ble, plays finely on the harpsichord and sings enchantingly. After supper we fell to expounding rebuses, most of them Miss N.'s own composing. To crown all, an impromptu acrostic was composed with the assistance of every one in the company which, oh wonderful to relate! was not only verse, but not quite nonsense. This put me in such a poetical humor, that in coming home I could not sleep till I had composed six or eight rebuses, from which I expect to get great honor. I shall in some measure regret leaving Scotland. In spite of old English prejudices I must own that the ladies here are less trifling, and the gentlemen more polite, sensible, and of a more liberal turn of mind, than among our Countrymen. No such thing here as a country squire who has no ideas elevated beyond those of his fellow-hunters the hounds, very little card-playing among the young ladies, and no sots among the young men. Is is a pity that the women have no notion of a je ne sçais quoy called delicacy; it does not look well to see a fine lovely creature striding two yards at every step. After all I think I will go to England for a wife, but perhaps live with her in Scotland." He left Edinburgh in good humor with its ladies after all, but escaped without agony this time such as he had experienced when torn from "Asteria."

Leaving Edinburgh in 1766, he next pursued his medical studies in Manchester, where he was "apprentice," or, as we we should call it, assistant, to a Mr. White. He says of this state: "Though the condition of an apprentice must necessarily have something disagreeable in it, I am certain mine has less than most. I have no ungenteel services to perform, and am treated in a gentlemanlike manner. Mrs. White, when she has no company, generally asks me to tea with her, and with regard to diet in general, I believe I never lived so elegantly. The conveniences I most want are those for washing myself" (he seems to have been stinted in towels), so that I should be obliged to you to send me a couple of napkins. I have got an excellent warm coat, or roquelaure, which is infinitely more convenient and comfortable than a great-coat, and besides, has a very doctorial air."

66

All this time the star of a certain Miss Lissy Rigby was in the ascendant, and in this letter he sends five songs, set to popular tunes, in her honor. One begins:

How sad and gloomy seem'd the day
That from my Lissy bore me, !
No cheerful thoughts to gild the way,
And all looked dark before me.

He suggests that his mamma, who knows all the tunes, should sing them.

Lissy and Sally Rigby, in conjunction with Miss Aikin, conspired to break the hearts of half the Warrington students, and must have seriously interfered with the academic course, one would think. They all married - Miss Aikin throwing herself away on the worthy, fussy, afterwards crazy little Huguenot, Rochemont Barbauld; Lissy Rigby marrying a Mr. Bunny; and her sister Dr. Parry, of Bath. Among Mrs. Barbauld's numerous admirers, the celebrated John Howard was one, as my mother lately discovered in her search amongst old letters. Dr. Aikin was an intimate friend of Howard's, who left him his literary executor.

"I

In a letter from Manchester, dated Jan. 6, 1767, our young practitioner describes an expedition he made with his master, Mr. White, to take a man's leg off. had no very agreeable ride, both going and coming back by myself, and the roads extremely slippery, and the weather very cold. I rode a mule, and found the exactness of Homer's description of their way of travelling. I think Pope has it, "o'er hill, o'er dale, o'er plain they go;" they still keep the same jog-trot, unmoved by whip or spur. However, they have an easy pace, and are pretty sure-footed."

In spite of hard work in his profession, John Aikin still found time for his beloved reading, though he is half inclined to blame himself for indulging in it, as he says he begins to think that reading, "except in the way of my profession, is a mighty idle employment." A friend of Mr. White's the surgeon, had written a tragedy, which the "apprentice" revised, and pronounced to want "retouching," though certainly a work of genius. His appetite for literature was omnivorous, and he mentions an immense variety of books which he found leisure to devour. In medical skill he was in advance of his age, and, contrary to ordinary usage at that time, pronounced against the practice of "loading a patient with drugs," which he is no fonder of doing than taking them himself. In 1769 the king of Denmark visited Manches ter. Dr. Aikin describes his visit to his sister.

"He (the king) stayed here all yesterday. I have had the honor, with many thousands more, of seeing this pretty master of a king, who, if dressed in woman's clothes, might pass for a delicate miss. Imagine to yourself a slender, white-faced youth with a large head of flaxen hair and tolerably regular features but totally inex

this

pressive, and you will see this potent monarch, this absolute master of the lives and fortunes of a numerous people. What a jest upon mankind considered in a ludicrous light, or what a humiliating circumstance to human nature considered seriously! But though men may be compelled to obedience and submission, yet we had a striking proof that station alone cannot long make a person appear great even in the eyes of the vulgar. When once the first impulses of curiosity were satisfied, it was surprising what a languor of sentiment succeeded. O grandeur! what a deceitful bubble thou art; thou cheatest more those who possess thee than who view thee at distance. . . . But a truce to moralizing; here come the races to drive away these speculations. Let us see what pleasure will have to say for itself; welcome plays, assemblies, concerts, and all the bewitching engines of her power. But while the giddy, dissipated crowd pursues the fantastic imaginary means of happiness, let us, my sister and my friend, apply to the source of all enjoyment; while some are votaries of ambition, riches, and pleasure, let us worship contentment, that benign power without whose influence no condition is happy, and with which all are tolerable." After some more in strain, and quotations from Cunningham, he remarks: "I don't know how it is, but describing scenes of gaiety and pleasure throws me into an abstracted and contemplative mood. Such inconsistencies in my mind make me suspect something wrong in my intellectual frame which I can't reduce to order, but in whatever humor I am, believe me your most affectionate brother." The image of Lissy and various other transient images which had given him what he was wont to call his "Mayfits" of love, had to yield to his various employments; for besides his real business he was engaged upon a "Critique on Gray," was reading Cicero, and drawing. He compares his love indeed to the Scotch twopenny ale, which being exceedingly flat and meagre by nature, before they drink it they place in bottles before the fire. As soon as the heat sets it fermenting, bounce goes the cork, and the liquor fumes and froths at a strange rate, but as soon as it cools it relapses into its former flatness. I must own I find my love prove arrant bottled small beer. The fire of Lissy's eyes soon makes it ferment, but when cooled by absence it soon becomes dead and flat. Well, is this not better than flaming away like burnt brandy?"

This was after a visit to Warrington,

and a brief spell of the old enchantment under Lissy Rigby's bright eyes.

At this time he went to London, to attend the class of the celebrated William Hunter, and lived at the town house (in Bloomsbury Square) of his uncle, Mr. Jennings, of Harlington, the old family house of the Wingates, in Bedfordshire.

He writes to his sister that he is living in as "calm, domestic a way as ever he did in the country. I find I can be as retired and composed in Bloomsbury Square as in the Butter Market. I have once indeed been at the play. The Hypocrite' was acted, which was done just tolerably, very little better than Edinburgh or Manchester actors; but the entertainment made amends for all. It was a representation of the Stratford Jubilee, and consisted of a few humorous scenes of the bustle and hurry of the place, closed by the pageant that was destined to be performed at Stratford. This was a grand procession of characters in the principal plays of Shakespeare in the proper dresses, and acting in dumb show the characteristic expression of their parts. Imagine to yourself the pomp and luxury of feeling to see the finest spectacles in nature pass in review before us, recalling the ideas of what had filled us with the sublimest emotions of the heart. It was impossible better to display the vast variety and extent of the poet's genius. Then how more than mortal was the sensation to see the statue of the great master, drawn in a triumphal chariot, close to the world of his creation. We paid him a sort of idolatry, and I believe never was a poet more honored in the feelings of his countrymen. Everybody seemed to enter into it, and to recognize at first sight the personages of the procession. This is all I have to say of public exhibitions. I have not yet seen the lions, the tombs, the waxworks, or any of those sights that we country folks are expected to admire, and yet laughed at for it. I just stepped in to see the model of Paris, and a beautiful sight it is. It covers a fine square table of eighteen feet by twenty, and all the streets and buildings are in exact proportion. The river is looking-glass, and the public walks are all filled with artificial trees upon a ground of green cloth."

Our young men of the nineteenth century would find a procession of Shakespearian characters in dumb show, followed by a plaster figure of the poet, and a model of Paris eighteen feet by twenty, rather "slow," I am afraid.

"You will want to know how I like all

Mr. Jennings was very rash, unless he secretly desired the result which was destined inevitably to follow the introduction of a young man of so ardent a temper into the family where there was an agreeable unmarried daughter. Of course John. Aikin fell very rapidly in love with his sweet cousin Patty, and became engaged to her. All the "Lissys" and "Esthers," etc., etc., of the past faded into nothingness, and Patty reigned in their stead.

He announces his engagement thus to his sister:

"Yes, my dear sister, you may now congratulate me upon an occasion I can scarcely say you ever could before, the mutual affection of one who deserves all the love a fond heart can lavish upon her. You may indulge the thought of a sister already near your heart in kindred and affection, but I hope to be still nearer as your brother's dearest attachment, and as one who must make herself more beloved as she is more known. All my supposed volatility must here be forever fixed into constancy, for she has bound me by the dearest, tenderest tie, she has convinced me that I have her affections as she has mine. You will know how, dear Nancy, to distinguish beyond rant and rapture, between heat of the imagination and ardor of the heart. I have known the time when I could easily express more than I felt; now my feelings want expression. Poetry is too artificial, prose too languid, and I must be contented to let my heart express for me in the way it finds best suited to its emotion. Suppose you were to write to Patty. It could not be improper, and I am sure would be well received." In all his letters his mention of his Patty is warm and tender; he says he feels at his heart "what a treasure possess, and have no wish so ardent as to give her that happiness which she so well deserves from me."

He is overwhelmed with penitence at some offence he had given her, which she forgave before he asked it, and all the ardor of his affectionate nature concentrated itself at once and forever upon the

When his fine mind had given way in his last illness and he was the mere wreck of his former self, his love for his wife survived. My mother, who remembers him well and describes him as a most charming companion, relates a touching trait of this last illness. Sometimes in the irritation of disease he would speak sharply to those about him; his wandering wits would keep the impression of the cross words and he would rise in the night to beg his wife's pardon for them.

He

Dr. Aikin died at Stoke Newington after a long, and on the whole, happy life, in 1822. His sister, Mrs. Barbauld, the friend of his life, survived him three years, and died also at Stoke Newington, where she had gone to live to be near her brother and his family. The Barbaulds, having no children, brought up Charles Rochemont Aikin, one of her brother's sons; and the " Early Lessons" were written for this Charles, my grandfather, who followed his father's profession. married Anne, the daughter of the once celebrated Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, one of the Warrington tutors, and the friend of Charles James Fox. Charles Aikin was highly respected both in his private and professional life, and died in Bloomsbury Square. Another son, Arthur, was a distinguished scientific man, the author of the "Chemical Dictionary," and secretary of the Society of Arts. He was, as well as one of the most learned chemists of his day, one of the most modest, kindhearted, and unassuming of men. He died unmarried. The only daughter who grew up, Lucy, is well known, not only by her writings, but also for her conversational powers and general cultivation, and was on terms of intimacy with the best literary society of her day.