that he would have stopped short of death, but certainly not of divorce; and assuredly never would the file of Doctors' Commons have exhibited a more eloquent bill of grievances.

He had sat some time with more of phrenzy than philosophy in his thoughts, when little Harold entered the room. The appearance of the child called up the calm image of his dying grandfather, and changed the current of the doctor's thoughts and feelings; anger and animosity sank rebuked before the impressions of the morning, and, taking the boy's hand, he left the library.

In the midst of this domestic storm Harold received a kinder reception from Mrs. Drennan, and made a quieter settlement in her abode, than he would otherwise have done; for she feared to attempt any further exasperation of her husband's temper.

But real reformation of conduct only grows from conviction produced upon the mind, not from fears. The disposition and habits of Mrs. Drennan speedily took their accustomed course, and a new and lamentable consequence of their prejudicial influence gradually ensued. Harold was an acute, sensitive child, he was directly dependent upon her for his domestic comforts, and she had the power of inflicting punishment upon him by means of privation; thus she operated upon all his lower feelings, and they were brought into action, and overgrew his higher feelings. He discovered, with almost intuitive penetration, that he could at any time conciliate Mrs. Drennan, or put her in a good humour, by telling her a ridiculous story of any of her neighbours, or joining her in a malicious review of their character. The precepts of Dr. Drennan were feeble of effect when opposed to a practical course of this kind; and his well meant, but ineffective teaching, served no other purpose than to add hypocrisy to Harold's other faults.

The youth gradually fell under the stigma of the whole neighbourhood, being convicted of a hundred instances of wilful falsehood and wanton mischief. Dr. Drennan, for an offence of an unusually flagrant nature, was induced to inflict on him a severe punishment. Harold felt the deepest resentment, and resolved upon revenge. He poisoned Sancho, now an aged creature, and apparently the creature on earth which Dr. Drennan loved best. The consequences of this act were dreadful: through some carelessness the poison used on this occasion was communicated to some liquid, of which Mrs. Drennan drank-her death was the result.

Suspicion instantly attached to Dr. Drennan; for the circumstances of his domestic inquietude were well known. With the calmness of conscious innocence he went to prison-there was not the slightest evidence on which to ground a conviction, and he was acquitted by a jury; not so by his neighbours. Slander was busy among the idle and the ignorant, and the story soon grew that

Harold was the natural són of the doctor, who had poisoned his wife for some supposed unkindness to the bastard boy.

Alas! the only poisoners had been Mrs. Drennan, and the circumstances which made her what she was. How fatal is such moral poison, especially when administered in that plastic time when the character is forming, Harold sufficiently exhibited; for, though his faults became modified and veiled as he advanced to manhood, he never bore the character of which he was originally capable. His sorrowing and disappointed friend attributed, not to early corruption, but to inherent degeneracy, the dereliction of his conduct; because Dr. Drennan had no conception of the power of female influence, interwoven as it is into the very texture of every feeling and habit of youth. Thus fatal to an excellent man and a promising child, was one narrow ignorant woman, whose strong energies, properly enlarged and directed, might have made her as beneficial as she was baneful.

M. L. G.

MUSICAL COMMENTARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LATE CHARLES LAMB.

The

'WHAT!' exclaims the reader, musical notices from him who confessedly had no ear; who ever eschewed music, and all that thereunto appertained! Come, this is a hoax.' No, unbelieving Christian, it is no hoax: the lines are veritable Elian. circumstances which gave rise to this extraordinary production were as follows:-Lamb, among his miscellaneous literature, had chanced upon Burney's History of Music, which, as was his wont in all cases, he read carefully through, and thus, though as earless, and as disinclined as ever to devote himself to the tuneful goddess, his memory became involuntarily stored with the names and qualities of all who, 'since Music, heavenly maid, was young,' have knelt at her shrine. This impersonal knowledge he a few days afterwards showered, with ludicrously astounding effect, upon his friend Ayrton, himself a learned professor of the divine art, and who, like thee, gentle reader, had no conception that Elia knew aught of the matter. Delighted, however, to find (as he supposed) in his and our dear friend so distinguished an amateur, he entreated from Lamb, for private edification and entertainment, his opinions as to the great masters' of music, which next day gave rise to the following:

Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites; for my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, or for Handel.
Cannot a man live free and easy,
Without admiring Pergolesi?

Or through the world in comfort go,
Who never heard of Doctor Blow?
For my own part I never have;
And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
Like other people. If you watch it,
I know no more of stave or crotchet
Than did the unspaniardized Peruvians,
Or those old, queer antediluvians,

Who lived in th' unwashed world with Tubal,
Before that dirty blacksmith, Jubal,
By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at,
Found out, t' his great surprise, the gamut.
I know no more of Cimarosa,
Than he did of Salvator Rosa,

Being no painter: and, bad luck

Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck!

Old Tycho Brahe, or modern Herschel,

Had something in them, but what's Purcell?

The devil, with his foot so cloven,

For aught I care, may take Beethoven ;
And if the bargain doesn't suit,

I'll throw him Weber in to boot!

There's not the splitting of a splinter

To choose 'twixt him last-named, and Winter.

Of Dr. Pepusch, old Queen Dido

Knew just as much, God knows, as I do.

I would not go four miles to visit
Sebastian Back, or Bof; which is it?
No more I would for Bononini.
As for Novello and Rossini,

I will not say a word about 'em ;
Except that we might do without 'em.

#

Lamb made the following report of the Westminster Abbey Festival, in a letter to a friend:

We heard the music in the Abbey, at Winchmore Hill! and the notes were incomparably softened by the distance. Novello's chromatics were distinctly audible. Clara was faulty in в flat; otherwise she sang like an angel. The trombone and Beethoven's waltzes were the best. Who played the oboe?'

The following letter is of a long anterior date, and relates to very different topics; we subjoin it in the assurance of providing a gratification for our readers:

'DEAR HAZLITT,

'I was very glad to hear from you, and that your journey was so picturesque. We miss you, as we foretold we should. One or two things have happened, which are beneath the dignity of epistolary communication, but which, seated about our fire at night, (the winter hands of pork have begun,) gesture and emphasis might have talked into some importance. Something about R's wife, for instance, how

tall she is, and that she visits pranked up like a queen of the May, with green streamers,— -a good-natured woman though, which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor. Some things, too, about Monkey, which can't so well be written,--how it set up for a fine lady, and thought it had got lovers, and was obliged to be convinced of its age from the parish register, when it was proved to be only twelve, and an edict issued that it should not give itself airs yet these four years; and how it got leave to be called Miss, by grace: these and such like hows were in my head to tell you; but who can write? Also how Manning came to town in spectacles, and studies physic; is melancholy, and seems to have something in his head which he don't impart. Then, how I am going to leave off smoking. O la!-Your Leonardos of Oxford made my mouth water. I was hurried through the gallery, and they escaped me. What do I say? I was a Goth then, and should not have noticed them. I had not settled my notions of beauty. I have now for ever: the small head, the long eye, that sort of peering curve, the wicked Italian mischief, the stick-at-nothing-Herodias'-daughter kind of grace. You understand me. But you disappoint me in passing over in absolute silence the Blenheim Leonardo. Did you not see it? Excuse a lover's curiosity. I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is curious to see how differently two great men treat the same subject, yet both excellent in their way: for instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe: Mr. Dawe has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson exactly in the point of view in which Milton has been most happy, the interview between the Jewish hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his locks grown again, strong as horse hair or porcupine's bristles, doubtless shaggy and black, as being hair "which of a nation armed contained the strength." I don't remember he says black; but could Milton imagine them to be yellow? do you? Mr. Dawe, with striking originality of conception, has crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in colour precisely like to Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's: his limbs rather stout, about such a man as my brother or Rickman; but no Atlas, nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact; for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a temple with a golden tress as soon as with the cables of the British navy. Miss Dawe is about a portrait of sulky F-, but Miss Dawe is of opinion that her subject is neither reserved nor sullen, and doubtless she will persuade the picture to be of the same opinion. However, the features are tolerably like. Too much of Dawes! Wasn't you sorry for Lord Nelson? I have followed him in fancy ever since I saw him walking in Pall Mall, (I was prejudiced against him before,) looking just as a hero should look, and I have been very much cut about it indeed. He was the only pretence of a great man we had. Nobody is left of any name at all. His secretary died by his side. I imagined him, a Mr. Scott, to be the man you met at Hume's, but I learn from Mrs. Hume that it is not the same. I met Mrs. H one day and agreed to go on the Sunday to tea, but the rain prevented us and the distance. I have been to apologize, and we are to dine there the first fine Sunday! Strange perverseness. I never went while you staid here, and now I go to find

you. What other news is there, Mary? What puns have I made in the last fortnight? You never remember them. You have no relish for the comic. Oh! tell Hazlitt not to forget to send the American Farmer. I dare say it isn't so good as he fancies, but a book's a book.

'I have not heard from Wordsworth, or from Malta since. Charles Kemble, it seems, enters into possession to-morrow. We sup at 109, Russel-street, this evening, I wish your brother would'nt drink. It's a blemish in the greatest characters. You send me a modern quotation poetical. How do you like this in an old play? Vittoria Corombona, an Italian lady, a Leonardo one, nicknamed the White Devil, being on her trial for murder, &c., and questioned about seducing a duke from his wife and the states, makes answer :

"Condemn you me for that the Duke did love me?

So may you blame some fair and crystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man

Hath drowned himself in it."

Our ticket was a £20. Alas!! Are both yours blanks?

'N.B. I shall expect a line from you, if but a bare line, whenever you write to Russel- street, and a letter often when you do not. I pay no postage. But I will have consideration for you till parliament time, and franks. Luck to Ned Search, and the new art of colouring. Monkey sends her love, and Mary's 'specially.

'10th November, 1805.

Yours truly,

'C. LAMB.

'P.S. Godwin has asked after you

several times.'

HIGH CHURCH AND CONVENTICLE;

OR, FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY, A SECTARIAN DIALogue.

(By the Author of the 'Exposition of the False Medium, &c.')

'IF,' said his reverence the apoplectic vicar of C—, and nonresident pastor of L, S, and D, addressing his superior half as she sat preparing to make breakfast with her accustomed air of sour sanctity-If, my dearest Mirabella, you really consider that the cook has taken to paying an occasional visit to that low-roofed, deal-boarded conventicle which is the abomination of the neighbourhood, I will have her summoned before me this moment, and question her seriously thereupon. But I doubt me'-here he placed his left foot beside the right, which was reposing upon a large puffy ottoman, I doubt me very much if she hath presumed so to do; more particularly as the distance is at least a mile and a half, and over a tract much exposed to the wind of an evening; I doubt me if she hatha-hem!'

'I well know,' answered the reverend lady, speaking through her teeth, that she hath, love.'

Can it be, can it be? Well, as soon as I have taken my breakfast

This moment, love, as you said; this moment let the cook be