now, Sophia, is the gay Westminster boy, the gallant, ambitious, high-minded statesman and soldier of the east? Can you trace him in that sallow, drooping, arraigned criminal, whose spirit is chafed almost to madness! In public he folds up his arms in self-supporting disdain; he tries to smooth his care-worn brow, and to teach his quivering lip to curl in contempt of his open accusers, and more rancorous secret enemies. But, alas! contempt and disdain of our fellow-men are not calm, much less are they happy feelings. The persecuted, if not yet degraded man, is sick at his very soul; his heart is bursting with the indignant anguish, which will break it at last. There may have been, and in this still hour of self-communion conscience so whispers, things faulty and blameworthy in his bold and illustrious career. Nor is he free of guilt; for his station was one of great difficulty, and loaded with responsibility which might make even the strongest and besthearted man tremble. Images of long-acted, painful scenes rise before him in his solitude; actions justified, in their passing, by the plea of a strong necessity, which he dislikes and dreads to think of now. And here, the world shut out, surrounded as he is with all the wealth and luxury of the eastern and western hemispheres, the hootings of the London rabble, and the hissings of the adder-tongues of his enemies, still ring in his ears; and to these envenomed sounds conscience in his own bosom returns a faint yet an undying echo. Perhaps he may wish, in this anguished hour, that his lot, though less splendid, had been more safe. "To beguile an hour of care he takes up a volume of the poetry of his old school-fellow, the lost William Cowper. He has little leisure for literature, but a lingering taste remains for what engrossed so many of the happy hours of happier days. He turns up one passage after another; and the map and history of Cowper's life lie before him. Are his feelings those of pity or of envy? Probably they are a strangely-entangled mixture of both. His eye is rivetted on a passage in the poem of Expostulation; he reads on and on; and, as if spell-urged, pronounces aloud,

'Hast thou, though suckled at fair Freedom's breast, Exported slavery to the conquered East! Pulled down the tyrants India served with dread, And raised thyself a greater in their stead? Gone thither armed and hungry, returned full, Fed from the richest veins of the Mogul, A despot big with power, obtained by wealth, And that obtained by rapine and by stealth?' "Hastings can read no farther. This passage could not, did not apply to himself; in his

proud integrity of heart he felt assured of this. The opinions too were those of ignorance. What could Cowper know of the East? And then he wonders at the latitude of discussion and the licentiousness of the press in England. He dips again; his fortune may be better this time; for in these rich volumes he perceives that there is much poetic beauty. He is more fortunate now, for he opens at the admired description of the coming in of the post. How fine an opening; and he reads aloud

"The heart-struck but fascinated reader proceeds on, in spite of himself, till he finishes the finest passages of the poem, those which unveil the habits and amiable character of his early friend. If there were some stir and bitterness in his spirit on the first perusal of offensive strictures, that is past now. He lays down the book with a quiet sigh; and, striving to fix his mind upon all that has been most brilliant in his fortunes, can only remember how many years have elapsed since he was a Westminster school-boy; and that both he and William Cowper have long since passed the meridian of life.

"Are you not yet tired, Miss Fanny, of gazing on that gorgeous bed-chamber," said the curate; "the bed of carved ivory and gold, the silken draperies, and couches of crimson and gold curiously worked; the silver-framed mirrors, the rich porcelain vases and foot-baths; the splendid toilette, with its jewelled ornaments; the ivory and ebony cabinets, richly inlaid with gold, and in the highest style of eastern decoration, exhibiting groups exquisitely executed; religious processions, festivals, marriages, in short, a series of gorgeous pictures of eastern manners. Those caskets on the toilette contain some of the rarest jewels of the East. That large emerald is to be sent to-morrow morning to a certain lady of questionable fame, but of great influence; for the proud Hastings must stoop to make friends at this crisis, by arts he would once have spurned, and still loathes. That gold bed, preserved with such care in his own chamber, is intended for a gift or tribute to the Queen of England.”

The children were not yet satisfied with

the African slave-trade. He first inquired the vote-it was favourable. He glanced over the reports of the leading speeches;-the vote was his, but the feeling, the spirit of the night was strongly against him. There was the speech of Charles Fox; and he had quoted Cowper!-a beautiful apostrophe to Freedom, cheered by all the members on both sides of the house, forced to admire, vote afterwards as they might.

"Lord Thurlow now sets himself to sleep in good earnest, and his strong will is omnipotent even here. But over the empire of dreams the lord high-chancellor had no power,-Fancy is not a ward of Chancery. His visions were gloomy and distempered. His youth, his manhood, his present life are all fantastically but vividly blended. Sometimes the spirit that haunts him is the Prince of Wales, then it becomes Charles Fox, and anon it changes to William Cowper, and again back to Fox. But his hour comes, the alarum wakes him, and he is almost glad of the relief."

"Would you choose to see the chancellor's dressing-room, Fanny, and his ante-chamber, and the persons met in levee there, thus early, in a chill, foggy, winter's morning?" Fanny chose to do so.

And there was seen the plain chamber of the English minister, lights burning dimly in the cold, heavy air,-a fire choked with smoke. "Ah, poor old gentleman," cried Fanny, "there he is, so cold, I am sure, and so very cross he looks--the poor servant that shaves him looks so terribly frightened. Well, considering how late he was of getting to bed, and all, I don't think, brother George, it is very pleasant to be a high-chancellor at least, in winter; particularly when the king wishes to see him so early at Windsor, to scold him perhaps."

"O, you silly child," said her sister.

"Not so silly, Miss Sophia," said the curate. "To be sure, there is no great hardship visible here, still I could have wished the lord-chancellor a longer and sounder sleep; and it is very wise, Fanny, to learn young, 'that all is not gold which glitters.' But now we shall suppose the chancellor shaved and booted, his hasty cup of coffee swallowed-as the Jews did the passover-standing, his loins girt; for he too is bound for the wilderness. In short, he detests Windsor interviews. A secretary bears his portfolio; his carriage is at the door; he hurries through the circle of adulators, solicitors of his patronage, understrappers of all kinds, that wait his appearance, -the whole herd hateful to him, and he to them; and he is not a man of glozing words or feigning courtesy. No rnan in England can say 'No' more gruffly or ZD SERIES, VOL. II.

decidedly. A few indispensable words uttered, he hurries on. Near the door you note a young clergyman, his fine features 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' His profile strikingly resembles that of William Cowper, and Lord Thurlow recalls his dream and Charles Fox's quotation; and, with his old accurate Temple habits, takes the portfolio himself, and directs his secretary to return and bring him a volume lying on the third shelf of a certain cabinet in his business-room, between a pamphlet on India affairs, and that something about Lord George Gordon.' He now perfectly recollected --for his memory was tenacious of everything

that Cowper had lost his paltry sort of appointment-had gone deranged-was always swainish,-and now piped in some rural shades or other, sunk into nobody, with probably not political interest sufficient to influence the election of the neighbouring borough-reeve. There had been a degree of impertinence in sending such a book to him; or it was, at least, an act of silliness, and showed small knowledge of life. But Fox had quoted it; so once beyond the smoke of London, Thurlow turns over the leaves. The carriage rolls on, post-haste, to the audience of Majesty; but habit has enabled the lord-chancellor to read even in the most rapid whirling motion. He dips at random in search of Fox's passage, and stumbles on that splendid one—‘All flesh is grass.'

'Cowper should have been in the church,' thought he; 'a dignified churchman he is unfit for, but he might have made a tolerable parish priest, if he would steer clear of Methodistical nonsense.'-He dips again

One sheltered hare;' 'whining stuff! or is he mad still?' His eye falls on that passage beginning-How various his employments whom the world calls idle;' and he reads on, not with the natural feelings of Hastings, but yet not wholly unmoved, till he gets to the words, 'Sipping calm the fragrant lymph which neatly she prepares,' when throwing down the book, the man, strong in the spirit of this world's wisdom, mutters to himself, 'Piperly trash!— and is it this Charles Fox quotes? The devil quotes Scripture for his use, and Fox would quote the devil for his.' Lord Thurlow then plunges into that red portfolio which engrosses so much of his time-so much of his soul.

"And now 'the proud keep of Windsor' rises on the ambitious, and prosperous, and proud statesman:- he smooths his brow; his sovereign welcomes him graciously; his audience passes off well; he hastens back to London, where a thousand affairs await to occupy and torture though they cannot distract him. He snatches

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a morsel of cold meat; swallows a glass of wine: and off to the House of Peers, to be baited for six long hours by the bull-dogs of Opposition." "And what has the poor gentleman for all this?" said little Fanny. "I am sure he has hard work of it."

"How idly you do talk, Fanny; is he not Lord-chancellor of England?" cried her sister.

"And fills high-I may say, the highest place; has immense patronage; is the maker of bishops, and deans, and judges, and everything," said George.

"And has immense revenues," added the curate; "estates, mansions,-all that money can command."

"Poor old gentleman," said Fanny, "I am glad he has also that woolsack to rest himself on, for I am sure he must be sadly tired and worried."

"Turn we to Olney-to that dwelling in the very heart of that shabby but now honoured town-to Cowper's abode:-no poet's fabled retirement, embowered in sylvan solitudes, by wild wandering brook or stately river's brink, skirted with hanging woods, or vine-clad steeps, or towering mountains.— Here is the parlour." -"But pray stop, sir," cried Sophia, "that dull house had its pleasant accessories; have you forgot the greenhouse, the plants, the goldfinches; that pleasant window looking over the neighbour's orchard?—and what so beautiful as an orchard, when the white plum blossom has come full out, and the pink apple flowers are just budding!"

"And Beau, and Tiney," cried Fanny.

"I have forgot none of these things, my dears," said Mr. Dodsley. "Only I fear that to see them, as Cowper saw them, we must have a poet's glass; an instrument of higher powers than a Claude Lorraine glass, and clothing every object with softer, or warmer, or sunnier hues than even that pretty toy:-where could that be bought, Fanny?" "Indeed, sir, I don't know," said Fanny.

"We may borrow one for a day, or a few hours or so," said Sophia, smiling intelligently. "It is but fair to use Mr. Cowper's glass, in viewing his own pictures; and Mrs. Unwin's spectacles, in judging of her domestic comforts,' said the curate. "There is the parlour; it looks doubly snug to-night. Now you are to recollect, ladies and gentlemen, that this scene passes on a night when Mr. Hastings' trial is proceeding; and while Lord Thurlow is busy and distracted in his bureau. Tea is overthe hares are asleep on the rug. Beau the spaniel lies in the bosom of Bess the maukin.

On the table lie some volumes of voyages, which Mrs. Hill has this day sent from London to Mr. Cowper, with a few rare West India seeds for his greenhouse, as he calls it. There is a kind but short letter from her husband, Cowper's old friend; for he too is a busy man in the courts, though not lord-chancellor

and there is a polite note from herself. There has also been a letter from Mr. Unwin this evening, a very kind one, filial and confidential. Mr. Cowper's cumbrous writing apparatus is on the table, for he has not yet got his neat, handy writing-desk from Lady Hesketh. His former writing-table had be come crazy and paralytic in its old limbs; but to-night he has, by a happy thought of Mrs. Unwin's, got that forgotten card-table lugged down from the lumber garret, and he shakes it, finds it steady, and rejoices over it. And now the fire is trimmed for the evening; the candles are snuffed; they show a print of Mr. Newton, and a few prints of other rather ugly, grim-looking, evangelical ministers, and black profile shades of some of Mrs. Unwin's friends. Yet all looks comfortable and feels pleasant to the inmates, for this is their home. O! that magic, transfiguring word! but this home is indeed a peaceful and a happy one.

"Mr. Cowper relates to his companion the events of his long morning ramble,—a ram. bling narrative; simple, descriptive, somewhat pathetic too, nor unrelieved by a few delicate touches of Cowper's peculiar humour. And she listens all benevolent smiles to his ventures, happened in meadow and mire-'o'er hills, through valleys, and by rivers' banks;' and, in her turn, tells him of two poor persons distressed in mind, and pinched in circumstances, who had called at their house; and mentions what she had done for them, and consults what farther deed of mercy or charity she and her friend may jointly accomplish before that day closed. And now Sam, Mr. Cowper's excellent and attached servant, or rather humble friend, who in adversity had cleaved to him, enters the room. Sam knew nothing of London lite or London wages, or official bribes, or perquisites; but I should like to know if ever Lord Thurlow had such a servant as Mr. Cowper's Sam; for this is no inconsiderable item in a man's domestic happiness. And unless we know all these little matters, how can we pronounce a true deliverance?"

"We may guess that honest Sam and his qualities would have been of little utility, and of small value to Edward, Lord Thurlow, any way," said Mrs. Herbert; "and so throw the attached servant out of his scale altogether."