worst of all, shut out from wet and cold as they were, but not having work like the seamen to occupy the mind, were the cribs of a parcel of children tossing about in all this tempest, and the bed of their parents on the cabin floor.-With these recollections (as the whole vessel got safe), we sometimes think we could find it in our hearts to relish even a feather-bed. A very large bedroom in an old country-house is not pleasant, where the candle shows you the darkness at the other end of it, and you begin to think it possible for houses to be haunted. And as little comfortable is the bed with a great dusty canopy, such as they say the Highland laird mistook for the bed itself, and mounted at top of, while he put his servant into the sheets, thinking that the loftier stratum was the place of grandeur. Sometimes these canopies are domed, and adorned with plumes, which give them a funereal look; and a nervous gentleman, who, while getting into bed, is hardly sure that a hand will not thrust itself out beneath the valance and catch him by the ankle, does not feel quite so bold in it as the French general, who, when threatened by some sheeted ghosts, told them to make the best of their way off, or he would give them a sound thrashing. On the other hand, unless warranted by necessity and good-humour, which can reconcile anything, it is very disagreeable to see sofa-bedsteads and press-bedsteads in "stived-up" little rooms, half sitting-room and half chamber. They look as if they never could be aired. For a similar reason, an Englishman cannot like the French beds that shut up into alcoves in the wall. We do not object to a custom merely because it is foreign; nor is it unreasonable, or indeed otherwise than agreeable, that a bedroom of good dimensions should include a partial bit of a sitting-room or boudoir; but in that case, and indeed in all cases, it should be kept scrupulously neat and clean. Order in a house first manifests itself in the room which the housewife inhabits; and every sentiment of the heart, as well as of the external graces, demands that a very reverence and religion of neatness should be there exhibited; not formality-not a want of snugness,-but all with evidences that the esteem of a life is preferred to the slatternliness of the moment, and that two hearts are always reigning together in that apartment, though one person alone should be visible. It is very proper that bedrooms, which can afford it, should be adorned with pictures, with flowers by day-time, (they are not wholesome at night,) and, if possible, with sculpture. We are among those who believe, with the old romance of Heliodorus, that, under circumstances which affect the earliest periods of existence, familiar objects are not without their influence upon the imagination. Besides, it is wholesome to live in the kindly and tranquil atmosphere of the arts; and few, even of the rightminded, turn to half the account they might do the innumerable beauties which Heaven has lavished upon the world, both in art and nature. Better hang a wild rose over the toilet, than nothing. The eye that looks in the glass will see there something besides itself; and it will acquire something of a religious right to respect itself, in thinking by how many objects in the creation the bloom of beauty is shared. The most sordidly ridiculous anecdote we remember of a bed-chamber, is one in the life of Elwes, the rich miser, who, asking a visitor one morning how he had rested, and being told that he could not escape from the rain which came through the roof of the apartment, till he had found out one particular corner in which to stow the truckle-bed, said, laughingly, and without any sense of shame, "Ah! what! you found it out, did you? Ah! that's a nice corner, isn't it?" This, however, is surpassed in dramatic effect, by the story of two ministers of state, in the last century, who were seen one day, by a sudden visitor, furiously discussing some great question out of two separate beds in one room, by day-time, their arms and bodies thrust forward towards each other out of the clothes, and the gesticulation going on accordingly. If our memory does not deceive us, one of them was Lord Chatham. He had the gout, and his colleague coming in to see him, and the weather being very cold, and no fire in the room, the noble earl had persuaded his visitor to get into the other bed. The most ghastly bed chamber story, in real life (next to some actually mortal ones), is that of a lady who dreamt that her servant-maid was coming into the room to murder her. She rose in the bed with the horror of the dream in her face; and sitting up thus appalled, encountered, in the opening door, the sight of the no less horrified face of the maid-servant, coming in with a light to do what her mistress apprehended. To give this article the termination fittest for it, such as leaves the reader with the most comprehensive sense upon him of profound rest, and of whatsoever conduces to lull and secure it, we shall conclude with a divine passage of Spenser, in which he combines, with the most poetical fiction, the most familiar feeling of truth. Morpheus, the god of sleep, has an impossible bed somewhere, on the borders of the sea, on the shore of "the world of waters wide and deep," by which its curtains are washed. Observe how this fictitious bed is made real by every collateral circumstance. "And more to lulle him in his slumber soft, A trickling streame, from high rock tumbling downe, Mixed with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne FAERIE QUEENE, Book I. canto i. stanza 41. THE WORLD OF BOOKS. Difficulty of proving that a man is not actually in a distant place, by dint of being there in imagination.-Visit of that kind to Scotland.-Suggestion of a Book-Geography; of Maps, in which none but poetical or otherwise intellectuallyassociated places are set down.-Scottish, English, French, and Italian items for such maps.—Local literizations of Rousseau and Wordsworth objected to.—Actual enrichment of the commonest places by intellectual associations. TO THE EDITOR OF TAIT'S MAGAZINE. SIR,-To write in your Magazine makes me feel as if I, at length, had the pleasure of being personally in Scotland, a gratification which I have not yet enjoyed in any other way. I dive into my channel of communication, like another Alpheus, and reappear in the shop of Mr. Tait; not pursuing, I trust, anything fugitive, but behaving very unlike a river-god, and helping to bring forth an Edinburgh periodical. Nor will you, sir, who enter so much into the interests of your fellow-creatures, and know so well. VOL. I. K |