My father bless'd me fervently, Mine own would not be dry. "Come hither, hither, my staunch yeoman, Why dost thou look so pale? Or dost thou dread a French foeman? Or shiv'rest at the gale?"'Deem'st thou I tremble for my life? Sir Childe, I'm not so weak; But thinking on an absent wife Will blanch a faithful cheek. My spouse and boys dwell near thy hall, And when they on their father call, "Enough, enough, my yeoman good, Thy grief let none gainsay; But I, who am of lighter mood, "For who would trust the seeming sighs Of wife or paramour? Fresh feres will dry the bright blue eyes Nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave Till fed by stranger hands; But long ere I come back again, He'd tear me where he stands. "With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go Nor care what land thou bear'st me to, Welcome, welcome, ye dark-blue waves! And when you fail my sight, Welcome, ye deserts, and ye caves! LONDON IN AUGUST. AUGUST- -a season of Ices, Soda Water, and cold baths—when even the church-steeples look thirsty, and one is tempted to think, with Gray, that paradise must consist in lounging on a sofa, and reading novels!— August-when altars to Pomona are erected in every street, and hot curds-and-whey look refreshingly sour from innumerable tin-kettles! Month of white hats and whiter inexpressibles-of Lilliputian bonnets and Brobdinagian veils ! Who, that could help it, would encounter thy almost tropical sun on a London pavement? To be sure, the fashionable winter is hardly over my Lady Betty and my Lord John still cut capers at Almack's—the Opera still boasts quality audiences-but, then, Rossini presides, and Pasta sings! Folks of ton still saunter in Hyde Park in the mornings, that is, about five o'clock P. M. There are still plenty of pigeons to be plucked in the St. James's Hells, and the country is still voted a bore by every body that is any body. Yet London has few charms for the million. Madame Catalani has ceased to sing between the Acts of Farces at New-Old-Drury, and Manager Elliston has made his last speech for the season. True, the Luges may repair to Vauxhall, the lungs of the metropolis-gaze on green lamps and green trees -listen to the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum of sundry cat-gut scrapers in cocked hats-admire the wonders of the Ballet-chuckle with delight at the Pyrotechnicals, and eat ham at a sovereign a pound. Or there is real water (rather muddy) at Sadler's Wells, and a shower of fire (vastly refreshing) at the Lyceum. Then, at the Haymarket there is Liston, coining his face into a thousand good jokes, and making you weep with irrepressible laughter. But, alas! the thermometer is above summer-heat in the open air,-think what it must be in a playhouse. What a situation, to be packed in the pit, between a gouty butcher and a dropsical fishmonger, the gas glaring, and the gods shouting; or to be pent in a side-box, filled to fainting, with feathers, flowers, silks, muslins, and women-kind; a chandelier staring you out of countenance, and your eyes asking for the green curtain, which they are not to see! If the Manager would convert the theatre into a shower-bath, and irrigate his suffering audience between the Acts, it might be endured; but at present, a prudent man, unless he is particularly fond of his apothecary, will hardly trust himself within its precincts. Prodigiously hot this morning, Ma'am."-"Very, it makes one shockingly nervous!"--"How oppressively sultry, Sir."-"Yes, Miss, I think we shall have thunder !"-Such are our every-day salutations— and if you have fortitude enough to follow the stream of traffic from Aldgate to Charing Cross, it will be as good as a comedy to observe the various groups of smoking and panting pedestrians as they pass, exhibiting the different degrees of fatigue, from listlessness to absolute exhaustion. Nothing is to be expected in the more Eastern line of streets, but business in its multiform moods-all is bustle and money-gathering; the wrinkled brow, or smile-puckered face, of the wealthy cit, indicates the rise or fall of stocks. Yet the portly old gentleman totters under the load of fifty turtle-eating years, and, sighing for the close of the dogdays, wishes himself at Ramsgate, and "lards the lean earth as he walks along." The hurrying importance of the dapper warehouseman is highly ludicrous; he is a moving price-current, and he wipes the accumulated moisture from his forehead with the air of a Prime Minister. Yonder would-be sprig of fashion, from whose blue surtout peeps his black book of office, affects to move with the easy nonchalance of a Bond Street idler; but banker's clerk is more legible in his countenance than coxcomb, and even the pastry-cook's nymph, while he swallows her ices, detects his want of gentility. In Change Alley the bond-holders comfort themselves with soda water, and in Bartholomew Lane the fruit-women triumph over their diminishing heaps; while in Cheapside the gilded dial of Bow Church, like a warming-pan protruded from a garret-window, afflicts the eye with its painful brightness. Then comes St. Paul's, looking in tranquil magnificence over the vast extent of the modern Babylon, London. The buildings which surround, seem perishable as the beings who raised them; while that sublime edifice seems built for eternity. Here, perhaps, you meet with a minor canon, lounging to the performance of his daily task, as if it were indeed a task; or a country bumpkin, reeking with his haste to see the monuments, yet pausing for a moment to gaze at Queen Anne, whose restored nose assorts but ill with the rueful visages of her attendants. Passing down Ludgate Hill, the mercer's shops, and Everington's in particular, blaze with all the splendour of braziery and plate-glass. Shades of the silkmen of former days, if ye can revisit the haunts of your past lives, how great must be your astonishment! Fleet Market, it seems, is to be removed at present it flourishes in its pristine glory; and the effluvia of putrefying meat, and stale vegetables, is truly edifying. A walk through this delightful arcade at noon may be imagined, but can hardly be described. Fish and flesh broiling beneath an August sun-fruit rotting into garbage-"things to dream of, but not to tell"-the blue-aproned lords of the shambles and the shrill-tongued syrens of Billingsgate clamour in rivalry! Woe to the hapless pedestrian, whose nasal organs are delicate, or whose sense of hearing is acute!-Proceeding westward, the Inns of Court offer their samples of legal wisdom. The incipient barrister, dignified in his own opinion by a smattering of unconnected authorities, stalks to his coffeehouse, longing for the fall of the leaf, and his first essay in public life. The Doctor, black to the neck-cloth, all pulse and patients, pants with heat and vexation, as, about to ascend some dark stairs, in search of the hapless invalids, whose poverty makes their maladies tiresome. Hard by, moves, with mincing gait, the newly-imported French Dancing Master, who walks to the measure of his favourite waltz, and despite of the almost vertical sun-beams, pursues his course with the alacrity of an unharnessed colt. Then comes the beau, dressed to a miracle! His cravat adjusted in the newest fashion-his cambric handkerchief diffusing its musty sweetness from nose to nose-and his rouged cheeks shin ing through hair-gathering moisture.--At last, the Equestrian Statue of the second Stuart, in all its melancholy dignity, its majestic sadness, its monarchical sorrow, meets the eye; and but that use renders the most interesting object unmarked, we might pause to shed a passing tear to the memory of the unfortunate Charles.—And now red coats and blue-grey coats and green, belaced and be-buttoned by the indefatigable hands of many a fashionable snip, claim our notice at every step. Heroes, whose hottest service has been at a Review, strutting with the assurance of thorough-bred Waterloo-men, and making a merit of their regimental panoply, though its glaring colours were never besmeared by the stains of war. Yet we may meet with better things than these-the unassuming veteran, whose scarred brow, eloquent in silence, tells of many a hard-won field; and whose bright grey eye, unquenched by the chills of age, still looks in recollection over the scenes of his youthful honours. The promising Tyro in the martial art, whose yet green years have still been nurtured in the arena, where the two greatest captains of their day strove for the laurel-and the wounded subaltern, whose medal speaks powerfully of the past, recalling to our imagination that terrific combat, where the blood of the brave moistened the earth like rain, and the valiant fell in their strength, under the red arm of slaughter, as the ripened harvests fall beneath the sickle of the reaper. London is classic ground-Greece and Italy cannot, even in their Rome and Athens, furnish more spirit-stirring thoughts to the soul of genius or patriotism, than the libelled city of the cockneys. When we talk of our renowned shop-keeping town, a thousand ridiculous ideas necessarily present themselves. Gog and Magog appear in their gigantic hideousness Whittington and his feline favourite-and Johnny Gilpin on his journey to Edmonton, are reasonable provocations to laughter: but, degraded and soul-less must that man be, who does not hallow in his imagination the birth-place of a Milton, the time-honoured spot where Shakspeare wrote and Sydney bled. A truce to these prose heroics—the weather is too hot for moral reflections! An August day spent amid the dust and smoke of a great town, would have made Diogenes himself unphilosophical. How palled is the appetite-how languid are all the organs of sense-a hot joint is an abomination-the "smoky column" from the "bubbling and loud-hissing urn," makes one feverish-and nothing is tolerable in the way of a meal, but cold meats and sallads. Bed, where, in winter, the indolent or invalid luxuriate in full content, has become a punishment. The aged and the infirm turn from side to side through the twilight hours, and long to be up again; while those who are weary from the want of occupation, can no longer take refuge in sleep, or enjoy in their dreams active pursuits, on which they have no courage to enter while waking. Breakfast is announced the boiling tea is as bad as a chapter of the Terrific Register. A walk is proposed, a drive to the Bazaar, or some fashionable exhibition-but the company are too peevish to be amused, an ice or a glass of soda water is a better thing just now, than the noblest production of art. Dinner is laid-but fortitude is wanting to attack the red-hot delicacies; and the cook's choicest efforts are regarded with as much aversion as if they were the vehicles of poison. Then the winecoolers burn one's fingers, and the dessert looks as if it had been roasted; a draught of spring-water, if fresh from the pump, is excellent. But then, what a weary road of eating and drinking must be passed over, ere we can arrive at a quiet moment. "London, I love thee;" I triumph in thy grandeur and thy genius, for I am a cockney; but with all my pious regard for thy bricks and mortar, I would fain pass my August in the country! H. MAGLIABECHI. THIS extraordinary character, whose extensive learning and vast memory has been noticed, (vide Portfolio, page 153,) according to the accurate Fabronius,* was born at Florence in 1633. He was placed, when a boy, as servant to a dealer in fruit, in which situation he discovered such a propensity to letters, that a bookseller took him into his employment, where his talents and memory made him so much talked of, that the Grand Duke appointed him his librarian. He lived in the midst of his books and spiders, nor could he be persuaded to leave his old apartment for one more commodious, which the Duke had provided for him. A thread-bare cloak served him for a gown in the day, and a coverlid at night; and the only luxury in which he indulged was smoking. He died July 14, 1714. TO L. E. L. STRANGER! Whoe'er thou art, thy plaintive lyre For thou dost weep the visions that in Fancy's hour B. * Fabroni (Angelo) vitæ Italorum Doctrina Excellentium quæ Seculis, xvii, et xviii. Floruerunt. 20 vols. |