Gentle Reader! if thou knowest not the pages of honest old Burton-we speak not of his melancholy end, which melancholy may have wrought, but of his honesty of purpose, and of his life, -thou wilt not be unacquainted with that excellent Poem of Wordsworth's, "The Excursion, being a If any know not

Portion of the Recluse."

the wisdom contained in it, forthwith let them study it!-Acquainted with it or not, it is Betty Yewdale that is described in the following lines, as holding the lanthorn to guide the steps of old Jonathan, her husband, on his return from working in the quarries, if at any time he chanced to be beyond his usual hour. They are given at length;for who will not be pleased to read them decies repetita?

Much was I pleased, the grey-haired wanderer said,
When to those shining fields our notice first
You turned; and yet more pleased have from your lips,
Gathered this fair report of them who dwell
In that retirement; whither, by such course
Of evil hap and good as oft awaits

A lone wayfaring man, I once was brought.
Dark on my road the autumnal evening fell
While I was traversing yon mountain pass,
And night succeeded with unusual gloom;
So that my feet and hands at length became
Guides better than mine eyes - until a light
High in the gloom appeared, too high, methought,
For human habitation, but I longed

To reach it destitute of other hope.

I looked with steadiness as sailors look,

On the north-star, or watch-tower's distant lamp,

And saw the light-now fixed — and shifting, now —

Not like a dancing meteor; but in line

Of never varying motion, to and fro.

It is no night fire of the naked hills,

Thought I, some friendly covert must be near.

With this persuasion thitherward my steps

I turn, and reach at last the guiding light;

Joy to myself! but to the heart of Her
Who there was standing on the open hill,
(The same kind Matron whom your tongue hath praised)
Alarm and disappointment! The alarni
Ceased, when she learned through what mishap I came,
And by what help had gained those distant fields.
Drawn from her Cottage, on that open height,
Bearing a lantern in her hand she stood
Or paced the ground, -to guide her husband home,
By that unwearied signal, kenned afar;
An anxious duty which the lofty Site,
Traversed but by a few irregular paths,
Imposes, whensoe'er untoward chance
Detains him after his accustomed hour

When night lies black upon the hills. But come,
Come,' said the Matron, to our poor abode;
Those dark rocks hide it! Entering, I beheld
A blazing fire-beside a cleanly hearth
Sate down; and to her office, with leave asked,
The Dame returned.-Or ere that glowing pile

Of mountain turf required the builder's hand
Its wasted splendour to repair, the door
Opened, and she re-entered with glad looks,
Her Helpmate following. Hospitable fare,
Frank conversation, make the evening's treat:
Need a bewildered Traveller wish for more?
But more was given; I studied as we sate
By the bright fire, the good Man's face- composed
Of features elegant; an open brow
Of undisturbed humanity; a cheek
Suffused with something of a feminine hue;
Eyes beaming courtesy and mild regard :
But in the quicker turns of his discourse,
Expression slowly varying, that evinced
A tardy apprehension. From a fount
Lost, thought 1, in the obscurities of time,
But honour'd once, those features and that mien
May have descended, though I see them here,
In such a man, so gentle and subdued,
Withal so graceful in his gentleness.
A race illustrious for heroic deeds,
Humbled, but not degraded, may expire.
This pleasing fancy (cherished and upheld
By sundry recollections of such fall
From high to low, ascent from low to high,
As books record, and even the careless mind
Cannot but notice among men and things,)
Went with me to the place of my repose.

BOOK V. THE PASTOR.

Miss Sarah Hutchinson, Mrs. Wordsworth's sister. and Mrs. Warter took down the story from the old woman's lips, and Southey laid it by for the Doctor, &c. She then lived in a cottage at Rydal, where I afterwards saw her. Of the old man it was told me (for I did not see him)" He is a perfect picture, like those we meet with in the better copies of Saints in our old Prayer Books."

There was another comical History intended for an Interchapter to the Doctor, &c. of a runaway match to Gretna Green by two people in humble life, but it was not handed over to me with the MS. materials. It was taken down from the mouth of the old woman who was one of the parties—and it would probably date back some sixty or seventy years.

CHAPTER CCIX.

EARLY APPROXIMATION TO THE DOCTOR'S THEORY. GEORGE FOX. ZACHARIAH BEN MOHAMMED. COWPER. INSTITUTES OF

MENU. BARDIC PHILOSOPHY. MILTON. SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

There are distinct degrees of Being as there are degrees of Sound; and the whole world is but as it were a greater Gamut, or scale of music. NORRIS.

CERTAIN theologians, and certain theosophists, as men who fancy themselves inspired sometimes affect to be called, had approached so nearly to the Doctor's hypothesis of progressive life, and propensities

solitude; the time of darkness is to him the time of action; then he visits the folds of sheep, and stalls of oxen, thirsting for their blood; as the thief and the murderer visits the habitations of men, for an opportunity of robbing, and destroying, under the concealment of the night. When the sun ariseth the beast of prey retires to the covert of the forest; and while the cattle are spreading themselves over a thousand hills in search of pasture, the tyrant of the desert is laying himself down in his den, to sleep off the fumes of his bloody meal. The ways of men are not less different than the ways of beasts; and here we may see them represented as on a glass; for, as the quietness of the pasture, in which the cattle spend their day, is to the howlings of a wilderness at night, such is the virtuous life of honest labour to the life of the thief, the oppressor, the murderer, and the midnight gamester, who live upon the losses and sufferings of other men."

But how would the Doctor have delighted in the first Lesson of that excellent man's Book of Nature, -a book more likely to be useful than any other that has yet been written with the same good intent.

speak lies, and utter slanders against their neighbours, when the poison of asps is under their lips. The devil, who deceiveth with lies, and would destroy all mankind, is the old serpent, who brought death into the world by the venom of his bite. He would kill me, and all the children that are born, if God would let him; but Jesus Christ came to save us from his power, and to destroy the works of the Devil.

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'Lord, thou hast made me a man for thy service: O let me not dishonour thy work, by turning myself into the likeness of some evil beast: let me not be as the fox, who is a thief and a robber: let me never be cruel, as a wolf, to any of thy creatures; especially to my dear fellow-creatures, and my dearer fellow Christians; but let me be harmless as the lamb; quiet and submissive as the sheep; that so I may be fit to live, and be fed on thy pasture, under the good shepherd, Jesus Christ. It is far better to be the poorest of his flock, than to be proud and cruel, as the lion or the tiger, who go about seeking what they may devour."

Man is a lump where all beasts kneaded be;
Wisdom makes him an Ark where all agree.
The fool in whom these beasts do live at jar,
Is sport to others and a theatre;
Nor 'scapes he so, but is himself their prey,
All that was man in him is ate away;
And now his beasts on one another feed,
Yet couple in anger and new monsters breed.
How happy he which hath due place assign'd
To his beasts, and disaforested his mind,
Empaled himself to keep them out, not in ;
Can sow and dares trust corn where they have been,
Can use his horse, goat, wolf and every beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest.

To this purport the Patriarch of the Quakers writes, where he saith "now some men have the nature of Swine, wallowing in the mire and some men have the nature of Dogs, to bite both the sheep and one another and some men have the nature of Lions, to tear, devour, and destroy: and some men have the nature of Wolves, to tear and devour the lambs and sheep of Christ and some men have the nature of the Serpent (that old destroyer) to sting, evenom, and poison. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear, and learn these things within himself. And some men have the natures of other beasts and creatures, minding nothing but earthly and visible things, and feeding without the fear of God. Some men have the nature of a Horse, to prance and vapour in their strength, and to be swift in doing evil. And some men have the nature of tall sturdy Oaks, to flourish and spread in wisdom and strength, who are strong in evil, which must perish and come to the fire. Thus the Evil one is but one in all, but worketh many ways; and whatsoever a Man's or Woman's nature is addicted to that is outward, the Evil one will fit him with that, and will please his nature and appetite, to keep his mind in his inventions, and in the creatures from the Creator."

To this purport the so-called Clemens writes in the Apostolical Constitutions when he complains that the flock of Christ was devoured by Demons and wicked men, or rather not men, but wild beasts in the shape of men, πονηροῖς ἀνθρώποις, μᾶλλον δὲ οὐκ ἀνθρώποις, ἀλλὰ θηρίοις ἀνθρωποείδεσιν, by Heathens, Jews and godless heretics.

With equal triumph, too, did he read a passage in one of the numbers of the Connoisseur, which made him wonder that the writer, from whom it proceeded in levity, should not have been led on by it to the clear perception of a great truth. "The affinity," says that writer, who is now known to have been no less a person than the author of the Task, "the affinity between chatterers and monkeys, and praters and parrots, is too obvious not to occur at once. Grunters and growlers may be justly compared to hogs. Snarlers are curs that continually shew their teeth, but never bite; and the spit-fire passionate are a sort of wild cats, that will not bear stroking, but will purr when they are pleased. Complainers are screech-owls; and story-tellers, always repeating the same dull note, are cuckoos. Poets, that prick up their ears at their own hideous braying, are no better than asses; critics in general are venomous serpents, that delight in hissing; and some of them, who have got by heart a few technical terms, without knowing their meaning, are no better than magpies."

So, too, the polyonomous Arabian philosopher Zechariah Ben Mohammed Ben Mahmud Al Camuni Al Cazvini. "Man," he says, "partakes of the nature of vegetables, because, like them, he grows and is nourished; he stands in this further relation to the irrational animals, that he feels and moves; by his intellectual faculties he resembles the higher orders of intelligences, and he partakes more or less of these various classes, as his inclination leads him. If his sole wish be to satisfy the wants of existence, then he is content to vegetate. If he partakes more of the animal than the vegetable nature, we find him fierce as the lion, greedy as the bull, impure as the hog, cruel as the leopard, or cunning as the fox; and if, as is sometimes the case, he possesses all these bad qualities, he is then a demon in human shape."

Gratifying as these passages were to him, some of them being mere sports of wit, and others only the produce of fancy, he would have been indeed delighted if he had known