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MY DEAR NORTH, Is the proposal you have of late so earnestly and frequently urged on me, that I should shape and parcel out my military recollections into articles for your Magazine, I really am at a loss to recognize, either that felicity of tact, or soundness of judgment, by which you are usually distinguished. I remember in 1816, when our acquaintance first commenced, (it was at Gibraltar, on your return from the Levant,) that certain moving narrations of the accidents I had encountered by flood and field, did occasionally contribute, along with the Malaga and cigars, to relieve the monotony of the evenings in my barrack-room, when you condescended to become its guest. You were then obligingly tolerant of the poorness of your cheer, both mental and physical, at least politely quiescent when I assumed the dreaded, though acknowledged privilege of an old soldier, and

"Fought all my battles o'er again,

And thrice I slew the slain." You did more than this. You strongly recommended me to compend a regular and consecutive narrative of the more striking portions of my military career, from the confused chaos of maVOL. XIX.

terials I had laid before you, and assured me of your conviction, that the strong interest they had excited in you would not be unparticipated by the public.

My own indolence, and other causes not now necessary to notice, prevented my then following your advice. I did not write a book, though the time was certainly favourable for such an undertaking. The excitement produced by the war, and its glorious termination, had not yet passed away; Waterloo still rung in every ear; the allies were yet in Paris; Napoleon was scarcely chained to his rock; the voice of the reading public was for war— war not merely in the pride, pomp, and circumstance with which it is invested by the historian, but in those humbler aspects, and more minute details, which those alone who were themselves actors in the scene can supply. In these circumstances, the booksellers set at work their potent spells to evoke military spirits from the vasty deep. And who answered to the call? Why, James Simpson, and a few other tourists of equal calibre and capacity for the task. The Farce of Simpson & Co., however was played with success, and had a run. And such was then the indiscriminate

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voracity of the public, that works of this contemptible description were not only generally read, but, what is more important, generally sold, and, in the absence of all military writers of competent power and knowledge, succeeded to an extensive though short-lived popularity. But those times have passed away. This blind and inordinate craving of the public appetite has been followed, as might have been expected, by a surfeit. Simpson's Commentaries "De Bello Gallico" have been subjected to the Casarian operation, and gutted for the trunk-makers. Works of a higher and better character have already been supplied. Lord Burghersh has published his Campaigns; the author of "Recollections of the Peninsula,"* clad in his bright and glittering panoply, has started into the field; and your own "Subaltern," approaching his task with the grace and brightness of a scholar and a gentleman, has exceedingly

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"Graced his cause In speaking of himselfWhat is it then you require of me? I appeal to your cooler judgment, if it would be wise and prudent in me to follow in the wake of writers like these, to try a passage at arms with champions who have already shown such skill and address in the management of their weapons. It really does appear to me quite hopeless to expect that scenes which have already been delineated by the hand of a master should acquire any new interest from a few additional sketches from a dauber like myself.

But, in truth, my good North, however well they may be executed, the taste for such subjects is now considerably on the wane. No writer at this time of day can expect in his readers a sensitive participation in the perils of an out-picket, nor induce them, by any eloqueuce, to cherish fervent aspirations for the escape of a foraging party. They will regard with

apathy the most moving narrative of the exploits of all regimental officers, and have even not the smallest wish for a nearer view of the vie privée of a brigade major. In vain may Captain Poker endeavour to stir up the blaze of sympathy for neglected merit; Major Tongs, were his exploits told by tongues far more eloquent than his own, would excite no admiration; and to bestow a tear on the ashes of Lieutenant Fireshovel will still, I fear, be beneath the great. (This pun deserves a kick. It trickled involuntarily from my pen; but

Even in our ashes live our wonted fires," and I fear I shall die a punster.) The public are unreasonable, and I will not consent to bear in mind that a cornet is in posse chrysalis of a FieldMarshal. They are indifferent about the progress of a career which ends in a veteran battalion, or like my own, in a half-pay majority. They will not brood over an ensign in the egg, nor follow him with breathless eagerness through all the perils of his chickenhood, even should he end in the wellfledged Governor of a Sugar island, or a member of the Clothing board. All this, I say, the public will not do, and I think you would do well to direct your efforts and attention to the supply of more marketable commodities than any you can expect from me. What I have already said, however, is matter for your consideration, not for mine. If you choose to fob your readers off with dull refacciamentos, and your readers prosper on such spare diet, I really do not see why I should give myself any concern about the matter. By failing in the attempt, I, at least, lose nothing. I have no literary character to be jeoparded in the trial; I am a man who trades without capital, whom no reverse of fortune can make worse than he was originally-a beggar. But even this chance I shall avoid. By you only can I be known as a being of thewes and sinews, a real

We believe we have never noticed this writer before. Bating an affectation of style, which pervades the whole of his works, we have no fault to find with his Recollections and Travels. They betray considerable graphic power, and are stamped throughout with the impress of an elegant and amiable mind. Buta work more thoroughly absurd and worthless than "The Story of a Life," we never met, except from the press of Leadenhall Street. There is throughout a constant effort and straining after effect; a turgid verbosity, which is to us very tiresome and disgusting. There is, however, something pleasant in watching the strenuous efforts of a clever man to knock down his own reputation, and endeavouring, even unsuccessfully, to get himself written down an ass.

C. N.

and material man. To the world at large I shall be an airy nothing, with a name, perhaps, but certainly without local habitation; in short,

"an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery."

But while I confess this, and throw the perils of the task on the shoulders most proper to bear them, I would not have you remain ignorant of, or undervalue the pain and sacrifice which a compliance with your wishes will require. You know, I am a man whose hopes have been blighted, and whose heart has been seared by disappointment. I cannot unclasp the volume of my life without pain, and feeling what a fearful world of memory is hidden in the past. Recollection cannot but awaken thoughts "that lie too deep for tears," passions which, though long buried by the ploughshare of time, are yet ever ready to spring up dragon's teeth, again to tear and agitate the soul. Think you it is possible for any man to ponder on the fears, the crimes, the follies, hopes, passions, and delights which have stirred his mortal frame,-to recal the dreams of young ambition, and compare the being he might have been with the thing he is, to think on his vanished hopes, the early love on which fortune frowned, the friendships passed away, and yet feel no burning of the brain, no shuddering and shrinking of the heart? Surely he who can whistle down the wind this painful weakness of his nature, and gaze calmly on the broken links of the manifold chain with which humanity is bound to earth, is an anomaly, not a man; a being whom we may envy, but with whom we can have no fellowship.

Such penalty, my dear North, I feel to be attached to a retrospect of my life, especially that most active and spirit-stirring part of it connected with all the promise of my youth, and the not less transient aspirations of my maturer years. But even this is not all. If, along with the events of his past life, any man be led to take (what is necessarily connected with them) a calm survey of his own character and motives, he must bid adieu for ever to all sentiments of self-respect. None, I am sure, can recal and examine his thoughts and feelings, the motives even of his most approved actions, without a vivid and humiliating emotion of contempt, both for his nature

and himself. His conduct may have been without stain, but how often has he been a villain in his heart? How often has he dallied with dishonour, and treasured in his inmost soul the base suggestions of profitable infamy? Could we, by intuition, learn the thoughts of even the best and purest of men, and read the secret promptings of his spirit, in what light would he appear to us! How many bright and pleasing delusions would vanish from our eyes! At the tribunal of his own heart, Mr Wilberforce might plead guilty to some visionary rape and battery; old Coutts to having robbed the mail, or some speculative forgery of bank-bills; and Mrs Hannah More herself-chaste as unsunned snow-might be convicted of loose and immoral dalliance with some brawny cornet of the Life Guards. This scrutiny of Secret motives, and contemplation of unborn delinquencies, would do more than Luther ever did for the Reformation of Catholicism; the calendar would soon become tolerably clear; not a few interlopers of doubtful virtue would be found to have increased the musterroll of the thirty thousand virgins; the holy army of martyrs might at least be reduced to a brigade; and the legion of saints be contracted within the narrow limits of a baker's dozen. But I begin to wander.

Entertaining as I do such general views of human nature, it would be inconsistent to object to their broad est application to myself. I have never been accused of a dishonourable action; I have done wrong to no man to whom I was not always ready to afford fitting satisfaction. I have borne a share in seven battles, have headed a forlorn hope, and fought a duel, at six paces, with notoriously the best pistol-shot in the army, (which cost me three jaw. teeth, and a third of my best whisker,) and on these occasions there was detected no hurried tremor of the voice, no quailing of the eye, nor quiver of the lip; my step was firm and regular, my arm steady; and yet I do not hesitate to own I am, in my own eyes, neither a man of pure principle, nor of high courage. Calm as in these trying circumstances I may have seemed, fear sat like a night-mare on my soul, my heart trembled like a woman's, and, amid the agonies of the

mental conflict, I knew myself to be brave, only because I wanted courage to be a coward. No man fears death more than I do, or would shrink more sensitively from its appalling gripe. But in me the certainty of shame of being cut off from my fellow-men, a mark for the finger of scorn to point at-outweighed in terror the probability of death. Surely to choose the least of two evils, one of which is inevitable, is no proof of courage; more than this I have never done.

You will say this verges on paradox, but I cannot think so. The legitimate conclusion to be drawn from it is, not that he is the brave man who runs away, and the coward who fights, because both equally follow the stronger impulse. The brave man does not fear death less than the coward, but he fears disgrace more.

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me

I have been more prolix about these matters than they require, but I wished you not to think that the task you impose upon me, of favouring the public with an account of my morabilia," was attended with neither pain nor sacrifice on my part, and also that you should understand the spirit of perfect openness and sincerity which I shall bring to the execution of it. I shall at least not attempt to pass myself for better than I am, and if I trade in base metal, no man shall say that I palmed it on him for gold. Of autobiography, (commonly so called,) God knows we have enough, and more than enough. Repetition has staled its infinite varieties, and from Cumberland and Colley Cibber, both upwards and downwards, we have been palled with all the incense and adulation which vanity is ever seeking opportunity to offer at the shrine of selflove. Vanity, in various modifications indeed, but still vanity, is and must be the ruling principle of this kind of work. Some men delight to show themselves in a full-dress holiday suit, and cooped up in stays and a stiff cravat, others dress themselves like opera dancers in flesh-coloured silk, which they wish to pass off upon us for their skin. Easily, however, as such deceptions are detected, they are probably all that, in this kind of writing, we have any reason to expect.

No man will reveal of himself that which he knows must render him an object of disgust or aversion to his fellow-men. When he approaches the

task, even in good faith, he will involuntarily cast his defects into the shade, or endeavour to screen them from our view. Depend on it, when "pimpled Hazlitt" draws his own portrait, he manages that the chief light does not fall on his "starry front," or the huge carbuncle on his nose, and you will see nothing on canvass of the obtrusive buck-tooth by which his visage is disfigured. So it is with us all. Our weakness will not let us exhibit ourselves as God made us, our vanity is ever at work to conceal our mental blotches and eruptions, to erase the impression of the seal which nature set on us, and soften down into dull smoothness and monotony, those marks and prominences on which our very idiosyncrasy depends.

But what a man has not courage to say openly of himself, he may say in the person of another, his words may be uttered by other lips, and his sentiments transferred to another bosom; and the belief that this was done by Lord Byron in his assumed character of Childe Harold, was the circumstance that contributed more than any other to the vivid and overweening interest with which that vigorous creation has been regarded by the world. Even in the trifling Sketches which I am about to attempt, therefore, I cannot but consider the " nominis umbra" under which I abide, a great and indispensable advantage. It is a mask which will not hide the changes of the countenance, a robe which will not cover the working of the muscles, or the pulsation of the heart.

It is unnecessary that I should say more. If, after a calm and deliberate consideration, you still persist in thinking your work can derive advantage from any communications of mine, I will not refuse to grant the act of friendship you have so earnestly demanded. I only fear you will accuse me of inordinate vanity in saying so much where so little was required, and furnishing a commentary so voluminous and disproportioned to the value of the text. This is, at best, to adopt the exaggeration of the Eastern Costermonger, who proclaims to the world, in the name of the prophet-" Figs." Ever yours, &c.

SPENCER MOggridge.

THE COUNTRY CURATE.

СНАР. І.

The Poacher.

In a distant part of the parish, in one of its wildest and most uncultivated regions, stands a solitary cottage, which, not more from the absolute dreariness of its location, than from the melancholy aspect of its architecture, can hardly fail to attract the notice of any wanderer who may chance to pass that way. It stands all alone upon a desolate moor. There are not eveu the varieties occasioned by hill and dale, to give to the thing the least of a romantic appearance; but, as far as the eye can reach, all is one flat, dreary common, so perfectly bare of pasture that the very sheep seem to shun it, whilst one or two old withered firs give evidence that man has, at some period or another, endeavoured to turn it to use, but has abandoned the attempt, because he found it fruitless.

Almost in the centre of this moor stands the cottage above alluded to. Its walls, constructed partly of brick, partly of deals, give free passage to every blast, let it blow from what quarter it may; and its roof, originally tiled, is now covered over, where it is covered at all, in some parts by patches of miserable thatch, in others by boards nailed on, by an unskilful hand, to the rafters. The cottage is two stories high, and presents five windows, besides a door on each side of it. The windows, as may be guessed, retain but few fragments of glass within the frames, the deficiency being supplied by old hats, rags, jackets, and rabbit-skins: whilst of the doors, the front or main one hangs by a single hinge, and that behind is fastened to the sinister lintel by no fewer than five latches made of leather.

Of the grounds by which it is begirt, a few words will suffice to convey an adequate idea. In setting out from the Vicarage, he who wishes to reach that cottage had better make, in the first place, for the high-road. Having traversed that for a while, he will observe a narrow foot-path on the left hand, which, after descending to the bottom of a glen, and rising again to the summit of a green hill, will

bring him within view of the desolate tract already noticed, and will conduct him safely, for in truth there is no pass besides itself across the wild, to the hovel in question. There it ends. It stretches nowhere beyond; indeed, it has evidently been formed by the tread of the tenants of that lonely habitation, as they have gone to or returned from church and market; the scantiness of the soil has doubtless given a facility to its formation; for, in truth, were any human being to walk twenty times backwards and forwards over any given spot in the moor, he would leave a trace of his journey behind him, which whole summers and winters would hardly suffice to obliterate.

Whilst the front door of the cottage opens at once upon the heath, a couple of roods of garden-ground, surrounded by a broken gorse-hedge in the rear, give proof of the industry or idleness of its tenants. Through the middle of this plot runs a straight walk, ending at a style, or immovable gate, erected in the lower fence. The articles produced are such only, on each side of that walk, as require little or no soil to bring them to perfection. A bed of potatoes, some rows of cabbages and savoys, two appletrees, a damson and a boolus, half a dozen gooseberry-bushes, with twice as many of red-currant, constitute the sum total of the crop ever reared upon it.

To make such a soil produce even these, must, I apprehend, have required some labour; and I will do its inhabitants the justice to observe, that, overgrown as it is now with nettles and rank weeds, there was a time when labour was not spared upon it.

In this miserable hovel dwelt, for many years previous to my arrival in the parish, old Simon Lee, the most skilful and the most determined poacher in all the county; he was now the father of five children, the eldest of whom when I first became acquainted with him, had attained his twenty-third year, whilst the youngest was just beginning to

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