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And numbers ten did bear her to the grave,
The Muses nine a monument her gave."

words have the same weight as much knowledge."

"Courts should be a pattern and an exam

Nor is what she styles "A Farewell to the ple of virtue to all the rest of the kingdom, beMuses" without its excellencies:

"Farewell, my Muse, thou gentle, harmless sprite,
That us'd to haunt me in the dead of night,
And on the pillow where my head I laid
Thou sit'st close by, and with my fancies play'd;
Sometimes upon my eyes you dancing skip,
Making a vision of some fine landskip.
Thus with your sportings kept me oft awake,
Not with your noise, for ne'er a word you spake;
But with your fairy-dancing, circling wind,
Upon a hill of thoughts within my mind.
When 'twas your sport to blow out every light,
Then I did rest, and sleep out all the night.'

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ing the ruler and chief head to direct the body
of state; but most commonly, instead of cle-
mency, justice, modesty, friendship, temper-
ance, humility, and unity, there is faction, pride,
ambition,luxury, covetousness, hate, envy, slan-
der, treachery, flattery, impudence, and many
the like; yet they are ofttimes covered with a
veil of smooth professions and protestations,
ed tinsel."
which glisters like gold when it is but copper-

"Great memories are like standing ponds that are made with rain; so that memory is nothing but the showers of other men's wits."

"Poetry is so powerful, and hath such an atThe following is impressive, but careless tractive beauty, that those that can but view

in its execution :

"Great God, from Thee all infinites do flow,
And by Thy power from thence effects do grow.
Thou order'dst all degrees of matter, just
As 'tis Thy will and pleasure-move it must.
And by Thy Knowledge order'dst all the best—
For in thy knowledge doth Thy wisdom rest.
And wisdom cannot order things amiss,
For where disorder is, no wisdom is,
Besides, great God, Thy will is just; for why?
Thy will still on Thy wisdom doth rely.
O, pardon, Lord, for what I now here speak
Upon a guess-my knowledge is but weak.
But Thou hast made such creatures as mankind,
And giv st them something which we call a mind;
Always in motion, never in quiet lies,
Until the figure of his body dies.

His several thoughts, which several motions are,
Do raise up love and hope, joys, doubts, and fear.
As love doth raise up hope, so fear doth doubt,
Which makes him seek to find the great God out.
Self-love doth make him seek to find, if he
Came from or shall last to eternity.

But motion being slow makes knowledge weak,
And then his thoughts 'gainst ignorance doth

beat.

As fluid waters 'gainst hard rocks do flow,
Break their soft streams, and so they backward
go;

Just so do thoughts, and then they backward slide
Unto the places where first they did abide:
And there in gentle murmurs do complain
That all their care and labor is in vain.
But since none knows, the great Creator must:
Man, seek no more, but in His goodness trust."

The prose of the duchess is bold but involved, her thoughts and her style are peculiarly her own. We select a few of her most striking sentences; the mind continually active, could not fail at times to write something that was good:

"The reason why women are so apt to talk too much, is an overweening opinion of themselves in thinking they speak well; and striving to take off that blemish from their sex of knowing little, by speaking much, as thinking that many

her perfectly could not but be enamored, her charms do so force affection. Surely those that do not delight in Poetry or Music have no divine souls or harmonious thoughts."

"Men who can speak long and eloquently, contrasted with those who can say but little, but that to the point, are like several sized candles, the longer or shorter ere they come to a snuff."

"Vanity is so natural to our sex, that it were unnatural not to be vain."

"Platonic love is a bawd to adultery."

"True affection is not to be measured; because it is like eternity, not to be comprised."

"There is no greater usury or extortion than upon courtesy; for the loan of money is but ten, twenty, or thirty in the hundred; but the loan of courtesy is to enslave a man all his life."

"Some have more words than wit, and more wit than judgment. And others have more years than experience, and more experience than honesty."

"Our natural English tongue was significant enough without the help of other languages; but as we have merchandized for wares, so have we done for words: but indeed we have rather brought in than carried out."

"Ben Jonson, I have heard, was of opinion that a comedy was not a natural or true comedy if it should present more than a day's ac

tion."

"In truth, I never heard any man read well but my husband, and have heard him say, he never heard any man read well but Ben Jonson, and yet he hath heard many in his time." -Letters, p. 362.

"King James was so great a lover of peace, that rather than he would lose the delights of peace, he would lie under the infamy of being thought timorous; for in that it was thought he had more craft than fear."

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"Children should be taught at first the best, plainest, and purest of their language, and the most significant words; and not as their nurses teach them, a strange kind of gibbridge, broken language of their own making, which is like scraps of several meats heaped together, or hash'd, mixt or minced: so do they the purest of their language; as, for example, when nurses teach children to go, instead of saying Go, they say, Do, do; and instead of saying, Come to me, they say, Tum to me; and when they newly come out of a sleep, and cannot well open their eyes, they do not say, My child cannot well open his or her eyes, but My child tant open its nies; and when they should bid them speak, they bid them peak; and when they should ask them, if they will or would drink, they ask them if they will dinck; and so all the rest of the language they teach children is after this manner. . . . Likewise they learn them the rudest language first; as to bid them say, such a one lies, or to call them rogues and the like names, and then laugh as if it were a witty jest. And as they breed them in their language, so they breed them in their sports, pastimes, or exercises, as to play with children at bo-peep, blindman's-buff, and cock's-hod."

"A gentleman ought to be skilful in the use of his sword, in the manage of horses, to vault, to wrestle, to dance: the first defends his honor and country; the next is for command in cavalry; the third makes him ready in the day of battle to horse himself; the fourth keeps him from being overcome by a clown or peasant, for the sleights in wrestling will overcome great strength; the fifth gives his limbs a graceful motion. His exercises should be masculine for better it were to see a gentleman shoe a horse, than to play on the viol or lute, virginal, or any other musical instrument; for that sheweth the command man hath over beast. Or to carry a burthen on his back, than to sit idly at cards or dice: for idleness is like the sluggish worm, that is neither able to help nor defend itself."

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Some, in their praises of women, say, they never speak but their words are too many in number for the weight of the sense: besides, the ground of their discourse is impertinent, as inquiries who dined and who supped at such a table; what looks, words, and actions passed among the company; what addresses such a man made to such a woman, and what encouragement they received in their courtships; then who was at court, who at church; or slandering, or defaming one another; or bragging of themselves, what clothes they have or will have; what coaches or lacqueys, what love-servants they have or may have; what men are like to die for love of them: what feast they made for such a company; who took them out to dance at such a ball; who ushered them out of church, and who they saw there; and not of what they heard there; and for their pastimes, say they are seldom at home but to receive visits. Neither are they pleased

with the company of their own sex; for if there be no man amongst them, they are very dull, and as mute as one would wish; unless it be at a gossipping, where a cup of good liquor runs about."

"All women are a kind of mountebanks; for they would make the world believe they are better than they are; and they do all they can to draw company; and their allurements is their dressing, dancing, painting, and the like; and when men are catcht, they laugh to see what fools they were to be taken with such toys: for women's ends are only to make men profess and protest, lie and forswear themselves in the admiration of them: for a woman's only delight is to be flattered of men; for they care not whether they love truly, or speak falsely, so they profess earnestly."

The

"Some parents suffer their children to run about into every dirty office, where the young master must learn to drink and play at cards with the kitchen boy, and learn to kiss his mother's dirty maid for a mess of cream. daughters are danced upon the knee of every clown and serving man, and hear them talk scurrilous to their maids, which is their complement of wooing, and then dancing Sellinger's Round with them at Christmas time.”

"Some say a man is a nobler creature than a woman, because our Savior took upon him made first: but these two reasons are weak; for the body of man; aud another, that man was the Holy Spirit took upon him the shape of a dove, which creature is of less esteem than mankind; and for the pre-eminency in creation, the devil was made before man.

Mrs. Piozzi gave a saffron color to her cheeks by painting. Thousands, by following a very foolish and pernicious fashion, had done the same before her.

"Painting the face, when it is used for a good is, perhaps, admissible; but in a widow, paintintent, as to keep or increase lawful affection, ing is most disallowable-a widow once, a widow ever. I am utterly against the art of painting, out of three respects; the first is danmercury, wherein is much quicksilver, which gerous-for most paintings are mixed with is of so subtle and malignant a nature, as it will fall from the head to the lungs, and cause consumptions, and is the cause of swelling about the neck and throat. The next is, that it is so far from adorning, that it disfigures: for it will rot the teeth, dim the eyes, and take is the greatest beauty. Thirdly, and lastlyboth the life and youth of a face, which the sluttishness of it, and especially in the preparatives, as masks of sear-clothes, which are not only horrid to look upon, in that they seem

away

"He to God's image, she to his was made, So farther from the fount the stream at random stray'd." DRYDEN,

as dead bodies embowelled or embalmed, but the stink is offensive. Then the pomatum and pultis, which are very uneasy to lie in, wet and greasy, and very unsavory; for all the while they have it on it presents to the nose a chandler's shop, or a greasy dripping-pan, so as all the time they fry, as it were, in grease; neither will their perfumes mend it, or their oils; and though I cannot say they live in purgatory, because they shun all hot places, for they cannot have the comfortable heat of the fire, and shun the natural heat of the sun, as they must live always as if they were at the North Pole, for fear the heat should melt away their oil, and oily drops can be no grace to their face. Dry painting shrivels up the skin, so as it imprints age in their face, in filling it full of wrinkles; wherefore paintings are both dangerous, ill-favored, and sluttish, besides the troublesome pains. But for other adornments in women, they are to be commended, as curling, powdering, pouncing, clothing, and all the

varieties of accoutrement."

The twenty-first letter contains a sad character of her sex.

"I observe," she says, "that cards is one of the chief pastimes of our sex, and their greatest delight; for few or none of our sex loves or delights in poetry, unless a copy of verses made in their praise, wherein for the most part, is more flattery than wit." . Neither doth our sex take much pleasure in harmonious music, only in violins to tread a measure; the truth is, the chief study of our sex is romances, wherein reading, they fall in love with the feigned heroes and carpet-knights, with whom their thoughts secretly commit adultery, and in their conversation and manner, or forms or phrases of speech, they imitate the romancy-ladies."

The forty-seventh letter is a long account of the pains that ladies take, and the cost they go to in getting, making, and buying fine and costly child-bed linen, swaddlingOne of the most interesting works of the clothes, mantles, and the like, their banduchess's composition is a large folio vol-quets of sweetmeats, cakes, wafers, biscuits, ume of Sociable Letters, for so they are styled, 211 in number. The odd eleven are for individuals with names, the 200 to some madame, evidently an admirer of the duchess and her writings. There is no such thing as a date throughout the work, and names are distinguished by initials, which, provokingly enough, are of frequent occurrence. The letters, however, seem to have been written wholly abroad, and the collection was printed at London in 1664.

There is, of course, a complimentary copy of verses by the duke, and a letter of gratitude and extravagant adulation from the duchess, with a preface to all professors of learning and art, and another to the Many.

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jellies, and such strong drinks as hippocras and burnt wine, with hot spices, mulled sack, strong and high-colored ale, well spiced and stuffed with toasts of cakes. This should be read with Letter c., where there is an account of a gossip meeting.

Some of her descriptions are very graphic, such as that of the sanctified lady to whom black patches had become abominable, and fans, ribands, pendants, and necklaces, the temptations of Satan, and laced shoes and galoshoes, as so many steps to pride. (Lett. LI.)

"You were pleased, in your last letter," she writes (No. CXLVI.), "to request me to send you my opinion of Virgil and Ovid, as which I thought was the better poet. Truly, madam, "It may be said to me," she writes to her my reason, skill, or understanding in poetry lord, "as one said to a lady, Work, lady, and poets is not sufficient to give a judgment work-let writing books alone, for surely wiser of two such famous poets, for though I am a women ne'er writ one;' but your lordship here poetess, yet I am but a poetastress, or a petty bid me to work, nor leave writing, except when poetess; but, howsoever, I am a legitimate you would persuade me spare so much time poetical child of Nature, and though my poems, from my study as to take the air for my health; which are the body of the poetical soul, are the truth is, my lord, I cannot work, I mean not so beautiful and pleasing as the rest of her such work as ladies used to pass their time poetical childrens' bodies are, yet I am, neverwithal; but I am not a dunce in all employ-theless, her child, although but a brownet." ments, for I understand the keeping of sheep, and ordering of a grange, indifferently well, although I do not busy myself much with it, by reason my scribbling takes away most part of my time."

Here is a very beautiful picture of the qualities required of a ballad singer :

"As for the present "The vulgar and plainer a voice is, the betbook of letters," she writes, "I know not, as ter it is for an old ballad; for a sweet voice, yet, what aspersion they will lay upon it, but I with quavers, and trilloes, and the like, would fear they'll say, they are not written in a mode be as improper for an old ballad, as golden style, that is, in a complimenting and roman-laces on a thrown suit of cloth, diamond buc tical way, with high words and mystical ex-kles on clouted or cobbled shoes, or a feather pressions, as most of our modern letter-writers on a monk's hood; neither should old ballads use to do." be sung so much in a tune as in a tone, which

tone is betwixt speaking and singing, for the sound is more than plain speaking, and less than clear singing, and the rumming or humming of a wheel should be the music to that tone, for the humming is the noise the wheel makes in the turning round, which is not like the music of the spheres; and ballads are only proper to be sung by spinsters, and that only in cold winter nights, when a company of good housewives are drawing a thread of flax." (Lett. cou.)

Her admiration of Davenant's Gondibert is made the subject of a letter, (number CXXVII.), where she speaks with great discrimination when finding fault with the over-precision of his language and the compact closeness of his expressions, " for the language is like so curious and finely engraven a seal as one cannot readily see the figure engraven thereon without a magnifying glass."

Her love for the writings of Shakspeare breaks out in two or three places, nor has it been hitherto noticed that the duchess was among the first who dared to publish their admiration :

"I wonder," she writes, "how that person you mention in your letter could either have the conscience or confidence to dispraise Shakspeare's plays, as to say they were made up only with clowns, fools, watchmen, and the like." "Shakspeare," she says, with admirable wit, "did not want wit to express to the life all sorts of persons, of what quality, possession, degree, breeding, or birth whatsoever; nor did he want wit to express the divers and different humors, or natures, or several passions in mankind; and so well he hath expressed in his plays all sorts of persons, as one would think he had been transformed into every one of those persons he hath described; and as sometimes one would think he was really himself the clown or jester he feigns, so one would think he was also the king and privy counsellor; also as one would think he were really the coward he feigns, so one would think he were the most valiant and experienced soldier; who would not think he had been such a man as his Sir John Falstaff? and who would not think he had been Harry the Fifth? and certainly Julius Cæsar, Augustus Cæsar, and Antonius did really never act their parts better, if so well, as he hath described them, and I believe that Antonius and Brutus did not speak better to the people than he had feigned them; nay, one would think that he had been metamorphosed from a man to a woman, for who could describe Cleopatra better than he has done, and many other females of his own creating? Who would not swear that he had been a noble lover? who could woo so well? and there is not any person he hath described in his book but his readers

might think they were well acquainted with them."-Pp. 245, 6, 7.

All this is excellent, but when the duchess tells us, some hundred pages on (p. 338), that her husband is as far beyond Shakspeare for comical humor, as Shakspeare is beyond an ordinary poet in that way, we love and respect the wife, but laugh outright at the silly weakness of the woman.

Here we stop, and in the belief, be it known, that our readers are as much in love with Margaret Lucas as Oliver Yorke is, or was old William Cavendish himself. For nothing here of vanity we see, "Is this a lady's closet? 't cannot be, Nothing of curiosity or pride,

As most of ladies' closets have beside.
Scarcely a g'ass or mirror in't you find,
Nor is't a library, but only as she
Exceping books, the mirror of the mind.

Makes each place where she comes a library.'*

From the Dublin University Magazine.

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME.

The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton, Esquire, Advocate. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1846.

Or the life of Hume, his own memoir, Adam Smith's letter to Strahan, and Mr. Ritchie's narrative, have hitherto been the principal accounts.

In the course of last year was published Lord Brougham's lively sketch, with several of the letters which are preserved in one of the public libraries of Edinburgh, and which have been long accessible to any person interested in the subject. All these works, and especially the first, are of considerable interest; still, something more was wanting. If correspondence is to be at all published, and is referred to as authority, there is then the general fitness of at least as much of it being given as in any way bears on the subject, to illustrate which it is produced. Allusions, more or less distinct, have been repeatedly made to these letters, and to those of the Scottish divines with whom

* On the Duchess of Newcastle's Closet.

FLECKNOE's Epigrams.

Hume lived in habits of friendliness, for sorcery or witchcraft was no pleasant to prove that the infidelity with which thing a century ago; and in later times, Hume was infected extended its taint to proceedings against a man for blasphemy them. If such fact can be established, or heresy were no joke. It would, we fear, (and we do not believe it,) it must be by be regarded even now as an insufficient deother evidence; for from the parts of the fence to such an accusation to be able to correspondence given by Mr. Burton, no show that Lord Brougham has affirmed the inference of the kind can be derived. first crime to be impossible, or to suggest that it would not be easy to find a tribunal, consisting of more than one individual, likely to agree in what constituted the second. That a serious offence against socie ty was committed by the publication of Hume's writings, was certainly the public feeling of the period in which they appeared; and under what name society was to punish it, was a matter that seemed of comparative indifference. Though the proceedings against Hume were defeated in the General Assembly, yet that against the publishers of Kames failed only by the death of the prosecutor.

That no such account of Hume as Scotland ought to have supplied to the general literature of the country should have before appeared, is easily to be accounted for. Till of late years, the strong feelings which any discussion of his views on religious subjects was sure to excite, would have rendered the publication, in all probability, a losing concern, and at all events be regarded by a great portion of the public as an offence. The Edinburgh publishers were not unlikely to remember the spirit in which, when in the General Assembly, a prosecution against Hume had failed, the parties who were his most active assail- Of late years the total defeat and rout of ants immediately commenced proceedings speculative infidelity has rendered it possiagainst the publishers of an essay of Lord ble to reprint all such works with no other Kames's, which essay-so subtle was the danger than the unpleasant consequence of zeal of the prosecutors in detecting latent the sale being insufficient to pay the pubinfidelity was written for the purpose of lisher's expenditure. The result of inquiconfuting the principles, supposed to be in-ry has, in every instance, as far as we know, volved in Hume's doctrine, that we are un- been directly opposed to that which the able to discover any real connection be- alarm of zealous but ignorant men suggesttween cause and effect.* A prosecution ed. Hume's "Inquiry into the Doctrine

schools. There can be no doubt that Kames

of Cause and Effect" led to those investi

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* The title of Kames's book, which was prose-gations in Germany which have ended in cuted, was "Essays on the Principles of Morality the total demolition of all the Babels which and Natural Religion." Kames's theory is, that in Paris and Edinburgh had affronted high there is no real liberty to human beings, but that heaven. The "Inquiry into Miracles in our nature is implanted the feeling that we are has issued not only in the signal triumph free. It seems to be a statement, in the philoso- of the defenders of revelation on the par phical jargon of his day, of a doctrine that ought not to have been offensive to persons who would ticular subject of controversy, but in what have, perhaps, been satisfied had the thought been is of almost as much moment-in fixing atexpressed in the language of the theological tention to the fact, that what has been thought he was answering Hume, though there rashly assumed, and even expressed,* to be is no distinct allusion to any particular passage in a violation of the laws of nature, is never, his essay, nor is he mentioned by name; and that in any true sense, such, but is in reality a Hume so understood his courteous adversary there new phenomenon not within the range of is no doubt. In a letter to Ramsay, written in the our ordinary experience-most often the year in which Kames's book was published, we find the following passage:" Have you seen our expression of some more general law, the friend Harry's essays? They are well wrote, constant operation of which would be per[written,] and are an unusual instance of an ceptible, but for hindrances thus for a moobliging method of answering a book. Philoso- ment removed. There can, we think, nevphers must judge of the question, but the clergy er be danger in the full discussion of any have already decided it, and say he is as bad as me! Nay, some affirm him to be worse-as much subject of scientific inquiry. Of this how as a treacherous friend is worse than an open en- remarkable a proof is given in the fact that emy. "Mr. Burton tells us, in a tone of grave Butler's "Analogy" and Hume's "Treahumor, that "those who constituted themselves judges of the matter seem to have taken example from the stern father, who, when there is a quarrel in the nursery, punishes both sides, because quarrelling is a thing not allowed in the house." Vol. VIII.-No. I.

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* "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.”—Hume, Essays and Treatises. Edinburgh, 1793.

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