All the while my bright brass basin delighted in their "trim gardens;" and John Kemble, in his rural retirement at Lausanne, was an ardent cultivator of flowers. In the boyhood of Uncle Timothy many a time, on a half-holiday, was he the welcome bearer of the Viola Amoena, or Purple Heart's-ease, as presents from his dearly-beloved preceptor (a floricultural enthusiast who commenced his delightful pursuit with a view to amuse a depressed mind and reinvigorate a sickly body) to Siddons at her sweet cottage on the Harrow road. Her great and constant call for this beautiful flower every spring, to keep the purple bordering of her garden complete and perfect, induced the gardeners in the neighbourhood to give the name of "Miss Heart's-ease" to her managing handmaid! Her garden was remarkable in another respect. It was a garden of Evergreens, which, together with a few deciduous shrubs, were of the most sombre, sable, and tragical cast, such as Box-trees, Fir, Privet, Phillyrea, Arbor Vitæ, Holly, Cypress, the Red Cedar, Laurel, Irish Ivy, Bay-tree, Arbutus Daphne or Spurge-Laurel, Cneorum Tricoccum or the "WidowWail," the branches and flowers of which, according to Pliny, were carried by the Roman matrons in their funeral processions: "Purpureos spargam flores.”—Virgil. 9 Democritus, in order to calculate the nature of things, was continually looking on a bruss busin, by which practice he is said to have blinded himself. He rang the city this quaint peal "Give the laughing devil his due— 10 The world, the busy world! and I I'm humble, and the World is proud; I, before a lucky dunce, Simple dress and simple diet Let it laugh! I'm in the vein Uncle Timothy. 11" A DESCRIPTION OF FOLLY. Entring once into the seate of the braine, she obfus cateth the imagination, perverteth conceit, alienateth the Than folly neither more, nor less, Time has made her naught the wiser, mind, corrupteth reason, and so disturbeth and hindreth a man, that he can neither read, deliuer, nor act any thing as he should doe: but on the contrarie, with turbulent conceptions, wavering and inconstant motions, broken sleepe, a sick braine, and an emptie soacked head, like a withred cucumber, he vainely like a blind mill horse, whirleth about a thousand fopperies, some no less lamentable than ridiculous." 12 London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome." In this picture we are forcibly reminded of Plutarch's description of the outlaws and fugitives that flocked to the Temple dedicated to the Asylæan God by Romulus and Remus. Their liberal Majesties welcomed all that came, and refused to deliver up the debtor to his creditor, and the murderer to the magistrate! by which means the rising city of Rome was soon peopled. 13 "Few men rise to power in a state, without a union of great and mean qualities.”—Lord Bacon. 14 "Honesty the best policy."— Antediluvian adage! Honesty is a ragged virtue, turned out of doors to beg or starve! The march of progression (the "Rogue's March?”) has kicked away this old-fashioned stumbling-block. In the general scramble for money, who can find time or afford to be honest? Talk of physical malaria, of sulphuretted and phosphuretted hydrogen (first cousin to the 15 WORLDLY WISDOM-craft and cunning, cholera!) Think of moral malaria! Of stagnant cesspools and public ordure-pits! What pool or pit, with its putrescent residua, so anti-odoriferous as the reeking rascality of Capel Court? Think of the pestilential virus of such an intramural deposit as a Rail-Road Jobber! Yet this moral plague what shall stay? Religion? when every man's God is Gold! Shume? when the brass candlestick, (like the schoolmaster,) is abroad, and not expected home again! A" Board of Health?" when ALL are alike infected! Yet knaves, like shears, whose edges are so keen, For want of HONESTY to put between. In the singing days of Uncle Timothy this was his DEMOCRITUSIAN CHANT. I owe the World nothing-I'm not in it's debt- Yet still in good humour am I with the World. The World ne'er deceived me-with all its deceit; A sweet smiling face and a pair of bright eyes I knew very well was the World in disguise; And when I was offer'd a heart and a hand, That joke call'd a "Friend" I could quite understand! Did pity, kind soul! come with me to condole, But fair-weather's follower fervent, Then came, apropos, to my mind Rochefoucault, The world will give thee credit for the rest.” Churchill. 16 "Give mee that Bird," says Bishop Hall, "which will sing in winter, and seeke to my window in the hardest frost; there is no tryall of friendship but adversity." And again—“ Give mee that love, and friendship, which is betweene the vine, and the elme, whereby the elme is no whit worse, and the vine so much the better." Alexander being asked where he would lay his treasure? answered "Apud Amicos." 17 "But be not concerned," writes the Archbishop of Dublin to Doctor Swift, "ingratitude is warranted by modern and ancient custom and it is more honour for a man to have it asked, why he had not a suitable return to his merits, than why he was overpaid." Looking at the actors in this great Drama, (the glorious Revolution of 1688,) we have,-on the one hand a king, such as James's own acts have declared him,-on the other his nearest relatives, sons-in-law professing towards him a devoted allegiance, daughters bound to him by every tie of filial gratitude; ("Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child, |