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WILLIAM COWPER.

From a Picture by Jackson RAin the Collection? of the Right Honorable the Earl Cowpers

Essayists p238

is discovered in a scrape, the impeachment of an accomplice, as at the Old Bailey, is made the condition of a pardon. I remember a boy, engaged in robbing an orchard, who was unfortunately taken prisoner in an apple-tree, and conducted, under the strong guard of the farmer and his dairy-maid to the master's house. Upon his absolute refusal to discover his associates, the pedagogue undertook to lash him out of his fidelity; but, finding it impossible to scourge the secret out of him, he at last gave him up for an obstinate villain, and sent him to his father, who told him he was ruined, and was going to disinherit him for not betraying his schoolfellows.

I must own I am not fond of thus drubbing our youths into treachery, and am much pleased with the request of Ulysses, when he went to Troy, who begged of those who were to have the care of young Telemachus, that they would above all things teach him to be just, sincere, faithful, and to keep a secret.

Every man's experience must have furnished him with instances of confidants who are not to be relied on, and friends who are not to be trusted; but few perhaps have thought it a character so well worth their attention as to have marked out the different degrees into which it may be divided and the different methods by which secrets are communicated.

intention to rob him of his charge. If he ventures abroad, it is to walk in some unfrequented place, where he is least in danger of an attack. At home, he shuts himself up from his family, paces to and fro his chamber, and has no relief but from muttering over to himself what he longs to publish to the world, and would gladly submit to the office of town-crier for the liberty of proclaiming it in the market-place. At length, however, weary of his burden, and resolved to bear it no longer, he consigns it to the custody of the first friend he meets, and returns to his wife with a cheerful aspect, and wonderfully altered for the better.

Careless is perhaps equally undesigning, though not equally excusable. Entrust him with an affair of the utmost importance, on the concealment of which your fortune and happiness depend, he hears you with a kind of half attention, whistles a favourite air, and accompanies it with the drumming of his fingers upon the table. As soon as your narration is ended, or perhaps in the middle of it, he asks your opinion of his swordknot-condemns his tailor for having dressed him in a snuff-coloured coat instead of a pompadour, and leaves you in haste to attend an auction, where, as if he meant to dispose of his intelligence to the best bidder, he divulges it with a voice as loud as an auctioneer's; and, when you tax him with having played you false, he is heartily sorry for it, but never knew that it was to be a secret.

Ned Trusty is a tell-tale of a very singular kind. Having some sense of his duty, he hesitates a little at the breach of it. If he engages To these I might add the character of the never to utter a syllable, he most punctually open and unreserved, who thinks it a breach of performs his promise; but then he has the friendship to conceal anything from his intiknack of insinuating by a nod, and a shrug well mates; and the impertinent, who, having by dint timed, or a seasonable leer, as much as others of observation made himself master of your can convey in express terms. It is difficult, in secret, imagines he may lawfully publish the short, to determine whether he is more to be ad- knowledge it cost him so much labour to obtain, mired for his resolution in not mentioning, or and considers that privilege as the reward due his ingenuity in disclosing, a secret. He is also to his industry. But I shall leave these, with excellent at a doubtful phrase, as Hamlet calls many other characters which my reader's own it, or ambiguous giving out, and his conversa- experience may suggest to him, and conclude tion consists chiefly of such broken inuendoes as with prescribing, as a short remedy for this evil, -"well I know-or I could-and if I would—that no man may betray the counsel of his or, if I list to speak-or there be, and if there friend-let every man keep his own. might," etc.

Here he generally stops, and leaves it to his hearers to draw proper inferences from these piecemeal premises. With due encouragement, however, he may be prevailed on to slip the padlock from his lips, and immediately overwhelms you with a torrent of secret history, which rushes forth with more violence for having been so long confined.

Poor Meanwell, though he never fails to transgress, is rather to be pitied than condemned. To trust him with a secret is to spoil his appetite, to break his rest, and to deprive him for a time of every earthly enjoyment. Like a man who travels with his whole fortune in his pocket, he is terrified if you approach him, and immediately suspects that you come with a felonious

COUNTRY CHURCHES.

"The tott'ring tower and mould'ring wall repair,
And fill with decency the house of prayer;
Quick to the needy curate bring relief,
And deck the parish church without a brief."
-Hor.

MR VILLAGE TO MR TOWN.

DEAR COUSIN,-The country at present, no less than the metropolis, abounding with politicians of every kind, I begin to despair of picking up any intelligence that might possibly be entertaining to your readers. However, I have lately visited some of the most distant parts of the kingdom with a clergyman of my acquaint

ance: I shall not trouble you with an account of the improvements that have been made in the seats we saw, according to the modern taste, but proceed to give you some reflections which occurred to us in observing several country churches, and the behaviour of their congregations.

The ruinous condition of some of these edifices gave me great offence, and I could not help wishing that the honest vicar, instead of indulging his genius for improvements, by enclosing his gooseberry-bushes with a Chinese rail, and converting half an acre of his glebe land into a bowling-green, would have applied part of his income to the more laudable purpose of sheltering his parishioners from the weather during their attendance on divine service. It is no uncommon thing to see the parsonage-house well thatched, and in exceeding good repair, while the church, perhaps, has scarce any other roof than the ivy that grows over it. The noise of owls, bats, and magpies, makes the principal part of the church music in many of these ancient edifices; and the walls, like a large map, seem to be portioned out into capes, seas, and promontories, by the various colours by which the damps have stained them. Sometimes, the foundation being too weak to support the steeple any longer, it has been found expedient to pull down that part of the building, and to hang the bells under a wooden shed on the ground beside it. This is the case in a parish in Norfolk, through which I lately passed, and where the clerk and the sexton, like the two figures of St Dunstan's, serve the bells in the capacity of clappers, by striking them alternately with a hammer.

In other churches, I have observed that nothing unseemly or ruinous is to be found, except in the clergyman, and the appendages of his person. The squire of the parish, or his ancestors, perhaps to testify their devotion and leave a lasting monument of their magnificence, have adorned the altar-piece with the richest crimson velvet, embroidered with vine-leaves and ears of wheat; and have dressed up the pulpit with the same splendour and expense; while the gentleman who fills it is exalted in the midst of all this finery, with a surplice as dirty as a farmer's frock, and a periwig that seems to have transferred its faculty of curling to the band which appears in full buckle beneath it.

But if I was concerned to see several distressed pastors, as well as many of our country churches in a tottering condition, I was more offended with the indecency of worship in others. I could wish that the clergy would inform their congregations that there is no occasion to scream themselves hoarse in making their responses; that the town-crier is not the only person qualified to pray with true devotion; and that he who bawls the loudest may nevertheless be the wickedest fellow in the parish. The old women, too, in

the aisle, might be told that their time would be better employed in attending to the sermon than in fumbling over their tattered Testaments till they have found the text, by which time the discourse is near drawing to a conclusion; while a word or two of instruction might not be thrown away upon the younger part of the congregation, to teach them that making posies in summertime, and cracking nuts in autumn, is no part of the religious ceremony.

The good old practice of psalm-singing is indeed wonderfully improved in many country churches since the days of Sternhold and Hopkins; and there is scarce a parish clerk who has so little taste as not to pick his staves out of the new version. This has occasioned great com. plaints in some places, where the clerk has been forced to bawl by himself, because the rest of the congregation cannot find the psalm at the end of their prayer-books; while others are highly disgusted at the innovation, and stick as obstinately to the old version as to the old style.

The tunes themselves have also been new set to jiggish measures, and the sober drawl which used to accompany the two first staves of the hundredth psalm, with the "Gloria Patri," is now split into as many quavers as an Italian air. For this purpose there is in every county an itinerant band of vocal musicians, who make it their business to go round to all the churches in their turns, and, after a prelude with a pitchpipe, astonish the audience with hymns set to the new Winchester measure, and anthems of their own composing.

As these new-fashioned psalmodists are necessarily made up of young men and maids, we may naturally suppose that there is a perfect concord and symphony between them, and indeed I have known it happen that these sweet singers have more than once been brought into disgrace by too close a unison between the thorough-base and the treble.

It is a difficult matter to decide which is looked upon as the greatest man in a country church, the parson or his clerk. The latter is most certainly held in the higher veneration where the former happens to be only a poor curate, who rides post every Sabbath from village to village, and mounts and dismounts at the church-door. The clerk's office is not only to tag the prayers with an amen, or usher in the sermon with a stave, but he is also the universal father to give away the brides, and the standing godfather to all the new-born bantlings. But in many places there is still a greater man belonging to the church than either the parson or the clerk himself. The person I mean is the squire, who, like the king, may be styled the head of the church in his own parish. If the benefice be in his own gift, the vicar is his creature, and of consequence entirely at his devotion; or if the care of the church be left to a curate, the Sunday fees,

roast-beef and plum-pudding, and the liberty to shoot in the manor, will bring him as much under the squire's command as his dogs and horses.

For this reason the bell is often kept tolling, and the people waiting in the churchyard an hour longer than the usual time; nor must the service begin till the squire has strutted up the aisle, and seated himself in the great pew in the chancel. The length of the sermon is also measured by the will of the squire, as formerly by the hour-glass, and I know one parish where the preacher has always the complacence to conclude his discourse, however abruptly, the minute that the squire gives the signal by rising up after his nap.

In a village church, the squire's lady or the vicar's wife are perhaps the only females that are stared at for their finery; but in the large cities and towns, where the newest fashions are brought down weekly by the stage-coach or waggon, all the wives and daughters of the most topping tradesmen vie with each other every Sunday in the elegance of their apparel. I could even trace their gradations in their dress according to the opulence, the extent, and the distance of the place from London. I was at a church in a populous city in the north, where the macebearer cleared the way for Mrs Mayoress, who came sideling after him in an enormous fan-hoop, of a pattern which had never been seen before in those parts. At another church in a corporation town I saw several Negligees, with furbelowed aprons, which had long disputed the prize of superiority; but these were most wofully eclipsed by a burgess's daughter just come from London, who appeared in a Trollope or Slammerkin with treble ruffles to the cuffs, pinked and gimped, and the sides of the petticoat drawn up in festoons. In some lesser borough towns, the contest, I found, lay between three or four black and green bibs and aprons. At one, a grocer's wife attracted our eyes by a new-fashioned cap, called a Joan, and at another they were wholly taken up by a mercer's daughter in a nun's hood.

I need not say anything of the behaviour of the congregation in these more polite places of religious resort; as the same genteel ceremonies are practised there as at the most fashionable churches in town. The ladies, immediately on their entrance, breathe a pious ejaculation through their fan-sticks, and the beaux very gravely address themselves to the haberdashers' bills, glued upon the lining of their hats. This pious duty is no sooner performed, than the exercise of bowing and courtesying succeeds: the locking and unlocking of the pews drowns the reader's voice at the beginning of the service; and the rustling of silks, added to the whispering and tittering of so much good company, renders him totally unintelligible to the very end of it.-I am, dear cousin, yours, etc.

CONVERSATION.*

Your talk to decency and reason suit,

Nor prate like fools, or gabble like a brute! In the comedy of "The Frenchman in London," which, we are told, was acted at Paris with universal applause for several nights together, there is a character of a rough Englishman, who is represented as quite unskilled in the graces of conversation, and his dialogue consists almost entirely of a repetition of the common salutation of "How do you do?-How do you do?" Our nation has, indeed, been generally supposed to be of a sullen and uncommunicative disposition; while, on the other hand, the loquacious French have been allowed to possess the art of conversing beyond all other people. The Englishman requires to be wound up frequently, and stops very soon; but the Frenchman runs on in a continued alarum. Yet it must be acknowledged, that, as the English consist of very different humours, their manner of discourse admits of great variety; but the whole French nation converse alike, and there is no difference in their address between a marquis and a valet-de-chambre. see a couple of French barbers accosting each other in the street, and paying their compliments with the same volubility of speech, the same grimace and action, as two courtiers in the Tuileries.

We may frequently

I shall not attempt to lay down any particular rules for conversation, but rather point out such faults in discourse and behaviour as render the company of half mankind rather tedious than amusing. It is in vain, indeed, to look for conversation, where we might expect to find it in the greatest perfection, among persons of fashion; there it is almost annihilated by universal cardplaying; insomuch that I have heard it given as a reason why it is impossible for our present writers to succeed in the dialogue of genteel comedy, that our people of quality scarce ever meet but to game. All their discourse turns upon the odd trick and the four honours, and it is no less a maxim with the votaries of whist than with those of Bacchus, that talking spoils

company.

Every one endeavours to make himself as agreeable to society as he can; but it often happens, that those who most aim at shining in conversation overshoot their mark. Though a man succeeds, he should not (as is frequently the case) engross the whole talk to himself; for that destroys the very essence of conversation, which is talking together. We should try to keep up conversation like a ball bandied to and fro from one to another, rather than seize it ourselves, and drive it before us like a football. We should likewise be cautious to adapt the

*This subject was afterwards expanded into the delightful poem entitled "Conversation."

Q

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