x.-THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. THOSE who use this proverb can never have seen Mrs. Conrady. The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of this heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding characters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and frames to herself a suitable mansion. scholar, the desponding looks of the puzzled | impressions, to be forcible, must be simultaporter: the one stopping at leisure, the other neous and undivided. hurrying on with his burden; the innocent though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy of the second; the place-a public street, not favourable to frivolous investigations; the affrontive quality of the primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) in the implied satire; namely, that few of that tribe are expected to eat of the good things which they carry, they being in most countries considered rather as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties, which the fellow was beginning to understand; but then the wig again comes in, and he can make nothing of it; all put together constitute a picture: Hogarth could have made it intelligible on canvass. Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cremona ;* because it is made out in all its parts, and leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call it cold; because, of thousands who have admired it, it would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled at it. As appealing to the judgment merely (setting the risible faculty aside), we must pronounce it a monument of curious felicity. But as some stories are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this biverbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the incident was invented to fit the line. It would have been better had it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian hemistichs, it has suffered by filling up. The nimium Vicina was enough in conscience; the Cremona afterwards loads it. It is, in fact, a double pun; and we have always observed that a superfotation in this sort of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not care to be cheated a second time; or, perhaps the mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capacious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The * Swift. All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Conrady, in her pre-existent state, was no great judge of architecture. To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine Spenser platonising, sings: -Every spirit as it is more pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, But Spenser, it is clear, never saw Mrs These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philosophy; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a saving clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves us as much to seek as ever: Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen somebody like Mrs Conrady. The spirit of this good lady- her previous anima- must have stumbled upon one of these untoward tabernacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious commodity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no gentle mind - and sure hers is one of the gentlest-ever had to deal with. Pondering upon her inexplicable visage — inexplicable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory-we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be plain, it is better to be plain all over, than amidst a tolerable residue of features to hang out one that shall face remains the same; when she has done you a thousand, and you know that she is ready to double the number, still it is that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it would be a good face if it were not marked by the small-pox-a compliment which is always more admissive than excusatory - for either Mrs. Conrady never had the small-pox: or, as we say, took it kindly. No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is. It is her mark, her token; that which she is known by. IN THE MOUTH. be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her Conrady's countenance that it would be better if she had but a nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces in this manner. We have seen the most malicious beauties of her own sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. The tout-ensemble defies particularising. It is too complete-too consistent, as we may sayto admit of these invidious reservations. It is not as if some Apelles had picked out here a lip-and there a chin-out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel of the countenance in question; to XI. - THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE say that this, or that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that true ugliness, no less than is affirmed of true beauty, is the result NOR a lady's age in the parish register. of harmony. Like that, too, it reigns without We hope we have more delicacy than to do a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Con- either; but some faces spare us the trouble rady, without pronouncing her to be the of these dental inquiries. And what if the plainest woman that he ever met with in the beast, which my friend would force upon course of his life. The first time that you my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a are indulged with a sight of her face, is an sorry Rosinante, a lean, ill-favoured jade, era in your existence ever after. You are whom no gentleman could think of setting glad to have seen it-like Stonehenge. No up in his stables? Must I, rather than not one can pretend to forget it. No one ever be obliged to my friend, make her a comapologised to her for meeting her in the panion to Eclipse or Lightfoot! A horsestreet on such a day and not knowing her: giver, no more than a horse-seller, has a the pretext would be too bare. Nobody can right to palm his spavined article upon us mistake her for another. Nobody can say of for good ware. An equivalent is expected her, I think I have seen that face some- in either case; and, with my own good will, where, but I cannot call to mind where." I would no more be cheated out of my You must remember that in such a parlour thanks than out of my money. Some people it first struck you - like a bust. You won- have a knack of putting upon you gifts of dered where the owner of the house had no real value, to engage you to substantial picked it up. You wondered more when it gratitude. We thank them for nothing. began to move its lips- so mildly too! No Our friend Mitis carries this humour of one ever thought of asking her to sit for her never refusing a present, to the very point picture. Lockets are for remembrance; and it would be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, which, once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a mean face either; its entire originality precludes that. Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary people, by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, put a cheat upon our eyes; juggle our senses out of their natural impressions; and set us upon discovering good indications in a countenance, which at first sight promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which had escaped us, lurking about an under lip. But when of absurdity-if it were possible to couple the ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy, and real good-nature. Not an apart ment in his fine house (and he has a true taste in household decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous print or mirror the worst adapted to his panels that may the presents of his friends that know weakness; while his noble Vandykes are displaced, to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched artist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds his account in bestowing them here gratis. The good creature has not the heart be his - friends. Caius conciliates Titius (knowing his goût) with a leash of partridges. Titius (suspecting his partiality for them) passes them to Lucius; who, in his turn, preferring his friend's relish to his own, makes them over to Marcius; till in their ever-widening progress, and round of unconscious circummigration, they distribute the seeds of harmony over half a parish. We are well-disposed to this kind of sensible remembrances; and are the less apt to be taken by those little airy tokens - impalpable to the palate which, under the names of rings, lockets, keep-sakes, some people's fancy mightily. We could never away with these indigestible trifles. They are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship. amuse XII. THAT HOME IS HOME THOUGH IT IS to mortify the painter at the expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour, surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honourable family, in favour to these adopted frights, are consigned to the stair-case and the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one by one stripped of his favourite old authors, to give place to a collection of presentation copies the flour and bran of modern poetry. A presentation copy, reader-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he -only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does sell, in return. We can speak to experience, having by us a tolerable HOMES there are, we are sure, that are no assortment of these gift-horses./Not to ride homes; the home of the very poor man, and a metaphor to death-we are willing to ac- another which we shall speak to presently. knowledge, that in some gifts there is sense. Crowded places of cheap entertainment, and A duplicate out of a friend's library (where he the benches of alehouses, if they could speak, has more than one copy of a rare author) is might bear mournful testimony to the first. intelligible. There are favours, short of the To them the very poor man resorts for an pecuniary a thing not fit to be hinted at image of the home, which he cannot find at among gentlemen - which confer as much home. For a starved grate, and a scanty grace upon the acceptor as the offerer; the firing, that is not enough to keep alive the kind, we confess, which is most to our palate, natural heat in the fingers of so many shiveris of those little conciliatory missives, which ing children with their mother, he finds in for their vehicle generally choose a hamper the depths of winter always a blazing hearth, - little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. wine though it is essential to the delicacy Instead of the clamours of a wife, made of the latter, that it be home-made. We gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheerlove to have our friend in the country sitting ful attendance beyond the merits of the thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend trifle which he can afford to spend. He has his presence (though a hundred miles may companions which his home denies him, for be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly the very poor man has no visitors. He can aspect reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;" to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately such participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase it. For these considerations we should be sorry if certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now stands, makes many look into the goings on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At home there are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All interests, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy with general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consideration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty; and while he cooks his lean scrap of butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread nurses, it was a stranger to the patient and cheese with an onion, in a corner, where fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting no one reflects upon his poverty, he has a novelty, the costlier plaything, or the cheaper sight of the substantial joint providing for off-hand contrivance to divert the child; the the landlord and his family. He takes an prattled nonsense (best sense to it), the wise interest in the dressing of it; and while he impertinences, the wholesome lies, the apt assists in removing the trivet from the fire, story interposed, that puts a stop to present he feels that there is such a thing as beef sufferings, and awakens the passions of young and cabbage, which he was beginning to for- wonder. It was never sung to— no one ever get at home. All this while he deserts his told to it a tale of the nursery. It was wife and children. But what wife, and what dragged up. to live or to die as it happened. children? Prosperous men, who object to It had no young dreams. It broke at once this desertion, image to themselves some into the iron realities of life. A child exists clean contented family like that which they not for the very poor as any object of dalligo home to. But look at the countenance of ance; it is only another mouth to be fed, the poor wives who follow and persecute a pair of little hands to be betimes inured their good-man to the door of the public- to labour. It is the rival, till it can be the house, which he is about to enter, wher co-operator, for food with the parent. It is something like shame would restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament has been long effaced by misery, is that a face to stay at home with? is it more a woman, or a wild cat? alas! it is the face of the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What comforts can it share? what burthens can it lighten? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared together! But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The innocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that condition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their children; they drag them up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflecting person. No one has time to dandle it, no one thinks There is yet another home, which we are it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to constrained to deny to be one. It has a toss it up and down, to humour it. There is larder, which the home of the poor man none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, it wants; its fireside conveniences, of which can only be beaten. It has been prettily the poor dream not. But with all this, it is said, that "a babe is fed with milk and no home. It is the house of a man that is praise." But the aliment of this poor babe infested with many visitors. May we be was thin, unnourishing; the return to its branded for the veriest churl, if we deny our little baby-tricks, and efforts to engage at heart to the many noble-hearted friends tention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It that at times exchange their dwelling for never had a toy, or knew what a coral our poor roof! It is not of guests that meant. It grew up without the lullaby of we complain, but of endless, purposeless never his mirth, his diversion, his solace: it never makes him young again, with recalling his young times. The children of the very poor have no young times. It makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings which we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays (fitting that age); of the promised sight, or play; of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman,- before it was a child. It has learned to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it never prattles. Had we not reason to say that the home of the very poor is no home? sneer, with which they "hope that they do not interrupt your studies." Though they flutter off the next moment, to carry their impertinences to the nearest student that they can call their friend, the tone of the book is spoiled; we shut the leaves, and with Dante's lovers, read no more that day. It were well if the effect of intrusion were simply co-extensive with its presence, but it mars all the good hours afterwards. These scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes not hastily. "It is a prostitution of the bravery of friendship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, "to spend it upon impertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my loads." This is the secret of their gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. They too have homes, which are no homes. XIII. THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE visitants; droppers in, as they are called. | the moment you have just sat down to a We sometimes wonder from what sky they book. They have a peculiar compassionate fall. It is the very error of the position of our lodging; its horoscopy was ill calculated, being just situate in a medium- a plaguy suburban mid-space-fitted to catch idlers from town or country. We are older than we were, and age is easily put out of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see them drop in endlessly succeeding impertinences. At our time of life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing infirmities of age manifest themselves in nothing more strongly, than in an inveterate dislike of interruption. The thing which we are doing, we wish to be permitted to do. We have neither much knowledge nor devices; but there are fewer in the place to which we hasten. We are not willingly put out of our way, even at a game of nine-pins. While youth was, we had vast reversions in time future; we are reduced to a present pittance, and obliged to economise in that article. We bleed away our moments now as hardly as our ducats. We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our good time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his own. Herein is the distinction between the genuine guest and the visitant. This latter takes your good time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest is domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird; the visitant is your fly, that flaps in at your window, and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturbance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutritive, must be solitary. With difficulty we can eat before a guest; and never understood what the relish of public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor digestion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in of a visitant stops the machine. There is a punctual generation who time their calls to the precise commencement of your dining-hour-not to eat - but to see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and we feel that we have swal- myself." lowed our latest morsel. Others again show their genius, as we have said, in knocking "GooD sir, or madam- as it may be- we most willingly embrace the offer of your friendship. We have long known your excellent qualities. We have wished to have you nearer to us; to hold you within the very innermost fold of our heart. We can have no reserve towards a person of your open and noble nature. The frankness of your humour suits us exactly. We have been long looking for such a friend. Quick-let us disburthen our troubles into each other's bosom let us make our single joys shine by reduplication - But yap, yap, yap! what is this confounded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." "It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. Here, Test-Test - Test!" "But he has bitten me." "Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better acquainted with him. I have had him three years. He never bites me.” Yap, yap, yap!" He is at it again." "Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like to be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the respect due to "But do you always take him out with you, when you go a friendship-hunting?" |