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What would the Dissenters have said if a clerical poet had written in such a strain upon the decease of a Bishop or Archbishop?

We pray in the Litany to be delivered from sudden death. Any death is to be deprecated which should find us unprepared: but as a temporal calamity with more reason might we pray to be spared from the misery of an infirm old age. It was once my fortune to see a frightful instance of extreme longevity,- —a woman who was nearly in her hundredth year. Her sight was greatly decayed, though not lost; it was very difficult to make her hear, and not easy then to make her understand what was said, though when her torpid intellect was awakened she was, legally, of sane mind. She was unable to walk, or to assist herself in any way. Her neck hung in such wrinkles that it might almost be likened to a turkey's; and the skin of her face and of her arms was cleft like the bark of an oak, as rough, and almost of as dark a colour. In this condition, without any apparent suffering, she passed her time in a state between sleeping and waking, fortunate that she could thus beguile the wearisomeness of such an existence.

Instances of this kind are much rarer in Europe than in tropical climates. Negresses in the West Indies sometimes attain an age which is seldom ascertained because it is far beyond living memory. They outlive all voluntary power, and their descendants of the third or fourth generation carry them out of their cabins into the open air, and lay them, like logs, as the season may require, in the sunshine, or in the shade. Methinks if Mecenas had seen such an object, he would have composed a palinode to those verses in which he has perpetuated his most pitiable love for life. A woman in New Hampshire, North America, had reached the miserable age of 102, when one day as some people were visiting her, the bell tolled for a funeral; she burst into tears and said, "Oh when will the bell toll for me! It seems as if it never would toll for me! I am afraid that I shall never die!" This reminds me that I have either read, or

heard, an affecting story of a poor old woman in England, - very old, and very poor, — who retained her senses long after the body had become a weary burden; she too when she heard the bell toll for a funeral used to weep, and say she was afraid God had forgotten her! Poor creature, ignorantly as she spake, she had not forgotten Him; and such impatience will not be accounted to her for a sin.

These are extreme cases, as rare as they are mournful. Life indeed is long enough for what we have to suffer, as well as what we have to learn; but it was wisely said by an old Scottish Minister (I wish I knew his name, for this saying ought to have immortalised it,) "Time is short; and if your cross is heavy you have not far to carry it."

Chi ha travaglio, in pace il porti:
Dolce è Dio, se il mondo è amaro.
Sappia l'uom, che al Cielo è caro;
Abbia fede, è aura conforti.❤

Were the term shorter it would not suffice for the development of those moral qualities which belong peculiarly to the latter stage of life; nor could the wholesome influence which age exercises over the young in every country where manners are not so thoroughly corrupted as to threaten the dissolution of society, be in any other manner supplied.

Il me semble que le mal physique attendrit autant que le mal moral endurcit le cœur, said Lord Chesterfield, when he was growing old, and suffering under the infirmities of a broken constitution. Affliction in its lightest form, with the aid of time, had brought his heart into this wholesome state.

O figliuol' d'Adam, grida Natura,
Onde i tormenti? Io vi farà tranquilli,
Se voi non rebellate alla mia legge.†

There is indeed a tranquillity which Nature brings with it as duly toward the close of life, as it induces sleep at the close of day. We may resist the salutary influence in both cases, and too often it is resisted, at the cost of health in the one, and at a still dearer

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cost in the other: but if we do this, we do it wilfully, the resistance is our own act and deed, — it is our own error, our own fault, our sin, and we must abide the consequences. The greatest happiness to which we can attain in this world is the peace of God. Ask those who have attained the height of their ambition, whether in the pursuit of wealth, or power, or fame, if it be not so? Ask them in their sane mind and serious hours, and they will confess that all else is vanity.

Fond man, that looks on earth for happiness,
And here long seeks what here is never found!

This His own peace, which is his last and crowning gift, our Heavenly Father reserves for us in declining life, when we have earned our discharge from its business and its cares; and He prepares us for it by the course of nature which he has appointed.

O all the good we hope, and all we see, That Thee we know and love, comes from Thy love and Thee.*

Hear, reader, the eloquent language of Adam Littleton when speaking of one who has received this gift:-it occurs in a funeral sermon, and the preacher's heart went with his words. After describing the state of a justified Christian, he rises into the following strain: "And now what has this happy person to do in this world any longer, having his debts paid and his sins pardoned, his God reconciled, his conscience quieted and assured, his accusers silenced, his enemies vanquished, the law satisfied, and himself justified, and his Saviour glorified, and a crown of Immortality, and a robe of righteousness prepared for him? What has he to do here more, than to get him up to the top of Pisgah and take a view of his heavenly Canaan; to stand upon the Confines of Eternity, and in the contemplation of those joys and glories, despise and slight the vanities and troubles of this sinful and miserable world; and to breathe after his better life, and be preparing himself for his change; when he shall be called off to weigh

PHINEAS FLETCHER.

anchor, and hoist sail for another world, where he is to make discoveries of unutterable felicities, and inconceivable pleasures?

"Oh what a happy and blest condition is it to live, or to die in the midst of such gracious deliverances and glorious assurances; with this fastening consideration to boot, that neither life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any creature is able to separate him from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ his Lord!'"

CHAPTER CXXXIV.

A TRANSITION, AN ANECDOTE, AN APOSTROPHE, AND A PUN, PUNNET, OR PUNDIGRION.

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures ;

Et sermone opus est, modo tristi, sæpe jocoso. HORACE. THE Reader is now so far acquainted with the Doctor and his bride elect, - (for we are still in the Interim,) — he knows so much of the birth, parentage, and education of both, so much of their respective characters, his way of thinking and her way of life, that we may pass to another of those questions propounded in the second post-initial chapter.

The minister of a very heterodox congregation in a certain large city, accosted one of his friends one day in the street with these words, which were so characteristic and remarkable that it was impossible not to remember and repeat them," I am considering whether I shall marry or keep a horse." He was an eccentric person, as this anecdote may show; and his inspirited sermons (I must not call them inspired) were thought in their style of eloquence and sublimity to resemble Klopstock's Odes.

No such dubitation could ever have entered the Doctor's head. Happy man, he had already one of the best horses in the world :-(Forgive me, O Shade of Nobs in thine Elysian pastures, that I have so long delayed thy eulogy!) and in Deborah

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Nobs, I may venture to affirm, is not mentioned by Reginald Heber. I have never had an opportunity of ascertaining the fact by a careful examination of his volumes, but the inquiries which it has been in my power to make have led to this conclusion. Judicious readers will, I hope, acknowledge, that in consequence of the scrupulous care with which I guard against even the appearance of speaking positively upon subjects whereon there may be any reasonable doubt, I am, comparatively with most authors, superlatively correct.

Now as Reginald Heber must have seen Nobs, and having seen could not but have remarked him, and having remarked must also have perceived how remarkable he was for all the outward and visible signs of a good horse, this omission is to be lamented. A culpable omission it must not be called, because it was not required that he should mention him; but it could not have been

considered as hors d'œuvre to have noticed

his surpassing merits, merits which Reginald Heber could have appreciated, and which no one perhaps could have described so well; for of Nobs it may veritably be said

that he was a horse

tanto buono e bello Che chi volesse dir le lodi sue, Bisognarebbe haver un gran cervello, Bisognarebbe un capo come un bue.*

⚫ VARCHI.

Perhaps some captious reader may suppose that he has here detected a notable error in my chronology. Nobs, he may say, was made dog's-meat before Reginald Heber was born, or at least before he had exchanged his petticoats for the garb-mascu line, denominated galligaskins in philippic

verse.

Pardon me, reader; the mistake is on your part; and you have committed two in this your supposition. Mistakes indeed, like misfortunes, seldom come single.

First, it is a mistake, and what, if it were not altogether inconsiderate, would be a calumnious one, to suppose that Nobs ever was made dog's-meat. The Doctor had far too much regard for his good horse, to let his remains be treated with such indignity. He had too much sense of obligation and humanity to part with an old dumb servant when his strength began to fail, and consign him to the hard usage which is the common lot of these poor creatures, in this, in this respect, hard-hearted and wicked nation. Nobs, when his labour was past, had for the remainder of his days the run of the fields at Thaxted Grange. And when, in due course of nature, he died of old age, instead of being sent to the tanners and the dogs, he became, like "brave Percy" food for-A grave was dug, wherein he was decently deposited, with his shoes on, and Barnaby and his master planted a horsechesnut on the spot. Matthew Montagu and Montagu Matthew ought to have visited it in joint pilgrimage.

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Hadst thou been a bay horse, Nobs, it would have been a bay-tree instead. But though the tree which was thy monument was deciduous, and has perhaps been doomed to fall by some irreverent or ignorant hand, thy honours are perennial.

Secondly, the captious reader is mistaken in supposing me to have spoken of Bishop Heber,-that Heber, who if he had been a Romish Bishop would already have been Saint Reginald by the courtesy of Rome, as in due time he must have been by right of canonisation. Sir Edward Lloyd would smile at such a mistake. So would a York

shire or a Shropshire Genealogist. I am not enough of one to know in what degree the two Reginalds were related; but that they were of the same family is apparent, and the elder, who is of the equestrian order of Authors and ought to have taken the name of Philip, was contemporary with the Doctor. He published yearly lists of horse matches run from 1753 to 1758,-I know not how much longer. If such registers as his had been preserved of the Olympic Games, precious would they be to historians and commentators, examining Masters, and aspirant Under-Graduates.

CHAPTER CXXXVI.

THE PEDIGREE AND BIRTH OF NOBS, GIVEN

battle, they were seen to get together and form in line, almost in as perfect order as if they had had their old masters upon their backs.

One of these old soldiers was what the Spaniards with the gravity peculiar to their language call a Caballo Padre; or what some of our own writers, with a decorum not less becoming, appellate an Entire horse; -or what a French interpreter accompanying an Englishman to obtain a passport wherein the horse as well as the rider was to be described, denominated un cheval de pierre to the astonishment of the clerks in the office, whose difficulty was not at all removed by the subsequent definition of the English applicant, which the said interpreter faithfully rendered thus, un cheval de pierre est un cheval qui couvre les officiers

IN REPLY TO THE FIRST QUERY IN THE municipaux. He had found his way in a

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A troop of British cavalry which had served on the continent was disbanded in the City of York, and the horses were sold. Their commander Sir Robert Clayton was a wealthy man, and happening to be a nobleminded man also, he could not bear to think that his old fellow campaigners, who had borne brave men to battle, should be ridden to death as butchers' hacks, or worked in dung-carts till they became dog's meat. So he purchased a piece of ground upon Knavesmire heath, and turned out the old horses to have their run there for life. There may be persons living who remember to have heard of this honourable act, and the curious circumstance which has preserved it from being forgotten. For once these horses were grazing promiscuously while a summer storm gathered, and when the first lightnings flashed from the cloud, and the distant thunder began to roll; but presently, as if they supposed these fires and sounds to be the signal of approaching

Cossack regiment from the Steppes of Tartary to the plains of Prussia; had run loose from a field of battle in which his master was killed, and passing from hand to hand had finally been sold by a Jew into the service of his Majesty King George II. In the course of this eventful life he had lost his Sclavonic name, and when he entered the British regiment was naturalised by that of Moses in honour of his late pos

sessor.

It so happened that a filly by name Miss Jenny had been turned out to recover from a sprain in a field sufficiently near Knavesmire heath for a Houyhnhnm voice to be within hearing of Houyhnhnm ears. In this field did Miss Jenny one day beguile the solitude by exclaiming "heigh-ho for a husband!” an exclamation which exists in the Equine as well as in the English language. It is also found in the Feline tongue, but Grimalkin has set it to very unpleasant music. Moses heard the strain and listened to the voice of love. The breezes did for him what many a lover has in vain requested them to do in sonnet, and in elegy, and in song; - they wafted back his sympathetic wishes, and the wooing was carried on at a quarter of a mile distance: after which the Innamorato made no more

-a

of hedge and ditch than Jupiter was wont
to do of a brazen Tower. Goonhilly in
Cornwall was indebted for its once famous
breed of horses to a Barb, which was turned
loose (like Moses) by one of the Erisey
family, the Erisey estate joining the down.
A few days afterwards, Miss Jenny, having
perfectly recovered of her sprain, was pur-
chased by Dr. Dove. The alteration which
took place in her shape was so little that
it excited no suspicion in any person:
circumstance which will not appear extra-
ordinary to those who remember that the
great Mr. Taplin himself having once booked
his expectations of a colt, kept the mare
eleven lunar months and a fortnight by
the Almanack, and then parted with her,
after taking the opinion of almost every
farmer and breeder in the country, upon an
universal decision that she had no foal in
her;
ten days afterwards the mare showed
cause why the decision of the judges should
be reversed. Those persons, I say, who
know the supereminent accuracy of Mr.
Taplin, and that in matters of this kind
everything passed under his own eye, (for
he tells you that it was a trust which he
never delegated to another), will not be so
much surprised as the Doctor was at what
happened on the present occasion. The
Doctor and Nicholas were returning from
Adwick-in-the-Street where they had been
performing an operation. It was on the
eleventh of June; the day had been un-
usually hot; they were overtaken by a thun-
derstorm, and took shelter in a barn. The
Doctor had no sooner alighted than Miss
Jenny appeared greatly distressed; and to
the utter astonishment both of Dr. Dove
and Nicholas, who could scarcely believe
their own eyes, there was almost as soon
as they could take off the saddle - what I
once saw called in the letter of a waiting
gentlewoman dishion to the family. To
express the same event in loftier language,

Ἦλθεν δ' ὑπὸ σπλάγχνων ὑπ' ὡς

δῖνος τ' ἐρατᾶς ΝΟΥ

Ἐς φάος αὐτίκα.

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THERE is an anecdote related of the Speaker in one of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments, who when the Queen, during a session in which small progress had been made in the public business, asked him what the House had got through, made answer, "May it please your Majesty, eight weeks." In like manner, if it be asked what I have got through in the prosecution of this my Opus, I reply, "May it please your Readership, four volumes."

This brings to my recollection another anecdote, which, though not matter of history like the former, is matter of fact, and occurred in the good town of Truro. A lady in that town hired a servant, who at the time of hiring thought herself bound to let the lady know that she had once "had a misfortune." When she had been some time in service, she spoke of something to her Mistress, inadvertently, as having happened just after the birth of her first child. "Your first!" said the Lady; "why how many have you had then ?"-"Oh, Ma'am," said she, "I've had four." "Four!" exclaimed the Mistress; "why you told me you had had but one. However I hope you mean to have no more." "Ma'am," replied the woman, "that must be as it may please God." "We are," says Lord Camelford, “as it

In the original Ixuss takes the place of Nobs. Cf. pleases God, and sometimes as it dis

Olymp. vi. 72.

pleases him."

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