The gay can weep, the impious can adore
From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel floor
Till dying sunset sheds his crimson stains
Through the faint halos of the irised panes.
Yet there are graves whose rudely-shapen sod
Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton trod;
Graves where the verdure has not dared to shoot,
Where the chance wild-flower has not fixed its root,
Whose slumbering tenants, dead without a name,
The eternal record shall at length proclaim
Pure as the holiest in the long array

Of hooded, mitred or tiaraed clay !

Deal meekly, gently with the hopes that guide
The lowliest brother straying from thy side;
If right they bid thee tremble for thine own,
If wrong, the verdict is for God alone.

What though the champions of thy faith esteem
The sprinkled fountain or baptismal stream;
Shall jealous passions in unseemly strife

Cross their dark weapons o'er the waves of life?

Let my free soul expanding as it can

Leave to his scheme the thoughtful Puritan;
But Calvin's dogma shall my lips decide?
In that stern faith my angel Mary died,
Or ask if Mercy's milder creed can save,
Sweet sister risen from thy new-made grave?
True, the harsh founders of thy church reviled
That ancient faith, the trust of Erin's child;-
Must thou be raking in the crumbled past
For racks and fagots in her teeth to cast?
See from the ashes of Helvetia's pile

The whitened skull of old Servetus smile!

Grieve as thou must o'er History's reeking page;
Blush for the wrongs that stain thy happier age;
Strive with the wanderer from the better path,
Bearing thy message meekly, not in wrath;
Weep for the frail that err, the weak that fall,
Have thine own faith,—but hope and pray for all.

I conclude with the following genial stanzas, worth all the temperance songs in the world, as inculcating temperance. They really form a compendium of the history of New England :

ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL

This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
That dipped their ladle in the punch, when this old bowl was new.

A Spanish galleon brought the bar,-so runs the ancient tale,-
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should
He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale [fail,
'Twas purchased by an English squire, to please his loving dame,
Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
And oft, as on the ancient stock, another twig was found,
'Twas filled with caudle, spiced and hot, and handed smoking round.

But changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,
Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,

But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,

He went to Leyden where he found conventicles and schnaps.

And then, of course you know what's next,-it left the Dutchman's shore,

[more,

With those that in the May-flower came,-a hundred souls and
Along with all the furniture to fill their new abodes,-
To judge by what is still on hand,—at least a hundred loads.
"T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
When old Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim ;
The little captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
He poured the fiery Hollands in, the man that never feared-
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard,
And one by one the musketeers-the men that fought and prayed—
All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin."
A hundred years, and fifty more, had spread their leaves and snows,
A thousand rubs had flattened down each little cherub's nose,
When once again the bowl was filled, but not in mirth or joy,
'T was mingled by a mother's hand to cheer her parting boy.

"Drink, John," she said, "'t will do you good-poor child, you'll never bear

This working in the dismal trench out in the midnight air;
And if God bless me !-you were hurt,'t would keep away the chill."
So John did drink-and well he wrought that night at Bunker's Hill!
I tell you there was generous warmth in good old English cheer;
I tell you 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here,
'Tis but the fool that loves excess. Hast thou a drunken soul?
The bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl!

I love the memory of the past-its pressed yet fragrant flowers--
The moss that clothes its broken walls-the ivy on its towers—
Nay this poor bauble it bequeathed-my eyes grow moist and dim
To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim.

Then fill a fair and honest cup, and bear it straight to me;
The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er the liquid be;
And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin
That dooms one to those dreadful words-" My dear, where hare
you been?"

Dr. Holmes is still a young man, and one of the most eminent physicians in Boston. He excels in singing his own charming songs, and speaks as well as he writes; and, after reading even the small specimens of his poetry that my space has enabled me to give, my fair readers will not wonder to hear that he is one of the most popular persons in his native city.

He is a small compact little man (says our mutual friend), the delight and ornament of every society that he enters, buzzing about like a bee, or fluttering like a humming-bird, exceedingly difficult to catch unless he be really wanted for some kind act, and then you are sure of him.

XXXII.

LETTERS OF AUTHORS.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON.

BESIDES the rich collections of State Papers and Historical Despatches which have been discovered in the different public offices, and the still more curious bundles of family epistles (such as the Paxton correspondence), which are every now and then disinterred from the forgotten repositories of old mansions, there is no branch of literature in which England is more eminent than the letters of celebrated men.

From the moment in which Mason by a happy inspiration made Gray tell his own story, and by dint of his charming letters contrived to produce from the uneventful life of a retired scholar one of the most attractive books ever printed, almost every biographer of note has followed his example. The lives of Cowper, of Byron, of Scott, of Southey, of Charles Lamb, of Dr. Arnold, works full of interest and vitality, owe their principal charm to this source. Nay, such is the reality and identity belonging to letters written at the moment and intended only for the eye of a favourite friend, that it is

probable that any genuine series of epistles, were the writer ever so little distinguished, would, provided they were truthful and spontaneous, possess the invaluable quality of individuality which so often causes us to linger before an old portrait of which we know no more than that it is a Burgomaster by Rembrandt, or a Venetian Senator by Titian. The least skilful pen, when flowing from the fulness of the heart, and untroubled by any misgivings of after publication, shall often paint with as faithful and life-like a touch as either of those great masters.

Of letter-writers by profession we have indeed few, although Horace Walpole, bright, fresh, quaint, and glittering as one of his own most precious figures of Dresden china, is a host in himself. But every here and there, scattered in various and unlikely volumes, we meet with detached letters of eminent persons which lead us to wish for more. I remember two or three of David Hume's which form a case in point: one to Adam Smith, who had asked of him the success of his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," in which he dallies with a charming playfulness with an author's anxiety, withholding, delaying, interrupting himself twenty times, and at last pouring out without stint or measure the favourable reception of the work; another, to Dr. Robertson, who appears to have requested his opinion of his style, bantering him on certain. Scottish provincialisms and small pedantries-"a historian, indeed! Have you an ear?"-mixed with praise so graceful and kindness so genuine, that the most susceptible of vanities could not have taken offence.

Every now and then, too, we fall upon a long correspondence which the writer's name has caused to be published, but which, from a thousand causes, is certain to fall into oblivion, although containing much that is curious. Such is "The Life and Letters of Samuel Richardson."

I suspect that the works from whence that great name is derived are in this generation little more than a tradition ; and that the "Clarissa" and the "Sir Charles Grandison," which, together with the "Spectators," formed the staple of our great grandmothers' libraries, find almost as few readers amongst their descendants as the "Grand Cyrus," or "The Princess of Cleves."

As far as "Clarissa" is concerned, great tragedy as the

book unquestionably is, I do not wonder at this. Considering the story and plan of the work, the marvel is rather that mothers should have placed it in their daughters' hands as a sort of manual of virtue, and that at Ranelagh, ladies of the highest character should have held up the new volumes as they came out, to show to their friends that they possessed the book of which all the world were talking, than that it should now be banished from the boudoir and the drawingroom. But as my friend, Sir Charles Grandison, has no other sin to answer for than that of being very long, very tedious, very old-fashioned, and a prig, I cannot help confessing that, in spite of these faults, and perhaps because of them, I think there are worse books printed now-a-days, and hailed with delight amongst critics feminine than the seven volumes that gave such infinite delight to the Beauties of the Court of George the Second.

As pictures of manners I suspect them to be worthless. Richardson was a citizen in an age in which the distinctions of caste were far more strictly observed than now-a-days; and the printer of Salisbury Court, even when retired to his villa at North End, had seen but little of the brilliant circles which he attempted to describe, and was altogether deficient in the airy grace and bright and glowing fancy which might have supplied the place of experience. Compared with the comic dramatists, Congreve and Farquhar, who have left us such vivid pictures of the Mirabels and Millamants, the Archers, and Mrs. Sullens of that day, Richardson's portraits are, like himself, stiff, prim, hard, ungainly, awkward. In manners, he utterly fails; but in character, in sentiment, and above all, in the power of bringing his personages into actual every-day life, he leaves every writer of his time far behind him. Somebody has said of him very happily-so happily that I suppose it must have been Hazlitt,-"that the effect of reading his books is to acquire a vast accesion of near relations." And it is true. Grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles, aunts, and cousins multiply upon us; we not only become acquainted with the people, but with their habitations; Selby House and Shirley Manor are as familiar to us as our own dwelling; and we could find our way to the cedar-parlour blindfolded.

It was a cause or a consequence of Richardson's popularity that he lived amongst a perfect flower-garden of young ladies,