Pursuing these ideas, I sat down close by my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellowcreatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me.

I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer I saw him pale and feverish: in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood-he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time-nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children

But here my heart began to bleed-and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the farthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there he had one of those little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down-shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle-He gave a deep sigh-I saw the iron enter into his soul-I burst into tearsI could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

IV.-BURKE'S EULOGIUM ON HOWARD.

I CANNOT name this gentleman without remarking that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe,-not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur; or to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; not to collect medals, or collate manuscripts but to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge into the infections of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original; and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every country: I hope he will anticipate his final reward, by seeing all its effects fully realized in his own. He will receive, not by retail, but in gross, the reward of those who visit the prisoner; and he has so forestalled and monopolized this branch of charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by such acts of benevolence hereafter.

V.-HENRY THE FOURTH'S SOLILOQUY ON SLEEP.

How many thousands of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O gentle Sleep!
Nature's soft nurse! how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch,
A watch-case or a common larum bell?

Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy mast,
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge;

And, in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamours in the slippery shrouds,
That, with the hurly, Death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude?
And, in the calmest and the stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy lowly clown!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

VI.-ON LIFE AND DEATH.

Duke.-Reason thus with life,

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
(Servile to all the skiey influences,)
That do this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st tow'rd him still. Thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations, that thou bear'st,

Are nursed by baseness: thou'rt by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more.
Thou'rt not thyself;

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains,
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich thou'rt poor;

For like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey;
And death unloads thee. Friend thou hast none;
For thy own bowels, which do call thee sire;
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,

But as it were an after dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou'rt old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.

Isabella. Oh, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

Claud.-Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot:

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world: or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That, age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,
Can lay on nature, is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

VII.-MARIE ANTOINETTE.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere, she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have. to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap