A DREAMER AWAKENED. WHERE to what happy land shall we two stray,- Were shall we rest awhile, and build our home? Under what forest arch, or azure dome ?— Come! let us leave the city tumult, dim With smoke and blinding fogs, and faces grim Abandoning a rank, ungrateful soil, Which feeds the stately growth and creeper strong, But leaves to die The trampled meadow sweets, and flowers of humble eye. On either side the wild surrounding sea, Regions of liberty, Islands and continents,-with mountains high, Clear lakes, and dimpling streams, and forests deep, His happy peasant wife, untouch'd by care, And singing (a welcome home) her cheerful song, Awake! thou tarrier in the land of dreams!. The price?-the Blessing!-Without toil of brain Of dreary leisure,-vacant holiday,— A clime that hath no freshness, cloud, nor rain, No change, save from satiety to pain : I say this who have toil'd, and also had my gain! B. C. HOW TO MAKE A LONG DAY. BY LAMAN BLANCHARD. TIME, as we learn from the lips of one of truth's wittiest expositors, can amble, trot, and gallop-and he can also stand still. How absurd to figure him to the mechanical understanding as a traveller who knows but one unvarying pace, and no pause at all from century to century! To measure every day simply by the number of minutes it contains is to act upon a most fallacious and deceptive principle. When we have, with the nicest exactness, estimated the hours according to their duration in seconds, we may determine, with precisely the same accuracy, the value of bank-notes by their weight. The work of the scale in one case would be performed by the clock in the other; the large note and the small, both being of the same size, would be matched by the long hour and the short, each counting a like number of seconds. Nothing is liable to such continual and extraordinary variation as time; the present hour differing so from the next that the minutes of one may be as years in the other; nay, as a vast eternity, ever dying and yet endless. Our lamentations over the shortness of life might be spared when we reflect upon the many long days that fall to the lot of every creature in his turn; though there is little perhaps of liveliness in the thought that all these long days are emphatically and necessarily the dull ones of our year, and that this very dullness regulates the degrees of their duration. Nor is it of much avail to seek comfort by counting up the happier days that have intervened, for these are always found to be the shortest in the calendar. But for the Long Days. Some people cultivate a habit of bespeaking them they have them "to order" as often as they please. These are the persons who, without the slightest reference to any one thing in the world save a friendly sentiment which has long subsisted between themselves and somebody whom perhaps they seldom meet, blandly and kindly, but rashly, madly, and destructively invite the said somebody to come and spend "a long day" with them! Without one solitary thought bestowed on the means of getting through the twelve hours, they ask a fellow-creature to come, with all his preconcerted and extempore tediousness, and help to draw out the dreary dozen into twenty-four! 66 Let no such amiable idiots bewail the brevity of their mortal date, when they can thus lengthen their days at will, simply by inviting an acquaintance to exercise a similar power equally possessed by him! The long day" is sure to be theirs, under such circumstances; no matter whether the wind be in the east or the west, whether the rain pelts or the sun parches, whether the guest be Mr. or Mrs. Damper; that long, long day is destined to be their own, as certain as that they must be at home and down early at breakfast, to welcome their esteemed and excellent visiter, who had with glorious self-denial risen at daybreak, on purpose to enjoy a full brimming measure of time-to make for once a long day of it. "Come and spend a long day with us," said the kind simpleton, as he chanced to reflect that he could contrive to be at home on Tuesday, and that Mrs. Damper (for Mrs. it is, whatever may be the sex) was really a worthy old soul, who would not knowingly be the death of a mite, and almost deserved to be canonized. Yes, and there accordingly sits Mrs. Damper, in a passive, procrastinating state of mind, with a most helpless and inanimate deficiency of every thing except amity, and seeming well content to make the day as long as the friendship to which it is sacrificed. What are you to do? You can't be wondering what o'clock it is before eleven in the morning, or hurrying up luncheon on the heels of breakfast, or ordering dinner at half-past one. Yet what is to be done with the time? How is that long day to be got through; by what magical process is the sun to be sunk in the sea at high noon; and night brought forth before her time, so that Mrs. Damper may go? Questions, these, that should have been thought of before-together with the momentous but utterly disregarded fact that betwen the muchrespected Mrs. Damper and yourself there existed nothing whatever in common, save that friendly sentiment which had originated the ruinous suggestion of spending a long day together. And how should such a sentiment as that, however profound and ardent, act as a spur to the dawdler, Time. Mere respect for a companion's virtues has small power to bestow on the leaden-footed hours the fleetness of the wind. We cannot make dulness delightful by looking all day in the dear creature's face, and thinking how very good she is. In fact, there is no spending a day with Mrs. Damper, though at the rate at which time passes in her company it is very easy to cram a seven days' martyrdom into one. Where every taste and every habit, where temper, disposition, and character all completely differ, it is rather difficult (there is little rashness in this assertion) to make choice of subjects for conversation on which both parties may be agreed; and it is even more difficult still, (this may be affirmed on oath) where one of two persons declines to utter a single word beyond a mere negative or affirmative, to keep up a conversation at all. If you have any doubts upon this point, invite some Damper (male or female) of your acquaintance to spend a long day with you, and then try to talk-not to, nor at, but with her. There is nothing that can make the day long like long-suffering; there is no long suffering like the protracted, weary, ever renewing and ever baffled effort to extract words from the mouth of the tongue-tied, and amuse the unamusable. The pursuit of chit-chat under difficulties hardly describes this effort when the Dampers are concerned; impossibilities meet the attempt at every new essay of what ought to be the pleasantest and most readily reciprocated of duties. They hear and say nothing. Subject after subject, appropriate to the occasion, or speculative and wide of the mark, is started and passed as a topic on which their lips are for ever sealed. Stores of memory, treasures of observation, and the idlest frivolities of the hour, are produced and turned over in succession, and a very possible," or a so I hear," is the full extent of the arduously elicited rejoinder. Silence, or a bare monosyllable is for the most part the cold water they fling in the flushed and glowing face of sociality. To encounter one of the tribe in a room full of agreeable people, and be obliged by courtesy to make a hopeless experiment upon such a nature for two minutes together, and not more, is to feel a chill and cramp visiting the most susceptible parts of the frame; but to have one for a guest, face to face, side by side, for a day, a long day, a live-long day, is to endure more than man, born to be a listener as well as a talker, was meant unmaddened to bear. But when speech fails there is action-which, however, is equally impotent. Some sport is going on, there is a view half a mile off, the garden is to be traversed, and the scantiest possible praise will more than suffice for the rose-trees and the vegetables, though neither are despicable. It is not to be had; all gardens are common-] -places, sports are not understood now, and no view in nature ever equalled by many degrees the picturesque in a portfolio of prints. This seems to point to a hope-which of course upon trial proves to be a forlorn one. The portfolio, rich in number as well as excellence, just serves to fill up a three minutes gap, for by that time every delicacy of art it contains has been, with no especial delicacy of handling, turned over, with or without remark, with or without pause; and the undiminished day demands new avocations, amusements, or sources of interest, which become rare in exact proportion to the tediousness of time's interminable march over the flat and barren ground. There are few things more disheartening, and in some cases even appalling, than to lose a pet subject for the interchange of remark, one on which we have relied for relief, by its falling still-born. Dropped as soon as started, it is gone for that day, and is no more capable of restoration than the plucked rose is of being put back again upon the tree. Another is to be sought for, a topic of promise; but it is nipped like the rest in the bud. We think once more, drearily and wearily, of themes likely to suit, and find them only to fail. The allusion ingeniously made, and the anecdote happily timed, are alike thrown away. They fill up the interval of one minute and forty seconds, but suggesting to the hearer no rejoinder, no retort, no peg whereon to hang a comment longer than a sigh, lapse into silence without a result. Lay the train as you will it sets fire to nothing, and idea after idea rises up, apparently fruitful and teeming, only to die on a sudden without progeny, for want of sympathy to act upon. And perhaps there is on the table all the time, under our eyes, the second volume of a new story, which we have read deeply into already, and are dying inwardly to finish! But how prevail upon Mr. Deadweight before us-Deadweight or Damper, whom we actually asked to come and spend a long day with us-to read too! In vain we push half-a-dozen volumes towards him, or slip an easy, pleasant-looking novelty into his very hand; in vain we recommend, as something vastly curious, and astonishingly short, the passage at page thirty-seven, with that capital bit over leaf. He is not to be tempted; he takes the book with a smile, and in the turning of the leaf it is laid down. Illustrations and all, it is not food for him for an instant; and his easy disengaged look in which calm expectation appears, tells you at once that he is quite prepared for any further exertions which your untiring spirit may make in some new direction for his entertainment. You cannot be too industrious, he is always ready. So drags on the heavy day, dedicated to friendly sentiment-Time, with wings perfectly featherless, and clogs upon his feet, drops from his glass one grain of sand at a time. And yet, when the tardy and reluctant clock proclaims at length, in tones that are as the unbolting and creaking of a dungeon-door, the appointed hour of departure, most cer tainly will Damper give a little start at the last stroke, and protest that it is often quite wonderful how the hours slip away. He can hardly believe it is so late, and actually looks at his watch, which he shows you, asking at the same time if you had dreamed of such a thing! Time has flown indeed, he cries-not one moment of ennui-the day altogether has been such a delightful one-he can never thank you enough, but pledges his word and honour to be with you again soon. And he will, if you don't mind-for he has had in truth a happy time of it, in imperturbably watching and counting up your numerous expedients for his comfort-in remarking your anxiety to relieve his inveterate dulness, your amiable torture under the consciousness of failing; your kind attention in setting before him the very dish he is so fond of -at any other time, but not to be tasted on this occasion; and the wine he prefers-only he is forbidden to drink it just now. His day, in fact, has seemed so short-solely because he has succeeded in making it so long to somebody else. But old Tædium Vita, the great lengthener of days, seizes upon the soul, sometimes, with quite as remorseless a grip, when our companion for the day, is the hearty, bustling, zealous, excellent good fellow, who can never by any possibility do enough for us. Brisk for example:-he is always for making the day long, by devising some occupation for every minute of it; and seems to be of opinion that the time can never be made to pass at all, if not entirely filled up; that the day cannot be got through, while a single second remains unappropriated to a special purpose. He can no more tolerate a rest, whether in conversation, at dinner, or in any social diversion, than Astley could in the case of the drummer in his orchestra. Whether he has you in doors or out, he is resolved on not losing a moment. If you go to spend a long day with him, expect to hear him cry before your hat's off, or "How are you?" has reached the tip of your tongue "Quite well! Come, let's lose no time !" Whether he finds you in Paris or London, where you have been scores of times, or never in your life before-pursuing business, or prowling after pleasure he treats you all the same; and you must have a long day with him, even if it were the last you had to live. Do the honours of the city he will-all of them in twelve hours; he insists. If he gets you out for a twenty minutes' saunter, it is a hundred chances to one but he whisks you up into the Whispering Gallery at St. Paul's, and before you can call a cab off the stand, claps you down, perhaps, among the wax-works in Baker-street. Thence you are probably transported to five houses in succession, at which morning calls are to be made, though you know not a soul that lives there-looking in at an exhibition or two by the way; hurrying off afterwards to some place for letters, and dropping in at another place for luncheon; rushing to the Strand to make a purchase of music, and carrying it to the charming young singer at Stoke-Newington; who, happening to be that moment setting off for the concert in town, has only to be escorted to the Hanover-square Rooms; where we can just hear one song and escape-or we should hardly be in time to take the promised peep into Bedlam (having a ticket), or to see the works at the new Parliament Houses. |