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Here the Hermit upraised his forefinger, and at the same time the door was opened, and a man, drest in snowy white, followed by Bezoar, brought in the first dish. Placing it upon the table the man disappeared, Bezoar taking his place behind the Hermit's chair. And then the Hermit rose, and baring his head, said grace. "Thanks be rendered for this: and may no man dine worse!" With this short ceremony the Hermit entered upon his serious task. He dined as though he was fulfilling a devout exercise of his life. Not a word escaped him, as dish after dish was levied upon, then taken away. We We confess our ignorance of the many delicious things set before the Hermit, they had been so disguised, so elevated by the art of the cook. As, in silence, we watched the doings of the Sage -for soon we sat with idle knife and fork, whilst still our host cut away-we marvelled that a man so capable of solemn thoughts-a man who could discourse, as he had done, upon a churchyardand the pride, the guilt, the empty foolishness of life--should be so curious, so eager in his food. With his strange quickness of mind, he jumped at our thoughts, and said--"I doubt not I can guess your meditation. I, myself, with the wings of my soul, have tried to escape from this mound of flesh," and he glanced at his stomach; "but the soul is, at best, as a trained hawk; let it fly as high as it will, there is its master for the time, with his feet upon the earth; and straightway it drops from the clouds at his call." Saying this, the Hermit pushed away his final plate. He had dined-for he had spoken.

"This wine is miraculous," said we, filling a glass of tokay.

"Yes; I shall remain some time in Hungary," answered the Hermit, sipping the liquor with educated lips. "This," said the Sage, holding the wine between him and the light, "this is the true blood of our dear mother earth. I have often wondered at the sneaking ingratitude of astronomical men. In the name of grapes, why should not Bacchus have a star to himself? We have only to reflect upon the characters of the Pagan deities siderally honoured, to feel the indignity done to Bacchus. There is Saturn, a tyrant and a child-eater, he must be set in a ring, and nominally hung in the sky. Mars, a bully, and nine times out of ten no whit better than a highwayman or burglar, he, too, must twinkle insultingly upon men, made fools and rogues, tyrants and victims, by his abominable influence; yes, he, the recruiting serjeant of the heavens-must stare with his red face upon us ;-and Mercury, thief and orator to boot, may wink through the long night, all having their admirers and worshippers; whilst for Bacchus, he, with all his great bounty, is starless and unhonoured. starless and unhonoured. "Twould be a pleasant, yea a proper thing," said the Hermit with a laugh, "to find a firenew planet for him."

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'Indeed," we answered, "in these days, it is not likely that Bacchus will meet with so bountiful an astronomer. In the outside world-to use your own phrase of Clovernook-his godship is in sad disgrace. His bottles are broken; his pottle-pots shivered; his name anathematized. Boys and girls, scarcely forgetful of the taste of mother's milk, renounce him and his ways; and more, by the potent eloquence of childhood, compel father and mother to forswear the worship of the frantic god. Drunkenness itself has lost its blotched and scarlet face, and, like the hart, pants only for pure water." "I never

"Can it be?" asked the Hermit. knew a drunkard so reformed, unless, indeed, he had been to the Land of Turveytop."

"The Land of Turvey top!" we cried; "where may that be? what people inhabit it, and what wonders may be done there?"

"As for its latitude," said the Hermit, "why, I will not puzzle your geography with it. The people are of gigantic stature, at least forty feet high; yet mild and benevolent-the nurses and pastors of the ordinary race of mortals."

And

"And is the land far distant ?" we asked. "Some hundred leagues, no more, from Clovernook. I was brought up there: understand mebrought up, after the fashion of the Turveytopians. The truth is, when I had arrived at man's estate, I found myself in possession of a bit of nearly every vice that blackens the sons of Adam. I will not run over the list, but to save your time and my breath will merely desire you to think me at that time knowing in all the rascally accomplishments generally shared among a crowd of sinners. yet, though wild and lawless, and hotly pursuing all sorts of mad delights, I never felt a touch of happiness. My pleasure was at best delirium that left me spent and heavy-hearted. It was in one of those moods, when the whole world about me was, to my moral vision, coloured like so much brown paper, that walking at the base of a high mountain, it suddenly opened before me. Sir," said the Hermit with a grave look that rebuked our gaze of incredulity, "I say the mountain opened. A narrow passage, adown which the sun shone with intense brightness, and from which I heard beautiful sounds, as of distant music, was before me. Without a thought I entered it; when having run a few paces, I turned round, andthe marrow froze in my bones-I saw the mountain had closed again behind me. I was trapped; swallowed, a miserable lump of breathing mortality, in the bowels of the earth. Great was the anguish of my heart; yet, strangely enough, light, like sunlight, streamed down the long passage before me, and the sounds of the music became louder and louder. louder and louder. By degrees they carried peace and fortitude into my soul, and I began to walk rapidly forward. As I walked, the passage became wider, and at length ended in an open country; where, save that the grass, the flowers,

the trees, and all things about me, were of gigantic proportions, all in form were the same as the things of the world I had left. I walked until I saw, what at first appeared to me, huge rocks. Continuing to approach them, I discovered them to be houses. My heart dropped within me, for I feared that I was in a land of giants. As the thought fell upon me, I turned round and almost swooned to the earth with fear. A giantess of nine-and-thirty feet three inches high-as I afterwards discovered-stood before me. Instantly I believed I Instantly I believed I was destined to be eaten alive. Though constitutionally gallant towards the sex, I was yet so wayward, that I would rather have fallen into the jaws of a tigress or any other female beast, than have formed the meal of the giantess before me. She saw my terror, and a smile broke upon her broad, good-humoured face, like a sunbeam on a rose-garden. A few strides brought her to me. I fell upon my knees, and lifted up my hands imploringly to her. Never did man drop at the foot of woman in more earnestness of soul. Never could he pray more fervently to be taken in marriage, than did I supplicate not to be chewed alive. The giantess, with a laugh that almost stunned me, bent over me; chucked me under the chin; playfully nipped the end of my nose; indented the tip of her fore-finger in both my cheeks, and shrilly crying klukklukkluk, which answers to our homely catchy, catchy-took me in her arms like a raw, red-faced, hour-old baby." "A strange place this Turveytop, and a strange people," cried we. "And amongst these folks you say you were brought up? Brought up! Why, you were of man's estate when the mountain opened and received you."

"True; but it is the benevolence of the Turveytopians to take in men and women to nurse: to bring them up anew; and to this philanthropic end, every new comer is treated as a new-born babe. Bless you! I have seen even a philosopher, who had made a great noise among his brother pigmies on the outside of the mountain, I have seen him sent back to nurse's milk and pap. The one great principle of the Turveytopians is this; to take no knowledge for granted on the part of those they nurse. May this tokay, sir,"-cried the Hermit, about to quaff,-"may it turn to train oil in my gullet, if I have not seen a Chancellor made, whether or no, to suck his thumb, because the little varlet would affect precocity and quarrel with his nurse, as if to suck his thumb was an act below his consequence. I have seen, too, a Lord Chamberlain taught again to walk: yes, seen him toddling after a sugar-stick held temptingly, encouragingly, 'twixt his nurse's fingers."

"And for what purpose," we asked, "this teaching over again? Was it not a waste of time and pains?"

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Assuredly not," answered the Hermit gravely: and then fixing his eye upon us, he asked, "Have you not known folks in the outside world, whostanding it may be within a few years of their grave seemed, nevertheless, as if they had learned all their worldly knowledge the wrong way? As if, to be aught good, wise, and morally dignified, they should learn the lesson of life again; yea, beginning in the nursery, should sprawl and roar in the nurse's lap? You cannot think this? It matters not: the honest Turveytopians have this belief, and therefore take weak and wicked men and women, of every age, as

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younglings from the womb; they are called the babes of the mountain-children of earth; and for the many vices and faults which they bring with them into Turveytop, why, they are considered as spots and flaws inseparable from their former condition. "Oh! the men I have seen there," cried the Hermit, with a laugh-"the kings, lords, bishops, lawmakers I have seen, all put into second swaddling-clothes, and brought up again as gentle, wise, charitable, sagacious folk, doing good credit to the beautiful earth, which, in their former days, they so grievously scandalized."

"But surely," said we, "it was to take the training a little too far back. We cannot, we repeat, but think it loss of time and trouble."

"Certainly not," cried the Hermit. "Consider, sir, how delightful it must be, by a strong effort of the soul, to lose and forget all that we have mislearned of life, and so begin the lesson

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again-with clear heads and ruddy hearts. compass this with the reprobates of the world is the purpose of the Turveytopians-wise, gracious, wonderful giants that they are-mighty only in their goodness, superhuman in their sweet charities."

"Pray," we cried, "tell us your history whilst in Turveytop."

"You shall hear it, sir," said the Hermit, "and the brief histories of many others."

We drew close to the table, and waited the story with impatience.*

*Here a sudden and sharp illness compelled the writer to lay down his pen; nor was he able to resume it, until too late in the month to continue the narrative. When Louis the Fourteenth visited the death-bed of one of his favourites, the moribund courtier begged pardon for the "ugly faces" which the acuteness of his suffering wrought in him. In the like spirit of contrition, a periodical writer feels that he ought to beg pardon of the sovereign public for being ill, when he is expected to be in the enjoyment of working health, still "to be continued," with the monthly task he has entered upon.-[EDITOR ]

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ཅ། །9

Sir George Etherege.

HIS is the portrait of a man who died a martyr to civility. See with what a self-satisfied air he contemplates the graces of his person, in that favourite appendage of a man of fashion,—a pocket mirror. He stands dangling his hat and plume immersed in his own consequence, saying perhaps with the triumphant Richard

"I'll entertain a score or two of tailors,
To study fashions to adorn my body:
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost."

In half an hour he is off for the Mall,

"To strut before a wanton ambling nymph." He is too well dressed for an assignation in Covent Garden; and he has no time to-day for the middle walk at the New Exchange. He is fresh from the theatre in Dorset Gardens, where some beauty in a vizard, pleased with the graces of his person, and the

known gaiety of his wit, flirted her time between the acts with her friend Sir Fopling Flutter. He is confident he has met her before; seen her, heard her, but her name is a mystery, and no entreaties could induce her to remove her masque for a minute. See her again he must his songs to Coelia are at an end; he has a fresh chase in view, and that best kind of occupation for a man of fashion,-a female secret to discover, and a new intrigue to carry on.

The wits about the court of King Charles II. bestowed on Etherege the epithet of Easy. Mr. Martin has represented him in an easy posture-and easy with himself. He lived, moreover, in easy circumstances, and had an easy way of writing. He was of easy virtue, and of a very easy temperament, never troubled by any fixed principle of religion, but, weathercock-ways, could adapt his morality to the change in his circumstances. "Gentle George" was the name he received from Lord Rochester, who condemns him in his "Ses

sion of the Poets" for his idleness, and his long seven years of poetic silence.

But his half hour of extra contemplation over, see our hero, Sir George, set down in his chair at St. James's, just in time, as a man of gallantry should always be, for what was then called High Mall. He is now conversing with himself,-"Shall I see her here? I could swear to her among ten thousand, though that d-d vizard was a drawback to all certain recognition ;-think of those large wanton eyes, but, above all, that mouth, that has made me kiss it a thousand times in imagination within an hour:

'Some feel no flames but at the court or ball,

And others hunt white aprons on the Mall.' I'gad, I'm not one of these, I'm in pursuit of a playhouse vizard; and she, as she said, would be in love with one who could dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love-letters, an agreeable voice for a chamber, very amorous, something discreet, but not over constant. Gad-zooks, my character to a pin-point; it hits me off to the letter. I'll swear at least to the inconstancy. In the Mall, Park, and Play, be where she will, I will find her out. What did she tell me? -'that she was in love with this dear town to that degree, that she could scarce endure the country i landscapes and in hangings."

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The Mall at this time presented a crowded scene of gaiety and fashion. Some were bowling their time away at the game of Pell Mell, others were on-lookers the lady of fashion was here with the man of sort and quality; the citizen with his wife; the West-ender and the East-ender. Near the Decoy, King Charles II. was seen, feeding his ducks and talking to Dryden, dressed as he was in a new Chedreux wig for this day's Mall, about the subject of his new poem. Here stood Rochester and Buckingham, busy about a new intrigue; here Mulgrave and Sedley, wondering what had become of "Gentle George." Here the man of mode was heard to lament with Sir Topling Flutter, that there was not an order made for the exclusion of the rabble from the Park, when the gay world of the better class were present. Here Pepys was walking with his friend Creed, curious about all that was going on, and making short-hand notes in his mind for his short-hand diary. Here Evelyn was walking, not unobserved, lamenting the sinfulness of the times; and here the carriages rolled by of the light-hearted Nelly, and the bold, impetuous, but handsome Countess of Castlemaine.

Through all this scene of gay confusion, Sir George Etherege is seen to pass, observed by all for the graces of his person and the correct elegance of his dress. Eager and anxious as he is-he never forgets the man

of fashion or the proprieties of the place, but walks becomingly on, neglecting all for "dear delightful woman," and scanning her, with the most minute attention, from head to foot. He talks and laughs for awhile with Wycherley-whispers a piece of scandal into the ear of Sir Peter Lely-is honoured with a look of recognition from La Belle Stuart, and a passing word from the Countess of Castlemaine. Vizards in fifties pass before him, but still the play-house beauty eludes his eye. Here again the rabble intercept his way, moving in dozens after the eccentric carriage of the eccentric Duchess of Newcastle. Five hundred fancies pass and repass through his fevered mind. He thinks more like a boy of seventeen, in love for the first time, than a man of thirty who had been literally through a whole "Chronicle" of loves with as much dexterity and wit as Cowley has enumerated the names in verse of those who took by turns possession of his heart. Still the vizard-face of Dorset Gardens eludes his vigilance, and the evening was well nigh spent. The Mall was thinning rapidly-the citizen had gone home tired with the scene, and the citizen's wife cross that she was not allowed to remain longer. The ducks were all nestled up for the night, and the King had returned to Whitehall, leaving his feathered charge to the care of M. St. Evremond. All hope was now heatly gone, and the easy Etherege of the morning was the uneasy Etherege of the night. He stood for a time under one of the trees near Wallingford House, angry with himself that he had allowed her to leave the theatre without knowing who she was, or that he had not traced her to home or dogged her to her lodgings. Like Titus, he had lost a day,-and gained a mistress, without knowing who she was or where to find her. "Well, well," he was heard to say, "follow a shadow, it still flies you; men are doomed to losses, and life's too short to mourn very deeply over them; better success another time. I must e'en off to Long's or Lockett's, and pass the night with rare Sir Charles or still rarer Rochester. I may find myself at last within Whitehall, at play with the King and passing ready repartees with Barbara Palmer."

He continued in this mood of mind for a few minutes longer, when a lady with a vizard-face passed smartly before him, half singing, half repeating

"It is not that I love you less

Than when before your feet I lay."

Our hero was once more Easy Etherege. In five minutes more the vizard was from off her face, and the fine and witty woman, that had set Sir George's heart on fire--the unattended wanderer in the park at night -was Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine.

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