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I am arrived at that point of life, at which a man may at it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he have either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity -- and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in Brownes Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or seventy years in the world. "In such a pass of time," he says, "a man may have a close apprehension what it is to be fotten, wheh lived to find none who could remember his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and ma sensibly see with what a fa no long time OBLIVION will look upon himself."I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She ofteo say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved; and, whehought I was quitting it, she grieved over me with mothers tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my reason ot altogether approve. She was from m till night p ood books, aional exercises. Her favourite volumes were Thomas Kempis, in Staranslation; and a Roman Catholic prayer Book, with the matins and plines regularly set down, -- terms which I was at that time too young to uand. She persisted in reading them, although admonished daily ing their Papistical tendency; ao church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should do. These were the only books she studied; though, I think, at one period of her life, she told me, she had read with great satisfa the Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman. Finding the door of the chapel in Essex-street open one day -- it was in the infancy of that heresy -- she went in, liked the sermon, and the manner of worship, and freque at intervals some time after. She came not for doal points, and never missed them. With some little asperities in her stitution, which I have above hi, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind -- extraordinary at a repartee; one of the few occasions of her breaking silence -- else she did not much value wit. The only secular employment I remember to have seen her engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping them into a a basin of fair water. The odour of those tender vegetables to this day es back upon my sense, redolent of soothing recolles. Certainly it is the most delicate of ary operations.
Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none -- to remember. By the uncles side I may be said to have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any -- to know them. A sister, I think, that should have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a fort, or what a care, may I not have missed in her! -- But I have cousins, sprinkled about ifordshire -- besides two, with whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par excellehese are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than myself by twelve, and ten, years; aher of them seems disposed, in matters of advid guidao waive any of the prerogatives which primogeniture fers. May they tiill in the same mind; and when they shall be seventy-five, ay-three, years old (I ot spare them sooner), persist iing me in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling, or younger brother!
James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities, whiot every criti pee; or, if we feel, we ot explaihe pen of Yorick, and of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire -- those fine Shandian lights and shades, which make up his story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grad talent. J. F. then -- to the eye of a on observer at least -- seemeth made up of tradictory principles. <bdo>９9ｌiｂ?</bdo>-- The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence -- the phlegm of my cousins doe is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high sanguine. With always some fire-new proje his brain, J. E. is the systematic oppo of innovation, and crier down of every thing that has not stood the test of age and experiment. With a hundred fiions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romanti others; and, determined by his own sense ihing, ends you to the guidance of on sense on all occasions. -- With a touch of the etri all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not it yourself by doing any thing absurd or singular. On my oting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so -- for the world would think me mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice colle), uhe pretext of buying only to sell again -- that his enthusiasm may give no encement to yours. Yet, if it were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral Dominio hang still by his wall? -- is the ball of his sight much more dear to him? -- or icture-dealer talk like him?
Whereas mankind in general are observed to their speculative clusions to the bent of their individual humours, his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition to his stitution. He is ceous as Charles of Sweden, upon instinct; chary of his person, upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. -- He has been preag up to me, all my life, the doe of bowing to the great -- the y of forms, and mao a maing on in the world. He himself never aims at either, that I discover, -- and has a spirit, that would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of patience -- extolling it as the truest wisdom --and to see him during the last seven mihat his dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a more restless piece of workmanship than when she moulded this impetuous cousin --and Art urned out a more elaborate orator than he display himself to be, upon his favourite topic of the advantages of quiet, and tentedness iate, whatever it may be, that laced in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for the western road, in a very obstrug manner, at the foot of John Murrays street -- where you get i is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath pleted her just freight -- a trying three quarters of an hour to some people. He wonders at your fidgetiness,--- "where could we be better than we are, thus sitting, thus sulting?" --"prefers, for his part, a state of rest to lootion," -- with an eye all the while upon the an -- till at length, waxing out of all patie your want of it, he breaks out into a pathetic remonstra the fellow for detaining us so long over the time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily, that "the gentleman in the coach is determio get out, if he does not drive on that instant."
Very quick at iing an argument, or deteg a sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any uing. Indeed he makes wild work with logid seems to jump at most admirable clusions by some process, not at all akin to it. sonantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upoain occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man as reason; and woh how man came first to have a ceit of it -- enf his ion with all the might of reasoning he is master of. He has some speculative notions against laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to him -- when peradvehe moment his lungs shall crow like ticleer. He says some of the best things in the world -- and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their grounds -- What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will all be ged into frivolous Members of Parliament!
His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous -- and in age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no promise with that iable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his swing. -- It does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine May m, to meet him marg in a quite opposite dire, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye -- a Claude -- or a Hobbima -- for much of his enviable leisure is ed at Christies, and Phillipss -- or where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he must do -- assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy o<bdi></bdi>n his hands -- wishes he had fewer holidays -- and goes off -- Westward Ho! -- ting a tuo Pall Mall -- perfectly vihat he has vinced me -- while I proceed in my opposite dire tuneless.
It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found the best -- plag it at this distance, and at that, but always suiting the focus of yht to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective -- though you assure him that to you the landscape shows much mreeable without that artifice. Wo be to the luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasoimation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present! -- The last is always his best hit -- his "thia of the minute." -- Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I known to e in -- a Raphael ! -- keep its asdancy for a few brief moons -- then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, theo the dark parlour, adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive l ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall -- sigo the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain aratti -- which things when I beheld musing upon the ces and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upoered dition of great personages, or that woful Queen of Richard the Sed -
-- set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May.
Sent back like Hollowmass or shortest day.
With great love for you, J. E. bath but a limited sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own, an<dfn></dfn>d makes slender guesses at asses in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old established play-goer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively edian -- as a piece of news! He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me, knowio be a great walker, in my own immediate viity -- who have hauhe identical spot any time these twenty years ! -- He has not much respect for that class of feelings which goes by the name of seal. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily sufferings exclusively -- aeth all others as imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of womankind. A stitutional aess to this class of sufferings may in part at for this. The animal tribe in particular he taketh under his especial prote. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his t for ever. He is the apostle to the brute kind -- the never-failing friend of those who have o care for them. The plation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that "all for pity he could die." It will take the savour from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that "true yoke-fellow with Time," to have effected as much for the animal, as he bath done for the Negro Creation. but my untrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes which demand cooperation. He ot wait. His amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent societies, and binations for the alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal stantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving,while they think of debating. He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief of -----, because the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension, and creeping processes, of his associates. I shall always sider this distin as a patent of nobility in the Elia fami<big>..</big>ly!
Do I mention these seeming insisteo smile at, or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good manners, and the uanding that should be between kinsfolk, forbid -- With all the strangenesses of this stra of the Elias -- I would not have him i or tittle other than he is; her would I barter or exge my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and every way sistent kinsmahing.
In my , reader, I may perhaps give you some at of my cousin Bridget -- if you are not already surfeited with cousins -- and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two since, in searore cousins -
Through the green plains of pleasafordshire
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