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ONCE UPON A TIME.

MY DEAR EUSEBIUS-You complain that the frost has benumbed your faculties, that your mind is hybernating, while, bodily, you are under a sense of general discomfort. Winter hardens the heart-at least we may suppose so, if it be true, as statisticians assert, that the greatest number and the worst of murders have been committed during that season. Is there not a charming piece of music I think of Purcell's-of Love frozen beneath a mountain of snow, and awakened by Beauty in the first spring, "What dost thou mean by sleeping here?" I was mightily moved when I heard it, and perhaps do not speak of it accurately. Some such talisman I must apply to your dormant faculties; let it be the old one, which has ever revivified you in your most apathetic moods, the "Once upon a Time." It is a charm which hath kept the child awake even in the best of dormitories, the mother's bosom, and has ever after enlivened the man-child, nor failed of ministering its elixir vitæ, even in extreme age. It is that one specific good, for every evil has some beneficial ingredient, which was in the curiosity that tempted first the mother of mankind; and maternal tenderness has culled it from the sin, and used it lovingly, to this day. And the charm will work as long as time shall last. The traveller, on whatever road of life, and on whatever speed intent, will stay his steps at hearing the words. Their power is inevitable, as of the "Ancient Mariner," and is embodied in his address, "There was a ship, quoth he."

I know very well, Eusebius, that you cannot have read so far without experiencing the working of the charm; but that you may have it in all its potency, feel it quickening your imagination, invigorating your virtues, and giving new impetus to all your amiabilities, send to your bookseller for Once upon a Time, by Charles Knight. These two little volumes will supply you with infinite amusement, both in what they contain, and in this, that they suggest

trains of thought without endthreads fancy-drawn from the web of truth.

The present, with all its improvements and advantages, hath its visible and invisible vexations. It is environed with the cares and the fears of this world. It touches us too closely to be a relief-we go about with as many feelers as the polyp, and are a thousand times more sensitive. Many are the hours we would shun contact, and willingly retire out of reach of encroaching thoughts and encroaching people. Not that we would encourage a misanthropic spirit; it is not that at such times we love the less, or hate the more, but that we are perplexed and weary of the too intimate pressure, and seek rest and alleviation without throwing off an atom of our common human interest. Nay, let it be the stronger; for humanity, after all, has a wider range than this living world. The dead, whom we believe to be still living in a spiritual state, which we cannot conceive, and who are once more to resume their substance, however changed, are, in real truthful thought, a portion of ourselves; the only difference being, that they act not now with us visibly, nor we with them; but they have left their influences, and naturally we encourage, as from an instinct, the belief in a communicative restoration. And if we take the selfish, narrow, present view only, into what insignificance do we shrink and withdraw ourselves

what a very infinitesimal portion of the general humanity do we make! The bulk of mankind, from the creation, still being, and in another state, are those whom we call the deadthat great mass to whom we are dropping off daily, and whom, in our turn, we shall all join. It is always, then, interesting, and not without ulterior benefit, to keep up in thought this general relationship of humanity, and that through the citizenship of death. I say not brotherhood of death, Eusebius; that is too near! What is strangest, this citizenship, which we acknowledge, feel, and enjoy,

in its kinship, is ever freshest in its far-offness. The idea of death has passed away by distance-it only hurts, wounds, and shocks by its closeness upon life-it recovers a vitality by time. Imagination brings back the old world of any period, and peoples it anew with its old inhabitants after a new manner; for it makes selections, and, as upon a stage, throws to their proper distances the accessories and inferior actors. We have them at our will, to play their parts again, to amuse, to teach, and to warn us; and, perhaps, more clearly and distinctly than they were ever known, removed as they are from the many confusions which invariably invest time present. I suppose it is the case with every one, Eusebius; but for myself, if I may speak, I cannot think of any of the dead whom I have ever actually known when living, even though I have never conversed with them, without something of pain, and perhaps of pity. They are scarcely freed from bodily suggestion. There is decay motionless, unknown, bodily deadness. The idea of sensation hovers over substantially - tenanted graves. That which is above them, the cold, the damp, the chill, the gloom, the awe, or the disorder of situation-all these penetrate through thought and feeling, and come back upon me, and by that connection I unreasonably commiserate. wonder of life, its sudden change, and its mystery, have not passed off. The removal from the earth I look at and tread, the skies I see, connect the earth and skies of to-day with the darkness-with the invisible. Very different is it with regard to the far-off, the generations whom I have never seen, never known, but as history, I see them quite after another manner. In reality, this earth and these skies were and are the same; but they come not the same upon the mind's vision-they have gone into the background, and, like as in pictures, are represented with a difference, and imagined poetically, and always, inasmuch as they are of one's own making, appropriately. Neither cloud nor sunshine are quite the same-they are changed by the hue of the magic glass which

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has called them up. I take in, and of every scene, what I will, and no more than I will. I am master of the revels, choose my tragedy or comedy, and all the dramatis persona. I can shift the scenes when I please. It is ever life, not death, which is acted before me- life in its wholesome, its perpetual action, making action its history,-unlike recent biographies, painful from the beginning, as rather a narrative of the course of death, whose stain and evil humour is in the first thread, and continuous to the end, to which it is ever hastening, and darkening with an almost malignant and morose gloom all noble aims and pursuits, and convicting them of their nothingness by the fatality that persecutes and the death that overtakes them. In the long since past, all this is reversed-life is more life. All the deadness is gone, and the pain of it affects not the imagination. sympathies inflict no injuries upon us. Who is expected to love or to hate too keenly? Love and hate are become also imaginary to a degree, and are therefore disinterested, and have virtue in them, and are pleasurable. There is something good in not knowing too much of individualities. Let poets and heroes be poets and heroes. Would you not rather know Shakespeare through his plays than be in daily attendance with his physician, to note the progress of his last sickness? Eusebius, you never think of Shakespeare as a dead man. He is living to you, and will live for all generations. In this respect are we better off than they who knew him personally? We have escaped melancholy regrets. This removal of the idea of death by time may be tested another way-by, as I think, a natural instinct. Refer it to yourselfevery man contemplates his own change. There is something distressing in its immediateness; removed to an hundred years hence, it is nothing

it has passed into a continuance of resuscitated existence-it is a thought as of a freed being. And so with the remembrance of those we have loved

every year takes something from the painfulness, and adds something of the warm cheer of life. The permanent idea of humanity is life. It

is death growing into life. And this is why "once upon a time" ever delights all of woman born.

Eusebius, consider for a moment "once upon a time" for its truthfulness, in which lies its use, and its entertainment also; for its truthfulness is of a peculiar kind. To be useful, it must be clear, picturesquely asserted, disentangled, and of a fair pattern, easily understood, and memory-fixed, which renders its being amusing needful. For this, no easy craft is to be employed-the true skill of the historian. He must imagine positions from whence to draw into one view, and discriminate by light and shade, in their places, all the incidents that fall in with his history. The historian is to make the circle of his art, and stand, like the necromancer, and call up the spirits of old to speak for themselves, after the arrangement that he has made for them. They cannot but tell truth; it is he that must make the truth come out, show itself, presentable and memorable. He who stands in a crowd sees little the historian has to clear himself of it, and choose his position apart. This position is his undisturbed territory, and is, as I ventured to call it, imaginary. It is the fiction which gathers realities. After all the satires written upon, and doubts thrown upon history (and the doubts themselves are its portions), the main features are veracious. Facts are really in crowds, in mobs and masses, in which individual features are undistinguishable,-yet have these individualities to be portrayed. And here, at once, is seen the historian's difficulty, his need of an art. certain extent he must be that which, at first view, it might be supposed he should not be-a poet. "Modo me Thebis modo ponit Athenis." He must take the reader also out of the crowd and hurry, where he will have his scene acted, and bring out his actors. Will it seem a paradox, Eusebius, to assert that every true history is more than half of it fiction; more true, because seized poetically, unencumbered with circumstance foreign to the oneness of its character ?some would say less true, because of its omissions; but the omissions are of things that distract thought. It

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omits facts for the purpose of making up itself into one fact. What is main truth but the truth of impression? For the poetic impression was either in some of the actors or some of the observers, not in any common view. And when this impression is made visible, in ages, perhaps, after the facts, it is as of multitudes of things, persons, and incidents, cast into the historian's alembic, and the residuum of many circumstances is one truth. Conscious of the use of this poetic element, did Herodotus dedicate his history to, and designate it by, the Nine Muses. Be thankful to him who can thus furnish you with the means of thought, and is gifted with the power of exciting it.

Is this, my dear Eusebius, a tiresome discussion ? Is it a prelude to a universal history of gravest importance, or to a semi-fabulous "once upon a time?" I have been led to it by considering the gift of this author of Once upon a Time,-with what clearness he brings past ages before you, by a few distinct pictures; and how, beyond that, by a few touches of comparison with the present, he draws you on to make proper inferences.

The Paston Letters supply materials for the first chapter in these interesting volumes. These letters were written during the turbulent period of the wars of the Roses. They are full of matter, and show the domestic and political life led by persons of any consideration in those days. Mr Knight, in his very first sentence, expresses the pleasure and information they afforded him. "I have a great affection for the Pastons. They are the only people of the old time who have allowed me to know them thoroughly. I am intimate with all their domestic concerns-their wooings, their marriages, their household economies. I see them, as I see the people of my own day, fighting a never-ending battle for shillings and pence, spending lavishly at one time, and pinched painfully at another. Í see them, too, carrying on their public actions after a fashion that is not wholly obsolete, intriguing at elections, bribing and feasting. I see them, as becomes constitutional Englishmen, ever quarrelling by action

and writ, and what is not quite so common in these less adventurous times, employing the holy law of pike and gun,' to support the other law, or to resist. I see them in their pride of family despising trade, and yet relying upon its assistance. I see the young ladies leading a somewhat unquiet and constrained life till they have become conformable in the matter of marriage; and I see the young gentlemen taking a strict inventory of the amount of ready cash that is to be paid down with a bride, and deciding upon eligibility by the simple rule of the scales. This is all very edifying; and I am truly obliged to this gracious family, who four hundred years ago communicated with each other, and with their friends, in the most frank manner, upon every subject of their varied lives."

Such is the programme; and, in the course of the little narrative, evidence is given as to every particular paragraph. We are first made acquainted with Sir William Paston, a judge of the Common Pleas, and his wife Agnes, "scheming for the marriage of her sons, and holding her daughters in terrible durance." Sir William makes his exit from the stage of life. Enter John Paston his eldest son, remarkable for a life of contention, of sometimes force, and sometimes law, for the lands and castle of Caister; and more worthily remarkable for possessing an excellent wife, Margaret, whose virtues, as is the case with most good women, take vigorous growth under difficulties. She became a widow in 1466. Her son, the knighted Sir John Paston, succeeds to Caister, for which he has to fight hard with a too successful enemy, the Duke of Norfolk, who at one time beleaguers the castle with a thousand men. Sir John is a gay, reckless character, loving adventure rather than his interest. Margaret has also another son by name also John, for distinction called John of Galston-the "Colebs in search of a wife," alluded to in the programme, as deciding upon "the rule of scales." There is also a daughter, Margaret, in whose person is exemplified that "the course of true love never did run smooth." There is also a priest, the chaplain of the house, who holds

both mother and daughter in no small tyranny, under a secret possessed, or a suspicion of Lollardy, as entertained by Margaret the elder, and one Richard Calle, the betrothed of Margaret the younger. The chaplain is Sir James Gloys. This was the age of Margaret heroines. In this little narrative three appear worthy the name-the two mentioned, and the dauntless, indomitable Margaret of Anjou, who visited Norwich in 1452. The second Margaret was, however, rather the novel-heroine-the heroine of a love tale. She had spent most of her time up to her fourteenth year at Caister, with old Sir John Fastolf, who, dying, bequeathed Caister to the Pastons. With her also was brought up as her playmate and fellow-scholar, Richard Calle, son of Sir John Fastolf's steward. Hence this attachment, which wounded the pride of the Pastons.

The little narratives chosen by Mr Knight are, a visit to Caister Castle by the mother, Margaret, on "the eve of Wednesday before the feast of Easter, in the year 1469, and the loves of Margaret and Richard Calle." "Now, it unfortunately happened that the day which we have recorded, on which Dame Paston and her chaplain took their way from her comfortable dowry-house at Norwich to her son's somewhat cheerless castle of Caister, for the purpose of distributing Mannday on the following morning to the poor and afflicted, as became the lady of a great house,-this day was marked at Caister by the absence of even a Lenten entertainment." The richlyfurnished and amply-provided Caister of Sir John Fastolf had become the bare, stript, ill-defended, and worseprovided Caister of Sir John Paston. Margaret shows her command and dignity, and loses not the affection of the poor, though her bounty of the Maunday is confessedly diminished. "Mrs Margaret Paston descends from her solitary chamber with a heavy heart on the Maunday Thursday, whose eve saw her son's retainers wanting a supper, had a lucky device not suggested itself to her inventive mind. She comes into the winter hall, the somewhat snug room which, opening into the inner court, is sheltered from the keen east winds that

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'Two winking Cupids

Of silver, each on one foot standing;' and she sighs, when she sees, as she had often seen before, that they are supplanted by two coarse uprights of undecorated and rusty iron. These are small matters, but they tell a tale." Nicholas, the porter, suggests to the lady ("he has seen the chaplain of his old master assist in washing the feet of the poor in all humility) that, as the weather is cold, the water should be warmed." The chaplain is, however, for dispensing with this service as obsolete. "Obsolete, Sir James," says the Lady Margaret, "how can you call it obsolete when kings and queens are even at this hour preparing to imitate the humility of our Divine Master, with archbishops and bishops to assist them." See how she dispenses the Maunday. "The lady has not abundance, but she has a spirit of love in her bosom, sometimes smothered, but the more ready to come forth now at a time when she is not happy, and feels more humbly than is her wont; and so she says, that, if the poor go unfed from the household, they should not go unblessed. She proceeds to the court, and thus addresses them, in a tone of real kindness: Friends and neighbours, I am come amongst you unprovided with the usual means of discharging one portion of the Christian duty which has been common in this house on this day. Before Sir John Fastolf died, at the reverent age of eighty, he distributed his Maunday to an increasing number with his increasing years. When my husband came into possession of this house, we each distributed Maunday according to our several ages, so that the poor were not worse off than before. When

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLXXVI.

he died, you were reduced to the wi-
dow's mite, for my son left me here to
be his housekeeper. I am no longer
equal to that duty. Idwell not among
you. According to the custom of an-
cient time, the Maunday must be as
the years of the age of the lord of the
household. I grieve that some of you
will return to your homes disap-
pointed. But let us not part as if
there was wrong to be remembered.
Let us meet together, and offer up our
prayers together, that God will bless
and preserve all His children, and give
them according to their several neces-
sities. Sir James, we follow you to
the chapel." What an honest-hearted
woman spoke there! Nor was she
down-hearted in adversity. She even
stands to the defence of Caister, and
calls upon Sir John for hasty help.
"Your brother and his fellowship,"
she writes, "stand in great jeopardy
at Caister, and lack victuals; and
Daubeny and Berney be dead, and
divers others greatly hurt; and they
fail gunpowder and arrows, and the
place is sore broken with guns of the
other party." But see the straits the
great landholders were in in those
days from law, and adversity from
violence. The son writes that he has
but ten shillings! But the mother
spends her own, and pledges-"I
could get but ten pounds upon
pledges." Yet the good Margaret
keeps a great heart amidst these
troubles, and counsels her son most
righteously: "God visiteth you as it
pleases Him, in sundry wises; He
would that ye should know Him,
and serve Him better than ye have
done before this time, and then He
will send you more grace to do well
in all other things; and for God's
love, remember it right well, and take
it patiently, and thank God of His
visitation; and if anything have been
amiss, any otherwise than it ought to
have been before this, either in pride
or in lavish expenses, or in any other
thing that may have offended God,
amend it, and pray Him of His grace
and help, and intend well to God and
to your neighbours." Verily the mo-
ther Margaret had read frequently and
beneficially that volume which had
been treasured up and secretly read
half a century in that house.

The little love-narrative will equally
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