If this And mountains; and of all that we behold Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft- Nor perchance, And now, with gleams of half-extinguished If I were not thus taught, should I the more thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks The picture of the mind revives again : first I came among these hills; when like a roe Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, Knowing that Nature never did betray, For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance- Of past existence-wilt thou then forget And rolls through all things. Therefore am I Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! THEY ARE ALL GONE. BY HENRY VAUGHAN. They are all gone into a world of light, It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Or those faint beams in which the hill is dressed, I see them walking in an air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days, My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, O holy hope, and high humility, High as the heavens above! These are your walks, and ye have showed them me, Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the just! What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could man outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know, But what fair field or grove he sings in now, And yet, as angels, in some brighter dreams, So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, And into glory peep! TRADITIONARY BALLAD. THE FAIRIES OF THE CALDON-LOW. BY MARY HOWITT. "And where have you been, my Mary, And where have you been from me?" "I've been at the top of the Caldon-Low, The midsummer night to see!" "And what did you see, my Mary, All up on the Caldon-Hill?" "I heard the drops of the water made, And the green corn ears to fill.” "Oh tell me all, my Mary,— All, all that ever you know; For you must have seen the fairies, Last night, on the Caldon-Low." "Then take me on your knee, mother, "And merry was the glee of the harp-strings, And their dancing feet so small; But, oh, the sound of their talking Was merrier far than all!" "And what were the words, my Mary, That you did hear them say?" "I'll tell you all, my motherBut let me have my way! "And some they played with the water, And roll'd it down the hill; And this,' they said, shall speedily turn For there has been no water By the dawning of the day! "Oh, the miller, how he will laugh, "And some, they siezed the little winds, And each put a horn into his mouth, "And there,' said they, the merry winds go Away from every horn; And those shall clear the mildew dank From the blind old widow's corn! GRACE BEFORE MEAT. BY CHARLES LAMB. The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, its origin in the early times of the world, and the hunter-state of man, when dinners were precious things, and a full meal was something more than a common blessing! when a belly-full was a windfall, and looked like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the modern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, why the blessing of food-the act of eating-should have had a particular expression of thanksgiving annexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent gratitude with which we are expected to enter upon the enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good things of existence. I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form of prayer for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts-a grace before Milton-a grace before Shakspeare-a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen ?—but the received ritual having prescribed these forms to the solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my observations to the experience which I have had of the grace, properly so called; commending my new scheme for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelæsian Christians, no matter where assembled. The form, then, of the benediction before eating has its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and unprovocative repasts of children. It is here that the grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a present sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme theory, have entered. The proper end of food-the animal sustenance-is barely contemplated by them. The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his bread for the day. Their courses are perennial. Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to appetite, leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of eating; when he shall confess a per turbation of the mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sate (a rarus hospes) at rich men's tables, with the savory soup and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter our praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises round is pagan, and the belly god intercepts it for his own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs, takes away all the sense of propor tion between the end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks--for what?-for having too much, while so many starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce consciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. I have seen it in clergymen and others-a sort of shame-a sense of the co-presence of circumstances which unhallow the blessing. After a devotional tone put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will fall into his common voice! helping himself or his neighbor, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, or was not most conscientious in the discharge of his duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the incompatibility of the scene and the viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude. I hear somebody exclaim,-Would you have Christians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, without remembering the Giver !-no-I would have them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for which east and west are ransacked, I would have them postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when appetite is laid; when the still small voice can be heard, and the reason of the grace returns-with temperate diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil knew the harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of Celano anything but a blessing. We may be gratefully sensible of the deliciousness of some kinds of food beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior gratitude: but the proper object of the grace is sustenance, not relishes; daily bread, not delicacies; the means of life, and not the means of pampering the carcass. With what frame or composure, I wonder, can a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great Hall-feast, when he knows that his last concluding pious word-and that in all probability, the sacred name which he preaches-is but the signal for so many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is temperance) as those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the good man himself does not feel his devotions a little clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, provides for a temptation in the wilderness: A table richly spread in regal mode With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates would go down without the recommendatory preface of a benediction. They are like to be short graces where the devil plays the host. I am afraid the poet wants his usual decorum in this place. Was he thinking of the old Roman luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cambridge? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogabalus. The whole banquet is too civic and culinary, and the accompaniments altogether a profamation of that deep, abstracted, holy scene. The mighty artillery of sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of proportion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his dreams might have been taught better. To the temperate fantasies of the fa mished Son of God, what sort of feasts presented themselves? He dreamed indeed, -As appetite is wont to dream, tically I own that (before meat especially) they seem to involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at a distance with a becoming gratitude; but the moment of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The Quakers, who go about their business of every description with more calmness than we, have more title to the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always admired their silent grace, and the more because I have observed their applications to the meat and drink following to be less passionate and sensual than ours. They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indifference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a surplice. I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dispassionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from one who professes to like minced veal. There is a physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses apple dumplings. I am not certain but he is right. With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. Only I stick to aspa Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. ragus, which still seems to inspire gentle thoughts. But what meats?— Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, And saw the ravens with their horny beaks Food to Elijah bringing even and morn; I am impatient and querulous under culinary disappointments; as to come home at the dinner hour, for instance, expecting some savory mess, and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill meltedthat commonest of kitchen failures-puts me beside Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they my tenor. The author of the Rambler used to make brought : He saw the prophet also how he fled Into the desert and how there he slept, Under a juniper; then how awaked inarticulate animal noises over a favorite food. Was this the music quite proper to be preceded by the grace? or would the pious man have done better to postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing might be contemplated with less perturbation? I quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin face against those excellent things, in their way, jollity and feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable, have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, that while he is pretending his devotions otherwise, he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish-his Dagon-with a special consecration of no ark but the fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet preluding strains to the banquets of angels Theoretically I am no enemy to graces; but prac- and children; to the roots and severer repasts of the He found his supper on the coals prepared, |