But ah! too well you know my lot, Ancestral acres greet me not, My freehold's in a garden-pot, Let Robins advertise and puff My "Man's Estate," I'm sure enough I shall not buy it in. 91 THE QUAKERS' CONVERSAZIONE. "Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made? Go not into the wilderness; descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the cells of thy ears, with little-faith'd, self-mistrusting Ulysses. Retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting." ESSAYS OF ELIA. Ir may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt was made, last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood especially favoured by that respectable and substantial sect. The idea originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity of Bruce Castle: the notion was broached to a select few of the sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle; the suggestion was relished; and a conference was called, at which the scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first there was a little boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was thought, of Loquacity; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to discourse against their own inclination; nay, that even amongst other persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible from a Negro "Talk," or a red Indian "Palaver." This little demur excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the subdued hum, which, in that quiet-loving community, is equivalent to acclamations. A secretary was formally proposed, and tacitly chosen unanimously; being no other than the fair Foundress herself the mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Mumford. A few brief rules were then drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to—some of them, considering the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called "a multiplicity of talk." For instance, the 9th rule provided, that "no brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse, |