had its warfare. In nearly all matters of real taste Walpole was wrong. That he did not feel the merit of Garrick, few will wonder, who know that Garrick's excellence was founded on nature and feeling; but it vexes one that Gray should have been, as he said himself, "stiff in the opposition." Pope, as in the case of Handel, was right in his judgment of Garrick"That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival." The following is a specimen of the manners of play-critics in those days: - "There has been a new comedy, called the Foundling, far from good; but it took. Lord Hobart and some more young men made a party to damn it, merely for the love of damnation. The Templars espoused the play, and went armed with syringes charged with stinking oil, and with sticking-plasters; but it did not come to action. Garrick was impertinent, and the pretty men gave over their plot the moment they grew to be in the right." There is a regular row at the theatre; bear-garden bruisers are introduced to knock down every one that hissed. On this occasion, Horace Walpole is delighted with his own heroism; while he affects to shrink from its notoriety, he takes care it shall be known. The heroism consisted in his calling the manager, Fleetwood, an impudent rascal;" upon which "the whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator!" But the ringleaders further look to him for directions. "Mr Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" How characteristic the finale! "I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, Where is Mr W.? where is Mr W.?' In short, the whole town has been entertained with my prowess; and Mr Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler." These theatrical hurricanes, and the beargarden bruisers, bring to mind a wellnigh forgotten similar event the O. P. riots of our day, Eusebius. Younger folk may ask what they were. Old prices versus new. Was it not the case upon that occasion that the

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flooring gave way, and the O. P.'s had to be extricated with difficulty, and promiscuously? It surely was so. I cannot have fabricated it for the sake of a quotation"Effodiuntur opes, irritamenta malorum."

In those times ladies frequented taverns-gamed; and a Mrs. Mackenzie horsewhipped Jemmy Lumley, who refused to pay because he was cheated.

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There was a deep philosophy," says Mr Knight, "in a saying of George Selwyn's, when a waiter at Arthur's Club-house was taken up for robbery, What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate!' 1750, and again 1756, there was a great fright about an earthquake, and, of course, prophecy took courage and cash, and foretold the world's coming to an end. People ran away from London previous to the predicted catastrophe. Several women have made earthquake gowns that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all tonight. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is to come to town on purpose; she says all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Catherine Pelham, Lady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back? I suppose to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish."

These kind of prophecies have ever been very taking-perhaps from the natural credulity of evil consciences, or a little spiteful expectation of the destruction of the sinful. We have had of late years, Eusebius, very numerous announcements of this awful kind. One is perfectly in my recollection, which alarmed the citizens of Bristol, and at that very time the Pitching and Paving Commissioners made a singular mistake. They literally advertised to receive tenders from contractors "To sweep up the ashes of the inhabitants." People loved the marvellous ; noble and great ones flocked to see the Cock Lane ghosthighwaymen, not fabulous, but real, were heroes in those days, and had their sympathisers, as the worst culprits have now occasionally. Fashion,

Here we are, Eusebius, running somewhat too fast from old to modern times, only a hundred years from this our year. Let me go back but a very few-for I think I can amuse you by parts of two letters, which I have picked out of some family papers, addressed to my great-grandmother. Some one said of a sauce that it was so piquant that one might eat one's grandmother with it. Devour, if you please, the anecdotes told in the letters, and relish them, but not a word of disrespect to my great-grandmother, for she lives in her portrait, a goodly one, and in family feminine remembrances that will compel me to put lance in rest in defence and in honour of her worth and beauty. Yes, Eusebius, there was beauty in the family one hundred and twenty years ago, whatever you may be pleased to think of us

now.

"Dear Madam,-Last night the Membury cheese came safe to me, which by its good appearance I should have judged to be a very good one; but can never doubt of its being so, as it is recommended by a lady of y' good taste. I am truly concerned for Mr. B -'s cough, but hope he will get rid of it time enough agst the sitting of Parliament, when, as you rightly judge, matters of such consequence are likely to be the subject of debate, that hardly any that are absent must expect to escape the publick censure, upon wch occasion, as the times are, every tongue will be let loose with the utmost bitterness. In the mean time I shall take care to provide a warm lodging for his reception. Master C. is much in the right in preferring Oxford to Somersetshire. I don't know why he was sent thither, if he could have spent his time anywhere else to more advantage.

"I don't know whether you have heard

But this bastard having squanhim, and despairing of the young Lord's dered away the little fortune was left comeing to an untimely end by the course of nature, he being now in the 20th year of his age, had made a proposal to one that taught him to play on the French horn, to give him £2000 if he would go over to France and murder Lord Brook. So considerable a reward tempted the assassin to undertake the villanous office; but his conscience at last check'd him and press'd him to send to Mr. J. Howe (guardian to the young Lord), and acquaint him with his crime. Mr. Howe writes immediately to La Hertford, and the La Chief Justice for his warrant to Ld Hertford loses no time in sending to seize the bastard, whose name is SilvesYou tre, who cannot yet be found. may depend upon the truth of this story. I am glad to hear my niece is out of danger; but what a sad thing will it be if she loses her complexion! I hope you don't think that irrecoverable.-I am, dear Madam,

Your most affectionate humble servant, GEO. H-N. 'My best compliments to Mr. B. and all the good ladies and gentlemen."

I

The next letter is from the same to the same, the year following, dated London, 21st December, 1736. omit the gossip of ladies in confinement, whose children and grandchildren have since died of old age; of a receipt to make brawn; of books coming by carrier, &c.; of this town being discomforted at the long absence of their monarch, &c. &c., in order to come to an anecdote, the like of which you never heard or read of perhaps, incredible in these money-loving incredible in these days :—

'I cannot close this letter (as long as it is), without telling you a remarkable story of two sisters, now in the Fleet Prison, who have suffer'd already a great deal, and are like to endure much more, onely for their obstinate refusal of six thousand pounds which is now tendered to them in Chancery as their just right. But neither entreaties nor menaces can yet prevail with them to accept this money, and discharge the executors, who earnestly desire to pay it. They are nieces of the late Dr. Stradford, canon of

Christ Church, who left them in his will residuary legatees; and to them, as such, Dr. Friend, of Westminster, and the other executor, having several times given notice that they had now in their hands the forementioned summe, for the payment of which they onely desire their order and discharge: but all their solicitations have hitherto proved ineffectual. They will not believe that their uncle Stradford dyed worth a groat. They say he was a vain extravagant man, and could not possibly save any money, and consequently that Dr. Friend uses them very ill in endeavouring to persuade them to the contrary. In short, Dr. Friend, having no other way to get rid of this money, and the trust of being executor, being forced to apply to Chancery, they were served with orders from that court to ap pear before it; but as they complyed with none of these orders, they were committed to Chester Goale (where they lived) for contempt. There they lived a full year in prison, and being lately brought to ye town, and into the Court of Chancery, all the exhortations of the Lord Chancellor and the court were to no purpose. They still adhere incorrigibly to their opinion that their uncle had

no money to leave them, and in this obstinate resolution they seem determined to rot in the Fleet Prison. The charges they have been already put to, which must be pay'd, amount to at least a thousand pounds," &c., &c."

celebrated physician, who, skilful in I presume this Dr. Friend was the physic, and perhaps in the quickness of his cures, was lengthy in epitaphs, the writing of which particularly amused him. One would not, Eusebius, like to know that the physician who is feeling your pulse has a particular fancy to write your epitaph.

I must now, my dear Eusebius, bring my letter to a close. I shall probably have something to say of Chatterton that may be new, and from a MS. fill up a gap in the poetry, whether of while, digest this marrow of Once Rowley or Chatterton. In the meanupon a Time offered you, and accomplish in your own person the wish of Thales, to grow old with good sense and a good friend-the latter being yours ever, -S. VIVE VALeque.

AQ

WERE we not tired of the perpetual babble which rings in our ears from every quarter, declaring the unparalleled wonders and excellences of these times of ours, we scarcely could begin our comment upon the strangest feature of all its many anomalies, without once more echoing the common sentiment that this is a wonderful age. But it is strange enough to know that the experience of ever so many centuries has thrown so little light upon the perennial inconsistencies of human nature, that every age is extraordinary, and that we are perpetually wondering and gaping at the vagaries of our fellows as if we were the first to find them out. Still to-day is to-day, and has an interest for us which yesterday cannot have: we are more immediately influenced by the lamps in our own streets than by the stars which dwell apart in the far-off ages; and it seems to be a necessity of human progress that we should always

be engaged about some crisis or other, and feel that the real battle-ground of time and existence is this footbreadth of soil which we are contesting to-day.

But if we are to believe the newest light of philosophy which has arisen among us, it is a super-eminently serious crisis at which we are now arrested. The foundations of the world are breaking up-we want new ground laid down for us-the former principles of the universe are antiquated and unreasonable the old revelation has served its time, and wants renewalthe old religion is a worn-out garment, and the work which lies before is no less a work than to make a new heavens and a new earth "for our own hand."

So we have placed ourselves in the noble position of "inquiring after truth." Our philosophers are the most impartial, the most candid investigators in the world: no old-fashioned

faith stands in their way; they are above the prejudices of education, above the weakness of personal interest or anxiety. They are martyrs to the noble thirst which possesses them; they must follow Truth, sublime conductress! wherever she leads them; and though now and then it is a will-o'-the-wisp dance enough, their lofty purpose sustains them through all. And whether it be the sublime eclecticism which selects a bit out of Paganism and a bit out of Christianity, and complacently pronounces its verdict on all the creeds, as the Creator did upon the world He made or that sad, conscientious, much-suffering infidelity, which weeps over its own vain efforts to believe, and deplores its undeceivableness-or the improved divinity, clad in new graces, which makes something handsome out of that Bible and that Gospel which hitherto have only given a rude idea to the world,-we surely cannot refuse to be struck with the beautiful aspect of this open unbiassed judgment, this mind which begins its investigations with no prior tendencythis candid impartial intellect, which sits apart, overlooking "creeds and systems," and judging of them like a god.

But, after all, it is a remarkable thing to find this nineteenth century, with all its boasts of itself and its own progress, so completely at sea about the most important matters of human thought. Have we drifted so far away from the everlasting standards that it is a Restoration of Belief, and nothing less, for which the world of to-day is waiting?—have we lost hold of the old clue so entirely that we can do nothing but grope about the darkling labyrinth, and feel our way by touch and sense? Is the ancient system of faith, which, pressing on through crowds of foes, has kept itself intact for eighteen hundred years, proved so imperfect at last that our skilled artificers have to take it to pieces, and cobble it to suit "the requirements of the times?" A strange result of all our learnings and philosophies! yet not so strange a consequence of our universal smattering, our universal self-applause, our widespread persuasion, that of all the ages of the world none has ever been so

well qualified to sit in judgment on everything human and divine as this age of steam and electricity, this nineteenth century, this culminating point of human wisdom, from the eminence of which we can supervise and condescend to the beggarly elements of the past.

Of old times, when scepticism was an unfamiliar monster in our respectable nation, and when the popular judgment unhesitatingly connected it with all manner of license and immorality, the beast was much less harmful; but even now, when innocent people are staggered by finding what they call good men among the fashionable sceptics of the times, we have not the slightest fear for the faith of the people. Those very common people who go to church for form's sake, as their charitable critics conclude--who have not very much to say about their own doctrines-who answer the arguments of the gainsayer, for the most part, with a mere dumb impenetrability— who have sin, trouble, inconsistency, all the natural incumbrances of humankind, about them on every sideare the square, solid, silent phalanx on which the polished lancets of the foe can make no impression. We remember, through the lapse of a great many years, some strangely significant words which we once heard from the lips of a benevolent Unitarian lady in one of the greatest towns in England. It was very strange, she said, but they had actually no poor people in their congregations almost all their members were wealthy. While churches and chapels around, of every other name, were burdened with pensioners, they had none-though the leaders of their sect were publicly acknowledged as the kindest and most liberal almsgivers in the place. The speaker was quite unconscious of all that lay in this admission; but we think we have a right to conclude that infidelity, and especially the amiable and refined infidelity of the day, is caviare to the multitude-a sin which does not tempt them. The common people in general, of all ranks and classes-they who fulfil the ordinary duties of humanity who are not clever, nor distinguished, nor in any way raised above their fellows-those same common people who "heard"

the gospel "gladly," when ritualists and illuminati alike stood aloof from the Divine preacher-are safe above all others from a prevailing epidemic of this nature; and that being the case, let the clever people, the talented, the gifted, the philosophical, look to themselves.

But infidelity, however fashionable, and sceptics, however amiable, are not our immediate subject. They are what they are, distinct and acknowledged; but we find a more curious field for inquiry among those members and leaders of the Church who, not content to relinquish their faith, and confident in the wonderful elasticity of that wide and all-embracing cordon which surrounds the English Establishment, have entered upon the dangerous experiment of accommodating and reconciling the gospel to the theories of their neighbours who have passed the rubicon. These divines are no longer contented with justifying the ways of God to man they bring Himself, a most august defendant, to the bar. They say, with more or less plainness, "We will believe in you, if we find you come up to our standard, and realise our idea of what God should be;" and with a real and true desire that the glorious Examinant before them should vindicate His own character according to their view of it, they set about, with His own materials, to build a system of we cannot say salvation, but of Divine help and benevolence. Let us give all just credit to these teachers; they strive at their work anxiously; they do it, we believe, devoutly; they only begin with a different idea in their minds from that which revelation declares to have been in the mind of God.

Were we to treat of the opinions of the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, or of the Broad Church which he represents, as a divine might treat of them, our profane laymanship would break down, of course, and Maga would incontinently reject the counterfeit; but, fortunately for us and for our purpose, these smooth orations are not divinity, but light literature. We confess, for our own part, that we approached Mr. Maurice's books, on our first introduction to them, with a profound awe and reverence. Among

the many good people who believe in him without believing in his doctrines, the idea was current that this respectable divine possessed the gift of an unintelligible and bewildering eloquence. "We could not make him out," said many kind critics, insinuating a charitable hope that, lost in his own bright maze of words, the reverend gentleman could not always make himself out, and so was a great deal less heretical than harsher judges concluded. But when we made actual experiment of these well-written volumes, we were no longer able to acquiesce in the popular judgment; for modesty forbids the supposition that it was the pure force of our own superior understanding which made Mr. Maurice's style perfectly legible and clear to us. We who have been stranded a score of times on the shelving beach of In Memoriam, have consequently no extraordinary penetration to boast of; yet we say it with humility-it is our modest and respectful persuasion that we can understand Mr. Maurice.

And let not any of the uninstructed suppose that this is a partial innovator, a dealer of stray blows, a reformer of unconsidered trifles. Mr. Maurice discloses himself boldly as the author of an elaborate and laborious plan, which, though we grant to him, as he rejoices that more competent authorities have granted, to be by no means novel in its parts, strikes us as sufficiently novel in its combination; so much so, indeed, that if the world is to believe as Mr. Maurice believes, it is indispensable that his work on the Doctrine of Sacrifice be instantly prepared for universal circulation, as a companion and auxiliary to the Bible, which is by no means to be understood without it. The freaks of humanity are strange; there are no men in the world who do protest so much against bigotry, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness as these liberal and enlightened teachers of this age; yet Mr. Kingsley finds rare sport in exterminating the Spanish Papists, and Mr. Maurice's trumpet gives forth no uncertain sound as to the unfortunate people called Evangelical, who have, as it seems, for ages, and after, in the main, a singularly unanimous fashion, been steadily contradicting and perverting the gospel, which now