Imagine the feelings with which an ancient believer must have gone by the oracular oaks of Dodona; or the calm groves of the Eumenides; or the fountain where Proserpine vanished under ground with Pluto; or the Great Temple of the mysteries at Eleusis; or the laurelled mountain Parnassus, on the side of which was the temple of Delphi, where Apollo was supposed to be present in person. Imagine Plutarch, a devout and yet a liberal believer, when he went to study theology and phi. losophy at Delphi: with what feelings must he not have passed along the woody paths of the hill, approaching nearer every instant to the divinity, and not sure that a glance of light through the trees was not the lustre of the god himself going by! This is mere poetry to us, and very fine it is; but to him it was poetry, and religion, and beauty, and gravity, and hushing awe, and a path as from one world to another.

With similar feelings he would cross the ocean, an element that naturally detaches the mind from earth, and which the ancients regarded as especially doing so. He had been in the Carpathian sea, the favorite haunt of Proteus, who was supposed to be gifted above every other deity with a knowledge of the causes of things. Towards evening, when the winds were rising, and the sailors had made their vows to Neptune, he would think of the old "shepherd of the seas of yore," and believe it possible that he might become visible to his eyesight, driving through the darkling waters, and turning the sacred wildness of his face towards the blessed ship.

In all this, there is a deeper sense of another world, than in the habit of contenting oneself with a few vague terms and embodying but Mammon. There is a deeper sense of another world, precisely because there is a deeper sense of the present; of its varieties, its benignities, its mystery. It was a strong sense of this, which made a living poet, who is accounted very orthodox in his religious opinions, give vent, in that fine sonnet, to his impatience at seeing the beautiful planet we live upon, with all its starry wonders about it, so little thought of, compared with what is ridiculously called the world. He seems to have dreaded the symptom, as an evidence of materialism, and of the planets being dry self-existing things, peopled with mere

successive mortalities, and unconnected with any superintendence or consciousness in the universe about them. It is abhorrent from all we think and feel, that they should be so: and yet Love might make heavens of them, if they were.

"The world is too much with us.
Late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours:

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

CHAPTER XXIV.

Getting up on Cold Mornings.

AN Italian author-Giulio Cordara, a Jesuit-has written a poem upon insects, which he begins by insisting, that those troublesome and abominable little animals were created for our annoyance, and that they were certainly not inhabitants of Paradise. We of the north may dispute this piece of theology; but on the other hand, it is as clear as the snow on the housetops, that Adam was not under the necessity of shaving; and that when Eve walked out of her delicious bower, she did not step upon ice three inches thick.

Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a cold morning. You have only, they tell you, to take the resolution; and the thing is done. This may be very true; just as a boy at school has only to take a flogging, and the thing is over. But we have not at all made up our minds upon it; and we find it a very pleasant exercise to discuss the matter, candidly, before we get up. This at least is not idling, though it may be lying. It affords an excellent answer to those, who ask how lying in bed can be indulged in by a reasoning being-a rational creature. How! Why with the argument calmly at work in one's head, and the clothes over one's shoulder. Oh! it is a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour.

If these people would be more charitable, they would get on with their argument better. But they are apt to reason so ill, and to assert so dogmatically, that one could wish to have them stand round one's bed of a bitter morning, and lie before their faces. They ought to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and out. If they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can.

Candid inquiries into one's decumbency, besides the greater or less privileges to be allowed a man in proportion to his ability

of keeping early hours, the work given his faculties, &c., will at least concede their due merits to such representations as the following. In the first place, says the injured but calm appealer, I have been warm all night, and find my system in a state perfectly suitable to a warm-blooded animal. To get out of this state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and uncritical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to such a creature, that the poets, refining upon the tortures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold -from fire to ice. They are "haled" out of their "beds," says Milton, by "harpy-footed furies,"-fellows who come to call them. On my first movement towards the anticipation of getting up, I find that such parts of the sheets and bolster as are exposed to the air of the room, are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that meets them is my own breath rolling forth, as if in the open air, like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this symptom. Then I turn my eyes sideways, and see the window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the servant comes in. "It is very cold this morning, is it not?"-" Very cold, sir."— "Very cold indeed, isn't it?"-"Very cold indeed, sir.""More than usually so, isn't it, even for this weather?" Here the servant's wit and good nature are put to a considerable test, and the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) “Why, sir, . . . . . I think it is." (Good creature! There is not a better, or more truth-telling servant going.) "I must rise, however— get me some warm water."-Here comes a fine interval between the departure of the servant and the arrival of the hot water; during which, of course, it is of "no use?" to get up. The hot water comes. "Is it quite hot?"- "Yes, sir."—" Perhaps too hot for shaving; I must wait a little ?"-" No, sir, it will just do." (There is an over-nice propriety sometimes, an officious zeal of virtue, a little troublesome.) "Oh-the shirt-you must air my clean shirt ;-linen gets very damp this weather."-" Yes, sir." Here another delicious five minutes. A knock at the door. “Oh, the shirt-very well. My stockings-I think the stockings had better be aired too."-" Very well, sir.”—Here another interval. At length everything is ready, except myself. I now, continues ou incumbent (a happy word, by the

bye, for a country vicar)-I now cannot help thinking a good deal--who can ?-upon the unnecessary and villainous custom of shaving it is a thing so unmanly (here I nestle closer)-so effeminate (here I recoil from an unlucky step into the colder part of the bed).-No wonder that the Queen of France took part with the rebels against that degenerate King, her husband, who first affronted her smooth visage with a face like her own. The Emperor Julian never showed the luxuriancy of his genius to better advantage than in reviving the flowing beard. Look at Cardinal Bembo's picture-at Michael Angelo's-at Titian's -at Shakspeare's-at Fletcher's-at Spenser's-at Chaucer's

at Alfred's-at Plato's-I could name a great man for every tick of my watch.-Look at the Turks, a grave and otiose people. Think of Haroun Al Raschid and Bed-ridden Hassan.Think of Wortley Montague, the worthy son of his mother, above the prejudice of his time.-Look at the Persian gentlemen, whom one is ashamed of meeting about the suburbs, their dress and appearance are so much finer than our own.-Lastly, think of the razor itself-how totally opposed to every sensation of bed-how cold, how edgy, how hard! how utterly different from anything like the warm and circling amplitude, which

Sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.

Add to this, benumbed fingers, which may help you to cut yourself, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a ewer full of ice; and he that says there is nothing to oppose in all this, only shows that he has no merit in opposing it.

Thomson, the poet, who exclaims in his Seasons

Falsely luxurious! Will not man awake?

used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no motive in getting up. He could imagine the good of rising; but then he could also imagine the good of lying still; and his exclamation, it must be allowed, was made upon summer-time, not winter. We must proportion the argument to the individual character. A money-getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or four