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disputes. But, whatever were his own sentiments, he always showed great tenderness to those who differed from him. Tenderness, indeed, in every sense of the word, was his peculiar characteristic; his friends, his domestics, his poor neighbors, all daily experienced his benevolent turn of mind. Indeed, this virtue in him was often carried to such excess that it sometimes bordered upon weakness; yet if he was convinced that any of those ranked amongst the number of his friends had treated him ungenerously, he was not easily reconciled. He used a maxim, however, on such occasions which is worthy of being observed and imitated. "I never," said he, "will be a revengeful enemy, but I cannot-it is not in my nature to-be half a friend." He was in his temper quite unsuspicious; but if suspicion was once awakened in him, it was not laid asleep again without difficulty. He was no economist; the generosity of his temper prevented him from paying a proper regard to the use of money. He exceeded, therefore, the bounds of his paternal fortune, which before he died was considerably encumbered. But when one recollects the perfect paradise he raised around him, the hospitality with which he lived, his great indulgence to his servants, his charities to the indigent, and all done with an estate not more than three hundred pounds a year, one should rather be led to wonder that he left anything behind him than to blame his want of economy. He left, however, more than sufficient to pay all his debts, and by his will appropriated his whole estate for that purpose. It was perIt was perhaps from some considerations on the narrowness of his fortune that he forbore to marry, for he was no enemy to wedlock, had

a high opinion of many among the fair sex, was fond of their society and no stranger to the tenderest impressions. One which he received in his youth was with difficulty surmounted. The lady was the subject of that sweet pastoral, in four parts, which has been so universally admired, and which, one would have thought, must have subdued the loftiest heart and softened the most obdurate.

Shenstone's person, as to height, was above the middle stature, but largely and rather inelegantly formed; his face seemed plain till you conversed with him, and then it grew very pleasing. In his dress he was negligent even to a fault, though when young, at the university, he was accounted a beau. He wore his own hair, which was quite gray very early, in a particular manner-not from any affectation of singularity, but from a maxim he had laid down, that, without too slavish a regard to fashion, every one should dress in a manner most suitable to his own person and figure. In short. his faults were only little blemishes thrown in by Nature, as it were, on purpose to prevent him from rising too much above that level of imperfection. allotted to humanity. His character as a writer will be distinguished by simplicity with elegance and genius with correctness. He had a sublimity equal to the highest attempts, yet, from the indolence of his temper, he chose rather to amuse himself in culling flowers at the foot of the mount than to take the trouble of climbing the more arduous steeps of Parnassus; but whenever he whenever he was disposed to rise, his steps, though natural, were noble and always well supported. In the tenderness of elegiac poetry he has not been excelled; in the simplicity of pastoral, one may venture

to say, he had very few equals. Of great sensibility himself, he never failed to engage the hearts of his readers, and amidst the nicest attention to the harmony of his numbers he always took care to express with propriety the sentiments of an elegant mind. In all his writings his greatest difficulty was to please himself. I remember a passage in one of his letters, where, speaking of his love-songs, he says, "Some were written on occasions a good deal imaginary, others not so; and the reason there are so many is that I wanted to write one good song and could never please myself." It was this diffidence which occasioned him to throw aside many of his pieces before he had bestowed upon them his last touches. He died A. D. 1763.

R. DODSLEY.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

TH

HIS gifted thinker and poet was the son of the Rev. John Coleridge, vicar of St. Mary's Ottery, Devonshire, and was born on 20th October, 1772. He received his education at Christ's Hospital, where, without desire or ambition, his talents and superiority placed him ever at the head of his class. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained till 1793. But, having contracted some debts, in a fit of despondency he enlisted as a soldier in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons. Here his education soon made his position in society known, and his friends, to his great satisfaction, as he made but a sorry dragoon, bought him

off.

In 1794, Coleridge became acquainted with Southey and formed a friendship which affected his future history. In conjunction with him he wrote and published "The Fall

of Robespierre," a poem, and spent the remainder of the year in lecturing on revealed religion, he having become a Unitarian. Southey and he afterward married two sisters of the name of Fricker. Coleridge also established a periodical called The Watchman, which, however, soon became defunct, from his incurable unpunctuality. He was at this time put to many shifts to obtain a living, though his family and friends were most anxious to help him. In 1798 appeared his fascinating tale of "The Ancient Mariner," "The Foster-Mother's Tale," etc., and about the same time he was by the liberality of the Messrs. Wedgewood, who settled one hundred and fifty pounds a year on him, enabled to proceed to Germany to complete his education. On his return, in 1800, he went to reside with Southey at Keswick; at this time his Unitarian views underwent a change, and he became a firm believer in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The same year Coleridge issued his translation-or, rather, transfusion-of Schiller's Wallenstein," into which he has thrown some of the choicest graces of his own fancy. He obtained also employment as an occasional contributor to the Morning Post, his unbusinesslike habits making regular contributions impossible. In 1804 he went to Malta to recruit his health, which was suffering greatly from his addiction to opium; he obtained there the post of secretary to the governor, but he held the situation only nine months. On his return he took up his abode at Grasmere, and in 1816, at the recommendation of Byron, he published Christabel, "a wild and wondrous tale." This was written many years before, but it appears to have been Cole

ridge's custom to retain his to retain his poems for years before publishing them.

Coleridge now began to reap the fruits of his genius; he obtained considerable sums from his poetical and prose works, which had a very wide circulation. Fortunately for his after-life, he was able to give up the use of opium, which was proving pernicious to his health. In 1816 he took up his residence with Mr. Gilman, a surgeon, of Highgate Grove, to whose care and skill he was indebted for the comparative ease and comfort of his later days. He died at Highgate, July 25, 1834.

ROBERT INGLIS.

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE.

THE art of painting made but slow

prog

ress in England from the time of the Renaissance until the middle of the eighteenth century. Foreign artists had been induced to come over by the wealth and smiles of royalty. Among these were Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyke and Sir Peter Lely, whose works form the staple of English galleries until the age of Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is greatly to the credit of Sir Thomas Lawrence that as the pupil of the latter and the successor of the former in the presidency of the Royal Academy he sustained the rising reputation of English artists and advanced English art.

Thomas Lawrence was the son of an innkeeper, and was born in Bristol, England, on the 4th of May, 1769-the birth-year of both Napoleon and Wellington. At six years of age the boy was quite a prodigy; he declaimed pieces and drew heads, and it was early a question whether he should be

come an actor or a painter. The failure of his father in 1779, when he was but ten years old, brought the task of supporting the family upon little Tom. This he did by making crayon portraits at Oxford, and afterward at Bath, for a guinea and a half each. In 1784 he received a prize for some crayon studies of portions of Rafael's "Transfiguration," and was soon able to aspire to better things. In 1787 he repaired to London and became the pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, at that time the most distinguished portrait-painter in the world. On the death of Sir Joshua, in 1792, Lawrence succeeded to his station in public favor. In 1794 he was elected a Royal Academician and became the fashionable portrait-painter of England. In 1815 he was knighted by the Crown. In 1818 he was called to Aix-laChapelle to paint the sovereigns assembled there, and before he returned he visited Vienna and Rome, where he was received with great distinction. In the year 1820, Sir Benjamin West died, and Lawrence was at once elected president of the Royal Academy; he held this distinguished office until his death, on the 7th of January, 1830. He never married, although he was always very courteous and gallant to women.

As to the character of Lawrence's art, it may be said that he makes flattering ideals rather than real pictures; and so strongly typical are his portraits that they all seem like one man's children, with large eyes, waving hair and a "conventional grace, in which they are enveloped by the painter as in a garment. Among the best of them is the double portrait entitled "The Brothers,' whose aristocratic bearing is well set off by the donkey's head as a foil.

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LADY TEAZ. No, no, I don't; 'twas a very

SIR PETER AND LADY TEAZLE.

IR PETER. Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, disagreeable one, or I should never have marI'll not bear it! ried you.

LADY TEAZLE. Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please; but I ought to have my own way in everything, and, what's more, I will too. What though I was educated in the country? I know very well that women of fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married.

SIR PET. Very well, ma'am, very well! So a husband is to have no influenee, no authority?

LADY TEAZ. Authority! No, to be sure. If you wanted authority over me, you should have adopted me, and not married me. am sure you were old enough.

I

SIR PET. Old enough! Ay, there it is. Well, well, Lady Teazle, though my life may be made unhappy by your temper, I'll not be ruined by your extravagance. LADY TEAZ. My extravagance! I'm sure I'm not more extravagant than a woman of fashion ought to be.

SIR PET. No, no, madam; you shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. To spend as much to furnish your dressing-room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse and give a fête champetre at Christmas!

LADY. TEAZ. And am I to blame, Sir Peter, because flowers are dear in cold weather? You should find fault with the climate, and not with me. For my part, I'm sure I wish it was spring all the year round, and that roses grew under our feet.

SIR PET. Oons, madam! If you had been born to this, I shouldn't wonder at your talk ing thus; but you forget what your situation was when I married you.

SIR PET. Yes, yes, madam; you were then in somewhat a humbler style-the daughter of a plain country squire. Recollect, Lady Teazle, when I saw you first sitting at your tambour, in a pretty figured linen gown, with a bunch of keys at your side, your hair combed smooth over a roll, and your apartment hung round with fruits in worsted of your own working.

LADY TEAZ. Oh yes; I remember it very well. And a curious life I led-my daily occupation to inspect the dairy, superintend the poultry, make extracts from the family receipt-book and comb my aunt Deborah's lapdog.

SIR PET. Yes, yes, ma'am, 'twas so in

deed.

LADY TEAZ. And then, you know, my evening amusements-to draw patterns for ruffles which I had not materials to make up, to play Pope Joan with the curate, to read a sermon to my aunt, or to be stuck down to an old spinnet to strum my father to sleep after a foxchase.

SIR PET. I am glad you have so good a memory. Yes, madam, these were the recreations I took you from; but now you must have your coach-vis-à-vis and three powdered footmen before your chair, and in the summer a pair of white cats to draw you to Kensington Gardens. No recollection, I suppose, when you were content to ride double. behind the butler on a docked coach-horse?

LADY TEAZ. No; I swear I never did that. I deny the butler and the coachhorse.

SIR PET. This, madam, was your situa

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