LIONEL GRANBY.

CHAP. VI.

"The letters are original, though sometimes in bad taste, and generally verbose." Edinburgh Review.

I had not been a long time at College before I received a large packet from home, enclosing a number of letters from my uncle, Frederick, and Lucy. One of them was folded in an odd fashion-directed in a stiff and inky hand, and surmounted with a mass of red sealing wax, on which was rudely impressed the ragged outline of the Granby arms. This was one of my uncle's pedantic, prolix, advisory, and generous epistles, and I was soon placed in possession of the following neatly written

sentences.

Chalgrave,

out its stirring and startling excitements. I myself, "vixi puellis idoneus," and I know that it softens the asperities of temper-gentles the turbulence of youthbreaks down the outworks of vice, and detracts no more from the firmness of mind than the polish of the diamond does from its solidity. You may read philosophy and think of woman-dwell on poetry and find your taste expanding into delicacy and elevation by dreaming of her gentleness, and I suppose that even in the crabbed study of the law, you may find her image peeping over black letter, or smiling through yellow parchment. When I was at college poor Ridon whom Johnstone shot, ('twas a fair duel) being in love, translated most of that portion of Coke upon Littleton which relates to females, into poetry of all styles, and measures. Only think of his drawing poetical conceits from this dull book, and scattering them on the margin of the leaden volume, like so many flowers prodigally thrown into a grave-yard! I have this rare copy, and in a page blotted with notes, references, and quæres, these crippled lines, have stumbled themselves into the text.

"Tenant per la curtesie d'Englettere."

A feme that has lands
Enters Hymen's bands,

Chap. iv. sect. 35.

And has heirs in the nuptial tye;
Then those lands shall descend,
When her life's at an end,

To her Lord in curtesy.

This species of poetry was all that he ever wrote, and he was wont to say, that he thought it was his duty to the sex, to use the language of rhyme, and thus make the law respectful.

My Dear Boy:-When Erasmus visited Sir Thomas More, that obstinate sophist, and that martyr to a scolding wife, (how nobly he bore her!) he said that he could always write a pleasing letter when his hand was the secretary of his heart. En passant, Erasmus made a gallant speech on this memorable visit. In admiring the kind fashion of saluting females with a kiss, on your arrival or departure from an entertainment, he said, and that philosophically, that this habit preserved health, in calling a constant and blushing glow to the cheek, and that in his moments of sickness he could wish no happier situation than to be placed near an English nunnery, where if he could not be kissed for charity he might yet live in hopes of it. Now my hand is the obedient secretary, and my heart is anxious to dictate its duties. How true, yet how simple is this conceit! and how far superior to the monkish verbosity, and strangled sentiment of those bad novels which you read merely because they are new. The heart is the écritoire of the letter writer, and have you never paused with feelings of admiration and delight over the affectionate and eloquent letters of a woman? She writes from the heart, and pours out the swelling torrent of all her thoughts and feelings. Man thinks what to write, and will fritter away feeling and sacrifice nature in the struggle for easy periods and mellifluous cadences. It is not learning that shadows with tints of tenderness the beautiful letters of Tully-nor is it philosophy which lends that nameless grace, and elastic interest, to the epistles of Pliny. 'Tis nature whose affections, like the rainbow, beautify and hallow the roughness of every spot over which it spans its creative arch. A letter, says Tully, cannot blush, “epistola enim non erubescit," if it could, it would never have this characteristic when I addressed it to you. I cannot write aught that will suffuse either your cheek or mine, though I might whisper something about your fair cousin, Isa Gordon. You love her, Lionel ? and she may return your affec-dog-latin, which were quoted to burn witches and sustain tion, but you must owe it to your distinction. Isa is no sickly and prurient-hearted girl who can solely love the person, for she demands the intellectual man, and in the hymeneal chaplet which is to adorn her brow, the laurel must twine its emblematic vanities. Let this hope excite you to study-let this holy object imp your eagle wing, for on every page of your books you must see her name urging and stimulating the slumbering energies of your ambition. I would not have you free from love, nor untouched, as Spenser calls it, by its pensive discontent, for no young man can prosper with- I

I do not know how to advise you about the study of law. I once looked into it, and though it may be a garden teeming with the elegancies of Postum, I could not bear that rough dragon of pedantry, Coke, who guarded its threshold. It is a sort of hustle-cap game, between judges and lawyers, and a perilous mystery wherein common sense cannot trust itself, without that peculiar and dogged impudence, which bears all the vulgarity, without the courage, of effrontery. Now there is philosophy in every thing, and if you will acquire decent effrontery I will call it, for your sake, dignity and learning; and I will even believe that it requires some mind to understand a plain statute, and some genius to pervert it. Yet I cannot look with a sarcastic eye on the hallowed relics of the legal institutions of antiquity. Go back, my dear boy, to the redundant fountains of ancient literature—and you will find that Plato and Tully, have long ago, looked up for the pure seat of law only to the bosom of God, and that the Norman gibberish and

kings, though they may make you a lawyer skilled in precedents, can never make you the scourge of knavery, the fearless champion of innocence, nor the enlightened advocate of your country's rights. Old Sir Roger L'Estrange wrote a mournful valedictory, when he left the riots and Apician nights of the Inns for the labors and stolid gravity of the bar, and, amid many sarcasms on the profession, he has thus happily sketched the character of an honest lawyer.

"He can prosecute a suit in equity without seeking to create a whirlpool where one order shall beget another,

and the poor client be swung around (like a cat before execution,) from decree to rehearing-from report to exception, and vice versâ, till his fortunes are shipwrecked, and himself drowned, for want of white and yellow earth to wade through on. He does not play the empiric with his client, and put him on the rack to make him bleed more freely; casting him into a swoon with frights of a judgment, and then reviving him again with a cordial writ of error, or the dear elixir of an injunction, to keep the brangle alive, as long as there are any vital spirits in the pouch. He can suffer his neighbors to live quiet about him without perpetual alarms of actions and indictments, or conjuring up dormant titles to every commodious seat, and making land fall five years purchase, merely for lying within ten miles of him."

I do not wish to give you a learned essay on books, nor to advise you what authors to read. Your taste is now matured, and that faculty will see that justice is done to its delicacy. The great object of study is to teach us how, and not what to think; and the principal art of authorship is the power of pilfering with judgment from the ruins of ancient lore. But trust not to this poor and suspicious honor. Rely for success on the daring emprise of your own genius, and should it fail to lift you from the earth, descend not to the dunghill of pedantry. Be a poet for the women-a historian for the men—and a scholar for your own happiness. Confirm your taste by satiating memory with the beauties of the | Spectator, and let Horace hourly talk you into the dignity and elegance of the sensible gentleman. Be accurate, rather than extensive, in your knowledge of history, and a recollection of dates will give you victory in every contest. Learn the technicalities of geometry; for this will satisfy the groping mathematician, while the world will take your pedantry for wisdom, and your crabbed words for learning. There has been, and ever will be, an everlasting conflict between the radiant course

lems. Strength of mind is claimed as the attribute of mathematical study, while we forget that any other study, pursued with the same strictness of attention, will equally fashion the mind into system and method, while it will be free from the slavish obedience and indurated dulness, which result from the memory of lines and proportions.

Devote most of your leisure hours to the study of Virginian antiquities, for it is a noble field, and one which glows into beauty beneath cultivation. Williamsburg itself is a hoary and whitened monument of ancient pomp and power, and there still dwells around it the trembling twilight of former greatness. There is something distinctive, learned, and patriotic, in the of genius, and the mole-hill track of diagrams and probcharacter of a home antiquary, which will lift you far above the little pedants, who have dipped the wing in Kennet, or tasted of the shallow learning of Athenian Stuart. Do you not remember the indignant, yet pathetic lines which Warton wrote in a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon, and the spirited scorn with which he repels the sneers of ignorance and dulness? The antiquary is neither a visionary, nor an enthusi- You know, my dear boy, my notions concerning your ast, for his pursuits teach the holiest love of country, dress. Express nothing in fancy; and without being the and call into action the softest and gentlest affections of Alpha or Omega of fashion, be neither fop nor sloven, the human heart, while his guileless life occasionally and dress for the effect of general and not particular shines forth with the chastened light of virtue and lear- dignity, and never wear a striped cravat. Do not ape ning. Virginia is a land whose thrilling history beggars eccentricity of manner and opinion, and take the world all romance—every fragment of which, like a broken in a laughing and good humored mood. I detest a vase, will multiply perfume. Who knows aught of that beardless Cato, for I never knew one of them, who gallant band, who so fearfully revenged the massacre of could stand fire. Talk to women about every thing 1622?—the bold patriots who resisted the illegal restric-but prudence and propriety, and they will think you tions on trade-the intrepid spirits who, led by Bacon, as wise as you are well bred; for they cannot bear the anticipated by a century our national æra, or that chi-restraint of advice, or the judgment of criticism. Tasso valric corps, who, under Vernon, rotted on the pestilential shores of Carthagena? Who dwells with the patriot's pride, on that unconquerable strength of infant freedom which made historic Beverley the Hampden of the colony? Or who troubles himself to inquire into the blood-stained life of that Westmoreland Parke, who siezed the throne of Antigua, and who died in the last dyke of a bootless though fiercely fought field? Who cares to remember the enlightened and learned botanist Clayton, whose modest book, written in the purest Latin, gained for himself and country, a once proud though now forgotten fame? And who will believe that the wise, pious, and eloquent Bishop Porteus was born, and gambolled away his boyhood on the sunny shores of the majestic York-river? They are all forgotten! and we neglect the vivid and truthful romance of our own beautiful land, to learn the nursery tales of fickle Greece, and factious Rome. In the shifting of the social scene, naught has been left to remind us of the busy drama once acted in Virginia, and even garrulous tradition now doubts its existence, while our feet hourly trample on the sepulchered silence of all that once adorned, dignified, and elevated human nature.

makes his heroine taunt Rinaldo with gravity and sedateness, and when she calls him a "Zenocrates in love" the volume of her eloquence exhibits the bitterest venom of female invective.

Chalgrave is now still, solitary, and deserted; and were it not for Lucy's cheerful voice, I should look on myself as a living tomb. Your pup Gildippe tore off the cover of my Elzevir Horace, an offence deserving a halter, yet she is pardoned for your sake. Tell me not of Sir Isaac Newton's diamond, for he never destroyed a jewel so rare, and so highly prized-ask Col. H. if a colt is best broken in a snaffle-bit-and tell him 'tis downright superstition to worm a genuine pointer. I send the pistols made by Wodgen and Barton, and carrying a ball of the most approved weight. Do write to me, and never forget that you are a Granby.

I am, my dear boy,
Yours truly,
CHARLES GRANBY.

P. S. Translate the Ode to Fortune for me! Old Schrevelli said that he had rather be the author of that poem, than the Emperor of all the Austrias, and there was more sense than enthusiasm in his noble preference.

P. S. Never scrape your bullets with a knife-but which skirted the city. The wind sobbed through the use a flat file. Do not play the flute; and never write dreary and desolate silence of the forest, and when I verses on a "flower presented to a lady," on "a lady looked up to the twinkling and radiant light which singing," or on "receiving a lock of hair;" for of all blazes in a starry sky of Virginia, the innate piety of puppyism, this is the smallest accomplishment. Nature almost chastened me into repentance. How vain is that feeble wisdom which impotently labors to read those mute and living oracles of God? yet who, in searching into them, does not feel that his heart is kindled into enthusiasm, by their wild and spiritual eloquence. May not each bright and dazzling star whose lambent fire dances over the cloudless sky be the abode of spirits enjoying a realm of mind—of philosophers who rived the adamant of vulgar error-of patriots who offered their blood at the shrine of their

P. S. Never buy a gaudy handkerchief! Do not say raised, disremember, expect for suspect; and never end the common courtesies of conversation with the frigid Sir! "Thank ye Sir!" "Drink tea instead of coffee, for 'tis more patrician; and do not render yourself suspected by pronouncing criticisms on wines.

through the gloom of tyranny-and of the poet who, fettered to the earth, boldly anticipated a foretaste of his eternal home, in some earthly, yet beautiful and rapturous dream?

THE DREAM.

I.

THETA.

The postscripts were multiplied through a full page, which presented a striking picture of all the odd conceits-incongrous notions, and broad feeling which tor-country-of those who opened a vista for freedom tured my kind uncle's tranquil brain, and I arose from the perusal of his letter with mingled emotions of love, respect, and laughter. Lucy's epistle was like that of all girls, full of small news, long words, and burning sentences of love and sentiment, and inquiring in a postscript of the health of Arthur Ludwell, as her mother was greatly interested in his welfare. Frederick gave me a learned dissertation on the origin of civil society, and the philosophy of Bolingbroke, scourging me into frantic ambition, and ending with a prayer that I would ever keep my honor untainted. My honor was then the subject of their hopes and fears; and, as I eyed the pistols, I found the fierceness of my nature lurking with a tranquil rapture around the open, and undisguised hints of my family. To my temperament, the neat and elegant workmanship, and the beautiful polish of the pistols, argued sternness and chivalry: and under the protection of the code of honor, I was determined, by braving every conflict, to gratify my long, deep, and vindictive hate of Pilton. How curiously constituted, how wayward, and yet how uncontrollable is the swelling pulse of the human heart, when agitated by some momentary and master passion; at any other period, the remembrance of Isa Gordon, would have soothed me into a lover's thoughtful gloom, but now every gentle and luxuriant tendril which was woven around my heart was a crushed and bleeding ruin, and I examined my uncle's gift of blood-only to murmur the name of Pilton.

My visits to Miss Pilton's had been attentive, and constant, and I had concealed my fraud with such art, that I found her listening with unhesitating confidence, to the deceitful passion which I daily uttered. Cautious of proposing matrimony, yet ever alert to hint it--affecting distress and melancholy—and alternately jealous and confiding, I awoke her sympathy, only to gain her passionate and abiding affection, while I secured my victory by every art which duplicity could invent, or falsehood suggest. I saw her reject the accomplished and educated youth whose pure and guileless feelings had retained the early romance of childhood's love, and when I found her in tears, with her head reclining on my bosom, she told me, with a blushing cheek, that she had sacrificed him, whose singleness and purity of heart she could not doubt, for me alone.

'Twas a calm and soft evening when Miss Pilton left Williamsburg, and, ere we parted, I extorted from her unsuspicious feelings a promise that she would write to me. Day had languished itself into night, when I found myself a solitary loiterer in the noiseless grove

I dreamed a dream-and still upon my mind
The image of that dream, on Memory's page
Inscribed in letters large and legible,
Rests vivid as the lightning's scathing flash.
Beneath a spreading oak, that towered high
And lone upon a hillock's grassy plot,
A Maiden stood-and by her side a Youth,
Whose summers did, tho' few, outnumber hers;
And she was beautiful as rainbow tints-
Her voice, like sweetest music borne upon
The bosom of some gentle breeze far o'er
The hushed and silent waters of the deep-
Her breath, like fragrant odors from the lap
Of Flora sent, when Morning's blush appears-
Her heart, the home where wild affections dwelt-
Her mind, of intellectual power the seat-
Her eye, the mirror to her speaking soul!
Upon her marble brow was set the seal
Of Dignity-and in her slender form
Were blended grace and perfect symmetry.
The Youth was tall, erect-but unlike her
In all things save affection's swelling tide:
Unknowing of the bright and quenchless fire,
At Beauty's altar lit, that constant burned
Within his bosom's deep recess, the world
Had deemed him changeful as the fitful wind.
Silent they were, and round them silence reigned:
Above, the clear blue ether spread her veil,
And by them swept the gentle, fresh'ning breeze
That cooled the burning temples of the one,
The flowing tresses of the other waved.
Beneath them was a wide spread plain, o'er which
The full Moon poured her streams of silver light,
And in a flood of glory bathed both plain
And rugged cliffs that wildly rose beyond.
Upon that lovely scene the maiden looked
That joy and stillness breathed into her heart;
But he that meeting, had not sought to gaze
On landscapes, living though they were.
He saw
But her whose form before him rose, so bright,
So beautiful, that all else faded from