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THE HOUSEKEEPER.

The frugal snail, with forecast of repose,
Carries his house with him where'er he goes;
Peeps out-and if there comes a shower of rain,
Retreats to his small domicile amain.

Touch but a tip of him, a horn, 'tis well-
He curls up in his sanctuary shell.

He's his own landlord, his own tenant; stay
Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day.
Himself he boards and lodges; both invites
And feasts himself; sleeps with himself o'nights.
He spares the upholster trouble to procure
Chattels; himself is his own furniture,
And his sole riches. Wheresoe'er he roam,
Knock when you will, he's sure to be at home.

ON THE FAMILY NAME.

What reason first imposed thee, gentle name-
Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire,
Without reproach? we trace our stream no higher;
And I, a childless man, may end the same.
Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains,
In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks,
Received thee first amid the merry mocks
And arch allusions of his fellow swains.
Perchance from Salem's holier fields return'd,
With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd
Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord
Took HIS meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd.
Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came,
No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name.

THE SABBATH BELLS.

The cheerful Sabbath bells, wherever heard,
Strike pleasant on the sense, most like the voice
Of one who from the far off hills proclaims

Tidings of good to Zion: chiefly when

Their piercing tones fall sudden on the ear

Of the contemplant, solitary man,

Whom thoughts abstruse or high have chanced to lure Forth from the walks of men, revolving oft,

And oft again, hard matter, which eludes

And baffles his pursuit-thought-sick, and tired

Of controversy, where no end appears,
No clue to his research, the lonely man
Half wishes for society again.

Him, thus engaged, the Sabbath bells salute
Sudden! his heart awakes, his ears drink in
The cheering music; his relenting soul
Yearns after all the joys of social life,
And softens with the love of human kind.

SHAKSPEARE CANNOT BE ACTED.

The characters of Shakspeare are so much the objects of meditation rather than of interest or curiosity, as to their actions, that while we are reading any of his great criminal characters-Macbeth, Richard, even Iago-we think not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompts them to overleap those moral fences. In Shakspeare, so little do the actions comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner mind, in all its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is exclusively attended to, the crime is comparatively nothing. But when we see these things represented, the acts which they do are comparatively everything, their impulses nothing. The state of sublime emotion into which we are elevated by those images of fright and horror which Macbeth is made to utter-that solemn prelude with which he entertains the time till the bell shall strike which is to call him to murder Duncan-when we no longer read it in a book—when we have given up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses over seeing, and come to see a man, in his bodily shape before our eyes, actually preparing to commit a murder-the painful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing semblance of reality, gives a pain and an uneasiness which totally destroy all the delight which the words in the book convey, where the deeddoing never presses upon us with the painful sense of presence; it rather seems to belong to history-to something past and inevitable-if it has anything to do with time at all. The sublime images, the poetry alone, is that which is present to our minds in the reading.

So, to see Lear acted-to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters, in a rainy night-has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want to take him into shelter, and relieve himthat is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in

me: but the Lear of Shakspeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimensions, but in intellectual; the explosions. of his passion are terrible as a volcano-they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on—even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear-we are in his mind-we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason we discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when, in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old?" What gesture shall we appropriate to this? what has the voice or the eye to do with such things?

CONFESSIONS OF AN INEBRIATE.1

Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favorite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received

1 What a sad, sad reflection it is that poor Lamb has here drawn his own picture! "In all honest praise of Lamb," says an admirable critic, "in everything that can be fairly said to vindicate his character, and to extenuate his fault or faults-we rejoice from the bottom of our hearts. He was born to be loved. But we cannot agree to build an altar for the enshrining of any theory of drunkenness-even the drunkenness of Lamb. Everybody is painfully aware that drunkenness is compatible with the highest order of genius and virtue. So much the worse; for we know also that it has a perilous tendency to ruin both. What ought to be the moral? Surely this, that the nobler the victim the more impressive the example. The characteristic of intemperance is that it is the gratification of our animal, at the expense of our intellectual and moral nature. Accordingly, it is the characteristic vice of savage as compared with civilized nations; and in civilized nations, of the class which is left most savage. The first stage in intemperance is to place

one's self in the rank of a barbarian; the last in the condition of a brute.”

Edinburgh Review, vol. 1xvì, p. 30.

with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately, their sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies.

Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twentieth year. I had lived from the period of leaving school to that time pretty much in solitude. My companions were chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to bed betimes, and the faculties which God had given me, I have reason to think, did not rust in me unused.

About that time I fell in with some companions of a different order. They were men of boisterous spirits, sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken; yet seemed to have something noble about them. We dealt about the wit, or what passes for it, after midnight, jovially. Of the quality called fancy I certainly possessed a larger share than my companions. Encouraged by their applause, I set up for a professed joker! I, who of all men am least fitted for such an occupation, having, in addition to the greatest difficulty which I experience at all times of finding words to express my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in my speech?

They were no drinkers; but, one from professional habits, and another from a custom derived from his father, smoked tobacco. The devil could not have devised a more subtle trap to re-take a backsliding penitent. The transition from gulping down draughts of liquid fire to puffing out innocuous blasts of dry smoke was so like cheating him. But he is too hard for us when we hope to commute. He beats us at barter; and when we think to set off a new failing against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts the trick upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven worse than himself.

It were impertinent to carry the reader through all the processes by which, from smoking at first with malt liquor, I took my degrees through thin wines, through stronger wine and water, through small punch, to those juggling compositions which, under the name of mixed liquors, slur a great deal of brandy or other poison under less and less water continually, until they come next to none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus.

Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy frame of mind and body. I was never strong, but I think my constitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt from the tendency to any malady as it was possible to be. I scarce knew what it was to

ail anything. Now, except when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am never free from those uneasy sensations in head and stomach which are so much worse to bear than any definite pains or aches.

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the morning, summer and winter. I awoke refreshed, and seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. Now, the first feeling which besets me, after stretching out the hours of recumbence to their last possible extent, is a forecast of the wearisome day that lies before me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on still, or never awaked.

Life itself, my waking life, has much of the confusion, the trouble, and obscure perplexity of an ill dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark mountains.

Business, which, though never very particularly adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken with cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give up an occupation which gives me bread, from a harassing conceit of incapacity. The slightest commission given me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to perform for myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, &c., haunts me as a labor impossible to be got through. So much the springs of action are broken.

The same cowardice attends me in all my intercourse with mankind. I dare not promise that a friend's honor, or his cause, would be safe in my keeping, if I were put to the expense of any manly resolution in defending it. So much the springs of moral action are deadened within me.

My favorite occupations in times past now cease to entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application, for ever so short a time, kills This poor abstract of my condition was penned at long intervals, with scarcely any attempt at connection of thought, which is now difficult to me.

me.

The noble passages which formerly delighted me in history or poetic fiction now only draw a few weak tears, allied to dotage. My broken and dispirited nature seems to sink before anything great and admirable.

It

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, or none. is inexpressible how much this infirmity adds to a sense of shame, and a general feeling of deterioration.

These are some of the instances, concerning which I can say with truth that it was not always so with me.

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