blissful band from whose faces GOD hath for ever wiped away all tears. There is a stanza of Campbell that moves deep feelings in me like a heaving flood when I think of it, for in its solemn plaintiveness I hear again that angel's breath, while lingering at the portal of the City whose dwellings have their light and joy from the countenance of the Lamb: Clasp me a little longer, on the brink Of fate, while I can feel thy dear caress; And when this heart hath ceased to beat, oh! think, And let it mitigate thy woes' excess, That thou hast been to me all tenderness, And Friend to more than human friendship just. O! by that retrospect of happiness, And by the hopes of an immortal trust, God shall assuage thy pangs when I am laid in dust.'" COLLOQUY II. CHAPTER IV. "And sure there seem of human kind Some born to shun the solemn strife; Some for amusive tasks designed To soothe the certain ills of life, Grace its lone vales with many a budding rose, Call forth refreshing shades, and decorate repose." SHENSTONE. THERE were three souls in the sanctum at Ivy Lodge on a laughing day in merry May. The Church, by a rather affecting process, quite apart from necromancy, has since resolved those three into two, after an honest and straight-forward fashion, on which one needs not to be over-explicit. I have before hinted at this "catastrophe." That eulogistic description in detail which it might have been excellent gratification to attempt for E.'s god-daughter, as such, would be egregious impropriety under an existing connection. I have two codes of law, by one of which I regulate my conduct socially, and by the other, my conduct professionally; and so distinctly maintained are their respective dictates, that, out of court or chambers, I jealously avoid hyperbole and equivoque, and am careful, when I doff the coif, to don sincerity. testimony, too, of all interested witnesses, is inherently vulnerable; and the portrait of a young wife, drawn by The a spouse peradventure uxorious, could hardly be set up for the scrutiny of Candour, the mind of the painter being by hallucination blinded to the fault of an extravagant use of vermilion. So, like Bassanio before the gaudy golden casket, "I will none of it.” It may be reasonable-or, to avoid all contention about terms-it may be sufferable to laud the object of one's idolatry while yet advancing on that pathway of pleasant meanderings which wend ultimately through the church-porch and have their terminus at the altar-rail; but that goal once attained, the sound of rhapsody beyond grates on the general ear, and incites to sarcasm and a search after blots. I restrain my ink, therefore, at the chops of a channel, into which, if its current once entered, Impartiality might be deluged, and the pilotage of Prudence despised. |