Ago.

A taunt in friendliness!

Meekness's happiest condescension!

No,

Gin.
So help me Heaven!-I but spoke in consciousness
Of what was weak on both sides. There's a love
In that, would you but know it, and encourage it.
The consciousness of wrong, in wills not evil,
Brings charity. Be you but charitable,
And I am grateful, and we both shall learn.

Ago. I am conscious of no wrong in this dispute,
Nor when we dispute ever,-except the wrong
Done to myself by a will still more wilful,
Because less moved, and less ingenuous.
Let them get charity that show it.

Gin. (who has reseated herself.) I pray you,
Let Fiodilisa come to me. My lips

Will show you that I faint.

350.-A GOSSIP AT RECULVERS.

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

[DOUGLAS JERROLD is a name familiar in every mouth. A book has been dedicated to him as to " the first wit of the present age." Those who have seen him in private life will feel that this is not mere friendly exaggeration. Those who know him through the veil of anonymous writing understand that a good deal of the long-continued success of a periodical work, at which all laugh and few are offended, may be ascribed to his inexhaustible possession of that "infinite jest," of those "flashes of merriment" which "set the table in a roar. Such fame is perhaps evanescent. It has its immediate success in light dramas and political jeux-d'esprit. But there is a higher fame to which, even in his lightest moods, Mr. Jerrold has not been insensible-that of an earnest vindicator of the claims of the wretched to forbearance and sympathy. We may think, as abstract reasoners, that in these matters he sometimes goes too far; but, when we consider that the tendencies of a great commercial country are in a high degree selfish, we are constrained to acknowledge that it is the duty and privilege of genius to throw its weight into the opposite scale, and make an earnest fight for the maintenance of that real brotherhood,

which must be upheld in every condition of society which aspires to peace and security. This has been the great function of the poetical mind in all ages. Mr. Jerrold's real talent is of the dramatic, rather than the narrative kind. His 'Caudle Lectures' are admirable examples of the skill with which character can be preserved in every possible variety of circumstances. The extract which we give-from a Series of Essays appended to a remarkable little volume, The Chronicles of Clovernook" (which exhibits, perhaps more than any other of his works, his peculiar modes of thought),-is no fair sample of his powers; but it is adapted to our pages, and at least cannot clash with any opinions.]

The spirit of the Saxon seems still to linger along the shores of Kent. There is the air of antiquity about them; a something breathing of the olden day-an influence, surviving all the changes of time, all the vicissitudes of politic and social life. The genius of the Heptarchy comes closer upon us from the realm of shadows: the Wittenagemote is not a convocation of ghosts-not a venerable House of Mists; but a living, talking, voting Parliament. We feel a something old, strong, stubborn, hearty; a something, for the intense meaning of which we have no other word than "English," rising about us from every rood of Kent. And wherefore this? England was not made piecemeal. Her foundations in the deep-could a sea of molten gold purchase the worth of her surrounding ocean?- -are of the same age, The same sun has risen and set upon the whole island. Wherefore, then, is Kent predominant in the mind for qualities which the mind denies to other counties? Because it is still invested with the poetry of action. Because we feel that Kent was the cradle of the marrow and bone of England; because we still see, ay, as palpably as we behold yonder trail of ebon smoke,—the broad black pennant of that mighty admiral, Steam,-the sails of Cæsar threatening Kent, and Kent barbarians clustering on the shore, defying him. It is thus that the spirit of past deeds survives immortally, and works upon the future: it is thus we are indissolubly linked to the memories of the bygone day, by the still active soul that once informed it.

How rich in thoughts-how fertile in fancies that quicken the brain and dally with the heart, is every foot-pace of the soil! Reader, be with us for a brief time, at this beautiful village of Herne. The sky is sullen; and summer, like a fine yet froward wench, smiles now and

then, now frowns the blacker for the passing brightness; nevertheless, summer in her worst mood cannot spoil the beautiful features of this demure, this antique village. It seems a very nest-warm and snug, and green-for human life; with the twilight haze of time about it, almost consecrating it from the aching hopes and feverish expectations of the present. Who would think that the bray and roar of multitudinous London sounded but some sixty miles away? The church stands peacefully, reverently; like some old, visionary monk, his feet on earth his thoughts with God. And the graves are all about; and things of peace and gentleness, like folded sheep, are gathered round it.

There is a stile which man might make the throne of solemn thought -his pregnant matter, the peasant bones that lie beneath. And on the other side a park, teeming with beauty; with sward green as emeralds, and soft as a mole's back; and trees, with centuries circulating in their gnarled massiveness.

But we must quit the churchyard, and, turning to the right, we will stroll towards Reculvers. How rich the swelling meadows! How their green breasts heave with conceived fertility! And on this side corn-fields; the grain-stalk thick as a reed; the crop level and compact as a green bank. And here, too, is a field of canary-seed: of seed grown for London birds in London cages. The farmer shoots the sparrow-the little rustic scoundrel-that, with felonious bill, would carry away one grain sown for, made sacred to, Portman Square canary! We might, perhaps, find a higher parallel to this, did we look with curious eyes about us. Nevertheless, bumpkin sparrow has his world of air to range in; his free loves; and for his nest his ivied wall or hawthorn bush. These, say the worst, are a happy set-off even against a gilt-wired cage; sand like diamond dust; unfailing seed, and sugar from even the sweeter lips of lady mistress. Powder and small shot may come upon the sparrow like apoplexy upon an alderman, with the unbolted morsel in its gullet; yet, consider-hath the canary no danger to encounter? Doth not prosperity keep a cat? Well, this idle gossip has brought us within a short distance of Reculvers. Here-so goes the hoary legend-Augustine impressed the first Christian foot upon the English shore, sent hither by good Pope Gregory; no less good that, if the same legend be true, he had a subtle sense of a joke. Christianity, unless historians say what is not, owes somewhat of its introduction into heathen England to a pun.

The story is so old, that there is not a schoolmaster's dog throughout merry Britain that could not bark it. Nevertheless, we will indicate our moral courage by repeating it. Our ink turns red with blushes at the thought-no matter-for once we will write in our blushes.

Pope Gregory, seeing some white-haired, pink-cheeked boys for sale in the Roman slave-market, asked, who they were? Sunt Angli— they are English, was the response. Non sunt Angli-sed Angeli; they are not English, but angels, was the Papal playfulness. His Holiness then inquired, from what part of England? Deirii, they are Deirians, was the answer. Whereupon the Pope, following up his vein of pleasantry, said, Non Deirii, sed De irá,—not Deirians, but from the anger of the Lord: snatched, as his Holiness indicated, from the vengeance that must always light upon heathenism.

This grey-haired story, like the grey hairs of Nestor, is pregnant with practical wisdom. Let us imagine Pope Gregory to have been a dull man; even for a Pope a dull man. Let us allow that his mind had not been sufficiently comprehensive to take within its circle the scattered lights of intelligence which, brought into a focus, make a joke. Suppose, in a word, that the Pope had had no ear for a pun? Saint Augustine might still have watched the bubbles upon Tiber, and never have been sea-sick on his English voyage.

What does this prove? What does this incident preach with a thunder-tongue? Why, the necessity, the vital necessity, of advancing no man to any sort of dignity who is not all alive as an eel to a joke. We are convinced of it. The world will never be properly ruled until jests entirely supersede the authority of Acts of Parliament. As it is, the Acts are too frequently the jests, without the fun.

We are now close to Reculvers. There, reader, there—where you see that wave leaping up to kiss that big white stone—that is the very spot where St. Augustine put down the sole of his Catholic foot. If it be not, we have been misinformed, and cheated of our money; we can say no more.

Never mind the spot. Is there not a glory lighting up the whole beach? Is not every wave of silver-every little stone, a shining crystal? Doth not the air vibrate with harmonies, strangely winding into the heart, and awakening the brain? Are we not under the spell of the imagination, which makes the present vulgarity melt away like morning mists, and shows to us the full uplighted glory of the past?

There was a landing on the Sussex coast; a landing of a Duke of Normandy, and a horde of armed cut-throats. Looking at them even through the distance of some eight hundred years, what are they but as a gang of burglars? A band of pick-purses-blood-shedders-robbers ?

What was this landing of a host of men, in the full trump and blazonry of war,-what all their ships, their minstrelsy, and armed power, to the advent of Augustine and his fellow-monks-brought hither by the forlornness of the soul of man? It is this thought that makes this bit of pebbled beach a sacred spot; it is this spirit of meditation that hears in every little wave a sweet and solemn music.

And there, where the ocean tumbles, was in the olden day a goodly town, sapped, swallowed by the wearing and voracious sea. At lowest tides, the people still discover odd, quaint, household relics, which, despite the homely breeding of the finders, must carry away their thoughts into the mist of time, and make them feel antiquity. The very children of the village are hucksters of the spoils of dead centuries. They grow up with some small trading knowledge of fossils, and are deep, very deep in all sorts of petrifactions. They must have strange early sympathies towards that mysterious town, with all its tradesfolk and market-folk sunk below the sea; a place of which they have a constant inkling in the petty spoils lashed upward by the tempest. Indeed, it is difficult for the mind to conceive the annihilation of a whole town, engulphed in the ocean. The tricksy fancy will assert itself; and looking over the shining water, with summer basking on it, we are apt to dream that the said market-town has only suffered a "sea-change;" and that, fathoms deep, the town still stands -that busy life goes on-that people of an odd, seagreen aspect, it may be, still carry on the work of mortal breathing: make love, beget little ones, and die. But this, indeed, is the dream of idleness. Yet who, if he could change his mind at will, would make his mind incapable of such poor fantasies? How much of the coarse web of existence owes its beauty to the idlest dreams with which we colour it! The village of Reculvers is a choice work of antiquity. The spirit of King Ethelbert tarries there still, and lives enshrined in the sign of a public-house. It would be well for all kings, could their spirits survive with such genial associations. There are some dead royalties too profitless even for a public sign. Who, now, with any other choice would