Imatges de pàgina
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SECOND CHILDISHNESS.

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

As you like it.

The closing scene of human existence, being described by privations, seems but a mere subject for the ingenuity of the painter; nevertheless the melancholy picture of human infirmity in its last stage, was, perhaps, never more feelingly represented, than it has been by Mr. Stothard. We contemplate a figure destitute of all the means of enjoyment,-" sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing" that can make life desirable to the possessor!-incapable of self motion, or of applying to his own use those aliments which are necessary to preserve him from returning to the dust of which he was formed: Pulvis et umbra sumus. How admirably is this situation described by the dying Mortimer :

Those eyes-like lamps whose wasting oil is spent-
Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent:

Weak shoulders, overborne with burth'ning grief;
And pithless arms, like to a wither'd vine,

That droops his sapless branches to the ground:
Yet are these feet-whose strengthless stay is numb,
Unable to support this lump of clay--

Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,

As witting I no other comfort have.-Henry VI.

And a passage very similar to this, Shakspeare puts into the mouth of the old John of Gaunt, in allusion to the banishment of his son :

For, ere the six years that he hath to spend,

Can change their moons, and bring their times about,
My oil-dry'd lamp, and time bewasted light,

Shall be extinct with age, and endless night.-Richard II. As it is from our several senses that we derive all the pleasures of the present life, to them, perhaps, we are indebted for the consciousness of existence itself; what can be more humiliating to the dignity and extravagant pride of man, than the total loss, or very considerable decay of those organical

inlets of joy and delights? Such a period Shakspeare antici pates as the necessary result of protracted years; a period which Pope has admirably described :--

Life protracted is protracted woe.
Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy,
And shuts up all the passages of joy :
In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour,
The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flower.
With listless eyes the dotard views the store;
He views and wonders that they please no more.
Now palls the tasteless meats, and joyless wines,
And luxury, with sighs, her slave resigns.
Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain,
And yield the tuneful lenitives of pain:
No sound, alas! would touch th' impervious ear,
Though dancing mountains witnessed Orpheus near;
Nor lute, nor lyre, his feeble powers attend,
Nor sweeter music of a virtuous friend.

To this state of human imbecility Lucretius likewise refers in the third book of his poem :—

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When the weak limbs, in life's concluding stage,
Feel the chill touches of benumbing age:
When bows the body 'neath the weight of years,
Then droops the mind, a prey to groundless fears:
The driveller dictates, ever in the wrong,

And folly falters on the palsied tongue.

86

W. Shepherd.

Every period," says Cicero, excepting the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits: old age alone has no precise and determined boundary. That distaste which is felt, in passing through the several stages of our present being, and to which Jacques, the moralizing satirist, alludes, must, it should seem, necessarily render life itself, in the close of its latest period, no longer desirable. When we have enjoyed the satisfactions peculiar to the last stage of human existence, till we have no longer any relish remaining for them, it is then that Death, the utmost course where human sorrow ends,' may be considered as a mature and seasonable

event.

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RYDDIE MORTON'S PROPHECY.

A LEGEND OF MINSTER.

that

When the dry phraseology of a day-book, and the tedious routine of the money market have excited the nerves to as deplorable a maximum as Dr. Bell ever attempted to cure, the imagination naturally suffers itself to float back to the beauteous antiquities, sunless avenues, picturesque corn-fields, and dancing rivulets, for which the country has acquired some portion of eminence. It is then that the stock-jobber assumes a partial recovery from his feverish and inveterate speculations, reads Mr. Britton on Sunday, and, after becoming disgusted with Charles Wright, determines to see the sun set on Canterbury Cathedral. On his way o'er the blue waves, hurry him from the dim and invariable seclusion of the counting-house, he points at the towers of Reculver, talks of a positive inundation on that part of the coast, eulogizes in the most exaggerating flippancy of expression the renowned splendor of Becket's altar, and of the Black Prince, mutters of "ashes that make it holier," and then, to give his visionary calculations the lordly emolument of a coup-de-grace, asks if it were not an exceedingly figurative quotation from Counsellor Shiel ! But, as this moonstruck speculator advances into the country, his notions of sepulchral magnificence gradually diminish, and his spirit dilates on the entranced musings which a few solitary walks would suggest to him. He feels the loftiest animation in exploring the stately cliffs that form a vast belt on the sea-shore, of accumulating traditions from the lips of the peasantry,-of meditating on the obsolete epitaphs that lie scattered in the church-yard, or surveying, in a small skiff, the perspective grandeur of Dungeness. Such a man will, at the expiration of his pilgrimage, return home with a settled composure of mind and body,-obtain an insertion of his lucubrations in the Monthly Magazine, and review his tour with unbridled gratification. He will need no medicine to invigorate his appetite, or require any stimulant to qualify his nerves for the fatigue of commercial business; and even the quaint phraseology of a day-book, will, to him, appear a pleasing relaxation from an agreeable amusement

My friend Clarence was an illustration of the theory on
G. 28.
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