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Howley is a poet. Mr. Davis is called as witness. He proves that Mr. Howley was an elegiac poet; that he was a lyric poet,-that he wrote an Ode to Winter, beginning "All hail;" that he had answered an advertisement to the effect that "any person competent to write ballads of a superior description, and in serious style, might hear of occupation ;"-that he was a descriptive poet, and had written a tender piece, commencing with

"How beautiful the country doth appear,

At this time of the year!"

Then various wits spoke for and against the charge; and Mr. Shiel gave an oration upon poetry in general; concluding with a peroration touching the magnificent calm of the poet while there is war, and want, and tumult, and sorrow all around. him. "Oh! there is an earthquake under his feet, and the soil heaves with a tremulous impatience, and the seas rush from their beds, and the air is darkened, and the vulture screams, and the palaces and the temples rock with a wide-spreading and allinvolving fury; but he stands erect amidst the convulsion, creeps out of the ruins, sings his song of gladness in the desert, and comes once more into the breeze and the sunshine." And then Mr. Quin, the editor of 'The Day,' rushes from his seat to embrace Mr. Shiel, and says "Sir, I honour ye. Dine with me to-morrow."

Then, during that brief intimacy with the renowned and the influential, I had the free admis

sions of the theatres. What a privilege was that! Drury was in ashes. But there was Covent Garden, with the two Kembles and Young. O'Neil and Kean were not as yet. But there were Munden, and Fawcett, and Emery.

They tell me there are no actors now. Perhaps not. I cannot judge. There are some things that look to me ever fresh, as of old-the face of nature, the smile of love, the gush of poetry, the wisdom above all wisdom. But for meaner things, surely

"Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim."

There

And with this brief experience I went back to my native town, to be one of those who bore the honoured name of "best public instructor." My range of pupils was very limited. I had little honour in my vocation, and less profit. The world in which I lived was a very singular one. was the Court atmosphere; and the Collegiate atmosphere; and the Corporate atmosphere-all very much opposed to a free inflation of that air which was called the Liberty of the Press. Yet I was resolved to be independent, and I was unaffectedly patriotic. I hated Napoleon with a true English fervour. That covered some of my sins in not having an undoubting faith in the rulers of the day, with their ex-officio informations. I had some compliments to soothe me. Sir Wil

liam Herschel came to thank me for telling the people that they were blockheads for attributing the high floods to him ;-and the vicar once quoted my leader in a fast-day sermon.

SAINT JOHN'S GATE.

WHEN Samuel Johnson first saw St. John's Gate, he "beheld it with reverence," as he subsequently told Boswell. But Boswell gives his own interpretation of the cause of this reverence. St. John's Gate, he says, was the place where the Gentleman's Magazine' was originally printed: and he adds, "I suppose, indeed, that every young author has had the same kind of feeling for the magazine or periodical publication which has first entertained him. " He continues, with happy naïveté, "I, myself, recollect such impressions from the 'Scot's Magazine.' Mr. Croker, in his valuable notes to Boswell's 'Johnson,' has a very rational doubt of the correctness of this explanation: "If, as Mr. Boswell supposes, Johnson looked at St. John's Gate as the printing-office of Cave, surely a less emphatical term than reverence would have been more just. The 'Gentleman's Magazine' had been, at this time, but six years before the public, and its contents were, until Johnson himself contributed to improve it, entitled to anything rather than reverence; but it is more probable that Johnson's reverence was excited by the recollections connected with the ancient gate itself, the last relic of the once extensive and magnificent priory of the

heroic knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive dilapidations."

More than a century is passed away since Johnson, from whatever motive, beheld with reverence the old gate of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. There it still remains, in a quarter of the town little visited, with scarcely another relic of antiquity immediately about it. Extensive improvements are going forward in its neighbourhood; and it may probably be one day swept away with as ruthless a hand as that of the Protector Somerset, who blew up the stately buildings of the hospital to procure materials for his own palace in the Strand. May it be preserved from the most complete of all destroyers-the building speculator! It has, to me, a double interest. It is the representative of the days of chivalrous enthusiasm on the one hand, and of popular improvement on the other. The Order, which dates from the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, has perished, even in our own time-an anomaly in the age up to which it had survived. The general desire for knowledge, which gave birth to the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' is an increasing power, and one which depends upon no splendid endowments and no stately mansions for its maintenance and ornament. Cave, the printer, was the accidental successor of the Prior of the Hospital of St. John. But, representing the freedom of public opinion, he was the natural successor of the despotic power of a secret society. At

VOL. II.

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any rate, the accident invests St. John's Gate with an interest which would not otherwise belong to it; and in its double character we may not be ashamed to behold it "with reverence."

It was in 1841 that I first saw St. John's Gate. Turning out of St. John's Street to enter St. John's Lane-a narrow street which runs obliquely from that wide thoroughfare-the Gate presented itself to view, completely closing the road, and leaving a passage into St. John's Square only through the archway. The large masses of stone of which the gate is composed were then much decayed; but the groined arch had recently been restored. A huge board which surmounted the archway informed the few passers-by that they might here solace themselves with the hospitalities of the 'Jerusalem Tavern;' and, lest they might dread to be subjected to any of the original notions of abstinence which a pilgrim might once have been expected to bring within these walls, a window of a house or bulk on the eastern side of the gateway displayed all the attractions of bottles with golden labels of 'Cordial Gin,' 'Pine-apple Rum,' and 'Real Cognac.' Passing under the arch, I perceived that the modern hospitium ran through the eastern side of the gateway, and connected with premises at either end. Invited To the Parlour,' I entered. A comfortable room was that parlour, with its tables checquered with many a liquor-stain; and genius had here its due honours, for Dr. Johnson's favourite seat was carefully pointed out. But the tavern

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