kidney, such as Ben, and Shakspeare, and Dick Corbet (pride of the lawn) would have chimed in with. Tories, of the Ambrosial sect, understood, that in order to be a gentleman it is necessary to be a man." The dramatic individuality of the compotators is certainly, in the main, most distinctly pronounced, and surprisingly well kept up. Wilson plumed himself upon it: "In those divine dialogues, the Noctes Ambrosianæ," he says (reviewing Davy's Salmonia, where the interlocutors have no individuality at all), "you could not change the name of one speaker for another, even for one retort courteous, or quip modest, without the misnomer being instantly detected by the dullest ear." The scope of the Dies Boreales may preclude the same felicitous effect; at any rate it is no longer patent in the graver debates in which to Hogg, and Tickler, and Mullion, have succceded Seward, and Buller, and Talboys. Alas! though, that the Dies should so soon have finished their course. How gratefully welcome they were; and how cordially we looked forward to each new session of Christopher under Canvass, and to a prolonged continuance of the series. They were worthy of the ripe, yet green old age which had haunted Ambrose's in its prime :-sobered, solemnised, saddened—"but that not much"-mellow with rich but unusual tints, with the soft western glow of a large soul's sunset. Who would have thought the two last of all were penned by a hand trembling with paralysis, and almost illegible to the compositor, though so readily perused by his friends and students. In reading them we were reminded of the elder Humboldt's saying, “I have always contemplated old age as a more pleasing, more charming period of life than youth; and now that I have reached this term of life, 1 find my expectations almost surpassed by the reality. . . . Meditation becomes purer, stronger, and more continuous." The meditative character of the Dies is full of winning tenderness and manly strength combined; the buoyant, often boisterous spirits of midnight revelries have been toned down, and chastened, and a little dulled-as became one who felt that, in his own case, η ΝΥΞ προέκοψεν, ἡ δὲ ΗΜΕΡΑ ἤγγικεν. Highly therefore we prize these the last records of his literary career— to which we may apply lines of his, and call them DAYS divine, Closing on NIGHTS diviner still, that leave New treasures to augment th' unbounded store An Evening in Furness Abbey (1829). Professor Wilson had well-nigh fulfilled his threescore years and ten when he died. By man's prevision, he might, with his constitution, have been expected to reach fourscore, without his strength even then being labour and sorrow. But it was not so to be. A quarter of a century ago, he playfully canvassed the term of human life, and declared the limit of threescore and ten to be "quite long enough." "If a man," said he, "will but be busy, and not idle away his time, he may do wonders within that period. Let us die at a moderate age, and be thankful. Why this vain longing for longevity? Why seek to rob human life of its melancholy moral-namely, its shortness?" And again, elsewhere, but in the same year: "Oh! who can complain of the shortness of human life that can re-travel all the windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden since the farthest back hour at which memory pauses?"—and after passionately recalling the joys and sorrows of those few years, "which we now call transitory, but which our Boyhood felt as if they would be endless"-and the season of youth, "with its insupportable sunshine, and its magnificent storms," and that meridian Life, which " seems, now that it is gone, to have been of a thousand years"he adds: "Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon-and is there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which we fear to face-Age, Old Age? Four dreams within a dream, and then we may awake in Heaven!" The four dreams are over now, and we trust the waking is as he would have it. In that trust, and awed by the associations it excites, we shrink from discussing what some of his critics are disputing about-viz., the measure of his fidelity in doing the earthly work appointed him. He his worldly task has done, Home is gone, and ta'en his wages. It is for his Taskmaster to decide, and for none other, whether he did it all as in his Taskmaster's eye. We can but murmur over his grave, from the same sylvan chant, Prolix as Fear not slander, censure rash; Ghost unlaid forbear thee! our prosing has been, we have omitted many points to which allusion was proposed. But there will be a Biography ere long, we presume, that ought to be passingly rich in interest; and until its appearance the reader will, without much pressing, allow us to defer any further discourse. THE REVEILLIE. BY MRS. ACTON TINDAL. ROUSE thee! life is daily dying, Thou mayst count them as they part. Over Time's deep solemn ocean When thine angel, ever waking, God in mercy gave his blessing Highly placed, a guide and light." Take thy place in God's great plan. Free thy gift! it passes glowing From the light of Heaven to thee! Not through human parents flowing Down a genealogy. Thou, within thy chamber writing, Minds unknown mayst move and bend, Bless'd if Thou shalt strike one fetter If to higher things and better Work while it is day, my brothers! Naked goes the soul and lonely Where our thoughts and labours cease, Taking with her, taking only Deeds of mercy-hopes of peace! A DAY AT MALVERN. THE SEQUEL TO "A VISIT TO WORCESTER." BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE UNHOLY WISH." I. SOME two months ago, good reader, I asked you if you had ever paid a visit to Worcester: I would now ask, but that I deem the question superfluous, if you have ever sojourned at that beautiful part of its county, Malvern. I am going to take you thither for a day presently. Not to Malvern, as it is now, but as it was, some twenty or thirty years back. You never saw a greater change than has taken place in the village; than is taking place in it, year by year. It was a lovely little spot in days gone by, romantic, secluded, and beautiful. Not a shop to be seen in it, save the cake-shop by the steep, leading down towards the abbey, and the library. It was no gay place, no rendezvous for travellers in fine clothes, eager for pleasure and society, but the few visitors seeking it were really invalids, requiring pure air and peace. It was half soothing, half painful, to sit on these beautiful hills, somewhere about St. Ann's Well, and watch the scanty stock of visitors toiling up, one by one. Soothing to recline there, undisturbed, on the green moss, soft as velvet, looking round at that immense extent of landscape, so calm and still, where the only noise to break the quiet would be a distant sheep-bell; painful to gaze at the pale faces of the invalids, supporting themselves up the hill by the help of a stick, and to listen to their troubled breathing as they gained the Well-room, and held the goblet-glass under the spring. I have sat there many a day as a child, finding no occupation but this watching and sympathy: picturing to my curious mind the outward and inward histories of these sick strangers wondering where they came from, where they were going to next, where they lodged in the village. On some bright day the monotonous scene would be varied. A picnic party from Worcester, all gaiety and laughter and baskets of provisions, would crowd merrily up the hill, and fixing upon a level convenient spot, encamp themselves and their dishes on it, preferring this free, gipsy-mode of enjoying a repast, to paying in gold for a dinner at the hotels. Sometimes the day would pass on in almost complete solitude, no parties and no invalids, and then there was nothing to do but lie on the grass and build castles in the air, or to find a fairy-tale book, and be rapt in a child's Elysium. Oh the retrospect of these early days, our life's morning! when it seems that there is no care or sorrow in the world, or that if there is, it cannot come near us; when we dream not that existence, the mysterious future so eagerly longed for, can be otherwise than it seems to us in those day-visions, sunny as the charming landscape around, bright as the blue sky above to recal life as it looked then, with its glorious hopes and expectations, and to dwell on the troubled waters that have come rushing on since, well-nigh overwhelming heart and existence-Let us get on. : Many a merry donkey-party you might see then, toiling up the hills or cantering about the village. I think I must tell you an anecdote of one it has this instant come into my memory. A joyous crew of us, twelve or fourteen, careless boys and girls together, got the donkeys hired for us, and mounting in the village, just by the Unicorn, cantered off for a ride towards the Link; the old, sober heads of the company bringing up the rear at a sober pace. The turnpike gate was openyou know it, near the new church and the buildings they call West Malvern now-and through it we dashed. But out came the turnpikeman, tearing after us, shouting and screaming. We all reined in, and stopped. What was the matter? Matter indeed! we had gone through the gate without paying. It was certainly true: and what was quite as true, upon searching our pockets, those who had any, there was not a single halfpenny to be found in one of them; it had all gone in "Malvern cakes." In vain we represented to the man that "those behind" were coming up, with pockets full of money, and they were the paymasters. He preferred being on the safe side, was surly and inexorable; so he made us all dismount, and took off the white cloths of the donkeys. What cared we? we remounted without them, and scampered on down the Link, leaving our astonished old relatives to redeem the calico. Lodgings at Malvern were within the bounds of a cautious purse then, and there was many an unpretending cottage, picturesque without, clean within, which would let you its best sitting-room, and a bedroom or two, for less than a sovereign per week, and give you pleasant looks and civil attendance besides. Go and try them now, these Malvern lodgings: when you hear what they ask, you will stand aghast and involuntarily button up your breeches-pocket. But for the matter of that, there are no cottages left, that I can see, and I was there last summer: they have all been turned, with the addition of a new room or so, into " Montpellier Villas," "Agapemone Bowers," "Gloria Lodges." I looked out for one I had formerly cause to know well, a pretty cottage standing in a little garden, on the road that leads up the hill, and I could not find it. road was there and the spot, but the abode was gone. The "What has become of the cottage that formerly stood here ?" I asked of a mason, who was passing. "A cottage!" was the answer; "oh, ay, I think I do recollect: a little bit of a place it was. It have been pulled down." "And there was another close by, where that fine place stands now," I continued, pointing to a flashy-looking house with a great white terrace. "That be the other cottage," replied my informant: "they did not demolish that, but they made it larger, and smartened it up, and built the terrace and the new door. You see the visitors, what comes here now, be too grand to live in cottages; they wants bigger and finer places." Who wonders? when Malvern has become the emporium of the fashionable, invalid world, at least, all of it who get talked into trying the "Water Cure." Who wonders? when patients write their experiences and laud the system; when our greatest living novelist published an account of the marvellous blessings it had wrought on him, and said it had made him young again! I don't know how many doctors the place boasts of now, "water" and dry, or how many splendid establish |