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W. You're a wise child; yet nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, especially while sitting out a tedious French ballet, and tempted to talk by a piquant old Parisian. What horrible ideas they have of music here!

G. Nothing can equal its wretchedness except the profound respect with which they listen to it. Did you ever hear such scream

mouths at its palatial magnificence, whereas
you were too well pleased with it to do that.
G. You are mistaken: I thought but poor-
ly of the place, and told Dick what I thought.
For instance, I am barbarian enough to call
the Grand Front a huge heap of littleness,
and to declare of the whole building that a
more disagreeable tout-ensemble you can no-
where see for love or money; though I ad-ing?
mire the back front, with the terrace and
marble basins and bronze statues. As for the
general taste of the place, everything, I tell
him, is forced and constrained; and even now
you might be shocked to see how I ridicule
the gardens, with their sugar-loaves and
minced-pies of yew, their scrawl-work of box,
their stiff tiresome walks, and their little
squirting jets d'eau.

W. No; except in our own laughter, when the thing was over: I really believe we squalled louder and longer than the singers, and infinitely more in tune. I'd as soon live on maigre as frequent their operas. The music is as like gooseberry tart as it is like harmony.

G. More so, if the gooseberries be sour, and set your teeth on edge. I shan't venW. Mind you keep your treasonable epis-ture on another bite, but confine myself to tle under lock and key, or we may both have Corneille and Molière. What a shame it is an exempt laying his paw on our shoulders, the houses are so thin on Molière nights! and whispering De part le roi in our ears, W. That's because they've had nothing and slipping a lettre de cachet into our hands. but Molière for such a prodigious time. Little as I love Versailles, it is the genteelest don't suppose Addison himself would conplace in the world compared with the Bastile. tinue to be worshipped in London every G. If the mouchards are not on the look-night of the year, and for twenty years runout for me, I am for them, and horribly sus- ning. But Molière has a foremost page in picious it makes me. your good books.

W. I'm sure one sat by me at the theatre last Wednesday; a mighty mean, dirtylooking creature, who would press his snuffbox on me, and talk about les Anglais. He pretended not to suppose me a foreigner; but though I said nothing about that, I was rude and abrupt enough to prove myself English to the backbone.

G. I noticed the ugly rascal. He invited me in an off-hand style to join him in a game at faro or hazard. Probably he keeps a gaming-house himself.

W. Oh, there's nothing dishonorable in doing that, you know, here in Paris. More than a hundred of the highest people in the place do it; and the houses are open all night long for any adventurer who likes to

go in.

G. I fancy our absence form the gamingtables is one reason why we get on so slowly with the natives. They have no sympathy with abstinence of that kind. We must be perfect Huguenots to them.

W. Had you much communication with mon cher ami of the snuff-box? I hope, if he is a mouchard, you are not compromised?

G. I was as reserved and circumspect as a Cambridge freshman. No, I'm quite safe. If I had committed myself, I should have been committed before now.

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G. I owe him a great deal, if only for whiling away dull hours at Cambridge, where he helped me to forget those execrable mathematics which are the alpha and omega of the university articles of faith. Cambridge will never produce a Molière, nor will England either.

W. Don't be ungrateful, child, for national mercies. Cambridge has given us Newton; and if France has her Molière, have we not Dryden and Vanbrugh, and Wycherly and Steele, and a world of others?

G. Perhaps we shall have Walpole on the list of English classics before we have done.

W. Who can tell? Stranger things have happened. Not only Balaam, but Balaam's ass, we find among the prophets. Then why not Sir Robert's son among the poets?

G. Or Thomas Gray himself, riding triumphantly on your argument of an ass. I dare say we have both had our day-dreams of glory at Eton and Cambridge.

W. And are not too old or too sage to have them still. After becoming travelled gentlemen, and initiated in all the mysteries of the Grand Tour, we must let the world see what is in us, and appeal to posteritythat imposing fiction which shall one day be fact!

G. If the world knows no more of us a century hence than it does to-day, posterity

will owe us as little as we owe it. Ah, if one could only rise from the grave in 1839, and search the booksellers' shops to see whether anything of Walpole or Gray be still on sale! To poor aspiring authors, posterity is what eternity is to Addison's Cato -a "pleasing, dreadful thought!" I wonder what our great-grandchildren will think of Pope and Arbuthnot, of Brooke's tragedies and Coventry's dialogues. Unless they're greater fools than I suppose they'll be-one may speak disrespectfully of one's juniors, who are not even going to be born for so considerable a time to come-they will cancel many a literary verdict of our day; raising the beggar from the dunghill, where we leave him, to be a companion of princes, and lowering some of our great Apollos to silent

contempt.

W. Why, plenty of authors have come to this pass in our own experience, whom Pope's "Dunciad" has at once stripped of immortality and immortalized. Every generation produces plenty more-people who make a noise and pother for a few brief moons, and then either die a violent death, like Mr. Pope's victims, by a sort of justifiable homicide, or else perish from natural causes, the most natural in the world.

G. There's rather a dearth at present in our home-literature. Poetry seems to have sunk with the Jacobites

W. Heaven forbid they should rise again together!

G. Spoken like thy father's son. The best thing I have seen lately is a satire called "London," said to be by a young fellow named Johnson, who writes for the magazines. It was published last year, and ought to be better known than it is, being very terse and energetic; every line in it is well-loaded, and goes off with a sharp report that you must listen to.

W. The satire's a sort of translation from Juvenal-isn't it? I've had it in my hands without reading it.

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G. Mr. Johnson is no mere translator, I promise you. His poem is rather a transfusion of Juvenalian vis vitæ into modern veins; such a satire as the old Roman himself would have written had he been a subject of his most sacred majesty the second George.

W. Why, child, you've discovered another star in the heavens.

G. A fixed one, depend on't; and one that you may see with the naked eye without telescope or glasses.

W. Your vision is perhaps too keen. Some eyes, you know, see in the dark; but we're not all gifted after that feline fashion; and meanwhile, Mr. —a—a—a—Johnson—is it? -must try and wait. If he be no falling star he need not be in a hurry, but can go on shining till we have time to look at him.

G. His light won't go out yet, never fear. As for seeing stars in the dark, I don't suppose that faculty is peculiar to me. When else should we notice them? This one will probably be gazetted in the astronomical tables of Parnassus a hundred years hence.

W. In that case the year 1839 ought to have a record of Mr. Gray's prediction as well as Mr. Johnson's sign in the zodiac. How would

66 "London" go down here at Paris? Is it smart enough to take with the readers of Messieurs Boileau and Voltaire ? Mr. Pope is already a prodigious favorite here, and the French are capital judges of

satire.

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POWERFUL EFFECT OF IMAGINATION.- several bottles of water, which had such an When the waters of Glastonbury were at the effect, that she soon laid aside one crutch, height of their reputation, in 1751, the follow- and not long after the other. This was exing story was told by a gentleman of charac- tolled as a most miraculous cure, but the man ter:-An old woman of the workhouse at protested to his friends that he had imposed Yeoril, who had long been a cripple and upon her, and fetched water from an ordimade use of crutches, was strongly inclined nary spring. I need not inform my reader, to drink of the Glastonbury waters, which that the force of imagination had spent itself, she was assured would cure her lameness. and she relapsed into her former infirmity.The master of the workhouse procured her | Blackwood's Magazine.

From Fraser's Magazine.

EDMUND BURKE.

SOME years have now elapsed since our readers were gratified by the publication of the Correspondence of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, between the years 1744 and the period of his decease in 1797. The letters have now taken their place among the Kterary treasures that we owe to the distinguished man by whom they were written; and they form an excellent supplement to his great works. They were edited without the least affectation by Earl Fitzwilliam and Sir Richard Bourke, and the public were told, for the first time, the reason why the manuscripts which Burke was known to have left had not sooner been given to the world.

Executors, like other men, must pay the tribute of mortality. Dr. Lawrence and the Bishop of Rochester both died before they had finished their labor of love. The manuscripts were then taken into the care of the late Earl Fitzwilliam; but he, too, died; and it was not until Burke had been sleeping peacefully for almost fifty years in the church of Beaconsfield, that his letters saw the light.

Arran Quay, in the metropolis of Ireland; but his health being very delicate, and a tendency to consumption having shown itself, he was after some years removed to his grandfather's residence at Castle Town Roche. As of nearly all young geniuses, tales have been related about his love of learning, and his superiority to the children among whom he was placed. His brother Richard always declared that Edmund had monopolized all the talent of the family; and that while the other children were always playing, he was always reading. The boy was father of the man; seldom, indeed, it was when the statesman was not busy. How long he remained at Castle Town is not very well known, but it seems probable that five years was the period. He then returned to Dublin, and shortly afterwards was sent to Ballitore. Here his acquaintance with the Shackletons commenced. Nothing is more honorablę to Burke than the manner in which he preserved, during all the brilliant scenes of his life, the sacred remembrance of his school-days and of his boyish friendships.

ing to some of the great political leaders of his time, he never was otherwise than kind, frank, and unassuming to the humble Richard Shackleton, the old steward, and his poor relations.

When the whole world was ringing with It is needless to say that they confirmed the fame of the great orator, his heart still the impression of his character that all judi- yearned towards the places and the compancious readers of his works must have enter-ions of his early days. Proud and unbendtained. They had, however, scarcely been well read and considered before the world was astonished by another French revolution. From France this democratic spirit spread with the rapidity of electricity over all Europe, and no country was free from its effects. It turned the minds of all thinkers back upon the history of the last seventy years, and kindled a fresh interest in the writings of Edmund Burke. To some people it might seem that the value of his speculations had diminished, while to others it might appear that his wisdom was more and more proved. It cannot, therefore, be deemed unnecessary, or of little consequence, if after the lapse of many years, we endeavor to give an impartial consideration to the writings of this great man.

Edmund Burke was born in a house on

After spending some years at Ballitore, he entered Trinity College, at the age of fifteen. Of his college life not much is known, although some of his admirers will have it that his academical career was highly distinguished. He certainly was elected scholar in 1746; but it does not appear that he was considered anything more than an ordinary, clever young man, steady in disposition, and ardent in the pursuit of knowledge.

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He was of course a dabbler in poetry; and his biographer, Mr. Prior, as usual with biographers, thinks that his verses have great

there was a theatre as noble as any that Greece and Rome offered in their proudest days. William Pitt was at that time the most brilliant orator; and all that he was he had made himself by his eloquence and patriotism. The political world, indeed, was not very stirring. The reign of the Pelhams was undisturbed. The very name of opposition appeared to be forgotten. Garrick had just become manager of Drury Lane; Rey

merit. His translation of the conclusion of the second "Georgic" is much better done than most of our college prize translations; but it is ridiculous to consider his poetical effusions as anything more than good academical verses. Every year such rhymes are abundantly poured out; and every year, after being read by admiring friends and relations, they are forgotten, or are only brought out on family anniversaries from the treasuries of kind aunts or of exulting grand-nolds was busy at his easel; Fielding strug

mammas.

He seems to have acquired a good stock of miscellaneous knowledge; but he did not differ much from his fellow-students. We are told of his great love for English authors, and it is not our intention to question the sincerity of his love. It is certain, however, that his learning was too much the learning of colleges; that for a thinker so great and original he showed not much discrimination. This even was characteristic of his later years. Burke often quoted Shakspeare, and often praised him; but he never showed much reverence for the greatest of all dramatists. His favorite author was Milton, whom he placed at the head of English literature. With him, however, he classed an author of very inferior merit. He loved Young so much, that he is said to have been able to repeat nearly all the Night Thoughts by heart. Nay, he went even further than this in his admiration. On a fly-leaf of the volume which he used to carry about with him, he wrote:

"Jove claimed the verse old Homer sung, But God himself inspired Young."

On the 23d of April, 1747, his name was entered at the Middle Temple; and in 1750 he left Ireland, with the ostensible purpose of keeping his law terms in London.

A very interesting letter to one of his young friends is in existence, and from it we learn his first impressions of England.

gling with a broken constitution, and a not very honorable name; and brave Samuel Johnson residing in a humble dwelling in Gough-square, and writing the Rambler for his daily bread.

All the young stranger's enthusiasm for the living did not prevent him from paying more than one visit to the resting-place of the illustrious dead. He stood among the monuments in Westminster Abbey, and unutterable thoughts flashed across his mind. After life's fitful fever, the statesman and author sleep well! The struggles, the enmities, the heart-breakings, the rivalries, the aspirations influence no longer; poverty, misery, abasement are at length vanquished, and a peaceful halo of glory is resting on their graves.

On describing some of his sensations to his early correspondent, two or three sentences, exquisitely characteristic of Burke's habits and feelings, fell from his pen. Even then, with all his ambition and enthusiasm, he had no desire to sleep in the great Abbey; and this love for a more humble grave continued during the whole of his long, arduous, and glorious career. He was always a lover of · his household gods and family fireside; and declared that the prospect of a quiet grave among his kinsmen, in a little country churchyard, was to him more pleasing than the proud mausoleum of a Capulet.

Little is known about his proceedings during the first year of his residence in London. His declared object, of course, was the study The young adventurer soon found, how- of the law; and, perhaps, for some time, he ever, that learning and genius were little may have thought that he was fulfilling his patronized, and that he must work his own father's wishes by acquiring a good stock of way. In rather bombastic language we find legal knowledge; but, as is the case with him declaring, that the fine arts still flour- many imaginative minds, the charms of ished; that poetry raised her enchanting literature proved too seductive; and his voice to heaven; that history arrested the heart, never much attached to the less enwings of Time; that philosophy, the queen gaging mistress, soon forsook her for her of arts and daughter of heaven, daily ex- more attractive rival. His health, too, was tended her empire; that fancy was sporting not so robust as it afterwards became; and on airy wings; and that metaphysics spun this, perhaps, might appear to him a sufher cobwebs. The House of Commons raised ficient excuse for allowing many a legal folio strong emotions in his breast. He felt that I to gather dust upon his shelves. His vaca

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tions were generally spent in excursions| Yet Burke was more enthusiastic, more His terms fast succeeded chivalrous, more imaginative, more impaseach other; but whatever may have been sioned at seventy than at twenty-five. All the reason, and however much his poor father the splendid visions of youth played round may have been disappointed, it is certain, the death-bed of the gray-haired old man. that after passing the usual time at his legal To him the world was still beautiful, life was studies, he was not called to the bar, and a noble drama, love and truth were not that law was soon afterwards abandoned. At all times he was open, Burke became a man without a profession. straightforward, and manly; but it was only He cut every cable that bound him to the as years rolled on, and time marked the moorings of his youth; and leaving the com- wrinkles on the philosopher's brow, that his mon track, by which a safe and sure voyage sterling qualities were richly decorated with might be effected, the young adventurer the graces of humanity. At twenty-five, he launched out alone, on an unknown sea, with- had to fight his way to power and glory; out any guidance but his own brave heart, at seventy, honor and fame were his in an and his ardent and enterprising soul. abundant measure. He had had rather an earnest game to play, yet he had played it like a man he had seen much of baseness, cowardice, and perfidy, yet his heart had not become cold, his sympathies for his fellowman were not languid. Around the bed on which he was dying, the echoes of a mighty earthquake were heard, a great change was coming upon the nations, and each man seemed determined to do that which was right in his own eyes. The fire of the old statesman glowed in its ashes. Over the whole world his voice resounded, and all ears were turned to listen, some in wonder, some in fear, some in admiration at the brilliant death-notes of that "old man eloquent."

It is not known what were the subjects that first employed his pen. They were, doubtless, of little consequence, or they would not have been suffered to pass into oblivion. We hasten to his first important publication.

In the year 1756, the Vindication of Natural Society was published. This work, the first of Burke's acknowledged productions, deserves a more attentive consideration than it has generally received. It has often been said that the fruits of his mind ripened before the blossoms appeared, that his early works were cold and unimpassioned, while, as he grew older, his style became more declamatory, and his eloquence more gorgeous. This is, undoubtedly, in some respects true; although this imitation of Bolingbroke proves it not to be so unreservedly true as it has been asserted. Burke did not resemble Bacon so much in this mental characteristic, as in others of much more importance.

If we look only at the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, and compare it with the Reflections on the French Revolution, there is, indeed, a most striking difference in the style of the two celebrated works. The first was written in the author's youth, the latter in his old age: how strange, then, it has been said, is the mental phenomenon that is here exhibited! Youth is generally the time of imagination, of passion, of love, of poetry, of eloquence; old age the period when the judgment is matured, when the passions have subsided, when poetry, rhetoric, enthusiasm, and all the glittering dreams of early days, charm us no longer, when the world has lost its attractions, when the freshness of its colors has passed away, when one illusion after another has left us, and we smile bitterly and sadly at many things that once appeared noble, beautiful, and true.

Circumstances undoubtedly have a great effect upon men. A minute's delay at a railway station may permanently influence the history of years. It would be a great error to imagine that Burke's eloquence, passion,

and declamation were the effect of some mental growth, that only attained perfection during his later years. This Vindication of Natural Society is not, in many passages, different from the Letters on a Regicide Peace, so far as mere style is considered. It would seem to indicate that Burke had several styles which he could wield at will; and that he sometimes adopted one, and sometimes another, as he thought it might best answer his present purpose. No author could ever write with more fervid eloquence, no author could ever write with more purity and simplicity. Of his simple style, the Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, written, it has been said, about the age of twenty, and the Observations on a late State of the Nation, written about the age of thirty-nine, are examples. The Vindication of Natural Society, written at twenty-five, and the Letter to a Noble Lord, written at sixty-six, are

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