motion; now and then alarmed, however, lest the whirligig should stop, and involve in catastrophe my entire planetary system. At length the servants returned, near dinner-time. I abdicated with secret joy and outward solemnity, and left the kitchen to their undisputed occupancy. I heard the jades giggling, as I went up stairs, doubtless at that huge, ill-conditioned, hapless pudding that was lying sprawling and seething in the dripping-pan.

Well, dinner came at last, and was brought in amidst suppressed titters by Anne, and not suppressed laughter from my sister and her friend. I was as grave as a judge, and felt that, having now provided so elegant a repast, it became me to do the honours of my table with due empressement. I played the assiduous Amphitryon accordingly. As to the pudding, it was a phenomenon. On the south side (towards the fire, that is), scorched to a cinder; on the north, unknown regions of flabby, ill-looking dough; the east and west exhibited delicate tints of every shade between black and white. In the centre a Mediterranean puddle of dripping. I make no doubt that it was exquisite in taste, but unhappily I could not get any one to partake of it. I attributed this, of course, to their wish that I should have this delicacy, which was the chef-d'œuvre of my art, all to myself. It was in vain that I assured them that there was enough and to spare ; they would not hear of such a thing as depriving me of a particle of it. Not to be outdone in politeness, and determined that I would not greedily appropriate so rare a delicacy to myself, I, with much moderation of mind, contented myself with taking on the tip of my fork the merest morsel, which, I assure you, I found rich beyond description; then, rather than seem selfish, I waived the incomparable dish away. I doubt not, after all, that my sister and her friend saw it go away with secret remorse and misgivings; or were they, after all, so envious of my skill that they were determined not to be able to bear witness, by an experimentum gustûs, to my superiority? If so, envy as usual, was its own punishment; for rely upon it they would never taste anything like that pudding again as long as they lived. "But what as to the leg of lamb?" you will say.

My dear

friend, it was roasted on the most philosophical principles, just as the earth is roasted by the sun; quite after the planetary model; and what more would you have? There was the north and south pole, where the arctic and antarctic fat still lay in primitive whiteness. There was the torrid zone, just opposite the equatorial fire, utterly scorched up, and unendurable, as the ancients assure us we ought to find the tropics. But let me tell you, there was on each side of this a happy strip of a temperate zone, extending a full inch each way, from which I cut some delicious slices, and which, if there had but been another parallel or two of latitude, would have sufficed for the whole household. You may say, perhaps, that this was not an economic way of cooking a leg of lamb. But can there be a better way than that adopted by the sun herself, as our Saxon fathers would say,—“that fair, hot wench in the flame-coloured taffata?" The only improvement I can suggest, and certainly I shall try it next time, that is, if I can ever get admittance into the cuisine for a second experiment is this; not to let the axis of revolution be perpendicular to the plane of the dripping-pan, but exactly adjusted to an angle of 239 30': in this way I doubt not I shall have a larger temperate region, and shall be able to get dinner enough for a moderate household out of a couple of legs of mutton or so. Give me your felicitations, I beseech you, on this happy occurrence in the history of your friend, and believe me

Yours truly,

R. E. H. G.

P.S. Should you be giving any large parties during the coming winter, I shall be most happy, as Counsellor Pleydell said, in reference to the 66 for the wild ducks," to give you "my poor thoughts" on any of the more difficult entrées or entremets you may be ambitious of trying.

sauce

LETTER V.

To the same.

Aug. 1839.

My dear West,

I have often wondered what an Atheist can have to say at a death-bed: though I suppose he is seldom present at any except his own. It must surely be an awkward place for him. A man who thinks this world all, must find it hard to say anything consolatory to one who feels that all fleeting away from him. How consoling it must be for a wife to be told by her husband "We are about, my dear creature, to part,― and to part for ever; but let not that disturb you; let me remind you that it is a universal law. You are nothing but a chance-composition of organic molecules, nor am I anything more; we shall never have individual consciousness again. But let me tell you, for your unspeakable consolation, that you will pass into new forms, and sublimely, though unconsciously, last for ever!" The consolation is "unspeakable."

On the other hand, the Christian at a death-bed has often just as little to say; not, because nothing can be said - but because little need be. I will give you an example.

I was recently asked one summer evening by a friend (a medical man in the country, with whom I was staying) to visit the cottage of a poor fellow whose wife was dying of consumption. It was just one of the common cases; the germs of our national plague were in her constitution from the beginning. She had married; she had borne one child. Soon after her confinement, the symptoms of consumption rapidly developed themselves; and she bore up bravely against the malady as long as she could. Her husband had obtained for her all the comforts he could command; and my benevolent friend, the practitioner aforesaid, bestowed all his skill gratis. He had, on the like charitable terms, obtained the opinion of a physician, because he thought it would be an additional

satisfaction to his poor patient to know that no means had been left untried. The physician saw at a glance that nothing was to be done except the painful task of saying so; a task, however, which he shrank from performing. The usual palliatives in the early and later stages had all been tried with the customary fruitlessness; and all that, as usual, was left for the physician, was to "indorse" the customary declaration respecting his brotherpractitioner's most judicious and most useless treatment, and certify that the patient was dying in the very best way possible under the conduct of much human wisdom and skill, means, in all such cases, human ignorance and impotence.

which

I told her as gently as I could-what I supposed not only her own fears had told her already, but my medical friend also — that human art could do no more, and that she must prepare to die. The husband was sitting by her bedside. I saw a shudder pass through his frame, and that hope had only that moment been dislodged from his heart; he looked at me with a peculiar expression of mingled stupefaction and horror. But he broke out into no womanly complaints, for he was a strong-minded man. After a moment, he turned a fixed look of peculiarly solemn tenderness on his wife, and gently laid his hand in hers, as if he would arrest her as she was setting out on the dark passage. On the other hand, to my surprise, she was far less affected than he. She received the tidings with calm and silent acquiescence; then said simply, "I am prepared for it; I have sometimes felt it must be so." She glanced at the open Bible which her husband had been reading to her, and turning to him, said "We shall meet again; I know Whom I have believed; and you know Him too. In our Father's house are many mansions, and He has gone to prepare a place for us." She quoted some of the passages which glow with the poetry of heaven and immortality; and as he listened, his sorrow seemed to catch bright gleams from the reflection of her own calm enthusiasm ; like a dark cloud at the close of a wintry day, which the setting sun suddenly lights up with a glow of transient splendour. I sat gazing upon them in speechless sympathy. They did not seem sensible of my presence; for they

were absorbed in those all-unutterable thoughts which make the presence of all the world just the same as solitude. Neither did they say much: they were talking with their eyes, and were speaking volumes in moments of time.

Here was a strange thing! Here was something, then, that had reversed the natural position of these two young creatures, The peace was hers, who was about to die. – the perturbation and the sorrow chiefly his, who was to live: nay, whatever softened gleam of lustre relieved his sorrow was the bright reflection of her setting glory. "Let it be all a grand delusion," thought I; "yet since Death is, for all of us, the great event of life — in the transaction of which we live more than a life, while those who survive have the whole of after-life affected by it, - how priceless must be that, whatever it is, which gives hopes like these!"

The cottage window was open; the setting sun shone in with a flood of radiance; the evening zephyr, laden with the fragrant breath of jessamine and honeysuckle, gently stirred the windowcurtains to and fro, as though ministering spirits were stealing in and out of that peaceful room. At any other moment I should have regarded all this as a horrible incongruity. I can recollect that once or twice in my life, in the chamber of the dying, I have lifted the window curtain in the weary morning watch, and, as I looked into the cold grey dawn, and saw the last pale stars so peacefully shining, and heard the faint preluding twitter of the birds beginning their matin carol; or, more incongruous still!caught a glimpse of the broad sun lifting up his jocund face from the horizon, and calling a busy, thoughtless world to renewed activity and care, — I have thought it almost a sin in nature to be so deeply peaceful while humanity lay wrestling there in its last. agony. But I had no such thoughts on this occasion. The setting sun, which shone through and through the clouds which lay on the horizon, and turned them to molten gold, seemed to me a fitting emblem of a Hope which thus converted the darkest sorrows of life into a diadem of glory. The living world it was which now looked so cold and dreary. It was we the livingwho seemed to have our faces towards the bleak north, and to be