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CHEAP PUBLICATIONS.

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those which are now thought, by too many persons, to be of such wondrous efficacy in the formation of right principles and feelings, which, by the by, always grow together, and maintain through life their due proportion. Some of the means which are now so pompously set at apparent work to enlighten the minds of the people, and to emollify their manners (mores), were then never dreamt of, even by the most visionary; and yet their minds were as full of light, and their manners were as full of rurality, or sylvanity, or urbanity, as they will be found to be now with the dwellers in grassy fields, leafy woods, or stony towns.

Tickler. And much more so.

North. Then it will be found, in the long-run, that the attempt to elevate the character of a people by cheap publications is very expensive.

Tickler. Very.

North. A penny-a-week is not, for a poor and industrious man, much to pay to a friendly society; for his condition is always, from within and from without, exceedingly precarious; and 'tis well to guard, at such sacrifice, sometimes no inconsiderable one, against the day in which no man can work. Tickler. Good.

North. A penny paper fills the empty stomach with windor lies in it, in the shape of a ball; and 'tis hard to say which is the worser, flatulence or indigestion.

Tickler. Sometimes, no doubt, the small swallow is harmless, and sometimes even salutary; but, at the best, it cannot give much strength; and, at the end of a year, the money would have been far better bestowed in purchasing some pecks of meal, or half a boll of potatoes

North. Or, ere the winter sets in, linsey-woolsey petticoats for the ditchers' daughters.

Tickler. I doubt if any man, earning wages by ordinary hand-work, ever continued such subscription through a twelvemonth.

North. Never. They almost all give in within the quarter; for they either get angry with themselves, on finding that they are not one whit the wiser from studying the Tatterdemalion— or, growing conceited, they aspire to write for it and a rejected contributor will not condescend to be an accepted subscriber.

352 CHEAP RELIGION CHEAP BIRTHS CHEAP DEATHS.

Tickler. The word "cheap" is never out of some poor creatures' mouths-cheap bread, cheap law, cheap government, cheap religion.

North. Ay, above all things else, they must have cheap religion. They grudge a fair price for heaven.

Tickler. Charity, too, must be cheap. Give such relief to the poor as will just hold soul and body together—and, when they part company, let the dissection of the pauper's carcass pay for its burial.

North. "Why go to any unnecessary expense on the birth, baptism, death, or funeral of any lump of clay? The most illustrious man-howdie would be munificently rewarded by a guinea, for ushering into existence any man-child that it is possible to conceive; and, for a mere lassie, there ought assuredly to be a drawback. There is something absolutely shocking in the idea of fees to the gentleman in black for making a baby a Christian. If any one thing on this earth ought to be cheap, it should be the marriage ceremony, for marriage itself, in the long run, is apt to prove a most expensive business ; and, as interment consists mainly in digging a hole and filling it up again, that surely may be done for a mere nothing, in a country that has been so long overflowed by a ceaseless influx of Irishmen, the best diggers that ever handled spade or shovel. A plain coffin may be made of four rough deals, with a few second-hand nails to hold them together till the box reaches the bottom, and none but a madman would dream of studding it with extravagant brass knobs, bedecking it with a profuse plate of the same metal, and that again with a ruinous inscription, which no eye may read in the dark, so soon to be bedimmed with dark mould and the slime of worms. As for a hearse and six horses, large enough to contain, and strong enough to draw, ten ton of coals, or twenty butts of porter, caparisoned with plumage-and few things are dearer for their weight than feathers-all to convey an emaciated corpse that probably does not ride six stone, though the man might have once walked twenty-why, the custom is at once so preposterous, and so expensive, that the philosopher is at a loss to know whether he ought to laugh at the folly, or to weep at the waste-for his maxim on such matters is, "if it be done at all, let it be done cheaply."

PICTURE OF WORDSWORTH.

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(Enter PETER with rizzers and cigars-he wheels his vener. able Master's easy-chair to the accustomed nook, and then places SOUTHSIDE so as to face the good old man—sets before each worthy his own little circular table, with its own Argand lamp—rakes and stirs the fire into a roaring glow and stumps out, noiselessly closing behind him the double door, that looks like one of the numerous oakpanels of the wall.)

North. Affectionate and faithful creature!

Tickler. Ha! what worthies have we got here over the chimney-piece?

North (smiling). What do you think?

Tickler (with a peculiar face). Wordsworth, with Jeffrey on the one side, and Brougham on the other!

North. How placid and profound the expression of the whole Bard! The face is Miltonic-even to the very eyes; for though, thank Heaven, they are not blind, there is a dimness about the orbs. The temples I remember shaded with thin hair of an indescribable colour, that in the sunlight seemed a kind of mild auburn-but now they are bare,-and-nothing to break it-the height is majestic. No furrows-no wrinkles on that contemplative forehead-the sky is without a cloud"The image of a Poet's soul,

How calm! how tranquil! how serene!"

It faintly smiles. There is light and motion round the lips, as if they were about to "discourse most eloquent music." In my imagination, that mouth is never mute-I hear it

"Murmuring by the living brooks,

A music sweeter than their own."

Tickler. Is he wont so to sit with folded arms?

North. 'Twas not his habit of old, but it may be nowthere seems to my mind much dignity in that repose. He is privileged to sit with folded arms, for all life long those hands have ministered religiously at the shrine of nature and nature's God; and the Priest, as age advances, may take his rest in the sanctuary, a voiceless worshipper. There is goodness in the great man's aspect-and while I look, love blends with reveHow bland! The features in themselves are almost stern-but most humane the spirit of the grand assemblage

rence.

VOL. III.

Z

354

PICTURE OF JEFFREY.

"Not harsh, nor greeting, but of amplest power

To soften and subdue!"

Tickler. Jeffrey has a fine face. Mere animation is common; but those large dark eyes beam with intellect and sensibility-naturally finest both-alive perpetually and at workyet never weary—as if that work were play-and needed not the restoration of sleep. Wit, in its full acceptation, is a weighty word-and by it I designate the mind of the Man! Taste in him is exalted into Imagination-Ingenuity brightens into Genius. He hath also Wisdom. But nemo omnibus horis sapit; and he made an unfortunate stumble over the Lyrical Ballads. He has had the magnanimity, however, I am told, to repent that great mistake, which to his fame was a misfortune-and, knowing the error of his ways, has returned to the broad path of Nature and Truth. How nobly has he written of Crabbe and Campbell, and Scott and Byron! Incomprehensible contradiction-the worst critic of the age is also the best; but the weeds of his mind are dead-the flowers are immortal. He is no orator, they say, in St Stephen's; but that mouth, even on the silent paper, gives them the lie; and I have heard him a hundred times the most eloquent of speakers. His is a brilliant name in the literature of Scotland.

North. It is-Francis Jeffrey.

Tickler. Brougham in his robes! Lord High Chancellor of England! Stern face and stalwart frame-and his mind, people say, is gigantic. They name him with Bacon. Be it so; the minister he and interpreter of Nature! Henry Brougham, in the eyes of his idolaters, is also an Edmund Burke. Be it so; at once the most imaginative and most philosophical of orators that ever sounded lament over the decline and fall of empires, while wisdom, listening to his lips, exclaimed,

"Was ne'er prophetic sound so full of woe!"

North. Come-come, Tickler-none of your invidious eulogies on the Man of the People.

Tickler. There he sits-a strong man-not about to run a

race

North. But who has run it, and distanced all competitors. There is something great, Tickler, in unconquerable and victorious energy

Tickler. A man of many talents he-some of them seeming

PICTURE OF BROUGHAM.

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almost to be of the highest order. Sword-like acuteness—sunlike perspicacity—

North. And sledge-hammer-like power.

Tickler. There is a wicked trouble in his keen grey eyes

North. No. Restless, but not unhappy.

Tickler. Scorn has settled on that wide-nostril'd probo North. No. It comes and goes-the nose is benevolent. Tickler. Do you say there is no brass on that hard forehead? North. I see but bone-and though the brain within is of intellect "all compact," the heart that feeds it burns with passions not unheroic.

Tickler. King of them all-ambition.

North.

"The last infirmity of noble minds!

Tickler. No-you misunderstand-you misrepresent Milton. He spoke of the love of fame.

North. So do I. In Brougham-do him justice-the two passions are one, -and under its perpetual inspiration he has

"Scorned delights, and lived laborious days,"

till with all his sins, by friend and foe, he is held to be, in his character of Statesman, the first man in England.

Tickler. Are you fuddled?

North. Not to my knowledge; yet that champagne does effervesce in an old man's brain

Tickler. And makes him utter confounded nonsense.

North. No-no-no-my dear friend, I am in sober sadness -and therefore I do not fear to ask you to look on-yonder picture.

Tickler. Where?

North. There!

Tickler. Ay-ay-ay-I cannot look on it-without a throb within my heart—a mist before my eyes,-Sir Walter to the very life!

North. Allan's.1

Tickler. Most admirable.

North. The Minstrel-the Magician-the Man.

1 Sir William Allan's picture, entitled "The Author of Waverley in his Study."

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