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I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life, iemple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said -- for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places? -- These are of my oldest recolles. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot.There when they came, whereas those bricky towers,
The whi Themmes brode aged back doth ride,
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide,
Till they decayd through pride.
Indeed, it is the most elegant spot iropolis. What a transition for a tryman visiting London for the first time -- the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by ued avenues, into its magnifit ample squares, its classic green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden: that goodly pile
Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,
fronting, with massy trast, the lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, with the cheerful -office Row (play kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her Twiham Naiades! a man would give something to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many times! to the astou of the young urs, my poraries, who, not being able to guess at its redite maery, were almost tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondeh the fountain of light! How would the dark lieal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, nice as an eva cloud -- or the first arrests of sleep!
Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived!
What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of unication, pared with the simple altar-like structure, and sile-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost every where vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate iions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its tinua spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after su, of temperance, and good-hours. It was the primitive clock, the he of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers t by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd "carved it out quaintly in the sun;" and, turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottos more toug than tombstones. It retty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are full, as all his poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not e in awkwardly I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden ses:
What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head.
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine.
The arine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach.
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness.
The mind, that o, where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transding these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all thats made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountains sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-trees mossy root,
Casting the bodys vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Thes and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
How well the skilful gardner drew,
Of flowers and herbs, this<u></u> dial new!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodia:
And, as it works, the industrious bee
putes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be red, but with herbs and flowers?
[Footnote] * from a copy of verses entitled "The Garden."
The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the South Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile! Four little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their i-wanton lips, in the square of Lins-inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children ohey are awakening images to them at least. Why must every thing smaan, and mannish? Is the wrown up? Is childhood dead? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the childs heart left, to respond to its earliest entments? The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area, less gothi appearance? or is the splutter of their hot rhetorie half so refreshing and i as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered?
They have lately gothicised the entrao the Iemple-hall, and the library front, to assimilate them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble. What is bee of the winged horse that stood over the former? a stately arms! and who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italiahe end of the Paper-buildings? -- my first hint of allegory! They must at to me for these things, which I miss so greatly.
The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the parade; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps which made its pavement awful! It is bee on and profahe old benchers had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you passed them. We walk oerms with their successors. The roguish eye of J----ll, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a strao vie a repartee wit<cite></cite>h it. But what i familiar durst have mated Thomas try ? -- whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lions, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, iible from his way as a moving n, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow-beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude of children wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestiostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it uhe mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye inal, and by adjuncts, with buttons of a obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace.
By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing but that and their benchership in on. In politics Salt was a whig and try a staunch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter cast out -- for try had a rough spinous humour -- at the political federates of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like on-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt.
S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excellent disment in the chamber practice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a case of difficult disposition of moestamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily ha over with a few instrus to his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural uanding, of which he had an unon share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man; a child might pose him in a minute -- i and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast application in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner party but he fot his sword -- they wore swords then -- or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there w<dfn></dfn>as any thing which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. He was to di a relatives of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her execution ; -- and L. who had a wary fht of his probable halluations, before he set out, schooled him with great ay not in any possible mao allude to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injun. He had not beeed in the parlour, where the pany was expeg the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the versation ensuing, he got up, looked out of windoulling down his ruffles -- an ordinary motion with him -- observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be sulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary ies and embarrassments of duct -- from foranirely. He never laughed. He had the same good fortune among the female world, -- was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said to have died for love of him -- I suppose, because he rifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly on attentions. He had a fine fad person, but wanted methought, the spirit that should have shown them off with advao the women. His eye lacked lustre. -- Not so, thought Susan P----; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unapanied, wetting the pavement of B----d Row, with tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her friend had died that day -- he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the last forty years -- a passion, which years could inguish or abate; nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings off of uing bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P----, thou hast now thy friend in heaven!
Thomas try was a cadet of the noble family of that name. He passed his youth in tracted circumstances, which gave him early those parsimonious habits whi after-life never forsook him; so that, with one windfall or another, about the time I knew him he was master of four or five huhousand pounds; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeants-inn, Fleet-street. J., the sel, is doing self-imposed penan it, for what reason I divi, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the summer; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I suspect he had his within- door reasons for the preference. Hic cursus et arma fuere. He might think his treasures more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a close hunks -- a hoarder rather than a miser -- or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit upon a character, which ot exist without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but ot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often eo part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000 l. at on his life-time to a blind charity. His house- keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentleman. He would know who came in an$ who went out of his house, but his kit ey was never suffered to freeze.
Salt was his opposite in this, as in all -- never knew what he was worth in the world; and having but a petency for his rank, which his i habits were little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had ho people about him. Lovel took care of every thing. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. He did nothing without sulting Lovel, or failed in any thing without expeg and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost too mu his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have fotten for a moment that he was a servant.
I khis Lovel. He was a man of an incible and losing hoy A good fellow withal, and "would strike." In the cause of the oppressed be never sidered inequalities, or calculated the number of his oppos. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn upon him; and pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female -- an occasion upon whio odds against him could have prevehe interference of Lovel. He would sta day bare-headed to the same person, modestly to excuse his interference -- for L. never fot rank, where somethier was not ed. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garricks, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which firms it), possessed a fiurn for humorous poetry -- o Swift and Prior ---- moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small et toys, to perfe; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility; made punch better than any man of his degree in England; had the merriest quips and ceits, and was altogether as brimful ueries and iions as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and <u></u>just such a free, hearty, ho panion as Mr. Isaac Walton would have chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness -- "a remnant most forlorn of what he was, "yet even then his eye would light up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes -- "oage nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came up a little boy from Lin to go to service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned, after some few years absence, in his smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the ge, and could hardly be thought to believe that it was "her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till I have wished that sad sed-childhood might have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the other of us all in no long time after received him gently into hers.
With try, and with Salt, in their walks upoerrace, most only Peter Pierson would join, to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm in arm in those days -- "as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," -- but general with both hands folded behind them for state, or with o least behind, the other carrying a e. P. was a benevolent, but not a prepossessing mad. He had that in his face which you could not term unhappiness; it rather implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without his sourness) that of reat philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could never make out what he was. porary with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington -- another oddity -- he walked burly and square -- in imitation, I think, of try -- howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his prototype. heless, he did pretty well, uporength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. When the at of his years treasurership came to be audited, the following singular charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench: "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardewenty shillings, for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my orders." o him was old Barton -- a jolly ion, who took upon him the of the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the benchers dine -- answering to the bination rooms at college -- much to the easement of his less epicureahren. I know nothing more of him. -- Then Read, and Twopenny -- Read, good- humoured and personable -- Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous is upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which erformed by tree steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learhis figure, or what occasio, I could never discover. It was her graceful in itself, nor seemed to ahe purpose aer than on walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cats ears extremely, when any thing had offended him. Ja -- the omnist Ja he was called -- was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any man of his time. He was the Friar Ba of the less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a pleasant passage, of the cook applying to him, with muality of <mark></mark>apology, or instrus how to write down edge bone of beef in his bill of ons. He was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. He decided the raphy to be -- as I have given it -- fortifying his authority with suatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblaween its shape, and that of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost fotten Mingay with the iron hand -- but he was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some act, and supplied it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute, before I was old enough to reasoher it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering, loudtalking person; and I reciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power -- somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelos Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the e of the reign of Gee the Sed, closes my imperfect recolles of the old benchers of the Iemple. Fantastis, whither are ye fled? Or, if the like of you exist, why exist they no more for me? Ye inexplicable, half- uood appearances, why es in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright loomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me -- to my childish eyes -- the mythology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish, -- extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling,in the heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of i or wholesome superstition -- the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital -- from every-day forms edug the unknown and the unon. In that little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, redug childhood, shall be left, imagination shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth.
P.S. I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect memory, and the erring notices of childhood! Yet I protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, and losing his lady in child-bed, within the first year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he hhly recovered. In what a new light does this place his reje (O call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan P----, unravelling into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy airing character -- Heh let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact -- verisimilitudes, not verities -- or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He is no such ho icler as R. N., and would have doer perhaps to have sulted that gentleman, before he sent these indite reminisces to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer -- who respects his old and his new masters -- would but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the lise which Magazines have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman`s -- his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having been long fio the holy ground of ho Urbans obituary. May it be long before his own name shall help to swell those ns of unenvied flattery! -- Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the Iemple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the ki of humaures. Should infirmities over-take him ---- he is yet in green and vigorous senility -- make allowances for them, remembering that "ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged Horse, our a badge and isaill flourish so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your churd chambers! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks! so may the fresh- coloured and ly nursery maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy as ye pass, reductive of juve emotion! so may the younkers of this geion eye you, pag your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veion, with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies that solemhe parade before ye!
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