with her,
asked him to say grace. The young gentleman, thinking that
her ladyship had lived quite long enough, expressed his
wishes thus graciously:—
“Good Lord of thy mercy,
Take my good Lady D'Arcy
Unto her heavenly throne;
That I, little Frank,
May sit in my rank,
And keep a good house of my own!”
** John Knox proclaimed the mild sentence, which was loudly
re-echoed by his disciples, that the idolator should die the
death, in plain English (or rather, God be thanked! in plain
Scotch) that every Catholic should be hanged. The bare
toleration of prelacy—of the Protestant prelacy!—was the
guilt of soul-murder. These were the merciful Christians!
the sainted martyrs! who conducted the inquisitorial tyranny
of the high commission, and imposed the test of that piece
of impious buffoonery, the “Holy League and Covenant!!” who
visited the west of Scotland with the free quarters of the
military, and triumphed so brutally over the unfortunate,
patriotic and gallant Montrose. The Scotch Presbyterians
enacted that each episcopalian was liable to transportation
who should baptize a child, or officiate as a clergyman to
more than Jour persons, besides the members of his own
family!
—“The plain Pathway to Penuriousness;” Peachwns “Worth of a Penny, or a caution to keep Money;” and the “Key to unknowne Knowledge, or a Shop of Five Windows”
“Which if you do open, to cheapen and copen,
You will be unwilling, for many a shilling,
To part with the profit that you shall have of it;”
and the drama, which, whether considered as a school of eloquence or a popular entertainment, is entitled to national regard, would have been proscribed, because—having neither soul for sentiment, eye for beauty, nor ear for poetry, it was his pleasure to be displeased. His humanity may be summed up in one short sentence, “I will take care, my dear brother, you shall not keep your bed in sickness, for I will take it from under you.” There are two reasons why we don't trust a man—one, because we don't know him, and the other because we do. Such a man would have shouted “Hosan-nah!” when the Saviour entered Jerusalem in triumph; and cried “Crucify him!” when he went up the mountain to die.
Seeing how little party spirit, religious controversy, and money-grubbing have contributed to the general stock of human happiness—that pre-eminence in knowledge is
“Only to know how little can be known,
To see all others' faults, and feel our own,”
we cry, with St. Patrick's dean, “Vive la bagatelle!” Democritus lived to an hundred. Death shook, not his dart, but his sides, at the laughing philosopher, and “delay'd to strike” till his lungs had crowed their second jubilee: while Heraclitus was Charon's passenger at threescore. But the night wanes apace; to-morrow we must rise with the lark. Fill we a cup to Mercury, à bon repos!
A bumper at parting! a bumper so bright,
Though the clock points to morning, by way of good
night!
Time, scandal, and cards, are for tea-drinking souls!
Let them play their rubbers, while we ply the bowls!
Oh who are so jocund, so happy as we?
Our skins full of wine, and our hearts full of glee!
Not buxom Dame Nature, a provident lass!
Abhors more a vacuum, than Bacchus's glass,
Where blue-devils drown, and where merry thoughts
swim—
As deep as a Quaker, as broad as his brim!
Like rosy fat friars, again and again
Our beads we have told, boys I—in sparkling champagne!
Our gravity's centre is good vin de grave,
Pour'd out to replenish the goblet concave;
And tell me what rubies so glisten and shine,
Like the deep blushing ruby of Burgundy wine?
His face in the glass Bibo smiles when he sees;
For Fancy takes flight on no wing like the bee's!
If truth in a well lie—ah! truth, well-a-day!—
I'll seek it in “Fmo,”—the pleasantest way!
Let temperance, twankay, teetotallers trump;
Your sad, sober swiggers at “Veritas” pump!
If water flow hither, so crystal and clear,
To mix with our wine—'tis humanity's tear.
When Venus is crusty, and Mars in a miff,
Their tipple is prime nectar-toddy and stiff—
And shall we not toast, like their godships above,
The lad we esteem, and the lady we love?
Be goblets as sparkling, and spirits as light,
Our next merry meeting! A bumper—good night!
CHAPTER II.
“The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.”
'Tis Flora's holiday, and in ancient times the goddess kept it with joyous festivity. Ah! those ancient times, they are food for melancholy. Yet may melancholy be made to “discourse most eloquent music,”—
“O why was England 'merrie' called, I pray you tell
me why?—
Because Old England merry was in merry times gone by!
She knew no dearth of honest mirth to cheer both son
and sire,
But kept it up o'er wassail cup around the Christmas
fire.
When fields were dight with blossoms white, and leaves
of lively green,
The May-pole rear'd its flow'ry head, and dancing round
were seen
A youthful band, join'd hand in hand, with shoon and
kirtle trim,
And softly rose the melody of Flora's morning hymn.
Her garlands, too, of varied hue the merry milkmaid
wove,
And Jack the Piper caprioled within his dancing grove;
Will,