March in Saul." In short, it looked just like a funeral. When we returned home, however, the scene, methought, was not so utterly unlike a merely mortal wedding. Several were weeping indeed, and looking very doleful; but then is it not just so in those April scenes in the waking world?—where festivity is so curiously shadowed and chequered with a sort of "bitter sweet?" -where handkerchiefs are often put up to fair eyes; and the parting bride and the disconsolate mother hardly know whether to laugh or weep? — where there is often, on the part of younger sisters, a burst of sorrow, which calls for that comic consolation a friend of mine addressed to a broken-hearted fair one on such an occasion, "Not lost, but gone before!" In short, they are scenes in which a stranger would doubt whether congratulation or condolence was most significantly expressed by those halfradiant, half-tearful faces.

But there could be no doubt about my theory on going into a church! Here I found the whole audience awaiting the commencement of the service with a light and riant expression of devout levity, and a pious simper on every face. The preacher skipped up the pulpit stairs, taking two or three steps at a time, and began the prayers with a downright giggle, which no doubt proceeded from the depths of religious emotion. I laughed outright from a very different cause, at the oddity of the spectacle, and was doubtless looked upon as a prodigy of pharisaic devotion for my well-timed hilarity. But suddenly, on recollecting where I was, I assumed a very grave countenance, not unmingled with indignation, and was forthwith simperingly reproved for my levity of manner by a scandalised old lady, who said, turning pale, that she was ashamed of my want of decorum in a place of worship! In some confusion, I escaped from the church; and was no sooner in the street than I encountered a funeral procession, of which the model seemed to be taken from "David dancing before the Ark!" The people who carried the coffin came along at a minuet pace, which I thought every moment would have brought the poor swaying corpse to the ground. A band played a lively anthem, which sounded about as funereal

as "Begone dull care," or "Life let us cherish." The chief mourners giggled and laughed till tears really dropped down their cheeks (though I had difficulty in imagining them tears of sorrow), and jumped and capered in this new "Dance of Death" like mad. Perhaps you will think that the symbols of emotion might be quite as sincere, and hardly more inverted than those with which decorous hypocrites too often carry a dead friend to his last resting-place in this waking world; that is, with a joyous heart and a mourning countenance; and certainly the farce in my dream would often come easier to our mutes and undertakers than the doleful comic masque in which they now perform.

However, the incongruity of the spectacle seemed so laughable that I awoke, and felt that, however association may modify and transform our conceptions of the beautiful, or make the language of the emotions transpose its symbols, there are limits to its power which neither time nor custom can transcend; and that though the constitution of human nature is very amenable to habit, habit can as little reconcile us to an absolute bouleversement of certain aboriginal principles of our mental constitution, as it can reconcile "eels" to the process of "skinning," which, according to the benevolent suggestion of the cook, is "nothing when they are used to it."

P.S.-I am living here in pleasant lodgings, and shall do so for two or three weeks. I have little to do but to scribble to my old friends, and you, as one of the oldest, are indulged with a letter proportionably long.

LETTER XVI.

To

M

Totteridge May 29, 1840.

My dear M

Your letter found me here, where I am staying for two or three weeks. I do not like your proposed new plan at all: better to

"bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of."

If you do not take heed, you will be lost to any useful purposes in life; for the time is fast passing in which you will have either the power or the will to fix yourself to the steady pursuit of any profession. Your habit of volatile change will strengthen by every indulgence, till you will have energy for nothing; and even if repentance comes, and perseverance as its fruit, it will come too late for successful effort. At four-and-twenty, and after so many changes of plan, your friends begin to look on your case with just anxiety.

The simple fact is, you are under the dominion of your fancy. It alternately plays the tricks of the microscope and the telescope with you, according as the objects are near or remote. To the present it applies itself as a microscope; and everything that is disagreeable there is magnified a thousandfold; to the distant future it applies itself as a telescope; and all the beautiful features of the smiling landscape, even the seeming peaceful smoke of the distant city does not offend you, are brought into view, without any of the annoyances, the noise, the turmoil, the ill odours, which, when you get into them, you will experience, just as you have found in scenes you have already tried. All is "silent as a picture," and as softened too. Cure yourself, I beseech you, of this boyish folly.

As to your new project - what earthly reason have you to think you will like it better, or prosecute it with more success,

than the old? Remember, you at first attached yourself to these with the same enthusiastic expectations. In addition to your predominant tendency to day-dreaming, you are, let me tell you, too impatient for success. It will not come without toil and perseverance,―let your choice of your profession be what it may. In the present case your entire hopes are built on inexperience; you are confident because you do not know the difficulties and irksomeness of what you fancy you will like so well. Let me tell you a story the application I will leave to you.

:

My sister, Mrs. Evans, once told me of a gallant young fellow, a lieutenant in India, who, in walking into Calcutta one evening, was vehemently appealed to by two ladies riding in a carriage. From certain spiral windings of their horses to the right and the left of the road, they suspected, either that the horses were drunk, or that their coachman was: so, thinking the last the more likely supposition of the two, they with difficulty got him to stop, and appealed to our pedestrian in uniform as to whether he could undertake to drive them into Calcutta. Now my young soldier

knew no more of driving than he did of astrology; but he was as gallant as he was gállant, and no more thought of disobeying a lady (even though he should break her neck by compliance) than he would of disobeying his commanding officer, and would face any "breach,” except a breach of politeness, So, mounting the box, he took the reins from the suspected coachman, and drove off with an air; but before he had gone five hundred yards, this Phaeton overset their phaeton, and laid the ladies, the coachman, and himself, at the bottom of a muddy ditch.

I fear a similar mishap for you, only I doubt whether your bed may be quite so soft. Be no longer the dupe of that faculty, which, in most of us, ought to have a strait-waistcoat on between sixteen and twenty-one, but generally begins to be a little more sober after that period: I mean the imagination. It is the most prodigious fortune-teller, but the worst prophet, in the world.

You ought now, at four-and-twenty, to have learned to distrust its promises; to tone down its bright-coloured visions; not to believe that every mirage in the desert is a delicious lake,—or

66

56 MYSTERIES OF PROVIDENCE OFTEN NONE. LET. XVII.

every "apple of Sodom" the genuine fruit of Paradise, till it turns to ashes in your mouth. Return to your discarded profession, pursue it energetically, and you will yet do well. You have talents-opportunities-friends, - everything but steadfastness of soul.

Get this, and you are made; without it, you are lost. I wish you well for your father's sake, but no less for your own; so forgive these words of honest freedom. Nay, rather thank me, and praise me, for not keeping a treacherous silence. Your conscience must tell you that I can have no other motive for writing than the hope of doing you good.

doubt

I do not half like your falling into that little bit of "cant" about that good man T. D- "His troubles," you say, 66 are an unaccountable mystery of Providence." There is nothing more unreasonable than the talk of what are often called "mysteries of Providence," if by that be meant, that they leave us in any whatever as to the equity and justice of the Divine Government. The sufferings and calamities which are often allowed to gather round excellent persons, are, in truth (as I will show you in five words), no mysteries at all; certainly not half so much so as the prosperity of flaunting and triumphant wickedness. That there are great mysteries connected with the Divine Government I admit ; -so great, that no tool of reason, however fine its edge or hard its temper, can touch the adamant. Our only way of dealing with the objections thence derived, is by showing that there is