the rustled book, and all the scenery of a thoughtful fireside, rise to the memory. Cowper describes the hour which he delighted to lose in this waking dream, when he had drawn the chair up to the fender, and fastened the shutter that still rattled. See him gazing earnestly into the sleepy fire!-what is he looking at? In the parlour twilight, the history of his boyhood and youth lives again, with the pleasant garden of the parsonage he was born in; the path along which the gardener, Robin, drew him to school; and his mother, in that vesture of tissued flowers which he used to prick into paper with a pin. Sometimes his gayer heart disported itself in other dreams:

Me oft has fancy, ludicrous and wild,

Soothed with a waking dream of houses, towers,
Trees, churches, and strange visages, express'd

In the red cinders, while with poring eye

I gazed, myself creating what I saw.

Not less amused have I, quiescent, watch'd
The sooty films that play upon the bars
Pendulous, and foreboding in the view

Of superstition, prophesying still,

Though still deceived, some stranger's near approach.

I should like to see a catalogue of Hearth-literature, if the title may be compounded;

Bright winter fires, that summer's part supply,

is the pleasing line of Cowley. The parlour twilight is instead of the sun playing on leaves and grass. What visions have been created, books planned, pictures designed, cathedrals built, and countries discovered, over dying embers! Thoughts of eloquence and devotion, at this hour moving and shining along the world,

A GREEK FAMILY VISITED.

145

were born in that glimmer. Ridley, watching out the last red coal in his cell, may have seen the Church rising in her stateliness and purity; Raleigh have called up cities of gold, and forests of fruit-bearing trees; and Milton, in the chimney-corner at Horton, have sketched the dim outline of Comus. Therefore a wet winter evening is a very agreeable characteristic of the season. The wood-ashes are aids to reflection. But a rainy day in summer is altogether different: it is the Faëry's dancing-hall, with the lights extinguished. A paper network flutters where the fire ought to be; a red cinder, for the parish-clerk to disappear in, would be worth its weight in silver. The eye wanders up and down, and finds no rest; the room itself wears a heavy, disconsolate expression; the table and chairs are miserable; the dozing fly mopes on the damp glass; and the flowers in the window look like mourners, just returned wet through from the funeral of Flora. Bamfylde has painted the sorrows of the season :

Mute is the mournful plain;

Silent the swallow sits beneath the thatch,

And vacant hind hangs pensive o'er his hatch,
Counting the frequent drops from reeded eaves.

JULY 20TH,

THANKS to the Germans, we are beginning to be on visiting terms with the old Greek families. A scholar is now able to call on Pericles, and even to form a fair estimate of the domestic arrangements of the middle classes. The drawing-room and

kitchen are restored. Becker has done much for this branch of study. He sketches an Athenian lodging-house with something of Flemish minuteness; and a lasting value is given to his descriptions by the authority of the original authors, whose words

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