all around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare. 66 I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. 66 Presents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those tame villatic fowl "), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, "give every thing." I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours, to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual palate-It argues an insensibility. I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of-the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I-I myself, and not another-would eat her nice cake-and what should I say to her the next time I saw her-how naughty I was to part with her pretty present-and the odour of that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last—and I blamed my impertinent spirit of almsgiving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness, and above all I wished never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto― I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?” I forget the decision. His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But, banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are-but consider, he is a weakling-a flower. 349. A QUAKER'S MEETING. Still-born Silence! thou that art Flood-gate of the deeper heart! Offspring of a heavenly kind! Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind! Secrecy's confident, and he Who makes religion mystery! Admiration's speaking'st tongue! Leave, thy desert shades among, Reverend hermits' hallowed cells, Where retired devotion dwells! With thy enthusiasms come, Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb.1 Reader, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would'st thou be alone, and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite :-come with e into a Quaker's Meeting. 1 From 'Poems of all Sorts,' by Richard Fleckno, 1653. Dost thou love silence deep as that "before the winds were made?" go not out into the wilderness, descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faith'd self-mistrusting Ulysses.-Retire with me into a Quaker's Meeting. For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold his peace, it is commendable; but for a multitude, it is great mastery. What is the stillness of the desert, compared with this place? what the uncommunicating muteness of fishes?-here the goddess reigns and revels.-" Boreas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud," do not with their inter-confounding uproars more augment the brawl-nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds-than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great obscurity of midnight. There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quaker's Meeting.-Those first hermits did certainly understand this principle when they retired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one another's want of conversation. The Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, what so pleasant as to be reading a book through a long winter evening, with a friend sitting by-say, a wife-he, or she, too (if that be probable), reading another, without interruption or oral communication ?-can there be no sympathy without the gabble of words ?— away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade-and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic solitude. To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles of some cathedral, timestricken; Or under hanging mountains, is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy who come together for the purposes of more complete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be felt."-The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quaker's Meeting. Here are no tombs, no inscriptions, sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings but here is something which throws Antiquity herself into the fore-ground-SILENCE-eldest of things-language of old Night— İve mans, 1 TS a te miske te arour trer inquired if Immediate shef in the next La aur avante Piss ini made her escape. Se la mettere as if i ates verk, with which mi mincent” eri ne view, and which I preEr " the ari ini ause I admired plenty of air. From tenes stetet the niche, Viere I av the doubtable Thomas Freeman, Vie Vid ne, mat kang see her, just after she imi torped nu te frek, de utenried ʼn ver her with his hat, but she screamei mt, mi eret ünaly ver is head. I then testrei um v purse is ist is ysbe, mi uditet Richard Coleman is being ambler, mi ring less weight than Thomas: 101 expecting a ses her can ma festens to learn, if pessicie, var became if her. something less than an hour, Richari benmei nest brathless, in the ewing account. Thas won her be bean arm, he left Tm behmd him, and came in sgia of a next timens hunt of men, women, children, and dogs: as he Ed is best keep back the fees, and presently orannoped the rivi s tas de ce vis at last sputed between himself and Pssste nas ting the town, and down the ine that leads Dreshers; a Cole before she came to the house, he got the start and mmed her; she posted for the town again, and soon after she entered a songis seizer in Mr. Wagstaf's tanyard, adjoining to oid Mr. Drake's Stores's harvest men were at supper, and saw her from the opposite side of the way. There she encountered the tampiss full of water; and while she was struggling |