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had a superb villa, was above all things most anxious to conceal from every one of his acquaintances that he had ever been engaged in trade at all-more especially in so low a calling as that of "Cheesemonger." It was the canker in his blooming rose of life, and any allusion, however accidental, was construed by him into a deadly and never to be forgiven insult.

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In a large party at the house of the village clergyman, Coleridge, Lamb, and the quondam Cheesemonger were present. In a discussion on the hard Poor Law, which was then agitating the litical and social circles of London, the retired tradesman took high ground, and irritated the kind-hearted Elia by violent denunciations of the poor; turning round, and with great appearance of triumph over the silent wit, he said to the company generally but more particularly to Lamb, "You must bear in mind, sir, that I have got rid of all that stuff which you Poets call the Milk of Human Kindness.'" Lamb looked at him steadily, and gave in his acquiescence in these words-"Yes, sir, I am aware of it—you turned it all into cheese several years ago." The retired Cheesemonger was inconsolable.

Lamb was once invited by an old friend to meet an author who had just published a volume of poems; when he got there (being somewhat early) he was asked by his host to look over the volume of the expected visiter. A few minutes convinced Elia that it possessed very little merit, being a feeble echo of different authors. This opinion of the poetaster was fully confirmed by the appearance of the gentleman himself, whose self-conceit and confidence in his own book were so manifest as to awaken in Lamb that spirit of mischievous waggery so characteristic of the Humorist. Lamb's rapid and tenacious memory enabled him during the dinner to quote fluently, several passages from the pretender's volume. These he gave with this introduction-"This reminds me of some verses I wrote when I was very young"-he then, to the astonishment of

the gentleman in question, quoted something from the volume. Lamb tried this a second time; the gentleman looked still more surprised, and seemed evidently bursting with suppressed indignation. At last, as a climax to the fun, Lamb cooly quoted the wellknown opening lines of "Paradise Lost," as written by himself. This was too much for the versemonger-he immediately rose to his legs, and with an impressive solemnity of manner thus addressed the claimant to so many poetical honors" Sir, I have tamely submitted all this evening to hear you claim the merit that may belong to any little poems of my own; this I have borne in silence, but, Sir, I never will sit quietly by and see the Immortal Milton robbed of Paradise Lost.""

When Lamb's farce of Mr. H. was acted, he gave a curious instance of one of his singular traits. It must be at once conceded that there were small evidences of humor in the piece, and the construction was undramatic; still there was much to show it was written by a man infinitely superior to all the farce writers in the kingdom. Towards the end of the performance, when it was evident to all that the piece was unmistakably damned, the attention of some of Lamb's friends was drawn to a very loud and violent hissing, which like a stormy petrel, seemed to ride on the whirlwind, and to direct the storm, or as Talfourd said, it was the most prominent fact of the evening, by merit raised to that bad eminence." What was their astonishment to find that this vigorous expression of dissent came from Lamb himself, who, when questioned as to his motive, after the fall of the curtain, stammered out in his peculiar pop-gun manner, "I was so damnably afraid they would take me to be the Author!"

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THOMAS CARLYLE.

One of the firmest-believed axioms of the present age is, that Liberty is the child of Education, and that an enlightened nation must, of necessity, be free; but, in giving the palm to what is termed education, they have bestowed the crown of laurel on the result, and not upon the cause. The victory has been the lauded, the teacher-warriors too often neglected or forgotten. It is the poet, the orator, and the philosopher, who create the patriot. Education does not presuppose freedom; it is only a discipline which lends force and precision to the ideas taught: many a highly educated people have been oppressed, and are still so. The Germans are better educated than the EnglishEngland is infinitely freer than Germany. It is possible to educate and drill a nation into slavery. Myriads of learned monks have been the slavish instruments of spiritual and temporal despotism. It is, clearly, the teachers who sow the seeds of freedom.

The authors of one generation are the spiritual parents of the next, which invariably reaps the full harvest of his thoughts and aspirations. Production and re-production co-everlastingly go on : the blasphemy of to-day is the religion of to-morrow. The thought for which some great-souled martyr died is, in time, the established faith of the million, who murder others for doubting the words which they destroyed the preachers for once uttering. "The Dream of

the Student" is an accomplished fact; a great writer sends his silent but eternal voice into the world; at first it glides unseen, but it gathers force as it glides, till it descends an overwhelming avalanche on the strongholds of tyranny. The great poets produce a revolution, the revolution they cause produces another band of heroic hearts who sing the songs of freedom and cheer the masses on to greater and more enduring triumphs. It was said of old, let who will frame the laws of a land, give to me the making of the songs; the first trains, the other fires-one forms the citizens, the other the hero and the patriot; the first teaches prudence, the other unselfish virtue; the first regulates, the other creates; in a word, the poet is the patriot, the critic, the legislator; we do not undervalue legislation, we only wish to impress that it is distinct from the poet and the philosopher's work. The one is valor, the other discipline; one concentrates and tutors the soul into self; the other expands and carries it beyond.

It is easy to trace the progress of freedom by the steps of literature; the tone of this day's teaching will be visible on the morrow. Seneca uttered a truth weighty beyond the usual course of his thoughts when he said, "To-day is the scholar of yesterday." Let us not, therefore, forget this cheering fact; it might almost resolve itself into an algebraic form, that if the masses who were educated by their parents and clergy of the last generation, have achieved the vast revolutions which so loudly speak the advance of man, what may we not predicate from the children of the present age, when every author of note is a republican or radical? There is not a man of genius now but who belongs to that class. In England we may instance, in proof of our assertion, Carlyle, Dickens, Talfourd, Southwood Smith, Tennyson, Browning, Horne, Heraud, Thackeray, &c. In America they also write under the banner of liberalism. The writings of the authors of to-day are the “ Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin” on the walls of every palace, and the tyrant trembles as did

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Belshazzar of old, as he reads the inevitable sentence. What was the exception thirty years ago, is now the rule; then a liberal author was hunted down as a wild beast, the scorn and dread of the aristocratic, the moneyed, and even of the middle classes. Every ministry thought it a bounden duty to prosecute, imprison, or transport. Now all is changed, and the result in twenty years hence will be the overthrow of every despotism in the world. Who can hesitate to admit that the author is the grand civilizer, the patriot, the true hero, the mental athlete; his voice is the trumpet march to victory; his song invites all to the struggle, and cheers them in the conflict, and his verse preserves and sanctifies them if they fall. He is the pillar of fire by night, the column of mist by day. He leads human nature to the promised land, and refreshes the fainting multitudes, during their wearisome progress, with waters in the wilderness. Every living heart, like the rock, owns the magic of his wand, and responds to its touch. Nature appears to the poets of our day, as she did in ancient times to the prophets.

We have thought it necessary to introduce Mr. Carlyle with these remarks, for he is pre-eminently one of the great teachers of the age; he is less of the mere author than any of his contemporaries; his object is to aid the development of his fellow-creatures, to urge them to cast aside the slavery of cant, and to "stand forth men, and not suits of clothes, with patent digesters placed inside them." It is somewhat to be regretted that his manner is deficient in that simplicity which renders the doctrines clear to the masses, but a little study soon enables the disciple to master the cypher of his style. It has sometimes occurred to us that the author of "Sartor Resartus" has somewhat over Germanised his mind as well as his manner; we all know how a writer is tempted to transfer the style of his favorite author into his own, more especially when being, in another language, the trace of imitation is destroyed or neutralized, and to this "hero worship" of Jean Paul Richter, per

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