that have a little illicit passion that way; but not one in a thousand that is a genuine antiquary. Clergymen have always had a relish for it, but the true clerical antiquary abdicated with King James. A whig and an antiquarian were never buttoned-up in the same great-coat; and an antiquarian Calvinist is impossible-it is a contradiction in terms; there may be people that profess it, but I deny their sincerity in one or the other :-I leave them the election. Even in the Church of England he is but a poor dumb thing, like a swallow in December. It is not his element. In my whole life I have never known but one who had the authentic stamp and impress of a legitimate descendant of old Camden; poor W, who died last autumn of a "restoration." Though living within half as many miles, he had not been at Salisbury for thirty years; and wanting to settle some disputed chronological fact, by reference to an old monument there, he determined, after six months' deliberation, to visit it again. There he arrived with a light heart, in a green old age, on the first of August: he fell into some idolatrous lapses in the cathedral close-entered the cathedral itself, with a bewildering, but subdued and religious passion,-and found the monument swept away in the late "restoration." He never looked up after this. He complained instantly of a cold chill, which I took for an indirect hint at the nakedness that surrounded him: the old screen, he said, if it did break the view, broke the wind in addition; he wandered once round the cathedral, heaved a sigh or two, returned to Stockbridge the same evening, and got home to Winchester, just in time to die on the third. W was so entirely an old antiquarian, that he must have had a bitter consciousness, if gall were in so gentle a creature, that he had outlived his generation. His library alone would prove this to any other person. Out of 711 volumes he bequeathed me, there were 305 folios, 208 quartos, 196 octavos, and two 12mos. This "halfpenny worth of bread was the "Sixe Court Comedies," by John Lilly; and the "Eikon Basilike, the Portraiture of his sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings." How the first came to be admitted I know not; and the latter, I suspect, would have been exchanged for a more " enlarged " edition, but that it was a sort of heir-loom, that had passed down through the successive generations of his family, from its first publication in 1661, with the autograph of every possessor. As the reader will presume, an antiquary is necessarily a high churchman and a tory; and you could always have distinguished my friend in his canonicals, by his bowing three times from the church door to the pulpit. He thought the Reformation a fine thing,—that is, he belonged to the church 200 years after it; but always qualified his commendation, by regretting the devastation of the cathedrals, and shrank with instinctive horror at the name of John Knox. He did not believe in transubstantiation, of course; but was equally incredulous in Pope Joan, and the Popish Antichrist. He hated (the old) controversial texts; and, therefore, discoursed twice a year regularly on the Seventh Verse of the Fourteenth Chapter of St. John. He thought a reconciliation and union in the Christian church possible, if people would not dispute about trifles; and was willing to give up his living, rather than his band or his surplice. He disliked the Act of Parliament Parish Registers, because these "flimsy foolish things" could not last above a few years (centuries), and must perish before they could possibly be of service (to an antiquary). He took in The St. James's Chronicle, and thought the obituary in The Gentleman's very entertaining:-by the bye, I may add, he was singular in commending the engravings in the latter work; but he objected against those of a higher finish, that with their shadows and their perspective they confused all detail the consummation and end of the art. He was a minorcanon, without a higher ambition: resided all his life under the wing of his cathedral, and was 66 plagued to death" to show it to friends' friends; and, therefore, if a stranger but cast an eye towards the great clock, while he was sunning himself on the south side, he pulled out his key, and accompanied him all over, even into the crypt and the cloisters, with infinite gratification. The zest of the enJoyment was in the south transept, when he refuted's ridiculous supposition about the circular arch; and in the gracious smile with which he refused the half-crown at the west door, and startled his companion into an assurance that he was not the verger. People had no relish for antiquity if this occurred less than three times a-week, from June to October. course, He was a bachelor, of course; and maintained two maiden sisters, of an antiquarian bachelor could do no less; and drove a fourwheeled chaise, with a Suffolk cobb, of course; he drank ale, and smoked in moderation. He visited no where, and was visited by no one that lived within twenty miles of his own house. He was not, to speak strictly, either a capuchin, or a carmelite,neither of the order of St. Benedict, nor St. Francis, since the protestant church knows no such abominations; yet was he, in spirit, "a right monk, if ever there were any, since the monking world monked a monkery," as Rabelais phrases it. He was stiff and reserved out of the shadow of his cathedral; but full of kind heartedness, under all his formality, if you could but get at it; which was somewhat difficult through so much flannel and fleecy-hosiery. He made sure of an old collegian or two at the Visitation, when the toilet was unpinned in the best chamber, and he "played his part:" a part full of humanity, but with some spice of infirmity; for he cared not then to "hear the chimes at midnight,"-bore a part in a catch of Anacreon's, that was in vogue forty years ago at St. John's,-ran revels over his old poet,-talked of Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Nell Gwyn, and awoke on the morrow, with a mixture of regret and good humour, hoping to be forgiven, as the Visitation came but once a-year. In his youth he had been introduced to old Cole of Cambridge, visited every cathedral in England, and went to France for the sole purpose of seeing the façade of Rheims. He laughed at Whittington's opinion about the antiquity of Gothic architecture there; agreed with Carter in calling it English; and, in proof, had no doubt Solomon's temple had the lancet arch," he made windows of narrow lights," if it were not a purely Gothic building; for "against the wall of the house, he built chambers" which he ever suspected to be the little chapelries that so beautify a Gothic cathedral, and of which the Parthenon knows nothing. There were innumerable other corroborative circumstances that he would throw out, if his conjecture were questioned; such as "the carving with knops and open flowers," and "the walls of the house round about with carved figures of cherubim, and palm-trees, and open flowers within and without; the former of which he maintained were yet visible in our corbels and gutter-spouts,-and the latter not only in the cathedral itself, but was the hint on which Warburton founded his theory. Nothing was more pleasant than the self-satisfaction with which he refuted Inigo Jones's conjecture about Stonehenge being a work of the Romans. He admitted the transmarine speculation about Merlin to be an idle tale; thought Colt Hoare visionary; smiled at the Druids; overthrew the Danes in a moment; and laughed outright at the cenotaphian humour about the British kings; admitted the work was in existence before the Conquest; and thus having disposed of all generations, since the first peopling of the island, shook his head significantly, and had “ an opinion of his own." He well remembered Mr. Gray, and was surprised to hear he was a poet. He had doubts about Rowley, but never mentioned which way. He thought Drayton's Polyolbion the finest poem in our language, but too superficial and imaginative, and all the rhyme the worse. He believed he liked fishing, for no other reason but that bequeathed him his tackle; and he went once a-year to BishopsWaltham, to unfold and fold it, and keep up the self-delusion. thought Isaac Walton's was a clever book, and would have been better but for the idle dialogue nothing to the purpose. He had a somewhat similar objection to Sir Thomas Brown's Urn Burial, which he thought discursive, and too full of irrelevant speculation. He These are a few opinions that may serve to give individuality to his character; but he had a thousand others no better worth recording, in all which," affection, master of passion, swayed him to the mood of what it liked and loathed ;" and so it does not only a simple antiquary, but all other people worth remembering: it is a clue to the whole mystery of the human mind; the text to Sterne's chapter on Hobby-horses; the soul of Wordsworth's poetry; the source of Hazlitt's power,Rousseau's pathos, Montaigne's knowledge; the foundation of Shakspeare's dramatic characters; and possibly the occasion of this first essay in the LONDON, by THURMA. THEODORE AND BERTHA, A DRAMATIC SKETCH. THE story of this little drama is taken, with some variation in the scene and catastrophe, from the beautiful ballad entitled Fause Foodrage, in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Scene, a Forest in Bohemia-a Castle in the Back ground. Theodore alone. The. Lie there, dark murderous weapon! I renounce thee! Farewell, ye barbarous sports! Alas, poor fawn! Enter Bertha. Ber. Did I not hear a gun? The poor, poor fawn The. Oh! cruel! cowardly! Never again will I- I hate my treacherous skill-I hate myself. Ber. Look how the poor fawn, with his nudging nose And pretty stamping feet, dabbled in blood, Tries to awake his dam! How piteously He moans, poor spotted thing! Are you quite sure The doe is dead? I thought I saw her move. The. Too sure. 'Twas not her motion; that fond thing Striving-I cannot bear to look on them! She is too surely dead; when I came up I found her dying; her fine delicate limbs Trembling with the death-shiver. She scarce breathed; Stretch'd out her feet and died. Oh, Lady Bertha, No; it lay sleeping there Behind the bushes. But a savage heart Was mine, that could even here- Look round you, lady! There is not in the forest such a spot As this. Look how the wood-walks hither tend, As to a centre: some in vistas green, Pillar'd and over-arch'd-as the long aisles Beneath this monarch oak, through whose thick boughs Ber. You are so sorry! The. Oh! no; no ; 'Tis my father's fault: He keeps me here, waging unequal war With these poor harmless deer, when I should be Ber. That were a strange place to learn gentleness. Ber. The. She knows me! Ber. The. Nay, Theodore Theodore Oh! now that name Is precious to my heart! Thou know'st me, lady? Ber. Think you, I thus had spoken with a stranger? I've often seen you at our early mass, And sometimes from the windows; and, besides, My own dear mother often speaks of your's- She was her maid; The. Oftenest, I think, of all. That I'm your foster-sister? That one breast- And that we should be friends? Oh, I have long'd, But my stern Uncle Look, the poor fawn has moan'd himself asleep! Yet have I there a lone deserted nook, Which long neglect has made a sort of garden, All clothed with moss, and grass, and trailing plants, And deck'd with gorgeous weeds. The wild-vine there, And white-vein'd ivy, form a natural arbour; And I have mingled odorous shrubs, and sprinkled Of any other, I still call it mine; And there my pretty fawn shall dwell with me, I must not, dare not. The. Oh no, no, no; Only to the gate? Ber. The gate! Then I must tell my truant tale- As if I had done wrong-as if-and yet A chosen spot! Well, Theodore, thou know'st In a most strict seclusion-prisoners In every thing but name! For eighteen years, Ber. Her lord's untimely death, and I The. She still mourning Oh! villain, That drink'st the orphan's tears! A time shall come- As a young bird. |