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He loveth no face more than a smiling one; a needlessly serious one serveth him for the whetting of his wit, as cold flints strike out quick sparks of fire.

His humour shows itself to all things and on all occasions. I found him once bowing on the stairs to a poor alarmed devil of a rat, who was cringing up in a corner; he was politely offering him the retreat honourable, with an "After you, Sir, if you would honour me." I settled the point of etiquette, by kicking the rat down stairs, and received a frown from my humane friend, for my impatient inhumanity.

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His opinions of men and things have some spice of singularity in them. He conceives it to be a kind of puppyism in pigs that they wear tails. He defines a great coat to be a Spenser, folio edition, with tailpieces." He calls Hercules a manmidwife, in a small way of business; because he had but twelve labours. He can tell you why Horace ran away from the battle of Philippi: it was to prove to the Romans that he was not a lame poet. He describes your critics to be a species of doorporters to the temple of fame; and says it is their business to see that no persons slip in with holes in their stockings, or paste buckles for diamond ones; not that they alwavs perform this duty honestly. He calls the sun "the yellow hair'd laddie; the prince of darkness, "the Black Prince;" or, when he displeases his sense of virtue, "Monsieur De Vil." He will ask you, "What is the distinctive difference between a sighheaver and a coal-heaver?" You cannot divine; he tells you, "a coalheaver has a load at his back, which he can carry; a sigh-heaver has one at his heart, which he can not carry." He asserts that the highest delight o' this side the grave, is to possess a pair of bagpipes, and to know that no one within forty miles can play them. Acting on this pleasure, he bought a pair of a Scotch bagpiper, and having pulled down the antlers of his ancestors triumphs, suspended them in their place, to the amazement and amusement of all beholders.

"What i' the name of all the saints but Saint Anthony, have you there over against the wall!" cries his first visitor. "Only an instrument of torture, brought from the Spanish inquisition, by a celebrated traveller: it is used where the rack fails, and it always answers," was his reply. A second questioned him, and it was a surgical instrument, resorted to but in extreme cases of stranguary; and then he quoted a celebrated opinion of one Doctor Shylock, something about a certain affection, felt by musical susceptibles, on hearing a bagpipe "sing i' the nose." A third questioner was answered, "It is an instrument of war, used by the highlanders, which, played in the rear of their clans, screws them up to such a desperate determination of getting their lugs out of the hearing of it, that, rushing onward, they overturn every thing opposed to them,-men, horses, walls, towers, and forts." He professes a great respect for rats, because he has been told that if a bagpipe is played where they haunt, they leave the place, either as a matter of taste or decency. He bought these pipes, as I have said before, of a poor Highlander, giving him five guineas for them; which, as he boasts, sent him home like a gentleman to Scotland, where he bought a landed estate, and is in a probable way of coming into parliament for a Scotch borough. And here he somewhat varied the old proverb, by saying, that "It was an ill bagpipe that blowed nobody good." Indeed, if he quotes a proverb at all, it is "with a difference;" such as "Cobler, stick to your wax,”- -a thing more practicable than sticking to his last, as the olden proverb adviseth. He will

say "What is bred in the bone will not come out with the skewer,”which, to those epicurean persons who have the magpie propensity of prying into marrow-bones, must simplify the proverb to their fat-headed comprehensions. Some one used that very trite old proverb in his hearing, of necessity having no laws; upon which, wilfully misunderstanding it, he remarked, "I am very sorry for it: it is surely a pity, considering

I suspect that there is an English antipathy to Frenchmen, in his selection of the appellative "Monsieur."

the number of learned clerks she might give employ to, if she had. Her chancellor would have no sinecure of it, I trow; hearing the petitions of her poor, broken-fortuned, and bankrupt subjects, would take up all his terms, though every term were a year, and every year a term." Thus he unites humour with seriousness, and seriousness with humour.

He is a polite man, though a wit; which is not what wits usually are; they would rather lose a life than a joke. I have heard him express his detestation of those wits who sport with venomed weapons, and wish them the fate of Laertes, who, in his encounter with Hamlet, got his weapon changed, and was himself wounded with the poisoned foil he had designed for his antagonist. I mean by saying he is a polite man, that he is naturally, not artificially, polite; for the one is but a handsome, frank-looking mask, under which you conceal the contempt you feel for the person you seem most diligent to please; it is a gilt-edged envelope to a blank valentine; a shell without a nut; a courtezan in a fair Quaker's chaste satinity and smooth sleekness; the arch devil in a domino-the other is, as he describes it, taking the hat and cloak of your heart off, and standing uncovered and unconcealed in the presence of worth, beauty, or any one amiable quality.

In short, he is a humane man; and humanity is your only true politeness. I have seen him ridicule that politeness which contents itself with bowing and back-bending, very humorously. In walking through his garden, a tree or tall flower, touched by the passing wind, bowed its head towards him: his hat was off, and the bow was returned with an old school ceremoniousness and etiquette that would, perhaps, have cured Lord Chesterfield, that fine polisher of exteriors, of some of his hollow-nutted notions of manners. In this spirit, I saw him bow very profoundly to the giants, as he passed by St. Dunstan's church. He had asked his friend Hobbes or Dobbs (I know not which) what was the hour? Before Hobbes could reply, the giants had informed him: "Thank you, gentlemen," said he,

bowing to them with a graceful hu

mour.

I have said he is a humane man, He once detected an unintimate cat picking his cold mutton, "on a day, alack the day!" for he was then too poor to spare it well. Some men would have thrown a poker at her; others would have squandered away a gentlemanly income of oaths, and then have sworn by private subscription; an absent man, had he been present, would perhaps have thrown his young son and heir, or his gold watch and seals, at her; another, perhaps, his wig ;-he contented himself with saying, "I have two or three doubts, (which I shall put forth as much in the shape of a half-crown pamphlet as possible), as to the propriety of your conduct in eating my mutton;" and then he brushed her off with his handkerchief, supped on half a French roll and a gooseberry, and went happy to bed.

Some of his jokes have a practicality about them; but they neither have the quarter-staff jocoseness of Robin Hood, that brake heads let them be never so obtuse and profound; nor the striking effect of that flourishing sprig of the green Isle, that knocks down friend and foe with a partiality truly impartial.

He is no respecter of persons: the beggar may have a joke of him, (and something better), though they do not happen to apply exactly "between the hours of eleven and four." Those handmaids of Pomona, who vend her fruits about our streets, seem, by their voices, to be legitimate daughters of old Stentor; moie especially shall I specify those damsels who sell walnuts. To one of these our humourist once addressed himself" to the effect following: "

"Pray, Mrs. Jones, will you crack me fifty walnuts with the same voice you cry them with?"

At dinner, there is purposely but one glass on the table; his lady apclogizes for her seeming negligence;

Time, my dear, hath no moie than one glass; and yet he contrives to see all his guests under the table

kings, lord-mayors, and pot-boys."

If he lends you a book, for the humour of the thing, he will request you, as you love clean shoes on a

lord-mayor's day, to make no thumb and-butter references in the margin; and will, moreover, ask you whether you have studied that modern "art of book-keeping," which has superseded the Italian method," viz. of never returning the books you borrow?

He has a very ingenious mode of putting names and significations on what he calls the brain-rack, and dislocating their joints into words: thus tortured and broken into pieces, Themistocles loses his quality, but increases his quantity, and becomes the Miss Tokeleys; the Cyclades, by the same disorder, become sick ladies; a" delectable enjoyment" is a deal-legged-table pleasure; &c. &c. pun without end. These are what he denominates punlings.

For his puns, they fall as thick from him as leaves from autumnbowers. Sometime since, he talked of petitioning for the office of punpurveyor to his Majesty ; but ere he had written and your petitioner shall ever" pun, it was bestowed on the yeoman of the guard. He still, however, talks of opening business as "pun-wright in general to his Majesty's subjects," for the diffusion of that pleasant small ware of wit; and intends to advertise 66 puns wholesale, retail, and for exportation. N. B. 1.-A liberal allowance made to captains, and gentlemen going to the East or West Indies. Hooks, Peakes, and Pococks, supplied on moderate terms. Worn-out sentiments and clap-traps taken in exchange.-N. B. 2. May be had in a large quantity in a great deal box, price five acts of sterling comedy, per packet; or in small quantities in court-plaister-sized boxes, price one melodrama and an interlude, per box.-N. B. 3.-The genuine are sealed with a Munden grin; all others are counterfeits. Long live Apollo!" &c. &c.

His wit is what he describes the true wit to be: it is brilliant and playful as a fencing-foil; it is as pointed too, and yet it hurts not; it

is as quick at a parry, and as harmless at a thrust. But it were á vanity in me to attempt to pourtray my humourous friend, so that all who run may know him. His likeness cannot be taken: you might as well hope to paint the cameleon of yesterday by the cameleon of to-day; or ask it as a particular favour of a flash of lightning to sit for a wholelength portrait: or Proteus to stand while you chiselled out a personification of Immutability. He is everchanging, and yet never changed. I cannot reflect back, by my dim mirror, the "flashings and outbreakings of his fiery mind," when he is in what he terms "excellent fooling" (but it is, to my thinking, true wisdom); sparkle follows sparkle, as spark followed spark from the well-bethumped anvil of patten-footed Vulcan. I give up the attempt.

This is the humorous, and therefore happy, man. Dost envy him, thou with the rugged brow, and pale, dejected cheek? When Fortune frowns at thee, do thou laugh at her: it is like laughing at the threatenings of a bully,-it makes her think less of her power over thee. Wouldst thou be such a man, one-hearted Selfishness, who hast no sympathy with the suffering, no smile with the happy? Feel less for thyself, and more for others, and the happiness of others shall make thee happy.

As he has walked up the hill of life with an equal pace, and without any breathless impatience for, or fear at, the prospect beyond, and the journey has been gentle and serene, so, I have no doubt, will be the end of it. Wishing him, and all who contribute to the happiness of their fellow-men, either by good humour, or goodness of any kind, the same silent conclusion to a noiseless life, I shake his and their hands; and, while the journey lasts, may they have May for their weather, and as many flowers for the roadside as Flora can afford to those who will stoop for them: and inns of plenteousness and joy, at which to sojourn, &c. &c. C. W.

MAJOR SCHILL.

FROM A MANUSCRIPT JOURNAL.

In the year 1813 I made a tour of a considerable portion of the north of Germany. From the Elbe to the Isle of Rugen my route lay through the country which had been the principal scene of the celebrated Schill's operations. The peasantry were full of the recollection, and when they were not afraid of finding a spy, or smarting under a recent visit from the French, they were boundless in their histories of the miraculous atchievements of the Brandenburgh Hussar." -Those narratives had gradually grown romantic, little as romance was to be expected from a boor on the edge of the Baltic. But the valour and eccentricity of Schill's attempt, his bold progress, and his death in the midst of fire and steel, would have made a subject for the exaggerations and melancholy of romance in any age.

A thousand years ago a German bard would have seen his spirit drinking in the halls of Odin, out of a Gaelish skull, and listening to the harps of the blue-eyed maids of Valhalla, bending around him with their sweet voices, and their golden hair. Arminius might have been no more than such a daring vindicator of his country; and, but for his narrower means, and more sudden extinction, Schill might have earned from some future Tacitus the fine and touching panegyric, "Liberator haud dubie Germaniæ, et qui non primordia populi Romani, sicut alii reges ducesque, sed florentissimum imperium lacesserit; præliis ambiguus, bello non victus, septem et triginta annos vitæ explevit. Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes, Græcorum annalibus ignotas, qui sua tantum mirantur, Romanis haud perinde celebris, dum vetera extollimus, recentium incuriosi." Schill was thirty-six, but a year younger than Arminius at his death. The rude prints and plaster images at the German fairs, gave him a vigorous figure, and a bold physiognomy. He was active in his exercises, superior to fatigue, and of acknowledged intrepidity; fond of adventure in the spirit of his corps, and his natural enthusiasm VOL. III.

deepened and magnified by some intercourse with the Secret Societies of Germany, which, with much mysticism, and solemn affectation of knowledge, certainly inculcated resistance to the tyrant of Europe, as among the first of duties.

He was said to be more distinguishable for bravery than for military knowledge or talent. But the man who could elude or overpower all opposition in the heart of an enemy's conquest for months together, must have had talent as well as heroism. Schill's first operation was to pass over the Elbe, and try the state of the public mind in the country round Magdeburgh.

It is still difficult to ascertain, whether his enterprize had a higher authority. The situation of Prussia, after the battle of Jena, in 1806, was one of the most deplorable suffering. The loss of independence, the loss of territory, the plunder of the public property, and the ruin of the Prussian name in Europe were felt like mortal wounds. But the personal insolence of the French, who have always lost by their insolence what they had gained by their rapine, struck deeper into the national mind. The innumerable private injuries to honour and feeling, the gross language, and the malignant tyranny of the French military, inflamed the people's blood into a fever of impatience and revenge. I have often expressed my surprise, on hearing those stories of French atrocity, that no German had taken up the pen to transmit them as a record and a warning to posterity. One evening, standing on the banks of the Elbe, and overlooking the fine quiet landscape of the islands towards Haarburg, I remember to have made the observation, after hearing a long detail of the sufferings of the peasantry, whose white cottages studded the scene at my feet. "My dear sir," said an old German officer, "My countrymen are like that river; their whole course has been through sandbanks and shallows, but they make their way to the end at last." Then, indulging

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his metaphor, and waving his hand as if to follow the windings of the stream, "I am not sure but that this very habit of reluctance to unnecessary exertion, may have allowed them to collect comforts by the way, which neither Englishman nor Frenchman would have been calm enough to gather. If that river had been a torrent, should we now be looking on those islands?" There may be some experience in the old soldier's answer, but if Germany is slow to give a history of her misfortunes, she ought not to leave her heroes in oblivion. Schill deserves a better memoir than a stranger can give.

In this fermentation of the public mind, the North of Germany was suddenly denuded of troops to form a part of the grand imperial army, marching against Austria. Slight garrisons were placed in the principal towns, and the general possession of the open country was chiefly left to the gendarmerie. Schill, then major of one of the most distinguished regiments in the service, the Brandenburgh hussars, one morning suddenly turned his horse's head towards the gate of Berlin, on the dismissal of the parade, gave a shout for "King and Country," and at the head of this regiment burst from the Glacis. Though the whole garrison of Berlin, French and Prussian, were on the parade, there was no attempt to intercept this bold manœuvre. They were thunderstruck, and by the time that orders were determined on, Schill was leagues off, galloping free over the sands of Prussia. The officers of his corps were among the best families of Brandenburgh, and some fine young men of rank joined It is uncerhim immediately. tain, to this hour, whether he was not secretly urged by his court to make the experiment on the probabilities of insurrection. But Napoleon was too near to allow of open encouragement, and at the demand of De Marsan, the French ambassador, who was, as Trinculo says, "Viceroy over the King," Schill was proclaimed an enemy to the state..

His first attempt was the surprize of Magdeburgh, the principal fortress of the new kingdom of Westphalia, and famous to English ears for the imprisonment of Trenck. He ad

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vanced to the gates, and after sus-
taining a vigorous skirmish with the
garrison, in which the French were
on the point of being cut off from
the town, was forced to abandon an
enterprize, which was probably un-
a more open
dertaken merely as
mode of declaring, that "war in pro-
was levied against the op-
cinct
pressors of the population. He then
plunged into Westphalia. His plans
in this country have been often can-
vassed; for the Germans are, in a
vast proportion to the English, mi-
litary disputants; and the names of
their highest soldiers, from Frederic
down to Blucher and Bulow, are
discussed without mercy and with-
out end. Schill shares the common
fate, and all the armies of Germany
would not have been enough to fill
up the outline of the campaign,
which I have heard sketched for him
round the fire of a table d'hote in
the north. According to those tac-
ticians he should have marched di-
rect upon Cassel, and made him-
self master of Jerome Buonaparte.
He should have charged up to the
gates of Berlin, and delivered the
country. He should have attacked
the rear of the grand army, and
given time for the arrival of the
Arch-duke. He should have made
an irruption into the French terri-
tory in its unguarded state, and
compelled Napoleon to consult the
safety of Paris. To all this the na-
tural answer was, that Schill had
but from four to six hundred hus-
sars, and a few infantry, deserters
from the line.

With those he re-
mained for nearly three months mas-
ter of the communications of West-
phalia, continually intercepting of
ficers, functionaries, and couriers,
and either eluding or beating every
detachment sent to break up his
In one of his expe-
flying camp.
ditions he took Marshal Victor with
his suite and despatches, on his
way to join the army before Vienna.
But it affords an extraordinary evi-
dence of the apathy, or the terror
of Germany, that, during this period
of excitement, his recruits never
amounted to two hundred men. It,
however, grew obviously perilous to
leave this daring partizan free to
raise the spirit of the country, and
a considerable force was despatched
A corps from Cassel
against him.

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