any sacred writer but St. Paul, I remarked that Lady Belfield admired almost exclusively Eccleclesiastes, Proverbs, and the historical books of the Bible. Of the Epistles, that of St. James was her favorite; the others she thought chiefly, if not entirely, applicable to the circumstances of the Jews and Pagans, to the converts from among whom they were addressed. If she entertained rather an awful reverence for the doctrinal parts, than an earnest wish to study them, it arose from the common mistake of believing that they were purely speculative, without being aware of their deep practical importance. But if these two la dies were diametrically opposite to each other in certain points, both were frequently right in what they assumed, and both wrong only in what they rejected. Each contended for one half of that which will not save when disjoined from the other, but which, when united to it, makes up the complete Christian character.

Lady Belfield, who was, if I may so speak, con> stitutionally charitable, almost thought that heaven might be purchased by charity. She inverted the valuable superstructure of good works, and laid them as her foundation; and while Mrs. Ranby would not perhaps, much have blamed Moses for breaking the tables of the law, had he only demolished the se ad, Lady Belfield would have saved the second, as the more important of the two.

Lady Belfield has less vanity than any woman I ever knew who was not governed by a very strict religious principle. Her modesty never courted the admiration of the world, but her timidity too much dreaded its censure. She would not do a wrong thing to obtain any applause, but she omitted some right ones from the dread of blame.

CHAP. VIII.

THE

house of Sir John Belfield was become a pleasant kind of home to me. He and his lady

seldom went out in an evening. Happy in each other and in their children, though they lived much with the rational, they associated as little as they thought possible with the racketing world. Yet being known to be generally at home, they were exposed to the inroads of certain invaders, called fine ladies, who, always afraid of being too early for their parties, are constantly on the watch, how to disburthen themselves for the intermediate hour, of the heavy commodity time; a raw material, which, as they seldom work up at home, they are always willing to truck against the time of their domestic acquaintance. Now as these last have always something to do, it is an unfair traffic, "all the reciprocity is on one side," to borrow the expression of an illustrious statesman; and the barter is as disadvantageous to the sober-home trader, as that of the honest negroes, who exchange their gold dust and ivory for the beads and bits of glass of the wily English.

These nightly irruptions, though sometimes inconvenient to my friends, were of use to me, as they enable me to see and judge more of the gay world, than I could have done without going in search of it; a risk, which I thought bore no proportion to the gain. It was like learning the language of the enemy's country at home.

One evening, when we were sitting happily alone

in the library, Lady Belfield, working at her embroidery, cheerfully joining in our little discussions, and comparing our peaceful pleasures with those pursued by the occupiers of the countless carriages which were tearing up the "wheel-worn streets," or jostling each other at the door of the next house, where a grand assembly was collecting its myriads--Sir John asked what should be the evening book. Then rising, he took down from the shelf Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.

"Is it," ," said he, as soon as he sat down, "the rage for novelty, or a real degeneracy of taste, that we now so seldom hear of a poet, who, when I was a boy, was the admiration of every man who had a relish for true genius? I cannot defend his principles, since in a work, of which Man is professedly the object, he has overlooked his immortality; a subject, which one wonders did not force itself upon him, as so congenial to the sublimity of his genius, whatever his religious views might have been. But to speak of him only as a poet; a work, which abounds in a richer profusion of images, and a more variegated luxuriance of expression than the Pleasures of Imagination, cannot easily be found. The flimsy metre of our day seems to add fresh value to his sinewy verse. We have no happier master of poetic numbers; none who better knew

To build the lofty rhyme.

The condensed vigour, so indispensible to blank verse, the skilful variation of the pause, the masterly structure of the period, and all the occult

mysteries of the art, can perhaps be best learnt. from Akenside. If he could have conveyed to Thomson his melody and rhythm, and Thomson would have paid him back in perspicuity and transparency of meaning, how might they have enriched each other!"

"I confess," said I, "in reading Akenside, I have now and then found the same passage at once enchanting and unintelligible. As it happens to many frequenters of the Opera, the music always transports, but the words are not always understood." I then desired my friend to gratify us with the first book of the Pleasures of Imagination.

Sir John is a passionate lover of poetry, in which he has a fine taste. He read it with much spirit and feeling, especially these truly classical lines,

Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven,

The living fountains in itself contains

Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand
Sit paramount the graces; here enthroned
Celestial Venus, with divinest airs

Invites the soul to never-fading joy.

"The reputation of this exquisite passage," said he, laying down the book, "is established by the consenting suffrage of all men of taste, though by the critical countenance you are beginning to put on, you look as if you had a mind to attack it."

"So far from it," said I, " that I know nothing more splendid in the whole mass of our poetry. And I feel almost guilty of high treason against the majesty of the sublimer Muses, in the remark I am going to hazard, on the celebrated lines which follow. The Poet's object, through this and the

two following pages, is to establish the infinite superiority of mind over unconscious matter, even in its fairest forms. The idea is as just as the execution is beautiful: so also is his supreme elevation of intellect, over

Greatness of bulk, or symmetry of parts.

Nothing again can be finer, than his subsequent preference of

The powers of genius and design,

over even the stupendous range

Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres.

He proceeds to ransack the stores of the mentaf and the moral world, as he hath done the world of matter, and with a pen dipped in Hippocrene, opposes to the latter,

The charms of virtuous friendship, &c.

*

The candid blush

Of him who strives with fortune to be just.

The graceful tear that streams from others' woes.

"Why, Charles," said Sir John, "I am glad to find you the enthusiastic eulogist of the passage of which I suspected you were about to be the saucy censurer."

"Censure," replied I, "is perhaps too strong a term for any part, especially the most admired part of this fine poem. I need not repeat the lines