my Master loved, and shews great Kindness to the old House-dog, that you know my poor Master was so fond of. It wou'd have gone to your Heart to have heard the Moans the dumb Creature made on the Day of my Master's Death. He has ne'er joyed himself since ; no more has any of us. 'Twas the melancholiest Day for the poor People that ever happened in Worcestershire. This being all from, "Honoured Sir, "Your most sorrowful Servant, "Edward Biscuit. "P.S. My Master desired, some Weeks before he died, that a Book which comes up to you by the Carrier should be given to Sir Andrew Freeport, in his Name." Sir Andrew opening This Letter, notwithstanding the poor Butler's Manner of Writing it, gave us such an Idea of our good old Friend, that upon the Reading of it there was not a dry Eye in the Club. the Book found it to be a Collection of Acts of Parliament. There was in Particular the Act of Uniformity, with some Passages in it marked by Sir Roger's own Hand. Sir Andrew found that they related to two or three Points, which he had disputed with Sir Roger the last Time he appeared at the Club. Sir Andrew, who would have been merry at such an Incident on another Occasion, at the Sight of the Old Man's Handwriting burst into Tears, and put the Book into his Pocket. Captain Sentry informs me, that the Knight has left Rings and Mourning for every one in the Club. SOME PASSAGES OF EDMUND BURKE THERE is no man anywhere to be found in the annals of Parliament who seems more thoroughly to belong to England than does Edmund Burke, indubitable Irishman though he was. His words ring out the authentic voice of the best political thought of the English race : "If any man ask me what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,—and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of the matter." "Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty adheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favourite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness." . . . "My hold on the colonies, is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it once be understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation, and the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. So long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign power of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you."... "We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition; your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery." Does not your blood stir at these passages? And is it not because, besides loving what is nobly written, you feel that every word strikes towards the heart of the things that have made your blood what it has proved to be in the history of our race. WOODROW WILSON. H. IN STRATFORD-UPON-AVON NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864): THE spire of Shakspeare's church-the Church of the Holy Trinity-begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-looking houses of modern date; and the streets being quite level, you are struck and surprised by nothing so much as the tameness of the general scene; as if Shakspeare's genius were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial splendours in the town where he was born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by; the house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded from within by the character of its inmate; and having been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as old humourists are apt to do. Here, too (as so often impressed me in decayed English towns), there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small-clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories: |