infinite in variety of hue as even the rainbow. In a paroxym of thirst, I hurried it to my lips, when my eye caught this sentence inscribed on the crystal rim:-" They who drink out of me, must drink out of my fellow." The momentary delay which occurred as I read this, did but inflame my eagerness to drink. Every drop was an ocean of delight. I could not have believed myself capable of sustaining so high an excess of enjoyment. When the goblet was drained, I saw by the moderated light which now prevailed, a girl of the most maddening beauty. She had eyes-oh! what was the blaze of the chandeliers, the liquid purity of the mirrors, the intense blueness of the unclouded dome,-what were all these to those eyes, and the halo shed around them? Her forehead, amidst all the red glare of the spicy lamps, was as fair as if the moon were shining full on it; while her cheeks and her breathing lips, in spite of all the emulous glow around them, were unequalled in their deepest of dye as carnations in the midst of a rose-bank. Who shall describe her hair? It was like the dark wavings of the willow seen against the silver twilight! But her forehead had a band of unwrought gold, and the startling words upon it ran thus: "He who loves me, shall embrace my sister." "Thy sister!" I cried,-" And is it possible that two such angels of bliss can have sprung from one parent, or be held by one world?" My transport is redoubled even at the thought. I am no mortal. This is not earth I tread on. Spirit of all ecstatic joys," said I to the sweet trembler before me, thy charms are nigh consuming me; but even as the moth rushes franticly towards the taper that may destroy it, I devote myself in this one wild embrace to all that dear ruin which thou dost bring." It was over, in a moment, that electrical touch; and the fatal SISTER stood before me. She held in her left hand the fillet, on which were graven the conditions of that enjoyment I had proved, and with her right she clasped me to her skinny and sweltering neck, less disgusting only than the bosom which hung under it. The poison of her breath, and the malignity of her eye, soon dispersed all the odour and brilliancy with which I had been surrounded. Nothing met my sight but her sickening ugliness; and all the rest of my senses were wrapt in the hellish influences this fury shed about her. I quickly found that in one and the same instant, I had reached the apex of both rapture and agony. Without dilating upon the horrors of my new situation, be it enough to say, that if the demon who so embraced me had left an increase of my torture at all possible, the augmentation was effected by the draught she forced on me from the fellow-goblet of that which had before entrapped me in delight. My blood curdled, my heart sickened, my knees trembled, and my brain throbbed, until I was brought to a state of torture which no words can give a notion of, and which, but for the evil power that sustained me, would have been utterly insupportable. When the bowl had dropped, and the fiend had vanished, I found myself alone in a dungeon-like apartment, which, from the shape and size of its windows, I knew must belong to the vile building which had previously caught my attention. There was a heap of dying embers laid in one corner of the room, and giving just light enough to make the loathsomeness of the place fully apparent. I might well indite a volume on the soul-chilling noises and visions that assailed me in my progress through this hall of terrors. Dead limbs crossed mine, and threw me frequently on the noisome floor, where slimy reptiles and clammy hands received my face as I fell. Stenches, the most suffocating and nauseating, made me reel with weakness and disgust. I made no motion, I uttered no sound, but my pangs were instantaneously deepened; and when at length I reached the outer door of this Pandemonium, I thought I had "passed and proved" all the pains of which human nature could be susceptible, and far more than it had ever yet endured. I turned my face upwards, and fœtid secretions were shaken from the rank boughs that now twined over me. Splintered stumps lay in my track, and precipitated me continually into the mire. My face was mutilated by jagged stones, and thorns transfixed my bursting feet: I emerged from the avenue of trees, and the big rain beat heavily down upon my head. My eyes were bruised with hail, and parched with lightning; while the crashing of trees, and the bellowing of the clouds and adjacent ocean, filled my ears with anguish. I soon recognized the inner side of the dilapidated gate I had formerly noticed; but it seemed an age before the mazes of the wilderness I was in, would admit of my escape. On a sudden, however, I tripped, and my head was dashed against the ragged edge of the only part of the ruin left upright. A strong hand lifted me, and the old man I had so long forgotten, motioned me to look back at the two gates of PLEASURE and PAIN. I turned loathingly away, and saw that my brandy and water had almost frozen, while the glow of a good coal fire had been tinging my fancy with those whimsical hues which I have endeavoured to exhibit to my readers. R. M. THE TEAR. [BY ROBERT MONTGOMERY.] Thou gently-falling tear, that gem'st the eyes, Betraying drop of deep convulsive woe, Thy spring--the anguish of the throbbing heart; I've watched thee, tear, in Pleasure's gladdest hour, No dearer sight hath gentle Pity seen, Than joy-lit eyes with beaming tear-drops dewed; Till streaming forth in gems of gratitude! GOOD THINGS BY GOOD AUTHORS. "Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira voluptas Juv. 1. "There is not a man in the world but desires to be, or to be thought to be, a wise man; and yet if he considered how little he contributes himself thereunto, he might wonder to find himself in any tolerable degree of understanding." CLARENDON. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service; but idleness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle employments, or amusements that amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labour wears, while the key often used is always bright. As the rose-tree is composed of the sweetest flowers, and the sharpest thorns; as the heavens are sometimes fair and sometimes overcast, alternately tempestuous and serene; so is the life of man intermingled with hopes and fears, with joys and sorrows, with pleasures and with pains. We should manage our thoughts in composing a poem, as shepherds do their flowers in making a garland; first select the choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, where they give a lustre to each other: like the feathers in Indian crowns, which are so managed that every one reflects a part of its colour and gloss on the next. I had rather never receive a kindness, than never bestow one: not to return a benefit is the greater sin, but not to confer it is the earlier. Pride, ill-nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience, or what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world. 'Tis not juggling that is to be blamed, but much juggling, for the world cannot be governed without it. There is this difference betwixt a thankful and an unthankful man: the one is always pleased in the good he has done, and the other only once in what he has received. As the fertilest ground must be manured; so must the highest flying wit have a Dædalus to guide him. Parody is a favourite flower both of ancient and modern literature. It is a species of ludicrous composition, which derives its wit from association: and never fails to produce admiration and delight, when it unites taste in selection with felicity of application. Even licentious specimens of it move to laughter; for we are always inclined to be diverted with mimicry, or ridiculous imitation, whether the original be an object of respect, of indifference, or of contempt. A polished Athenian audience heard, with bursts of mirthful applause, the discourses of the venerable Socrates burlesqued upon the stage; and no Englishman can read the Rehearsal without smiling at the medley of borrowed absurdities which it exhibits. There is scarce a village in Europe, and not one university, that is not thus furnished with its little great men. The head of a petty corporation, who opposes the designs of a prince who would tyrannically force his subjects to save their best clothes for Sundays; the puny pedant who finds one undiscovered property in the polype, or describes an unheeded process in the skeleton of a mole, and whose mind, like his microscope, perceives nature only in detail: the rhymer, who makes smooth verses, and paints to our imagination, when he should only speak to our hearts; all equally fancy themselves walking forward to immortality, and desire the crowd behind them to look on. The crowd takes them at their word. Patriot, philosopher, and poet, are shouted in their train. 'Where was there ever so much merit seen? No times so important as our own; ages, yet unborn, shall gaze with wonder and applause!' To such music, the important pigmy moves forward, bustling and swelling, and aptly compared to a puddle in a storm. The most positive men are the most credulous; since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their fellow flatterer and worst enemy, their own false love. The state of the possessor of humble virtues, to the affecter of great excellencies, is that of a small cottage of stone, to the palace raised with ice by the Empress of Russia; it was for a time splendid and luminous, but the first sunshine melted it to nothing. If there be a nation that exports its beef and linen, to pay for the importation of claret and porter, while a great part of its people live upon potatoes and wear no shirts, wherein does it differ from the sot, who lets his family starve, and sells his clothes to buy drink? One principal point of good-breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men; our superiors, our equals, and those below us. The French seldom dine under seven hot dishes; it is true, indeed, with all this magnificence, they seldom spread a cloth before the guests; but in that I cannot be angry with them, since those that have got no linen upon their backs, may very well be excused for wanting upon their tables. A herald calls himself a king, because he has authority to hang, draw, and quarter arms; for assuming a jurisdiction over the distributive justice of titles of honour, as far as words extend, he gives himself as great a latitude that way, as other magistrates used to do, where they have authority, and would enlarge it as far as they can. It is true, he can make no lords nor knights of himself, but as many squires and gentlemen as he pleases, and adopt them into what family they have a mind. His dominions abound with all sorts of cattle, fish, and fowl, and all manner of manufactures, besides whole fields of gold and silver, which he magnificently bestows upon his followers, or sells as cheap as lands in Jamaica. The language they use is barbarous, as being but a dialect of pedlar's French, or the Egyptian, though of a loftier sound, and in the propriety affecting brevity, as the other does verbosity. ́His business is like that of all the schools, to make plain things hard with perplexed methods and insignificant terms, and then appear learned in making them plain again. He professes arms, not for use, but ornament only; and yet makes the basest things in the world weapons of worshipful bearings. He is wiser than the fellow that sold his ass, but kept the shadow for his own use; for he sells only the shadow, (that is the picture,) and keeps the ass himself. His chief province is at funerals, where he commands in chief, marshals the tristitia irritamenta; and like a gentleman-sewer to the worms, serves up the feast with all punctual formality. He is a kind of a necromancer; and can raise the dead out of their graves, to make them marry, and beget those they never heard of in their lifetime. His coat is like the King of Spain's dominions, all shirts, and hangs as loose about him; and his neck is the waist, like the picture of Nobody with his breeches fastened to his collar. He will sell the head or the single joint of a beast or fowl as dear as the whole body, like a pig's head in Bartholomew Fair, and after, put off the rest to his customers at the same rate. His arms being utterly out of use in war, since guns came up, have been translated to dishes and cups, as the ancients used their precious stones, according to the poet Gemmas ad pocula transfert a gladiis, &c.---and since are like to decay every day more and more; for since he gave citizens coats of arms, gentlemen have made bold to take their letters of mark by way of reprisal. The hangman has a receipt to mar all his work in a moment; for by nailing the wrong end of a scutcheon upwards upon a gibbet, all the honour and gentility extinguishes of itself, like a candle that is held with the flame downwards. Other arms are made for the spilling of blood; but his ouly purify and cleanse it, like scurvy-grass; for a small dose taken by his prescription, will refine that which is as base and gross as bull's blood, (which the Athenians used to poison withal) to any degree of purity. The humour of turning every misfortune into a judgment, proceeds from wrong notions of religion, which, in its own nature, produces good will toward men, and In this case, puts the mildest construction upon every accident that befalls them. therefore, it is not religion that sours a man's temper, but it is his temper that sours his religion. People of gloomy uncheerful imaginations, or of envious malignant tempers, whatever kind of life they are engaged in, will discover their natural tincture of mind in all their thoughts, words, and actions. As the finest wines have often the taste of the soil, so even the most religious thoughts often draw something that is particular from the constitution of the mind in which they arise. When folly or superstition strikes in with this natural depravity of temper, it is not in the power, even of religion itself, to preserve the character of the person who is possessed with it, from appearing highly absurd and ridiculous. The scholar, without good breeding, is a pedant; the philosopher, a cynic; the soldier a brute; and every man disagreeable. The good parishioner is timely at the beginning of common prayer. Yet as Tully charged some dissolute people for being such sluggards that they never saw the sunne rising or setting, as being always up after the one, and abed before the other; so some negligent people never hear prayers begun, or sermon ended; the confession being passed before they come, and the blessing not come before they are passed away. There are not more cripples come out of the wars than there are from great services; some through discontent lose their speech, some their memories, others their senses, or their lives; and I seldom see a man thoroughly discontented, but I conclude he has had the favour of some great man. I have known of such as have been for twenty years together within a month of a good employment, but never arrived at the happiness of being possessed of any thing. Rich people who are covetous, are like the cypress tree, they may appear well, but are fruitless; so rich persons have the means to be generous, yet some are not so, but they should consider they are only trustees for what they possess, and should show their wealth to be more in doing good, than merely in having it. They should not reserve their benevolence for purposes after they are dead, for those who give not till they die, show that they would not then if they could keep it any longer. A weak man, however honest, is not qualified to judge. A man of the world, however penetrating, is not fit to counsel, Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own. Friends are tender, and unwilling to give pain, or they are interested and fearful to offend. The character of covetousness is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill-grace, in little and inconsiderable things, than in expences of any consequence; a very few pounds a year would ease that man of the scandal of avarice. Dependents on great men, as well for the homage that is accepted from them, as the hopes which are given to them, are become a sort of creditors: and these debts, being debts of honour, ought, according to the accustomed maxim, to be discharged first. Flattery---Delicious essence! how refreshing art thou to nature! how strongly are all its powers and all its weaknesses on thy side! how sweetly dost thou mix with the blood, and help it through the most difficult and tortuous passages to the heart! I asked a poor man how he did? He said he was like a washball, always in decay. Tragedies, as they are now made, are good, instructive, moral sermons enough; and it would be a fault not to be pleased with good things. There I learn several great truths; as that it is impossible to see into the ways of futurity; that punishment always attends the villain; that love is the fond soother of the human breast; that we should not resist heaven's will, for in resisting heaven's will, heaven's will is resisted; with several other sentiments equally new, delicate, and striking. Every new tragedy, therefore, I shall go to see; for reflections of this nature make a tolerable harmony, when mixed up with a proper quantity of drum, trumpet, thuuder, lightning, or the scene-shifter's whistle. |