your Journal - would be sufficient to fling open the doors of the Beautiful Temple again, as we can remember them when we were boys. At that time of life, what would the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, have suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had been obstructed by the demand of so much silver !-if we had scraped it up to gain an occasional admission (as we certainly should have done) would the sight of those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while we had been weighing anxiously prudence against sentiment) as when the gates stood open as those of the adjacent Park; when we could walk in at any time, as the mood brought us, for a shorter or longer time, as that lasted? Is the being shown over a place the same as silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it? In no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find entrance (out of service time) under the sum of two shillings. The rich and the great will smile at the anticlimax, presumed to lie in these two short words. But you can tell them, sir, how much quiet worth, how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with a purse incompetent to this demand.-A respected friend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis, presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the same time a decently clothed man, with as decent a wife, and child, were bargaining for the same indulgence. 'The price was only two-pence each person. The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in; but there were three of them, and he turned away reluctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb of Nelson. Perhaps the interior of the Cathedral was his object. But in the state of his finances, even sixpence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more impressively); instruct them of what value these insignificant pieces of money, these minims to their sight, may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate admission would expose the Tombs to violation. Remember your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all? Do the rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such speculations? It is all that you can do to drive them into your churches; they do not voluntarily offer themselves. They have, alas! no passion for antiquities; for tomb of king or prelate, sage or poet. they had, they would be no longer the rabble.

If

For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has been--a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon the effigy of that amiable spy Major Andre. And is it for this-the wanton mischief of some schoolboy, fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic Freedom-or the remote possibility of such a mischief occurring again, so easily to be prevented by stationing a constable within the walls, if the vergers are incompetent to the duty-is it upon such wretched pretences, that the people of England are made to pay a new Peter's Pence, so long abrogated; or must content themselves with contemplating the ragged exterior of their Cathedral? The mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic? [Can you help us in this emergency to find the nose? or can you give Chantrey a notion (from memory) of its pristine life and vigour? I am willing for peace's sake to subscribe my guinea towards the restoration of the lamented feature. I am, Sir, your humble servant,-ELIA.]

Amicus Redivivus.

(The London Magazine, December, 1823.)

["G. D." whose escape from drowning is here commemorated, was George Dyer, formerly a student of Christ's Hospital, an old bookworm, who in later life eked out his income as a Reader for the press. Barry Cornwall describes him as the simplest and most inoffensive of men. William Hazlitt speaks of him as browsing on the husks and leaves of books and following learning as its shadow. Charles Lamb declared in his regard that the gods by denying him the very faculty of discrimination, had effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom. Extremely near-sighted, wonderfully absent, and, in his very gait spasmodic, he was visibly an oddity. Spare and diminutive in stature, this was the eccentric, who at broad noonday, as Elia here relates, marched straight into "the New River (by this rather elderly)" running immediately in front of Elia's then home, Colebrook Cottage.]

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

I Do not know when I have experienced a stranger sensation, than on seeing my old friend G. D., who had been paying me a morning visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, instead of turning down the right-hand path by which he had entered—with staff in hand, and at noonday, deliberately march right forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear.*

A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling enough; but, in the broad open daylight, to witness such an unreserved motion towards selfdestruction in a valued friend, took from me all power of speculation.

How I found my feet, I know not. Consciousness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but the silvery apparition of a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff (the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on my shoulders, and I-freighted with a load more precious than he who bore Anchises.

And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry passers-by, who albeit arriving a little too late to participate in the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to communicate their advice as to the recovery; prescribing variously the application, or non-application of salt, &c, to the person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest by a bright thought, proposed sending for the doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impossible as one should think, to be missed on, -shall I confess?—in this emergency, it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions and mine had not been inconsiderable-are commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of irresolution.

MONOCULUS for so, in default of catching his true name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman who now appeared- is a grave middle-aged person,

* [The topography of my cottage and its relation to the river will explain this, as I have been at some cost to have the whole engraved (in time, I hope, for our next number), as well for the satisfaction of the reader as to commemorate so signal a deliverance.]

who, without having studied at the college, or truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would seem extinct, and lost for ever. He omitteth no occasion of obtruding his services, from a case of common-surfeitsuffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by a too wilful application of the plant Cannabis outwardly. But though he declineth not altogether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth for the most part to water-practice; for the convenience of which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters near the grand repository of the stream mentioned, where, day and night, from his little watch-tower, at the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks of drowned mortality--partly, as he saith, to be upon the spot-and partly, because the liquids which he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently to be found at these common hostelries, than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported, he can distinguish a plunge at a half furlong distance; and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a sad brown, but which, by time, and frequency of nightly divings has been dinged into a true professional sable. He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable for wanting his left eye. His remedy-after a sufficient application of warm blankets, friction, &c., is a simple tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, with water, made as hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster, and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of the prescription. Nothing can be more kind or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth confidence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid can refuse to pledge him in the potion? In fine, MONOCULUS is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to wear it out in the endeavour to save the lives of others-his pretentions so moderate, that with difficulty I could press a crown upon him, for the price of restoring the existence of such an invaluable creature to society as G. D.

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed to have given a shake to memory, calling up notice after notice, of all the providential deliverances he had experienced in the course of his long and innocent life. Sitting up in my couch-my couch which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which it administered, shall be honoured with costly vallance, at some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook, -he discoursed of marvellous escapes-by carelessness of nurses- by pails of gelid, and kettles of the boiling element, in infancy-by orchard pranks, and snapping twigs, in schoolboy frolics-by descent of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at Pembroke -- by studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance, by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore throbbings of the learned head.--Anon, he would burst out into little fragments of chaunting-of songs long ago-ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered before since childhood, but coming up now, when his heart was made tender as a child's- for the tremer cordis, in the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in a case of impending danger, acting upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which we should do ill to christen cowardice; and Shakespeare, in the latter crisis, has made his good Sir Hugh to remember the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow rivers.

Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton-what a spark you were like to have extinguished for ever! Your salubrious streams to this City, for now near two centuries, would hardly have atoned for what you were in a moment washing

away.

Mockery of a river-liquid artifice-wretched conduit! henceforth rank with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this, that, smit in boyhood with the explorations of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the vales of Amwell to explore your tributary springs, to trace your salutary waters sparkle through green Hertfordshire, and cultured Enfield parks?-Ye have no swans— no Naiads-no river God-or did the benevolent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye might also have the tutelary genius of your waters? Had he been drowned in Cam there would have been some consonancy in it; but what willows had ye to wave and rustle over his moist sepulchre?-or, having no name, besides that unmeaning assumption of eternal novity, did ye think to get one by the noble prize, and henceforth to be termed the STREAM DYERIAN?

And could such spacious virtue find a grave
Beneath the imposthumed bubble of a wave?

I protest, George, you shall not venture out again--no, not by daylight-without a sufficient pair of spectacles-in your musing moods especially. Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it. You shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your years, after your many tracts in favour of sprinkling only!

I have nothing but water in my head o' nights since this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence in his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopeful (that is to me), "I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head, all the waves go over me. Selah." Then I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the steerage. I cry out too late to save. Next follow-a mournful procession-suicidal faces, saved against their wills from drowning! dolefully trailing a length of reluctant gratefulness, with ropy weeds pendant from locks of watchet hue-constrained Lazari-Pluto's half-subjects-stolen fees from the grave-bilking Charon of his fare. At their head Arion-or is it G. D. ?-in his singing garments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Macheon (or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth are constrained to drown downright, by wharves where Ophelia twice acts her muddy death.

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible world, when one of us approacheth (as my friend did so lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's door, the sensation aroused within the palace must be considerable; and the grim Feature, by modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must have learned by this time to pity Tantalus.

A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was announced by no equivocal indications. From their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver ghosts-poet, or historian of Grecian or of Roman lore-to crown with unfading chaplets the halffinished love-labours of their unwearied scholiast. Him Markland expectedhim Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter-him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom he had barely seen upon earth,* with newest airs prepared to greet- ; and, patron of the gentle Christ's boy,-who should have been his patron through life-the mild Askew, with longing aspirations, leaned foremost from his venerable Esculapian chair, to welcome into that happy company the matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon earth had so prophetically fed and watered.

* GRAIUM tantum vidit.

Blakesmoor in ―shire.

(The London Magazine, September, 1824.)

[Under the title of Blakesmoor, Charles Lamb has here described the old Elizabethan mansion of the Plumers, at Gilston in Hertfordshire. From the Plumers, in Elia's own time, the estate had passed into the possession of a collateral descendant of the race, Robert Plumer Ward, sometime Under Secretary of State, Lord of the Admiralty and Clerk of the Ordnance, but better known in his day as the didactic novelist who wrote "De Vere" and "Tremaine.' At Gilston lived for many years, as housekeeper, the original of Mrs. Sarah Battle, old Mrs. Field, Charles Lamb's maternal grandmother.] I Do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty-an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory-or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on that of the preacher-puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But would'st thou know the beauty of holiness?-go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church: think of the piety that has kneeled there--the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there—the meek pastor -the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee.

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to-an antiquity.

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood the great gates? What bounded the courtyard? Whereabout did the outhouses commence? a few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious.

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot-window seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me-it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a panel of the yellow room.

Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms-tapestry so much better than painting-not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots-at which childhood ever and anon