a battalion of sausage-rolls to be despatched in detail, a carriage drove up to the door, and, with the exclamation of "Here's dear Lucy England!" all the children ran out to welcome and bring her in. "But where is your venerable father, my dear Lucy? enquired Mrs. Warden; "And your sister ?" added the host. "Maria is not very well to-day, so my father staid at home to keep her company; but she has sent you these verses, William, on your birth-day, with her love." "Well," said Mr. Warden, " the first thing you do, 'Sincere-eyes,' sit down, and have some breakfast, and we 'll see about reading the verses directly. Here, Charles Singleton shall read them aloud, as we all know he will do them justice; and, as I suppose he has by this time pacified that amazing appetite of his-" But Mr. Singleton declaring that he had as yet only begun to think of the preliminaries of peace with his rebellious stomach, and should recommence his attack on that "bastion of a cold sirloin " afterwards, read aloud the following: TO WILLIAM. Dear boy, on this thy day of birth, Bid pen and paper speak for me, And feel, "Ah, could I William see!" To gaze into thy speaking eyes, To trace bright hope on thy young brow; And pray that God may realize The visions thou art dreaming now; That life to thee may be a tale Of honour, virtue, truth, and love, A land of peace, a moon-lit sail, Types of Eternity above. BIRTH-DAY CELEBRATION. 15 "This is a very enviable power Maria England possesses of pouring out her thoughts in verse," remarked Mr. Warden; "I hardly know one that is more calculated to give pleasure. Congratulatory verses have ever been a favourite mode of honouring a birth-day by those possessing the poetical taste and faculty; but among the numerous pleasant hints that Leigh Hunt has thrown out in the course of his writings for the right keeping of a birth-day, he proposes the bringing forward, by each one of the party assembled, an appropriate verse extracted from a favourite author, if unable to produce an original one; a graceful example of the many suggestions for increasing our social enjoyment, which the age owes to that elegant writer and poet." "Was it not Epicurus," said Mr. Singleton, "the festival of whose birth was celebrated by his followers during the course of a whole month?" "Yes," said Mr. Warden, "and his memory and doctrines were held in such reverence by his friends and adherents, that we find Cicero exclaiming in rapture, about a hundred and eighty years after the philosopher's death, 'What a multitude of friends, and how closely united in affection, did Epicurus entertain in one little house! A harmony which is kept up to this day by the Epicureans.' And nearly as many years had elapsed when Pliny mentions the keeping of his birth-day. Like all great and original men, he also seems to have been much misunderstood; and his vindication of man's right to seek the pleasurable in existence, to have been confounded with a desire to inculcate vice. In proportion to the homage he received from the wise, was his misrepresentation from the ignorant and morose. "That was a wisely-instituted celebration of his birth 16 DEATHS ON BIRTH-DAYS. day by one of the old Greek philosophers," continued Mr. Warden," who left in his will a request that a holiday might be granted to all the school-children in his native village, on each returning anniversary." "Rather better," replied Mr. Singleton, "than the pretty foolery that passed between one of the Kings of France and a favourite lady of his court, who, having declared she would never accept a costly gift at his hands, upon receiving a birth-day present of the monarch's portrait, set in diamonds, proved her consistency, if not disinterestedness, by having the gems taken from their setting and ground to powder, which she used as sand to sprinkle over the ink wherewith she penned a refusal of the royal gift." “That was a singular coincidence of events which took from the world two of its greatest men, in their several spheres, at the same point of time," observed Mr. Warden. "Shakespeare and the author of Don Quixote both died on the same day. It was as if Nature, in a sudden fit of parsimonious regret, had thought fit to snatch back the rich gifts she had lavished on the world." "Or, as if, seeking to extinguish one of the lights which had shed its lustre on literature, she had inadvertently puffed out both," said Mrs. Warden, smiling. "You know, Shakespeare himself says, 'Heaven does with us as we with torches do,' said Lucy England. 9 99 "His great 'spirit,' which indeed was 'not touched but to a fine issue,'" pursued Mr. Warden, reverting to the same superb passage,* "fled to its celestial dwelling on the same day which saw its entrance into this 'breathing world; for he died on his birth-day; as did the prince of painters, Raphael, about a century previous. Oliver Cromwell, too, and that grand musician, Handel, both died on the anniversary of the day that gave each birth." *From "Measure for Measure." VENERATION FOR BIRTH-DAYS. 17 "We frequently find a peculiar and personal veneration for their birth-days among men of tender and susceptible natures," remarked Mr. Singleton; "as in the instance of the late pious and excellent Dr. Arnold, who made an affecting entry in his journal just before his death, indicative of a desire to live till his approaching birth-day, and to mark it as an epoch of the commencement of fresh labours in behalf of his beloved brethren." "Was he permitted to live till his birth-day, Sir?" asked William, who had been listening eagerly to the conversation. "No, my dear," answered Mr. Singleton; "from one of those inscrutable ordinations of Providence, which so frequently perplex our limited human judgments, he died two days before its date; but in the space of life accorded to him he had, doubtless, already fulfilled the intention of its Divine Giver, by affording to the age a rare instance, in the same abundant degree, of wisdom, moderation, and love of his fellow-creatures." "We are forcibly struck by the same peculiar reverence for the period of his birth in the writings of Jean Paul Richter," said Mr. Warden; "he, with his glowing imagination and affectionate temperament, found exquisite gratification in dwelling on the circumstance that the time of the year in which he first beheld the light was the one which also gave birth to the spring-to that season which brings forth bud and blossom from the bosom of the earth; the fresh and genial showers from the sky, as from gentle, maternal eyes, and the callow nestlings from their first shelly habitation. Do you remember the fond complacency with which he finds himself entering upon his new occupation of schoolmaster on the very date of his birth—the 21st of March? And this poetical association seems to have 18 MILTON'S BIRTH-DAY SONNET. accompanied him through life, and to have been a source of joyful pride." "Do you recollect, too," said Mr. Singleton, "that fine passage in allusion to his second and more spiritual birth— the birth of self-consciousness in him? Every man of imagination and feeling must, I think, recognise in himself this same epoch, and remember its having taken place at some period or other of his early youth; and I hope and believe that my young friend here may realise these same mysterious feelings and noble aspirations. Then, upon an occasion like the present one, we should by no means forget to instance the seriously-chastised spirit-longings and resolutions of the divine Milton, whose Sonnet on his own youthful birth-day was a worthy promise of the grand achievements that his mature age was to bring forth. In that beautiful little poem, we have another example of the 'self-consciousness' that has been alluded to in the case of Richter, joined to that calm and dignified self-reliance which must always accompany great intellectual power. With what modest and humble faith he resigns all his future attempts and fulfilments to the disposal of his all-wise Task-master and Director. This is a favourite sonnet of mine," continued Mr. Singleton ; 66 and, as coming from one of the greatest poets the world has yet seen, it is good and encouraging to quote to a lad on his birth-day: "How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, |