while, keep up a little bustle about his name, but a short dialogue with a sexton of aftertimes, over the scattered fragments of his existence, will afford a pretty accurate measure of the degree of real insignificance into which he has subsided. This is mortifying; but it is among the sources of our highest interests. Certainly, it is only natural that we should look to some future compensation for our minds, in return for the many insults their old companions are sure to suffer when they are not by to protect them: it were an intolerable prospect otherwisc. To-day to be active, happy, and ambitious, conscious of being "made for the contemplation of heaven and all noble objects," and to-morrow to be flung as useless lumber into a hole, and in process of time to be buffeted by grave-diggers and shovelled up to make way for new-comers, without a friendly moralizer to pronounce an "Alas, poor Yorick!" over our chop-fallen crania-or perhaps (what is still more humiliating in a posthumous point of view) to be purloined by resurrection-men, and hung up in dissecting-rooms as models of osteology for the instruction of surgcons'-mates for His Majesty's navy-the thoughts of all this would gall, as well it might, our vanity to the quick, were it not

that Religion, assured of a retribution, can smile at these indignities, and discover, in every rudo cuff that may be given to our dishonoured bones, a further proof that there awaits us "a bright reversion beyond the grave."

169

BARRY THE PAINTER.

[APRIL, 1823.]

I HAVE just read a notice of Barry the painter in one of our periodical publications, and I am reminded of a few particulars respecting that singular person, with whom I chanced to have come into contact towards the close of his career. My reminiscences of him, such as they are, I shall set down in the order in which they may happen to start up out of the oblivion into which I had long consigned them.

My acquaintance with him commenced in the year 1804. I was a mere boy at the time. I resided in Berners-street, and had daily occasion to pass through an adjoining street, Castle-street, Oxford-market. In Castle-street there was a house

that soon attracted my attention. It appeared to be uninhabited. The glass of the lower windows was broken, the shutters closed, and the door and walls plastered with mud. Upon the first occasion of my particularly observing this house, a group of boys and idlers had collected outside, where they continued shouting, whispering, pointing to the upper windows, and going through the ordinary routine of looks and gestures, and muttered execrations, that precede a general assault upon an obnoxious tenement. They were in the act of com---mencing hostile operations, when they were dispersed by the parish officers. I inquired the cause of these demonstrations of popular anger, and was informed, that the house (to. the terror and scandal of the neighbourhood) was occupied by an old wizard, or necromancer, or Jew, for this point was unsettled, and secmed not very material; but that, whatever he was, he lived there in unholy solitude, that he might the better dedicate himself unobserved to some unrighteous mysteries. I took in the account with greedy ears; it was confirmed by the distant view, for I dared not approach, of some writings and strange figures upon the paper that supplied the place of glass in the parlour windows. I was as

sured that the work of magic was going on within, and for some time after never passed the house, which was always on the opposite side of the way, without a thrill of Christian horror.

While my mind was in this state of boyish superstition, it was proposed to me, one day, by two gentlemen from Ireland, to accompany them on a visit to their friend and countryman, Barry the celebrated painter. I had heard before of "the great Barry," and, naturally enough at my years, associated with the idea of intellectual greatness a tolerable proportion of opulence and external splendour. As we went along, I began already to feel certain tremors of youthful awe creeping upon me, at the prospect of entering the, doubtless, spacious mansion of so renowned an artist. The way led through Oxford-market. We proceeded down Castlestreet, and my friends made a full stop at the door of the old magician. It was Barry the painter's. A loud knock was given, and for some minutes unanswered. My fears were now all dispersed; and I had courage, as well as time, to examine with some closeness the external peculiaritics of this temple of genius. The area was bestrewn with skeletons of cats and dogs, marrow-bones, waste-paper, fragments