grounds, and be a Quaker still! so different from the practice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can never get far enough from the society of their former errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, with which they had been mingled, not implicated. Get the Writings of John Woolman by heart; and love the early Quakers. How far the followers of these good men in our days have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in their assemblies upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. Others again I have watched, when my thoughts should have been better engaged, in which I could possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the absence of the fierce controversial workings. If the spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed that you shall see one get up among them to hold forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, generally ancient, voice is heard-you cannot guess from what part of the meeting it proceeds-with a low, buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few words which "she thought might suit the condition of some present," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves no possibility of supposing that any thing of female vanity was mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness and a restraining modesty. The men, for what I have observed, speak seldomer. More frequently the Meeting is broken up without a word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the TONGUE, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness. Oh, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half hour, upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers! Their garb and stillness conjoined present a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like—as in the pasture" forty feeding like one.' The very garments of the Quaker seem incapable of receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones. THE TWO RACES OF MEN. The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive Sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all agesAlcibiades-Falstaff-Sir Richard Steele-our late incomparable Brinsley-what a family likeness in all four! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest-taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money-accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or, rather, what a noble simplification of language, (beyond Tooke,) resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun-adjective! What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community-to the extent of one-half of the principle at least. He is the true taxer, who "calleth all the world up to be taxed;" and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem! His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers-those ink-horn varlets who carry their want of welcome in their faces! He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your purse— which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Propontis which never ebbeth! the sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honor, struggles with destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore, cheerfully, O man, ordained to lend-that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were halfway. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who parted this life on Wednesday evening, dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues, which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of disfurnishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) "To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise," he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, "borrowing and to borrow!" In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated: but having had the honor of accompanying my friend divers times, in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends, (as he was pleased to express himself,) to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd." With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away, (for he was an excellent toss-pot;) some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him-as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious-into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth; or he would bury it (where he would never see it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest-but out away from him it must go peremp. torily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick, jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with gray, (cana fides.) He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue, (your bastard borrower,) who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal. When I think of this man: his fiery glow of heart; his swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and little men. The following is a portion of a letter to Coleridge, in which he most beautifully pours forth his feelings of FILIAL AFFECTION. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father. Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? Not those "merrier days," not the "pleasant days of hope," not "those wanderings with a fair-haired maid," which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her schoolboy. What would I give to call her back to earth for one day, on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain! And the day, my friend, I trust, will come; there will be "time enough" for kind offices of love, if "Heaven's eternal year" be ours. Hereafter her meek spirit shall not reproach me. Oh, my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man think himself released from the kind "charities" of relationship: these shall give him peace at the last these are the best foundation for every species of benevolence. I rejoice to hear, by certain channels, that you, my friend, are reconciled with all your relations. 'Tis the most kindly and natural species of love, and we have all the associated train of early feelings to secure its strength and perpetuity. JAMES HOGG, 1772-1835. JAMES HOGG, known under the appellation of "the Ettrick Shepherd," was descended from a family of shepherds, and born on the 25th of January, 1772. At the early age of seven he became a cowherd, and was afterward raised to the more dignified post of shepherd. During his progress in these callings he suffered many hardships, which he humorously describes in his published autobiography; but like many other great men, he owed the nursing of the talent which God had given him to his mother, who saw his genius, and fed it by singing and repeating to him in his childhood many of the old ballads of Scotland. When eighteen years of age he entered the service of a Mr. Laidlaw, in the capacity of a shepherd, with whom he lived nine years, and by whom he was treated with the kindness of a parent. This gentleman possessed many valuable books, which Hogg, who had but recently learned to read, almost literally devoured in the delight he felt in the exercise of this new acquisition. His first literary effort was in song-writing, and in 1801 he published a small volume of poems, and afterward, encouraged by Sir Walter Scott, while still in the capacity of a shepherd, he published another volume of songs and poems under the title of "The Mountain Bard." With the money he received for this, and for "An Essay on Sheep," which gained a premium from the Highland Society, he entered into farming speculations, and in three years found himself penniless. Not being able to find employment in his early occupation at his native place, he went to Edinburgh, determined, as he says, "to force himself into notice as a literary character." At first he was unsuccessful, but on the appearance of "The Queen's Wake," in 1813, he at once established his reputation as a true poet. This "legendary poem" is composed of a series of tales and lyric legends, supposed to be sung before Mary, Queen of Scots, by the native bards of Scotland assembled at a royal “Wake” (or night-meeting) at the palace of Holyrood, in order that the fair queen might prove "The wondrous powers of Scottish song." "The design was excellent, and the execution so varied and masterly, that Hogg was at once placed among the first of living poets. The different productions of the native minstrels are strung together by a thread of narrative so gracefully written in many parts, that the reader is surprised equally at the delicacy and genius of the author." At the conclusion of the poem, Hogg thus adverts with feeling to the advice once given him, to abstain from the worship of poetry, by SIR WALTER SCOTT. The land was charm'd to list his lays; 1 Ettrick is a small place in the county of Selkirk, about forty miles south of Edinburgh, and near the head waters of the river Ettrick, which flows into the Tweed. The principal branch of this stream is the Yarrow, which Hogg often mentions in his poetry. |