THE MONK.

-Now, was I a King of France, cried I—what a moment for an orphan to have begged his father's portmanteau of me!

I had scarce uttered the words, when a poor monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his convent. No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies-or one man may be generous, as another man is puissant-sed non, quoad hanc-or be it as it may-for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for aught I know, which influence the tides themselves-'twould oft be no discredit to us to suppose it was so: I'm sure at least for myself, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied, to have it said by the world, "I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin or shame,” than have it pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much of both.

-But be this as it may. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous, and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket-buttoned it up-set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him there was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs upon his temples, being all that remained of it, might be about seventy-but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty-Truth might lie between-he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the

account.

It was one of those heads, which Guido has often painted— mild, pale-penetrating, free from all common-place ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth-it

looked forwards; but looked, as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows ; but it would have suited a Bramin, and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of anyone to design, for 'twas neither elegant or otherwise, but as character and expression made it so it was a thin, spare form, something above the common size, if it lost not the distinction by a bend forwards in the figure -but it was the attitude of Intreaty; and as it now stands present to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast, a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his right-when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order—and did it with so simple a grace-and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure—I was bewitched not to have been struck with it

-A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sous.

Tis very true, said I, replying to a cast upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address-'tis very true— and heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

As I pronounced the words great claims, he gave a slight glance with his eye downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic-I felt the full force of the appeal-I acknowledge it, said I,-a coarse habit, and that but once in three years with meagre diet are no great matters: and the true point of pity is, as they can be earned in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm→ the captive who lies down counting over and over again the days of his afflictions, languishes also for his share of it; and had you been of the order of mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis,

poor as I am, continued I, pointing at my portmanteau, full cheerfully should it have been opened to you, for the ransom of the unfortunate.-The monk made me a bow-but of all others, resumed I, the unfortunate of our own country, surely, have the first rights; and I have left thousands in distress upon our own shore-The monk gave a cordial wave with his head—as much as to say, No doubt, there is misery enough in every corner of the world, as well as within our convent-But we distinguish, said I, laying my hand upon the sleeve of his tunic, in return for his appeal-we distinguish, my good father! betwixt those who wish only to eat the bread of their own labour-and those who eat the bread of other people's, and have no other plan in life, but to get through it in sloth and ignorance, for the love of God.

The poor Franciscan made no reply: a hectic of a moment passed across his cheek, but could not tarry-Nature seemed to have had done with her resentments in him; he shewed nonebut letting his staff fall within his arm, he pressed both his hands with resignation upon his breast, and retired.

A Sentimental Journey.

P. 200, 1. 8. Lays down. "There let him lay," for it can only be admitted that, despite the certainty and obvious use of the distinction between “lie” and “lay," it has been often neglected by great writers.

P. 200, 1. 21. Montaigne. The passage is in Book III. Chapter xiii. of the Essays. It is quoted desultorily and without regard to context, but not unfaithfully

I

THOMAS GRAY

Thomas Gray was born in London in 1716, was brought up at Eton and Cambridge, travelled with Horace Walpole, and then returned to Cambridge, which was the headquarters of his life of studious ease till his death in 1771. His prose has not the elaborate perfection of his poetry, but exhibits much of the same scholarly character. In appreciating nature he has few predecessors in English.

A SUNRISE.

MUST not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was that, in the course of my late tour, I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea coast time enough to be at the sun's levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapours open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide, as it flowed gently in upon the sands, first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that, before I can write these five words, was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen. It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least as I endure. I wonder whether any body ever saw it before; I hardly believe it.

Letter to Bonstetten.

This brief passage gives what hardly exists before in prose English, an attempt to describe landscape from nature and not conventionally. It is probably this very difference from conventional writing which made the author complain that it "made no figure upon paper." We do not think so now.

I

HORACE WALPOLE.

Horace Walpole, younger son of Sir Robert, was born in London in 1717 and died there in 1797, by which time he had succeeded to the earldom of Orford. A dilettante, a coxcomb, and cold-hearted towards all but a narrow circle of personal friends, Walpole was a man of very considerable sense and culture, the best of all English letter-writers, and capable of much better work, of other kinds, than he chose to do.

THE JOYS OF LONDON.

AM writing to you in an inn on the road to London. What a paradise should I have thought this when I was in the Italian inns! in a wide barn with four ample windows, which had nothing more like glass than shutters and iron bars! no tester to the bed, and the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off the cold. What a paradise did I think the inn at Dover when I came back! and what magnificence were twopenny prints, salt-cellars, and boxes to hold the knives; but the summum bonum was small-beer and the newspaper.

"I bless'd my stars, and called it luxury!"

Who was the Neapolitan ambassadress that could not live at Paris, because there was no maccaroni? Now am I relapsed into all the dissatisfied refinement of a true English grumbling voluptuary. I could find in my heart to write a Craftsman against the Government, because I am not quite so much at my ease as on my own sofa. I could persuade myself that it is my Lord Carteret's fault that I am only sitting in a common armchair, when I would be lolling in a péché-mortel. How dismal, how solitary, how scrub does this town look; and yet it has