The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 341, November 15, 1828

And happy days, with thee come not again!
The sad memorials only of my pain
Do with thee come, which turn my sweets to sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wert before,
Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair,
But she whose breath embalmed thy wholesome air
Is gone—nor gold, nor gems can her restore,
Neglected virtue—seasons, go and come,
When thine, forgot, lie closed in a tomb.

SONNET

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours,
Of winters past, or coming, void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,—
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers,
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leavy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,—
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs
(Attir'd in sweetness) sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven?
Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres—yes, and to angels lays!

SLEEP

Now while the Night her sable veil hath spread,
And silently her resty coach doth roll,
Rousing with her, from Thetis' azure bed,
Those starry nymphs which dance about the pole;
While Cynthia, in purest cypress clad.
The Latmian shepherd in a trance descries,
And, looking pale from height of all the skies,
She dyes her beauties in a blushing red;
While Sleep, in triumph, closed hath all eyes,
And birds and beasts a silence sweet do keep,
And Proteus' monstrous people in the deep,—
The winds and waves, hush'd up, to rest entice,—
I wake, I turn, I weep, oppress'd with pain,
Perplex'd in the meanders of my brain.

Sleep, Silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince, whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds which are oppress'd—
Lo! by thy charming rod, all breathing things
Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd,
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings
Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest.
Since I am thine, O come,—but with that face
To inward light, which thou art wont to shew—
With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe;
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace,
Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath
I long to kiss the image of my death!

Hark, happy lovers, hark!
This first and last of joys,
This sweetener of annoys,
This nectar of the gods,
You call a kiss, is with itself at odds:
And half so sweet is not,
In equal measure got
At light of sun as it is in the dark:
Hark, happy lovers, hark!

NOTES OF A READER

INDIAN FEAST OF SOULS

Every three or four years, by a general agreement, the Indians disinter the bodies of such as have died within that time; finding the soft parts mouldered away, they carefully clean the bones, and each family wrap up the remains of their departed friends in new fur. They are then laid together in one mound or barrow, and the ceremony concludes with a feast, with dances, songs, speeches, games, and mock combats.

PALEY

We think it next to impossible for a candid unbeliever to read the Evidences of Paley, in their proper order, unshaken. His Natural Theology will open the heart, that it may understand, or at least receive the Scriptures, if any thing can. It is philosophy in its highest and noblest sense; scientific, without the jargon of science; profound, but so clear that its depth is disguised. There is nothing of the "budge Doctor" here; speculations which will convince, if aught will, that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," are made familiar as household words. They are brought home to the experience of every man, the most ordinary observer on the facts of nature with which he is daily conversant. A thicker clothing, for instance, is provided in winter for that tribe of animals which are covered with fur. Now, in these days, such an assertion would be backed by an appeal to some learned Rabbi of a Zoological Society, who had written a deep pamphlet, upon what he would probably call the Theory of Hair. But to whom does Paley refer us? To any dealer in rabbit skins. The curious contrivance in the bones of birds, to unite strength with lightness, is noticed. The bore is larger, in proportion to the weight of the bone, than in other animals; it is empty; the substance of the bone itself is of a closer texture. For these facts, any "operative" would quote Sir Everard Home, or Professor Cuvier, by way of giving a sort of philosophical éclat to the affair, and throwing a little learned dust in the eyes of the public. Paley, however, advises you to make your own observations when you happen to be engaged in the scientific operation of picking the leg or wing of a chicken. The very singular correspondence between the two sides of any animal, the right hand answering to the left, and so on, is touched upon, as a proof of a contriving Creator, and a very striking one it is. Well! we have a long and abstruse problem in chances worked out to show that it was so many millions, and so many odd thousands to one, that accident could not have produced the phenomenon; not a bit of it. Paley, who was probably scratching his head at the moment, offers no other confirmation of his assertion, than that it is the most difficult thing in the world to get a wig made even, seldom as it is that the face is made awry. The circulation of the blood, and the provision for its getting from the heart to the extremities, and back again, affords a singular demonstration of the Maker of the body being an admirable Master both of mechanics and hydrostatics. But what is the language in which Paley talks of this process?—technical?—that mystical nomenclature of Diaforius, which frightens country patients out of their wits, thinking, as they very naturally do, that a disease must be very horrid which involves such very horrid names? Hear our anatomist from Giggleswick.

"The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main-pipe of the water-works at London Bridge; and the roaring in the passage through that pipe is inferior, in impetus and velocity, to the blood gushing from the whale's heart."

He cares not whence he fetches his illustrations, provided they are to the purpose. The laminae of the feathers of birds are kept together by teeth that hook into one another, "as a latch enters into the catch, and fastens a door." The eyes of the mole are protected by being very small, and buried deep in a cushion of skin, so that the apertures leading to them are like pin-holes in a piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth. The snail without wings, feet, or thread, adheres to a stalk by a provision of sticking-plaster. The lobster, as he grows, is furnished with a way of uncasing himself of his buckler, and drawing his legs out of his boots when they become too small for him.

In this unambitious manner does Paley prosecute his high theme, drawing, as it were, philosophy from the clouds. But it is not merely the fund of entertaining knowledge which the Natural Theology contains, or the admirable address displayed in the adaption of it, which fits it for working conviction; the "sunshine of the breast," the cheerful spirit with which its benevolent author goes on his way (κυδει γαιων [Greek: kudei gaion],) this it is that carries the coldest reader captive, and constrains him to confess within himself, and even in spite of himself, "it is good for me to be here."

…We mourn over the leaves of our peaches and plum-trees, as they wither under a blight. What does Paley see in this? A legion of animated beings (for such is a blight) claiming their portion of the bounty of Nature, and made happy by our comparatively trifling privation, We are tortured by bodily pain,—Paley himself was so, even at the moment that he was thus nobly vindicating God's wisdom and ways. What of that? Pain is not the object of contrivance—no anatomist ever dreamt of explaining any organ of the body on the principle of the thumb screw; it is itself productive of good; it is seldom both violent, and long continued; and then its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. "It has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which I believe," says this true philosopher, "few enjoyments exceed." The returns of an hospital in his neighbourhood lie before him. Does he conjure up the images of Milton's lazar-house, and sicken at the spectacle of human suffering? No—he finds the admitted 6,420—the dead, 234—the cured, 5,476; his eye settles upon the last, and he is content.

There is nothing in the world which has not more handles than one; and it is of the greatest consequence to get a habit of taking hold by the best. The bells speak as we make them; "how many a tale their music tells!" Hogarth's industrious apprentice might hear in them that he should be "Lord Mayor of London"—the idle apprentice that he should be hanged at Tyburn. The landscape looks as we see it; if we go to meet a friend, every distant object assumes his shape—

"In great and small, and round and square,
'Tis Johnny, Johnny, every where."

Crabbe's lover passed over the very same heath to his mistress and from her; yet as he went, all was beauty—as he returned all was blank. The world does not more surely provide different kinds of food for different animals, than it furnishes doubts to the sceptic and hopes to the believer, as he takes it. The one, in an honest and good heart, pours out the box of ointment on a Saviour's head—the other, in the pride of his philosophy, only searches into it for a dead fly.—Q. Rev.

"ALL FOR THE BEST."

When Bernard Gilpin was summoned up to London to give an account of himself and his creed before Bonner, he chanced to break his leg on the way; and, on some persons retorting upon him a favourite saying of his own, "that nothing happens to us but what is intended for our good," and asking him whether it was for his good that he had broken his leg, he answered, "that he made no question but it was." And so it turned out, for before he was able to travel again, Queen Mary died, and he was set at liberty.

Men keep their word simply because it is right to do so. They feel it is right, and ask no further questions. Conscience carries along with it its own authority—its own credentials. The depraved appetites may rebel against it, but they are aware that it is rebellion.—Q. Rev.