Conversation at Dinner.

From my fondness for conversation, my imagination had been early fired with Dr Johnson's remark, that there is no pleasure on earth comparable to the fine full flow of London talk. I who, since I had quitted college, had seldom had my mind refreshed but with the petty rills and penurious streams of knowledge which country society afforded, now expected to meet it in a strong and rapid current, fertilizing wherever it flowed, producing in abundance the rich fruits of argument and the gay flowers of rhetoric. I looked for an uninterrupted course of profit and delight. I flattered myself that every dinner would add to my stock of images; that every debate would clear up some difficulty, every discussion elucidate some truth; that every allusion would be purely classical, every sentence abound with instruction, and every period be pointed with wit.

On the tiptoe of expectation I went to dine with Sir John Belfield in Cavendish-square. I looked at my watch fifty times. I thought it would never be six o'clock. I did not care to shew my country breeding by going too early, to incommode my friend, nor my town breeding by going too late, and spoiling his dinner. Sir John is a valuable, elegant-minded man, and, next to Mr Stanley, stood highest in my father's esteem for his mental accomplishments and correct morals. As I knew he was remarkable for assembling at his table men of sense, taste, and learning, my expectations of pleasure were very high. Here at least,' said I, as I heard the name of one clever man announced after another, 'here at least I cannot fail to find

"The feast of reason and the flow of soul: "

here, at least, all the energies of my mind will be brought into exercise. From this society I shall carry away documents for the improvement of my taste; I shall treasure up hints to enrich my understanding, and collect aphorisms for the conduct of life.'

At first there was no fair opportunity to introduce any conversation beyond the topics of the day, and to those, it must be confessed, this eventful period gives a new and powerful interest. I should have been much pleased to have had my country politics rectified, and any prejudices which I might have contracted removed or softened, could the discussion have been carried on without the frequent interruption of the youngest man in the company. This gentleman broke in on every remark, by descanting successively on the merits of the various dishes; and, if it be true that experience only can determine the judgment, he gave proof of that best right to peremptory decision by not trusting to delusive theory, but by actually eating of every dish at table.

His animadversions were uttered with the gravity of a German philosopher and the science of a French cook. If any of his opinions happened to be controverted, he quoted, in confirmation of his own judgment, l'Almanac des Gourmands, which he assured us was the most valuable work that had appeared in France since the revolution. The author of this book he seemed to consider of as high authority in the science of eating as Coke or Hale in that of jurisprudence, or Quintilian in the art of criticism. To the credit of the company, however, be it spoken, he had the whole of this topic to himself. The rest of the party were, in general, of quite a different

As soon as the servants were beginning to withdraw, we got into a sort of attitude of conversation; all except the eulogist of l'Almanac des Gourmands, who, wrapping himself up in the comfortable consciousness of his own superior judgment, and a little piqued that he had found neither support nor opposition, (the next best thing to a professed talker,) he seemed to have a perfect indiffer ence to all topics except that on which he had shewn so much eloquence with so little effect.

The last tray was now carried out, the last lingering servant had retired. I was beginning to listen with all my powers of attention to an ingenious gentleman who was about to give an interesting account of Egypt, where he had spent a year, and from whence he was lately returned. He was just got to the catacombs,

'When on a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,'

the mahogany folding doors, and in at once, struggling who should be first, rushed half a dozen children, lovely, fresh, gay, and noisy. This sudden and violent irruption of the pretty barbarians necessarily caused a total interruption of conversation. The sprightly creatures ran round the table to chuse where they would sit. At length this great difficulty of courts and cabinets, the choice of places, was settled. The little things were jostled in between the ladies, who all contended who should get possession of the little beauties. One was in raptures with the rosy cheeks of a sweet girl she held in her lap. A second exclaimed aloud at the beautiful lace with which the frock of another was trimmed, and which she was sure mamma had given her for being good. A profitable, and doubtless a lasting and inseparable, association was thus formed in the child's mind between lace and goodness. A third cried out, ‘Look at the pretty angel !-do but observe-her bracelets are as blue as her eyes. Did you ever see such a match?' 'Surely, Lady Belfield,' cried a fourth, you carried the eyes to the shop, or there must have been a shade of difference.' I myself, who am passionately fond of children, eyed the sweet little rebels with compla cency, notwithstanding the unseasonableness of their interruption.

At last, when they were all disposed of, I resumed my enquiries about the resting-place of the mummies. But the grand dispute who should have oranges and who should have almonds and raisins, soon raised such a clamour that it was impossible to hear my Egyptian friend. This great contest was, however, at length settled, and I was returning to the antiquities of Memphis, when the important point, who should have red wine and who should have white, who should have half a glass and who a whole one, set us again in an uproar. Sir John was visibly uneasy, and commanded silence. During this interval of peace, I gave up the catacombs and took refuge in the pyramids.

But I had no sooner proposed my question about the serpent said to be found in one of them, than the son and heir, a fine little fellow just six years old, reaching out his arm to dart an apple across the table at his sister, roguishly intending to overset her glass, unluckily overthrew his own, brimful of port wine. The whole contents were discharged on the elegant drapery of a white-robed nymph.

All was now agitation and distress, and disturbance and confusion; the gentlemen ringing for napkins, the ladies assisting the dripping fair one; each vying with the other who should recommend the most approved specific for getting out the stain of red wine, and comforting the sufferer by stories of similar misfortunes. The poor little culprit was dismissed, and all difficulties and disasters seemed at last surmounted. But you cannot heat up again an interest which has been so often cooled. The thread of conversation had been so frequently broken that I despaired of seeing it tied together again. I sorrowfully gave up catacombs, pyramids, and serpent, and was obliged to content myself with a little desultory chat with my next neighbour; sorry and disappointed to glean only a few scattered ears, where I had expected so abundant a harvest; and the day from which I had promised myself so much benefit and delight passed away with a very slender acquisition of either.

The Majesty and Meanness of Man.

I returned to town at the end of a few days. To a speculative stranger, a London day presents every variety of circumstance in every conceivable shape of which human life is susceptible. When you trace the solicitude of the morning countenance, the anxious exploring of the morning paper, the eager interrogation of the morning guest; when you hear the dismal enumeration of losses by land and perils by sea-taxes trebling, dangers multiplying, commerce annihilating, war protracted, invasion threatening, destruction impending― your mind catches and communicates the terror, and you feel yourself 'falling with a falling state.'

But when, in the course of the very same day, you meet these gloomy prognosticators at the sumptuous, not dinner but Hecatomb,' at the gorgeous fête, the splendid spectacle; when you hear the frivolous discourse, witness the luxurious dissipation, contemplate the boundless indulgence, and observe the ruinous gaming, you would be ready to exclaim, 'Am I not supping in the Antipodes of that land in which I breakfasted? Surely this is a country of different men, different characters, and different circumstances. This at least is a place in which there is neither fear nor danger, nor want, nor misery, nor war.'

If you observed the overflowing subscriptions raised, the innumerable societies formed, the committees appointed, the agents employed, the royal patrons engaged, the noble presidents provided, the palacelike structures erected; and all this to alleviate, to cure, and even to prevent every calamity which the indigent can suffer or the affluent conceive; to remove not only want but ignorance; to suppress not only misery but vice-would you not exclaim with Hamlet, 'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties ! In action how like an angel! in compassion how like a God!'

If you look into the whole comet-like eccentric orb of

the human character; if you compared all the struggling contrariety of principle and of passion; the clashing of opinion and of action, of resolution and of performance; the victories of evil over the propensities to good; if you contrasted the splendid virtue with the disorderly vice; the exalted generosity with the selfish narrowness; the provident bounty with the thoughtless prodigality; the extremes of all that is dignified, with the excesses of all that is abject, would you not exclaim, in the very spirit of Pascal, O! the grandeur and the littleness, the excellence and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness of man!

The Music Nuisance.

'I look upon the great predominance of music in female education,' said Mr Stanley, 'to be the source of more mischief than is suspected; not from any evil in the thing itself, but from its being such a gulph of time as really to leave little room for solid acquisitions. I love music, and were it only cultivated as an amusement should commend it. But the monstrous proportion, or rather disproportion of life which it swallows up, even in many religious families, and this is the chief subject of my regret, has converted an innocent diversion into a positive sin. . . . Only figure to your self my six girls daily playing their four hours a piece, which is now a moderate allowance! As we have but one instrument they must be at it in succession, day and night, to keep pace with their neighbours. If I may compare light things with serious ones, it would resemble,' added he, smiling, the perpetual psalmody of good Mr Nicholas Ferrar, who had relays of musicians every six hours to sing the whole Psalter through every day and night! I mean not to ridicule that holy man; but my girls thus keeping their useless vigils in turn, we should only have the melody without any of the piety. No, my friend! I will have but two or three singing birds to cheer my little grove. If all the world are performers, there will soon be no hearers. Now, as I am resolved in my own family that some shall listen, I will have but few to perform.'

Besides the Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More, by William Roberts (4 vols. 1834), there is a pleasant little sketch by Miss Yonge in the 'Eminent Women' series (1888). Her collected works have been repeatedly reissued (8 vols. 1801; 19 vols. 1818; 11 vols. 1830, &c.).

Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) was born at Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire. Her father, the Rev. John Aikin, D.D., then kept a boys' school, and Anna received the same instruction as the pupils, including a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin. In 1758 Dr Aikin (whose father was a London Scot) undertook the office of classical tutor in a Dissenting academy at Warrington, and there his daughter lived for fifteen years. In 1773 she published a volume of poems, of which four editions were called for in the first year. In May 1774 she was married to the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, of Huguenot ancestry, who became minister of a Dissenting congregation at Palgrave near Diss, and there opened a boarding-school, which throve under his wife's capable assistance. In 1775 she commenced authoress with a volume of devotional pieces compiled from the Psalms, and with Hymns in Prose

for Children. In 1786 Mr and Mrs Barbauld removed to Hampstead, and there the industrious helpmeet wrote several tracts in support of Whig principles. She also aided her brother (John Aikin, 1747-1822, physician and author, father of Lucy Aikin) in preparing a series of papers for children, the famous Evenings at Home (1796) -the bulk of the work being the brother's; and she wrote critical essays on Akenside and Collins for editions of their works. After compiling a selection of essays from the Spectator, Tatler, and Guardian, she edited the correspondence of Richardson, and wrote a Life of the novelist. Her last great enterprise was a col

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD. From an Engraving by Meyer.

lection of the British novelists, published in 1810, with an introductory essay and biographical and critical notices. Her husband drowned himself in a fit of insanity in 1808. Some of her lyrical pieces are flowing and harmonious, and her Ode to Spring was plainly an imitation of Collins's manner. Charles James Fox was a great admirer of Mrs Barbauld's poems, but most of them are artificial and unimpassioned. In one, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, she anticipated Macaulay's New Zealander with a youth from the Blue Mountains or Ontario's Lake' who views the ruins of London (both Horace Walpole and Volney had already brought Peruvians or other wanderers thither). Her hymns were long popular, and some of her lighter things, like The Washing Day, are amusing. Lord Selborne included four of her pieces in his Book of Praise, the best known that of which the first three verses run :

Praise to God, immortal praise
For the love that crowns our days!
Bounteous source of every joy,
Let thy praise our tongues employ.
For the blessings of the field,
For the stores the gardens yield,
For the vine's exalted juice,
For the generous olive's use;
Flocks that whiten all the plain;
Yellow sheaves of ripened grain ;
Clouds that drop their fattening dews;
Suns that temperate warmth diffuse.

By far her best serious poem is that on Life, of which the last exquisite stanza was so much admired by Wordsworth, Rogers, and Madame D'Arblay; like Flatman's 'Thought of Death' and Pope's Dying Christian,' the poem was inspired by Emperor Hadrian's 'Animula, vagula, blandula.'

Life.

Life! I know not what thou art,

But know that thou and I must part;
And when, or how, or where we met,

I own to me's a secret yet.

But this I know, when thou art fled
Where'er they lay these limbs, this head,
No clod so valueless shall be

As all that then remains of me.

O whither, whither dost thou fly,

Where bend unseen thy trackless course,
And in this strange divorce,

Ah, tell where I must meet this compound I?

To the vast ocean of empyreal flame

From whence thy essence came

Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed
From matter's base encumbering weed?

Or dost thou, hid from sight,

Wait, like some spell-bound knight, Through blank oblivious years the appointed hour To break thy trance and reassume thy power? Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? O say what art thou when no more thou 'rt thee? Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning,

Choose thine own time;

Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good morning.

Ode to Spring.

Sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire,
Hoar Winter's blooming child, delightful Spring!
Whose unshorn locks with leaves
And swelling buds are crowned;

From the green islands of eternal youth-
Crowned with fresh blooms and ever-springing shade-
Turn, hither turn thy step,

O thou, whose powerful voice,
More sweet than softest touch of Doric reed
Or Lydian flute, can soothe the madding winds,
And through the stormy deep
Breathe thy own tender calm.

Thee, best beloved! the virgin train await
With songs and festal rites, and joy to rove
Thy blooming wilds among,

And vales and dewy lawns,

With untired feet; and cull thy earliest sweets To weave fresh garlands for the glowing brow Of him, the favoured youth

That prompts their whispered sigh.

Unlock thy copious stores; those tender showers That drop their sweetness on the infant buds, And silent dews that swell

The milky ear's green stem,

And feed the flowering osier's early shoots;

And call those winds which through the whispering boughs With warm and pleasant breath

Salute the blowing flowers.

Now let me sit beneath the whitening thorn,

And mark thy spreading tints steal o'er the dale ;
And watch with patient eye
Thy fair unfolding charms.

O nymph, approach! while yet the temperate Sun
With bashful forehead, through the cool moist air
Throws his young maiden beams,

And with chaste kisses woos

The Earth's fair bosom; while the streaming veil Of lucid clouds, with kind and frequent shade Protects thy modest blooms

From his severer blaze.

Sweet is thy reign, but short: the red dog-star
Shall scorch thy tresses, and the mower's scythe
Thy greens, thy flowerets all,
Remorseless shall destroy.

Reluctant shall I bid thee then farewell;
For oh! not all that Autumn's lap contains,
Nor summer's ruddiest fruits,

Can aught for thee atone,

Fair Spring! whose simplest promise more delights
Than all their largest wealth, and through the heart
Each joy and new-born hope
With softest influence breathes.

To a Lady, with some Painted Flowers. Flowers to the fair: to you these flowers I bring, And strive to greet you with an earlier spring. Flowers sweet, and gay, and delicate like you; Emblems of innocence, and beauty too. With flowers the Graces bind their yellow hair, And flowery wreaths consenting lovers wear. Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew, In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew. To loftier forms are rougher tasks assigned; The sheltering oak resists the stormy wind, The tougher yew repels invading foes, And the tall pine for future navies grows : But this soft family to cares unknown, Were born for pleasure and delight alone. Gay without toil, and lovely without art, They spring to cheer the sense and glad the heart. Nor blush, my fair, to own you copy these; Your best, your sweetest empire is-to please.

Hymn to Content.

O thou, the nymph with placid eye! O seldom found, yet ever nigh!

Receive my temperate vow: Not all the storms that shake the pole Can e'er disturb thy halcyon soul,

And smooth the unaltered brow.

O come, in simple vest arrayed,
With all thy sober cheer displayed,

To bless my longing sight;
Thy mien composed, thy even pace,
Thy meek regard, thy matron grace,
And chaste subdued delight.

No more by varying passions beat,
O gently guide my pilgrim feet

To find thy hermit cell;
Where in some pure and equal sky,
Beneath thy soft indulgent eye,

The modest virtues dwell.

There Health, through whose calm bosom glide The temperate joys in even-tide,

That rarely ebb or flow;

And Patience there, thy sister meek,
Presents her mild unvarying cheek
To meet the offered blow.

Her influence taught the Phrygian sage
A tyrant master's wanton rage

With settled smiles to wait :
Inured to toil and bitter bread,
He bowed his meek submissive head,
And kissed thy sainted feet.
But thou, O nymph retired and coy!
In what brown hamlet dost thou joy
To tell thy tender tale?
The lowliest children of the ground,
Moss-rose and violet blossom round,
And lily of the vale.

O say what soft propitious hour
I best may choose to hail thy power,
And court thy gentle sway?
When autumn, friendly to the Muse,
Shall thy own modest tints diffuse,
And shed thy milder day.

Fragments.

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

The world has little to bestow
Where two fond hearts in equal love are joined.

Society than solitude is worse,

And man to man is still the greatest curse.

A Memoir of Mrs Barbauld was published in 1874 by her grandniece, Anna le Breton; and in the same year appeared a Life by Ellis. See also Miss Thackeray's Book of Sibyls (1883); and Lockhart's Scott for the share Mrs Barbauld had in awaking Scott's interest in German literature, by her reading at Edinburgh William Taylor's translation of Bürger's Lenore.

Mrs Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821), actress, dramatist, and novelist, was born at Stanningfield near Bury St Edmunds, the daughter of a Roman Catholic farmer. At eighteen, full of giddy romance, she ran off to London, having a few things in a band-box, but very little money. After many adventures and even some indignities, the unprotected girl applied for advice to Mr Inchbald, an actor she had known. Inchbald counselled marriage. 'But who would marry me?' she asked. 'I would,' replied her friend, 'if | you would have me.' 'Yes, sir, and I would for ever be grateful'—and married they were in June 1772. The union thus singularly brought about was happy enough; but Inchbald died seven years afterwards. Mrs Inchbald played leading parts in the Scottish theatres for four years, and continued acting in London, Dublin, and elsewhere till 1789, when she retired from the stage. Her exemplary prudence and the profits of her works enabled her not only to live, but to save money; the applause and distinction she earned never led her to deviate from her simple-almost ostentatiously simplehabits. 'Last Thursday,' she writes, 'I finished scouring my bedroom, while a coach with a coronet and two footmen waited at my door to take me an airing.' She allowed a sister who was in ill-health £100 a year. 'Many a time this winter,' she records in her Diary, when I cried for cold, I said to myself: “But, thank God, my sister has not to stir from her room; she has her fire lighted every morning all her provisions bought and brought ready cooked; she is now the less able to bear what I bear; and how much more should I suffer but for this reflection." Her income was only £172 a year, and after the death of her sister she went to live in a boarding-house in which she enjoyed more of the comforts of life. Traces of feminine weakness break out in her private memoranda amidst the sterner records of her struggle for independence. Thus 1798. London. Rehearsing Lovers Vows; happy but for a suspicion, amounting to a certainty, of a rapid appearance of age in my face.' Her two tales, A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796), are the supporters of her fame; but her light dramatic pieces were marked by various talent. Her first production was a farce entitled The Mogul Tale (1784), and from this time down to 1805 she wrote nine other plays and farces. Her last literary labour was writing biographical and critical prefaces to a collection of plays, in twenty-five volumes; a collection of farces, in seven volumes; and the Modern Theatre, in ten volumes. Phillips the publisher offered her 1000 for an autobiography she had written, but she declined the tempting offer; and the manuscript was, by her orders, destroyed after her death.

Catholic.

She died as she had lived, a devout

Of this remarkable woman many interesting facts are recorded in Kegan Paul's Life of Godwin (1876). Mrs Shelley (Godwin's daughter) says of

her Living in mean lodgings, dressed with an economy allied to penury, without connections, and alone, her beauty, her talents, and the charm of her manners gave her entrance into a delightful circle of society. Apt to fall in love and desirous to marry, she continued single because the men who loved and admired her were too worldly to take an actress and a poor author, however lovely and charming, for a wife. Her life was thus spent in an interchange of hardship and amusement, privation and luxury. Her character partook of the same contrast: fond of pleasure, she was prudent in her conduct; penurious in her personal expenditure, she was generous to others. Vain of her beauty, we are told that the gown she wore was not worth a shilling, it was so coarse and shabby. Very susceptible to the softer feelings, she could yet guard herself against passion; and though she might have been called a flirt, her character was unimpeached. I have heard that a rival beauty of her day pettishly complained that when Mrs Inchbald came into a room, and sat in a chair in the middle of it, as was her wont, every man gathered round it, and it was vain for any other woman to attempt to gain attention. Godwin could not fail to admire her; she became and continued to be a favourite. Her talents, her beauty, her manners were all delightful to him. He used to describe her as a piquante mixture between a lady and a milkmaid, and added that Sheridan declared she was the only authoress whose society pleased him.' The extract is from Nature and Art.

Judge and Victim.

The day at length is come on which Agnes shall have a sight of her beloved William! She who has watched for hours near his door, to procure a glimpse of him going out or returning home; who has walked miles to see his chariot pass; she now will behold him, and he will see her, by command of the laws of his country. Those laws, which will deal with rigour towards her, are in this one instance still indulgent.

The time of the assizes at the country town in which she is imprisoned is arrived—the prisoners are demanded at the shire-hall-the jail-doors are opened-they go in sad procession. The trumpet sounds-it speaks the arrival of the judge, and that judge is William.

The day previous to her trial, Agnes had read, in the printed calendar of the prisoners, his name as the learned judge before whom she was to appear. For a moment she forgot her perilous state in the excess of joy which the still unconquerable love she bore to him permitted her to taste, even on the brink of the grave! Afterreflection made her check those worldly transports, as unfit for the present solemn occasion. But, alas! to her, earth and William were so closely united, that till she forsook the one, she could never cease to think, without the contending passions of hope, of fear, of love, of shame, and of despair, on the other.

Now fear took the place of her first immoderate joy; she feared that, although much changed in person since he had seen her, and her real name now added to many an alias-yet she feared that some well-known glance of the eye, turn of the action, or accent of speech, might