ADVICE TO PARISHIONERS. 313 the vow of sobriety. It is all nonsense about not being able to work without ale, and gin, and cider, and fermented liquors. Do lions and cart-horses drink ale? It is mere habit. If you have good nourishing food, you can do very well without ale. Nobody works harder than the Yorkshire people, and for years together there are many Yorkshire labourers who never taste ale. I have no objection, you will observe, to a moderate use of ale, or any other liquor you can afford to purchase. My objection is, that you cannot afford it; that every penny you spend at the ale-house comes out of the stomachs of the poor children, and strips off the clothes of the wife. My dear little Nanny, don't believe a word he says. He merely means to ruin and deceive you. You have a plain answer to give :-" When I am axed in the church, and the parson has read the service, and all about it is written down in the book, then I will listen to your nonsense, and not before." Am not I a Justice of the Peace, and have not I had a hundred foolish girls brought before me, who have all come with the same story? "Please, your Worship, he is a false man; he promised me marriage over and over again." I confess I have often wished for the power of hanging these rural lovers. But what use is my wishing? All that can be done with the villain is to make him pay half-a-crown a week, and you are handed over to the poor-house, and to infamy. Will no example teach you? Look to Mary Willet,three years ago the handsomest and best girl in the village, now a slattern in the poor-house! Look at Harriet Dobson, who trusted in the promises of James Harefield's son, and, after being abandoned by him, went away in despair with a party of soldiers! How can you be such a fool as to surrender your character to the stupid flattery of a ploughboy? If the evening is pleasant, and 314 THE LAW.-CHURCH PREFERMENT. birds sing, and flowers bloom, is that any reason why you are to forget God's Word, the happiness of your family, and your own character? What is a woman worth without character? A profligate carpenter, or a debauched watchmaker, may gain business from their skill; but how is a profligate woman to gain her bread? Who will receive her? But this is enough of my parish advice. -[Memoir.] PROFESSION OF THE LAW. THE Law is decidedly the best profession for a young man, if he has anything in him. In the Church a man is thrown into life with his hands tied, and bid to swim; he does well if he keeps his head above water. But then in the law he must have a stout heart and an iron digestion, and must be regular as the town clock, or he may as well retire. Attorneys expect in a lawyer the constancy of the turtle-dove.-[Memoir.] CHURCH PREFERMENT. To give to every clergyman who has gone through the expense of an English University, and who is married and settled in the country, the income which they ought in decency and in justice to receive, would require, not only the confiscation of all the cathedral and episcopal property, but some millions of money in addition. A church provided for as ours now is, can obtain a welleducated and respectable clergy only by those hopes which are excited by the unequal division and lottery of preferment. This is the real cause which has brought capital and respectability into the English Church, and peopled it with the well-educated sons of gentlemen,an object of the greatest importance in a rich country like England. Nothing would so rapidly and certainly ADVICE TO A LADY. 315 ensure the degradation of the Church of England, as the equal division of all its revenues among all its members. -[Memoir.] ADVICE TO A LADY. KEEP as much as possible in the grand and common road of life; patent educations or habits seldom succeed. Depend upon it, men set more value on the cultivated minds than on the accomplishments of women, which they are rarely able to appreciate. It is a common error, but it is an error, that literature unfits women for the everyday business of life. It is not so with men: you see those of the most cultivated minds constantly devoting their time and attention to the most homely objects. Literature gives women a real and proper weight in society, but then they must use it with discretion; if the stocking is blue, the petticoat must be long, as my friend Jeffrey says; the want of this has furnished food for ridicule in all ages. Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach. I once gave a lady two-andtwenty recipes against melancholy: one was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to and of her; another, to keep a box of sugar-plums on the chimneypiece, and a kettle simmering on the hob. -[Memoir.] THE SCARS OF LIFE. EVERY one must go to his grave with his heart scarred like a soldier's body,- sometimes a parent, sometimes a child, a friend, a husband, or a wife. Thus the bands of this life are gradually loosened, and death at last is more welcome than the comfortless solitude of the world. --[Memoir.] 316 FAREWELL.-MELANCHOLY IN WOMEN. FAREWELL. ALL adieus are melancholy; and principally, I believe, because they put us in mind of the last of all adieus, when the apothecary, and the heir apparent, and the nurse who weeps for pay, surround the bed: when the curate, engaged to dine three miles off, mumbles hasty prayers; when the dim eye closes for ever in the midst of empty pill-boxes, gallipots, phials, and jugs of barleyAt that time, a very distant one, I hope, my dear Madam,——may the memory of good deeds support you!-[Memoir.] water. JOURNEY OF LIFE. WE talk of human life as a journey, but how variously is that journey performed! There are some who come forth girt, and shod, and mantled, to walk on velvet lawns and smooth terraces, where every gale is arrested, and every beam is tempered. There are others who walk on the Alpine paths of life, against driving misery, and through stormy sorrows, over sharp afflictions; walk with bare feet, and naked breast, jaded, mangled, and chilled. -[Memoir.] MELANCHOLY IN WOMEN. GOD has made us with strong passions and little wisdom. To inspire the notion that infallible vengeance will be the consequence of every little deviation from our duty is to encourage melancholy and despair. Women have often ill health and irritable nerves; they want moreover that strong coercion over the fancy which judgment exercises in the minds of men; hence they are apt to cloud their minds with secret fears and superstitious presentiments. Check, my dear Madam, as you SHAKES OF THE HAND. 317 value their future comfort, every appearance of this in your daughters; dispel that prophetic gloom which dives into futurity, to extract sorrow from days and years to come, and which considers its own unhappy visions as the decrees of Providence. We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy to-day.[Memoir.] EXPENDITURE OF LIFE. LIVE always in the best company when you read. No one in youth thinks on the value of time. Do you ever reflect how you pass your life? If you live to seventy-two, which I hope you may, your life is spent in the following manner :- An hour a day is three years; this makes twenty-seven years sleeping,-nine years dressing, -nine years at table,— six years playing with children,-nine years walking, drawing, and visiting,six years shopping, and three years quarrelling.— [Memoir.] A ONE-BOOK MAN. SOME men have only one book in them; others, a library.-[Memoir.] SHAKES OF THE HAND. THERE is nothing more characteristic than shakes of the hand. I have classified them. There is the high official,-the body erect, and a rapid, short shake, near the chin. There is the mortmain, -the flat hand introduced into your palm, and hardly conscious of its contiguity. The digital,-one finger held out, much used by the high clergy. There is the shakus rusticus, where your hand is seized in an iron grasp, betokening |
