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THE HAPPY LIFE OF A PARISH PRIEST IN SWEDEN.
FROM RICHTER.

Sweden apart, the condition of a parish priest is in itself sufficiently happy in Sweden, then, much more So. There he enjoys summer and winter pure and unalloyed by any tedious interruptions: a Swedish spring, which is always a late one, is no repetition, in a lower key, of the harshness of winter, but anticipates, and is a prelibation of perfect summer,-laden with blossoms,-radiant with the lily and the rose: insomuch, that a Swedish summer-night represents implicitly one half of Italy, and a winter-night one half of the world beside.

I will begin with winter, and I will suppose it to be Christmas. priest, whom we shall imagine to be The a German, and summoned from the southern climate of Germany upon presentation to the church of a Swedish hamlet lying in a high polar latitude, rises in cheerfulness about seven o'clock in the morning; and till half past nine he burns his lamp. nine o'clock, the stars are still shinAt ing, and the unclouded moon even yet longer. star-light into the forenoon is to This prolongation of him delightful; for he is a German, and has a sense of something marvellous in a starry forenoon. Methinks, I behold the priest and his flock moving towards the church with lanterns: the lights dispersed amongst the crowd connect the congregation into the appearance of some domestic groupe or larger household, and carry the priest back to his childish years during the winter season and Christmas matins, when every hand bore its candle. Arrived at the pulpit, he declares to his audience the plain truth, word for word, as it stands in the Gospel in the presence of God, all intellectual pretensions are called upon to be silent; the very reason ceases to be reasonable; nor is any thing reasonable in the sight of God but a sincere and upright heart.

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Just as he and his flock are is suing from the church the bright Christmas sun ascends above the horizon, and shoots his beams upon their faces. The old men, who are numerous in Sweden, are all

tinged with the colours of youth by the rosy morning-lustre; and the priest, as he looks away from them to mother earth lying in the sleep of winter, and to the church-yard, where the flowers and the men are all in their graves together, might secretly exclaim with the poet:-" Upon the dead mother, in peace and utter gloom, are reposing the dead children. After a time, uprises the everlasting sun; and the mother starts up at the summons of the heavenly dawn with a resurrection of her ancient bloom :-And her children?Yes: but they must wait awhile.'

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At home he is awaited by a warm sun-light upon the book-clad wall. study, and a "long-levelled rule" of

fully; for, having before him such a The afternoon he spends delightperfect flower-stand of pleasures, he scarcely knows where he should setday, he preaches again: he preaches tle. Supposing it to be Christmasthe beauteous eastern-land, or of eteron a subject which calls up nity. images of only a couple of wax lights upon the gloom prevail through the church: By this time, twilight and altar throw wondrous and mighty angel that hangs down from the roof shadows through the aisles: the above the baptismal font, is awoke into a solemn life by the shadows and ascension: through the windows, the the rays, and seems almost in the act of stars or the moon are beginning to peer: aloft, in the pulpit, which is flamed and possessed by the sacred now hid in gloom, the priest is inburthen of glad tidings which he is announcing: he is lost and insensible to all besides; and from amidst the darkness which surrounds him, he pours down his thunders, with tears and agitation, reasoning of future worlds, and of the heaven of heapowerfully shake the heart and the vens, and whatsoever else can most affections.

holy fervours, he now, perhaps, takes Descending from his pulpit in these a walk it is about four o'clock: and he walks beneath a sky lit up by the shifting northern lights, that striking upwards from the eternal to his eye appear but an Aurora

morning of the south, or as a forest composed of saintly thickets, like the fiery bushes of Moses, that are round about the throne of God.

Thus, if it be the afternoon of Christmas day: but, if it be any other afternoon, visitors, perhaps, come and bring their well-bred, grownup daughters; like the fashionable world in London, he dines at sunset; that is to say, like the unfashionable world of London, he dines at two o'clock; and he drinks coffee by moonlight; and the parsonage-house becomes an enchanted palace of pleasure gleaming with twilight, star-light, and moon-light. Or, perhaps, he goes over to the schoolmaster, who is teaching his afternoon school: there, by the candlelight, he gathers round his knees all the scholars, as if-being the children of his spiritual children-they must therefore be his own grand-children; and with delightful words he wins their attention, and pours knowledge into their docile hearts.

All these pleasures failing, he may pace up and down in his library already, by three o'clock, gloomy with twilight, but fitfully enlivened by a glowing fire, and steadily by the bright moonlight; and he needs do no more than taste at every turn of his walk a little orange marmalade to call up images of beautiful Italy, and its gardens, and orange groves, before all his five senses, and as it were, to the very tip of his tongue. Looking at the moon, he will not fail to recollect that the very same silver disk hangs at the very same moment between the branches of the laurels in Italy. It will delight him to consider that the Eolian harp, and the lark, and indeed music of all kinds, and the stars, and children, are just the same in hot climates and in cold. And when the post-boy, that rides in with news from Italy, winds his horn through the hamlet, and with a few simple notes raises up on the frozen window of his study a vision of flowery realms; and when he plays with treasured leaves of roses and of lilies from some departed summer, or with the plumes of a bird of Paradise, the memorial of some distant friend; when further, his heart is moved by the magnificent sounds of Lady-day, Sallad-season, Cherrytime, Trinity-Sundays, the rose of June, &c. how can he fail to forget

that he is in Sweden by the time that his lamp is brought in; and then, indeed, he will be somewhat disconcerted to recognize his study in what had now shaped itself to his fancy as a room in some foreign land. However, if he would pursue this airy creation, he need but light at his lamp a wax-candle-end, to gain a glimpse through the whole evening into that world of fashion and splendour, from which he purchased the said wax-candle-end. For I should suppose, that at the court of Stockholm, as elsewhere, there must be candle-ends to be bought of the state-footmen.

But now, after the lapse of half a year, all at once there strikes upon his heart something more beautiful than Italy, where the sun sets so much earlier in summer-time than it does at our Swedish hamlet: and what is that? It is the longest day, with the rich freight that it carries in its bosom, and leading by the hand the early dawn blushing with rosy light, and melodious with the caroling of larks at one o'clock in the morn ing. Before two, that is, at sun-rise, the elegant party that we mentioned last winter arrive in gay clothing at the parsonage; for they are bound on a little excursion of pleasure in company with the priest. At two o'clock they are in motion; at which time all the flowers are glittering, and the forests are gleaming with the mighty light. The warm sun threatens them with no storm nor thunder showers; for both are rare in Sweden. The priest, in common with the rest of the company, is attired in the costume of Sweden; he wears his short jacket with a broad scarf, his short cloak above that, his round hat with floating plumes, and shoes tied with bright ribbons: like the rest of the men, he resembles a Spanish knight, or a provençal, or other man of the south; more especially when he and his gay company are seen flying through the lofty foliage luxuriant with blossom, that within so short a period of weeks has shot forth from the garden plots and the naked boughs.

That a longest day like this, bearing such a cornucopia of sunshine, of cloudless ether, of buds and bells, of blossoms and of leisure, should pass away more rapidly than the shortest,- is not difficult to sup

pose. As early as eight o'clock in the evening the party breaks up; the sun is now burning more gently over the half-closed sleepy flowers: about nine he has mitigated his rays, and is beheld bathing as it were naked in the blue depths of heaven: about ten, at which hour the company reassemble at the parsonage, the priest is deeply moved, for throughout the hamlet, though the tepid sun, now sunk to the horizon, is still shedding a sullen glow upon the cottages and the window panes, every thing reposes in profoundest silence and sleep: the birds even are all slumbering in the golden summits of the woods and at last, the solitary sun himself sets, like a moon, amidst the universal quiet of nature. To our priest, walking in his romantic dress, it seems as though rosy-coloured realms were laid open, in which fairies and spirits range; and he would scarcely feel an emotion of wonder, if, in this hour of golden vision, his brother, who ran away in childhood, should suddenly present himself as one alighting from some blooming heaven of enchantment.

The priest will not allow his company to depart: he detains them in the parsonage garden,-where, says he, every one that chooses may slum

ber away in beautiful bowers the brief, warm hours until the re-appeargenerally adopted: and the garden ance of the sun. This proposal is is occupied: many a lovely pair are making believe to sleep, but, in fact, are holding each other by the hand. through the parterres. The happy priest walks up and down comes, and a few stars. His nightCoolness breathe out their powerful odours. violets and gillyflowers open and To the north, from the eternal morning of the pole, exhales as it were a golden dawn. The priest thinks of the village of his childhood far away in Germany; he thinks of the life of and he is calm and at peace with man, his hopes, and his aspirations : himself. Then all at once starts up the morning sun in his freshness. Some there are in the garden would fain confound it with the evening sun, and close their eyes again: but the sleeper from bower to bower. larks betray all, and waken every

morning in their pomp of radiance; Then again begin pleasure and

and almost I could persuade myself also, though it differs from its predeto delineate the course of this day of a rose-bud. cessor hardly by so much as the leaf

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT THE HOUSE OF WEEPING.
FROM RICHTER.

Since the day when the town of Haslau first became the seat of a court, no man could remember that any one event in its annals (always excepting the birth of the hereditary prince) had been looked for with so anxious a curiosity as the opening of the last will and testament left by Van der Kabel. This Van der Kabel might be styled the Haslau Croesus; and his whole life might be termed, according to the pleasure of the wits, one long festival of God-sends, or a daily washing of golden sands, nightly impregnated by golden showers of Danaë. Seven distant surviving relatives of seven distant relatives deceased, of the said Van der Kabel, entertained some little hopes of a place amongst his legatees, grounded upon an assurance which he had made, "that upon his oath he would not fail to remember them in his will." These

hopes, however, were but faint and weakly; for they could not repose good faith-not only because, in all any extraordinary confidence in his cases, he conducted his affairs in perverse obstinacy of moral princia disinterested spirit, and with a ple, whereas his seven relatives ginners in the trade of morality,-but were mere novices, and young bealso because, in all these moral extravagances of his (so distressing to the feelings of the sincere rascal), he thought proper to be very satirical, and had his heart so full of odd caprices, tricks, and snares, for unsuspicious scoundrels, that (as they all said) no man, who was but raw in the art of virtue, could deal with him, or place any reliance upon his intentions. Indeed the covert laughand the falsetto tones of his sneering ter which played about his temples,

voice, somewhat weakened the advantageous impression which was made by the noble composition of his face, and by a pair of large hands, from which were daily dropping favours little and great, benefit-nights, Christmas-boxes, and new-year's gifts for this reason it was that, by the whole flock of birds who sought shelter in his boughs, and who fed and built their nests on him, as on any wild service-tree, he was, notwithstanding, reputed a secret magazine of springes; and they were scarce able to find eyes for the visi ble berries which fed them, in their scrutiny after the supposed gossamer

snares.

In the interval between two apoplectic fits he had drawn up his will, and had deposited it with the magistrate. When he was just at the point of death he transferred to the seven presumptive heirs the certificate of this deposit; and even then said, in his old tone-how far it was from his expectation, that by any such anticipation of his approaching decease, he could at all depress the spirits of men so steady and sedate, whom, for his own part, he would much rather regard in the light of laughing than of weeping heirs to which remark one only of the whole number, namely, Mr. Harprecht, inspector-of-police, replied as a cool ironist to a bitter one-" that the total amount of concern and of interest, which might severally belong to them in such a loss, was not (they were sincerely sorry it was not) in their own power to determine."

At length the time is come when the seven heirs have made their appearance at the town-hall, with their certificate-of-deposit; videlicet, the ecclesiastical councillor Glantz; Harprecht, the inspector-of-police; Neupeter, the court-agent; the court-fiscal, Knoll; Pasvogel, the bookseller; the reader of the morning lecture, Flacks; and Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace. Solemnly, and in due form, they demanded of the magistrate the schedule of effects consigned to him by the late Kabel, and the opening of his will. The principal executor of this will was Mr. Mayor himself: the sub-executors were the rest of the town-council. Thereupon, without delay, the schedule and the will were fetched from the register

office of the council, to the councilchamber: both were exhibited in rotation to the members of the council and the heirs, in order that they might see the privy seal of the town impressed upon them: the registryof-consignment, indorsed upon the schedule, was read aloud to the seven heirs by the town-clerk and by that registry it was notified to them, that the deceased had actually consigned the schedule to the magistrate, and entrusted it to the corporation-chest; and that on the day of consignment he was still of sound mind:-finally, the seven seals, which he had himself affixed to the instrument, were found unbroken. These preliminaries gone through, it was now (but not until a brief registry of all these forms had been drawn up by the town-clerk) lawful, in God's name, that the will should be opened and read aloud by Mr. Mayor, word for word as follows:

"I Van der Kabel, on this 7th of May, 179-, being in my house, at Haslau, situate in Dog-street, deliver and make known this for my last will; and without many millions of words; notwithstanding I have been both a German notary, and a Dutch schoolmaster. Howsoever I may disgrace my old professions by this parsimony of words, I believe myself to be so far at home in the art and calling of a notary, that I am competent to act for myself as a testator in due form, and as a regular devisor of property.

"It is a custom with testators to premise the moving causes of their wills. These, in my case, as in most others, are regard for my happy departure, and for the disposal of the succession to my propertywhich, by the way, is the object of a tender passion in various quarters. To say any thing about my funeral, and all that-would be absurd and stupid. This, and what shape my remains shall take, let the eternal sun settle above, not in any gloomy winter, but in some of his most verdant springs.

"As to those charitable foundations, and memorial institutions of benevolence, about which notaries are so much occupied, in my case I appoint as follows: to three thousand of my poor townsmen, of every class, I assign just the same number of flo

rins, which sum I will that, on the anniversary of my death, they shall spend jovially in feasting, upon the town common, where they are previously to pitch their camp, unless the military camp of his Serene Highness be already pitched there, in preparation for the reviews: and when the gala is ended, I would have them cut up the tents into clothes. Item, to all the school-masters in our principality I bequeath one golden Augustus. Item, to the Jews of this place I bequeath my pew in the high church. As I would wish that my will should be divided into clauses, this is to be considered the first.

66 CLAUSE II.

"Amongst the important offices of a will, it is universally agreed to be one, that from amongst the presumptive and presumptuous expectants, it should name those who are, and those who are not, to succeed to the inheritance; that it should create heirs, and should destroy them. In conformity to this notion, I give and bequeath to Mr. Glantz, the councillor for ecclesiastical affairs; as also to Mr. Knoll, the exchequer officer; likewise to Mr. Peter Neupeter, the court-agent; item to Mr. Harprecht, director of police; furthermore to Mr. Flacks, the morning lecturer; in like manner to the court-bookseller, Mr. Pasvogel; and finally, to Monsieur Flitte,- -nothing: not so much because they have no just claims upon me-standing, as they do, in the remotest possible degree of consanguinity; nor again, because they are, for the most part, themselves rich enough to leave handsome inheritances; as because I am assured, indeed I have it from their own lips, that they entertain a far stronger regard for my insignificant person than for my splendid property; my body, therefore, or as large a share of it as they can get, I bequeath to them.”

At this point, seven faces, like those of the seven sleepers, gradually elongated into preternatural extent. The ecclesiastical councillor, a young man, but already famous throughout Germany for his sermons printed or preached, was especially aggrieved by such offensive personality: Monsieur Flitte rapped out a curse that rattled even in the ears of magistracy: the chin of Flacks, the morning lecturer, gra

vitated downwards into the dimensions of a patriarchal beard: and the town-council could distinguish an assortment of audible reproaches to the memory of Mr. Kabel, such as prig, rascal, profane wretch, &c. But the Mayor motioned with his hand; and immediately the Fiscal and the bookseller recomposed their features and set their faces like so many traps, with springs, and triggers, all at full cock, that they might catch every syllable; and then, with a gravity that cost him some efforts, his worship read on as follows:

"CLAUSE III.

"Excepting always, and be it exstreet: which house, by virtue of this cepted, my present house in Dogthird clause, is to descend and to pass in full property, just as it now stands, to that one of my seven relatives above-mentioned, who shall, within the space of one half hour this clause), shed, to the memory of (to be computed from the reciting of me his departed kinsman, sooner or, if possible, a couple of tears, in than the other six competitors, one, the presence of a respectable magistrate, who is to make a protocol thereof. Should, however, all remain dry, in that case, the house must lapse to the heir generalwhom I shall proceed to name."

doubtless, he observed, the conHere Mr. Mayor closed the will: dition annexed to the bequest was an unusual one, but yet, in no rewept the first the court was bound spect contrary to law: to him that to adjudge the house: and then, placing his watch on the session table, the pointers of which indicated that it was now just half past eleven, duly witness, in his official character he calmly sat down-that he might of executor, assisted by the whole court of aldermen, who should be or tears on behalf of the testator. the first to produce the requisite tear

has moved or existed, there can That since the terraqueous globe ever have met a more lugubritemper and enraged than this of ous congress, or one more out of Seven United Provinces, as it were, all dry and all confederated for the purpose of weeping,-I suppose no impartial judge will believe. first some invaluable minutes were lost in pure confusion of mind, in

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