During the vicegeral times, their houses were furnished with great magnificence, many of them received titles of honour from the court of Spain, and in a short time the city was adorned with beautiful churches, and handsome private houses. The University, a fine edifice, with spacious stone cloisters, was founded in 1598 by Don Antonio de la Raya, the fifth bishop of Cuzco; and raised to the rank of a university by Pope Innocent XII., in 1692. It now numbers about ninety graduated doctors. The Jesuits also founded the college of San Borja, for the education of the children of Indian nobles. The building is handsome, but the establishment has long since been suppressed, and its halls are now used for a small boys' school. They are decorated with portraits of the Incas, painted on the walls. Since the establishment of independence in Peru, many of the families of Cuzco have become impoverished, or retired to Lima and other parts; their fine houses have become dilapidated; and as I passed along the streets, I found that many a handsome and elaborately carved doorway led to a court now inhabited by the poorest people, once the wealthy abode of some Spanish nobleman. THE LABOURER AND THE STATESMAN. BY E. P. ROWSELL. As I watch John Styles hoeing turnips in Squire Larkins's garden, I am led into a curious brown study as to the pleasures of John Styles's existence. But this is proceeding too fast. I am assuming that he has pleasures. He may have none. However, supposing him to have some, how many has he, and what may be their character? While my mind slowly and laboriously enters upon this important and deeply intricate field of inquiry, my bodily eye closely scrutinises the outward man of my interesting subject. Hale and hearty, sound in wind and limb-" a first-class life," as the assurance offices would say-is evidently John Styles. The attitude necessitated in hoeing is not graceful, but it displays the solidity and power of John's frame to a marked extent. No trace of illness in John's countenance; his eye is bright, and his hearing good. Well, here is a vast point to commence with. John has no sick-headaches, no indigestion, no gout. He hardly knows what illness is. Need I go further? John must be a happy man. Need I go further? If I want to remain in the conclusion that John is blessed, I had better not. But I desire to learn the truth. Good health is a very great deal, but it is not all. What other source of satisfaction has my humble friend? Now comes down upon me the recollection that he has only twelve shillings a week, and the expenditure thereof provideth subsistence for himself, wife, and five children. Alas, the rude appetite which rude health brings to John is an evil, and not a blessing. A sickly appetite, if compatible with a strong frame, would better suit. The constantly recurring requirement to eat and drink is, then, a misfortune to poor John. As yet we have not added to his sources of happiness. Has he any intellectual pleasures? Ah me, the satire in the bare hint! John literally knows nothing beyond hoeing turnips and other equally exalted duties. He hoed turnips when he was a boy of fifteen, he is hoeing them now he is a man of fifty, and he will hoe them until he shall take permanent possession of his own six feet of landed property. Now the marvel in my mind is that John has not become an idiot. What in the world has that brain had to feed upon from earliest years? Scarce any intelligence ever comes into that secluded hamlet. The great universe rolls on-events appalling in their magnitude and results occur-the crowds in great cities pursue from morn to night the same crushing labours as did their fathers and will their children,-but unmoved, unstirred, ignorant of everything but his hoeing, John still lives. Beyond the hoeing he has not a thought, not a care. John exists, and you can say no more. John goes to church and sleeps during the sermon. The minister scolds him for it every Monday. But what knows John of sanctifying grace, or being renewed in the spirit, or reformed in the inner man ? John is aware that there is a difference between life and death. He can walk and talk now-by-and-by he will die, be put in a coffin, and be buried. Here beginneth and here endeth the description of John's knowledge. Into that narrowed, darkened intellect (narrowed and darkened by neglect and disuse) no bright beams penetrate. A glimmer-just a faint glimmer-of light there is, and that is all. Unconsciously my mind glides into contemplation of another life so different to John's! It is night, and in a handsome room in a large west-end house sits a man, noble and distinguished, absorbed in thought. Absorbed in thought! The labour that brain has undergone for forty long years has been sufficient to craze an ordinary intellect, but this man's mind has luxuriated and thriven upon it. The history of the past -every event of importance since the world began-is stored in that brain; the present-every circumstance nearly affecting the well-being of nations-is before that brain as a broad picture before the bodily eye; the future the shadows of events at hand-dimly dawns upon that sagacious master-mind. Who speaks of toil, and he toils not? The merchant at his desk may toil, the divine in his closet, the philosopher in his study; but working more earnestly and laboriously than they all will be found the ambitious statesman, a devoted worshipper at the idol of fame. No repose there-no cessation of labour-no quiet-no calm. Busy excitement ever—perpetual conflict and struggle—these characterise the life of the man upon whom our mental gaze now rests. No wonder that the brow is furrowed and the hair is grey. It has been a noble day of toil-a long day-bravely borne, worthy to be had in remembrance when it shall have closed, and night, which is to be succeeded by no earthly morning, shall have set in. What means that half-sad smile slowly stealing over the lordly features? This night, as he sits thus solitary, the man of the world looks back. He sees much to make his bosom glow with legitimate pride. Great things have been accomplished, and much work done. The labourer has not been idle in the vineyard. And yet, now that the night is so near at hand when this workman shall rest, is not his heart sorrowful within him, and does he not feel almost as though, leaving the field of his untiring exertions, he would rather never have entered it, but have preferred to work humbly and quietly amidst far less exciting and less momentous scenes? The state and magnificence, the power and dignity achieved with so much toil-in this silent hour of reflection, as the pulse beats faintly and the spirit wanes-how small do they appear, and how strongly occurs the mental questioning whether delusion has not prevailed and dreams have not deceived? and whether the inhabitant of the hamlet in his deep serenity and peace, in his freedom from that perfect saturation with this world's vanities which has marked the gifted statesman, must not be regarded as, after all, happier on earth and possessing brighter hope of bliss in heaven? I do not say that this feeling is well founded. It is not. It comes with the midnight hour and solitude, and morning will disperse it. No; nothing more untrue and unjust than to represent legitimate ambition as a sin, or deep engagement in this world's pursuits as incompatible with piety. The mighty intellect which rules a nation, is it less open to the influences above and around us, proceeding from the Great Master Mind of all, than the feeble intelligence which ranks little above the instinct of the brute? Not so; every step which my mind accomplishes in the vast ladder gives me a clearer view of the unattainable altitude whereon sitteth Omnipotence. Every increase in my intellectual grasp, each minute portion of my intellectual growth, brings more vividly to my view the mighty intelligence which is above all and in all. The great man may be a bad man; the highly gifted a fearful sinner; but the natural law is, that the more you raise and expand the intellect, the more you dignify and exalt the man, the more hopeful is the tendency to contemplate and admire goodness as well as greatness, to worship the majesty of virtue and the beauty of holiness, in preference to the shame and degradation of folly and vice. One would think sometimes, when listening to the bemoaning tone in which priests preach on the subject of this world's greatness, that some dark curse rested on the effort after fame and fortune; that worldly success were identical with forgetfulness of all religion, and earthly honour could not be sought without abandonment of all heavenly. One would think that Heaven's blessing were restricted to the poor and insignificant, the apathetic and selfish, and never beamed forth on the man who had striven to win this world's goods and this world's esteem, that he might advance the cause of truth and of justice among his fellow-men. Away with that wretched teaching, which would persuade men to sit with closed eyes and folded hands in regard to the great questions agitated around them, which advises contentment because in contentment is security, and urges non-interference because in interference there is danger. The advice to our sons should rather be, "Be up and doing; care nothing because that the hill of Fame and Fortune is steep and rough; enter boldly on its ascent. Honour and wealth may be small inducements in your eyes against the perils and labours of the way, but having gained them you will have achieved a position which every soul, high and noble, will glow at possessing, the position enabling you to work real, lasting good for your fellow-men, and advance their temporal and eternal well-being." The point is not to stop ambition, but to put it in the right road. And the putting it in the right road involves the clearing its way to proper and legitimate objects. The misfortune to which a very clever but poor man is subjected is, that he can much sooner obtain a reward for his cleverness in a wrong way than in a right. The old, worn fashion of journeying upwards is so slow, and is beset with so many hinderances, the man of talent almost wishes he had been a John Styles, and had never known anything, and had never wished to know anything beyond hoeing turnips. Ah, we ought to alter this, somehow or other. I care not for difficulty in devising a mode-a mode might be devised-the gifted man might have extended to him a helping hand which now is not extended, and might be encouraged by a friendly smile which now is not bestowed. Which will you be, reader-John Styles or the eminent statesman? And which is happier of the two? It really were hard to say. God is good, and they both are happy; and yet how different the basis of happiness in each case! "It will all be the same a hundred years hence," is a stupid proverb commonly, but it is true to an extent here. John will sleep in the village churchyard, no gravestone marking his resting-place, no record existing regarding him, nothing to show that John Styles was ever one of the inhabitants of the earth. The proud statesman, too, before then will have ceased his labours, his power will have ended, and though he will not be forgotten, his views and opinions, so regarded during life, will have become only matter of occasional recollection and passing comment. Much on the same footing, then, will be the peer and the peasant. It is well that they should remember this now. Somebody should rouse up honest John's brain sufficiently to take in this thought, and the gifted statesman will find himself the better for letting his mind dwell upon and be humbled by it. It may do good, too, in another way. It may induce him to ponder on John Styles's mental condition somewhat more than he does now, and he may be stirred to activity in trying to give it the improvement it so much needs. One hardly likes to contemplate these enormous differences between men; to survey together the man rich in intellect and acquirement, in fame and fortune, in power and position, and the man with scarce an idea or grain of knowledge, and poor in pocket as in mind. We ask whether nothing can be done to raise the one, little above the brute, even a trifle nearer to the other, almost more than man? Banish your melancholy musings, statesman, and let this more profitable employment occupy your mind tonight. ROGERS AND HIS TABLE-TALK. "ANNO DOMINI" 1786, and two New Poets. 'Tis seventy years since. Both the poets have had time to die in that long space. In fact, one of them, Robert Burns, only survived the début ten years, having been dead sixty. The other, Samuel Rogers, has just been carried to his last long home-his tale of Human Life told (almost twice told)his Pleasures of Memory drained to the dregs. To come out as a poet at four-and-twenty, and to survive the experiment for threescore years and ten, is indeed a rare lot. When Samuel Rogers published, in thin quarto, his "Ode to Superstition, and other Poems," Johnson was only just dead, both the Wartons were flourishing, Horace Walpole was in good condition, Macpherson had a ten years' lease of life to run; William Pitt was just beginning to feel his way; the French Revolution wanted years of preparation; Miss Seward was sending forth new editions of "Louisa ;" Mrs. Barbauld was settling down with Mr. Barbauld at Hampstead, to write Whig pamphlets, and aid and assist in "Evenings at Home;" Charlotte Smith was yet unknown as a novelist; Dr. Darwin had only issued Part I. of his "Botanic Garden;" William Hayley was enjoying (together with a captivated nation) his "Triumphs of Temper;" Cowper had only just published the "Task;" Gibbon was only just drawing towards a close his immortal History. When Samuel Rogers died, generation after generation of poets, politicians, philosophers, had, meanwhile, flourished and faded, won their public and lost it, lived their life and died their death. Byron and the Satanic school had come and gone. So had Wordsworth and the Lakers. So had Scott and the Romanticists. The Table-talk* of such a veteran may well look for as eager a welcome as that of "old Nestor," Shakspearian version, to inquiring youth: Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle, That hast so long walk'd hand in hand with time :- "When the tomb had closed upon Goldsmith," writes Dr. Beattie to Rogers, in dedicating to him the Life of Campbell,-" when, for a season, the oracles of Poetry were almost dumb; it was your happy destiny to break the silence, to revive the spirit, and introduce a new era of polished song. Your Pleasures of Memory' found Thomas Campbella youthful but ardent votary-in the lonely Hebrides;' it struck his heart with inspiring impulse, and quickened all his noblest inspirations." Campbell was not the only bard of lasting renown whose soul was moved by this poem. Byron wrote these lines on a blank leaf of his copy of it: Recollections of the Table-talk of Samuel Rogers. To which is added Porsoniana. Moxon. 1856. + Troilus and Cressida. By the way, the author of "Living Poets and Poetesses," writing in 1832, with whose critical rhymes old Christopher North made merry, in the merry times of Maga, has the following curious and chronological couplet in his address to Samuel Rogers: How swiftly time's life-sapping waters flow! Sir Kit's comment is worth referring to, on the logic of this "For," and on the general treatment of "the worthy Banker," as an illustration, or argumentum ab homine, of Pollok's "Course of Time." |