When forth, along their thousand rills,
The mountain people come,
Join thou their worship on those hills
Of glorious Martyrdom!*

And while the song of praise ascends,
And while the torrent's voice

Like the swell of many an organ blends,
Then let thy soul rejoice!

Rejoice, that human hearts, through scorn,
Through grief, through death, made strong,
Before the rocks and heavens have borne
Witness of God so long.

F. H.

KIT-CAT SKETCHES.-NO. II.

Old Heads on young Shoulders.

UPON one of my days of infant innocence I lined my cousin Proby's hat with birdlime, out of revenge, because he had broken the central ornament in a string of birds' eggs, which, at that happy epoch of puerile simplicity, I had purloined from certain nests in Hadley grove. The poor lad found his beaver as immoveable as the plumed cap of the son of Maia; and much hot water and many screams were expended before it could be disjointed from his head. My mother was seriously angry; but my poor aunt Proby, mother to the victim aforesaid, as gentle a being as ever suffered a family to run wild upon the common of their own inclinations, exclaimed, " Well, well, never mind! he meant no harm: there is no putting old heads on young shoulders!"

My aunt's asseveration has, according to my subsequent experience, been qualified by two exceptions; the one corporeal, and the other mental. The Countess of A- has a pair of very juvenile-looking shoulders, with a very wrinkled head screwed upon their apex. If you walk behind her, she seems twenty-two: accost her, vis a vis, and she mounts to sixty. In that respect she is like the law-very well to follow, but very ill to confront. The mental exception is one Smedley Jones, lately an articled clerk to an attorney-I beg his pardon, a solicitor-in Furnival's Inn, Holborn; but recently out of his time, and therefore qualified to kill game upon his own account. He wears black half-gaiters, and is a member of the Philonomic Society; exhibits much wisdom, little whisker, and no shirt collar; simpers; makes a gentle bow at the close of every sentence, with his chin touching his left collar-bone; criticises the new law courts; wears lead-coloured gloves; affects a beaver with a broad brim; nods at the close of every sentence when the Court of Exchequer pronounces a judgment, by way of encouraging the three puisne barons; and carries his pantaloons to his tailor's in a blue bag that they may pass for briefs. There is a lame clerk in the Three Per Cent. Consol Office at the Bank, with whom Smedley Jones appears to be on terms of considerable intimacy. I rather suspect that the motive of this conjunction is that the latter may

See the description of a sabbath upon the Vaudois mountains, in Gilly's Researches in Piedmont.

obtain private information with respect to certain funded property, appertaining to certain widows and maidens, his attention to whom rises and falls accordingly. It is an unquestionable fact, that whenever a young man rises, like Smedley Jones, upon his toes in walking; waltzes with every thick-ankled girl, that would otherwise be a wall-flower for the whole evening; looks benevolently downward upon his own cheeks, sings a second at church, and boasts of belonging to no club, he may, to a certainty, be set down as one who means to let fly an arrow at Plutus through the Temple of Hymen.

It is quite edifying to meet Smedley Jones at a dinner-party. The first thing he does, on entering the drawing-room, is to take up a book with an air of no common sagacity. If it happen to be Woodstock, he smiles with an aspect of compassionate disdain, and informs the bystander that he objects to historical novels, and that he prefers going to the fountain-head in Lord Clarendon and Bishop Burnet. Upon the appearance of the mistress of the mansion, he takes a seat by her on the sofa; but so near to its edge, that the slightest backward movement of that article of furniture would seat him where he ought to be. He smooths down the sand-coloured hair of the matron's accompanying offspring with an air of ineffable interest; inquires after dear Charles hopes to see sweet little Emma: and ejaculates, "Oh, pray now," when mamma expresses a doubt as to her appearance. He then talks of the sea as beneficial to children, and recommends Worthing, because it has no cliff. When dinner is announced, he looks sharply round for some female whose spine rather swerves from the perpendicular, aware that heiresses are seldom strait-backed; tucks her lean arm under his, and manœuvres to sit next to her at table. Whilst in the act of descending the stairs, our proprietor of an old head upon young shoulders, takes due care that the tongue which vibrates in the mouth of it shall ejaculate, "What a capital house this is!" in accents sufficiently loud to be overheard by the master or mistress of the mansion. He dilutes his wine with water, to adapt it to his conversation ; and enlarges upon the folly of the maxim, "a reformed rake makes the best husband." I have heard him tell, nineteen times over, the anecdote of his uncle Major Flush, who thirty years back, at a dinner with Sir Phelim O'Four-bottle, poured his claret into his boots, aware that they would stand a soaking better than the coats of his stomach. This gives Mr. Smedley Jones an opportunity of observing how different things are at present; with an addition, that one glass of wine at dinner, and two after it, should never be exceeded by any man who wishes to render himself acceptable to the ladies. He belongs to a society for converting Captain Parry's Esquimaux, at the North Pole, from the errors of their ways. I have this fact from his own mouth, having had the misfortune to sit next but one to him at dinner, at old Spinsuit's, the Chancery barrister. The intervening individual was Miss Creek, of Upper Clapton, a white-visaged personage, whom the abovementioned lame clerk, in the Three-per-cent. Office, has introduced to his acquaintance. I rather think Spinsuit has been instructed to peruse and settle their marriage articles. Miss Creek having retired with the rest of the ladies, my left flank was cruelly exposed. The old headsman accordingly brought his juvenile left shoulder forward, and occupied the vacant seat. He asked me if I did not think

the Esquimaux at the North Pole, "dark heathens:" I answered, not entirely so, because their whale blubber supplied them with oil for lamps. Mr. Smedley Jones stared at this, and added, that his meaning was that they were poor unenlightened wanderers. I rejoined, "True, but that's Apollo's fault!" Finding that he had a neighbour who was not to be dealt with metaphorically, he changed his course, and began to dilate upon his family-affairs, and informed me that his brother George was a clerk in the Post-office, where he expressed a hope that Mr. Freeling would push him. Finding, upon enquiry, that his brother George lodged at the last house in Cecil Street, which overlooks the mud-bank of the river Thames, I answered, "I hope he will." I was then informed that Mr. Smedley Jones's brother Richard was a clerk in the brewhouse of Sweetwort and Company; the junior partner of which establishment," sitting under the same minister" at Hoxton, had promised to push him. Finding that Sweetwort and Company were celebrated for their large vat, I again said, "I hope they will," which procured for me one of those amiable chin-dropping bows, which I have already depicted. "For myself," continued my juvenile companion with the antique bust, "I have a clerk who is a cousin to one of the judges, who goes the home circuit next assizes; he knows something of the high sheriff, and that kind-hearted and noble personage (Mr. Smedley Jones is not sparing of adjectives to benefactors in esse or en passe) has promised to push me"-" Neck and heels out of court, into the High Street," thought I, "or his javelin-man will not be of my mind." A Captain Smithers, with a dull eye and a drawling voice, now offered his snuff-box to Mr. Smedley Jones; this the latter declined, with another of those amiable bows, to which I have faintly endeavoured to do justice; and turning to me, observed that snuff-taking was a bad habit for a young man. "At all events," answered I, "he should wear a bad habit, or Scotch rappee will make it one." "Not but what I carry a box myself," continued Mr. Smedley Jones,with a look that he meant for arch-" here it is :" so saying, he pulled out of his coat-pocket an oblong box, with an amber lid. May I perish," thought I, "if it does not come from Geneva. We shall now be pestered with the regular orthodox series of quadrille tunes." When this machine had interrupted conversation for the usual period, and had "said its say," I was in hopes that we had done with it: "But soft! by regular approach-not yet." It was again wound up, and again set a-going, to gratify little Theobald Spinsuit, who had bolted into the dining-room in quest of an orange. These little attentions gratify mothers, and are apt to procure the perpetrator a second invitation to dinner.

66

There now ensued a regular struggle between Mr. Smedley Jones's tongue and my taciturnity. He is one of those civil young men who must speak to their neighbours, whether they have any thing to communicate or not. I was accordingly asked what I thought of the Catholic Question. I had entertained no thoughts upon the subject. "Indeed!" was the reply. The next interrogatory to which I was subjected, was "Who was the Author of Junius?" I protested that I had never given the matter a moment's reflection. This, however, did not stop the subject, and I was condemned to listen to the usual harangue, with the words "Sir Philip Francis, Lord Chatham, Lord Shelburn, bound

copy at bankers, and tall man at letter box"-emphasized after the accustomed manner. Then followed the banking system of Scotland, the Rev. Edward Irving, (whose watch I fear is still in pawn;) the death of the dowager Empress of Russia, Craneoscopy, and Tooke on Currency. All which topics were by me, jointly and severally, returned ignoramus. Mr. Smedley Jones's battery here suffered a momentary pause: whereupon "Thinks I to myself!" now for my turn. "Since Nature has clapped an old head upon his young shoulders, Art shall insert a young head between my old ones. Fifty-one shall start the topics which twenty-one ought to have discussed." Accordingly I asked Mr. Smedley Jones, to his no small dismay, what he thought of Mrs. Humby's Cherry Ripe and the Lover's Mistake. I took it for granted that he had seen Paul Pry on horseback, at Astley's Amphitheatre. I animadverted upon Madame Pasta's Medea: was sorry that Signora Garcia had picked up a Yankee husband: mentioned that I had seen Sir Thomas Beevor and Cobbett, in Saint Paul's Church-yard, in the character of the Goose and Gridiron : wondered why Potier came to the French theatre in Tottenham-street; and asked him if he could tell me what had become of Delia. Nor did I not regret that Miss M. Tree, had changed her situation, and taken to enact plays at Florence, in lieu of operas at Covent-Garden. It is thus that extremes produce each other. If twenty-one monopolizes all the sense at the dinnertable, fifty-one must take to the nonsense or hold its tongue. "Sir," said the moralist of Bolt-court, upon an occasion somewhat similar, "he talked of the origin of evil, whereupon I withdrew my attention, and thought of Tom Thumb." I fear that Smedley Jones has by this time become almost as wearisome to the reader at second hand, as he was originally to the writer. I shall therefore conclude with this observation :-All monsters ought to be smothered: and wherever Nature puts an old head upon young shoulders, the sooner the one is knocked off the other the better.

HYMN TO THE MOON.

"Incessu patuit Dea."

THY port bespeaks thee Goddess, though uncrowned;
Like Naiad wanderer, from some lake-built bower

Launching thy bark through heaven's bright surf and shower,

And making graceful vaunt of kindliest power.

The vapours, dolphin-like, do crowd, and bound,

Showing their changeful backs; and round and round,
Quick-dying lightnings colour them; with sound

Of deep winds, on thou marchest, through each isle

That lies in beaded lines along the sky,

Thy sky of amorous blue, and we do smile
Gravely, and bow unto the gentle joy.
And so thou makest festival above

With the pale watchers of the night; and men
Feel there is joy in heaven; and hill, and plain,
Laugh in their sleep more beautiful: and then
Thoughts, that the blaze of day had veil❜d, do move
Starlike, and tremble in the soul, proud Love
Of all things high and noble, and do prove
Our very day celestial; and all life

Seems, in this purest moonlight,-moonlight pure
And radiant, from the morning's mist; and strife,
And e'en bad men the thought of good endure,
And weeping eyes look up to Heaven secure.

W.

RECOLLECTIONS OF DR. PARR, BY A PUPIL.-NO. I,

DURING the period of my pupilage, Dr. Parr resided at Hatton. His first wife, (formerly Miss Marsengale) and his two daughters, Sarah and Catherine, were then living. The former, whom the Doctor called Sally Parr, was the cleverest woman I ever knew. She was not learned, but she had accumulated a very considerable store of miscellaneous reading, including the works of most of our standard English writers, had a wonderful memory, a fertile imagination, and tremendous powers of wit and sarcasın. In a word, "elle pétilloit de Talent;" as a striking proof of which, I have heard her father allude to a colloquial conflict which she once had with Godwin on the subject of his philosophy, which was then in its zenith, and on which she exercised her powers of ridicule, in a way that excited the astonishment of all

present.

She had lived in the society of Joseph Gerald, George Moore, Godwin, Holcroft, Sir Samuel Romilly, and many individuals of celebrity in the political and literary world; and her talent in discriminating characters, and in portraying their respective foibles and peculiarities, rendered her a most entertaining companion. Her mother possessed strong sense et voilà tout." Catherine, the youngest daughter, who had evidently a tendency to consumption, died unmarried, at the age of about three-and-twenty. Although by no means deficient in abilities, she was eclipsed in intellect by her more highly gifted sister. The latter used often to play on the piano-forte, whilst the Doctor was poring over some favourite Greek or Latin book, totally insensible to the charms of the finest compositions of Haydn or Mozart, which could not for a moment distract his attention. Very different was the case when she struck up the tune of "In yonder green copse there sits an old fox." For a little while the Doctor would attempt to resist the enchantment; but at length the fascination was irresistible, the pipe was laid down, the book thrown aside, and my preceptor accompanied the instrument with all the power of his stentorian voice. The song to which I have just alluded is sung as a glee: I believe it is not in print, and I have never heard it except at Hatton, where I have often joined in singing it with Parr and Tom Sheridan,

"Animæ quales neque candidiores

Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter."

HOR. Sat. v. Lib. i. 41, 42.

Parr took the bass, and Tom Sheridan the second. Being on a vocal topick, I claim to be allowed one note of admiration for that most openhearted and most agreeable companion, Tom Sheridan; who had been one of the Doctor's favourite pupils, and who was on a visit to him at the period to which I have alluded. He was "a fellow of infinite fun." In conversation he combined wit, with good-nature, and the tout ensemble was delightful. His knowledge was not indeed very great, but July-VOL. XVII. NO. LXVII.

F