to reason, without knowing all the facts- -a course which men are sometimes obliged to pursue, but which they do pursue much more frequently than is needful-and thus he went on torturing his own heart with inquiries which he could not answer. Nevertheless, for Fairfax's character was a peculiar one in some respects, he drew a degree of relief from supposing an explanation of Margaret's conduct. That it should have a cause, though an insufficient one, was some comfort, and he said to himself as he entered the garden-gate,

"We must have a full explanation: frankness on both parts is the only thing which can save us from misery. I shall soon know whether I am to be wretched or happy for life.-Where is your mistress?" he demanded of the servant whom he found in the hall.

"She is in the back drawing-room, sir,” replied the man, "and she told me to tell you that she wished to see you as soon as you came in.” "Very well," cried Fairfax, and walked on.

THE CHILD AND THE STARS.

BY J. E. CARPENTER, ESQ.

"THEY tell me, dear father, each gem in the sky
That sparkles at night is a star,

But why do they dwell in those regions so high,
And shed their cold lustre so far?

I know that the sun makes the blossoms to spring,
That it gives to the flow'rets their birth,
But what are the stars? do they nothing but fling
Their cold rays of light upon earth ?"

"My child, it is said, that yon stars in the sky,
Are worlds that are fashion'd like this,

Where the souls of the good and the gentle who die,
Assemble together in bliss ;

And the rays that they shed o'er the earth is the light

Of His glory whose throne is above,

That tell us, who dwell in these regions of night,

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How great is His goodness and love."

Then, father, why still press your hand to your brow,

Why still are your cheeks pale with care?

If all that was gentle be dwelling there now,

Dear mother, I know, must be there."

"Thou chidest me well," said the father, with pain,

Thy wisdom is greater by far,

We may mourn for the lost, but we should not complain,
While we gaze on each beautiful star."

A GRAYBEARD'S GOSSIP ABOUT HIS LITERARY

ACQUAINTANCE.

No. V.

Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit.

Anecdotes of the late Charles Mathews, the Comedian-The Poet Campbell; his Vanity as an Author rebuked by a pious Shoemaker; Malicious Pleasantry in Ridicule of his Slowness in Composition; his Philanthropic Exertions for Human Improvement; his deep Dejection at their occasional Failure; the Picture of the Gipsy Girl; a Fit of Hypochondria; his Library in Victoria-square; his Burial in Westminster Abbey.

Of the late Charles Mathews, the comedian, one of the most entertaining members of Hill's Sydenham company, my memory retains few, if any, gleanings which have not already been given to the public, in the full and delightful Biography written by his widow. This lady, whom to know is to esteem, I am proud to reckon among my literary acquaintance, and gladly do I avail myself of this opportunity to waft to her all cordial good wishes from my "loopholes of retreat," as well as to express a hope that she may give to the world another volume of those "Anecdotes of Actors," and "Desultory Recollections," of which her store is so copious, and which none can narrate so pleasantly. The matchless power of mimicry possessed by Charles Mathews, far from being confined to mere vocal flexibility, extended to the mind, look, and manner of the original; so that the hearer was not less surprised by his intuition into character than by a copy of every external manifestation so faithful and minute, that you seemed to behold a temporary metempsychosis. He was, indeed,

Proteus for shape and mocking-bird for tongue.

To possess such an unfailing source of merriment is a perilous temptation to its abuse; but he was too polite and kind-hearted to give unnecessary pain to any one, and knowing his mirth-provoking weapon to be irresistible, wielded it charily and considerately. Properly jealous of his great conversational talent, in which few men exceeded him, I have known him resist every solicitation to mimetic display, especially in great houses, if he had any reason to suspect that he had been invited, like Samson, to make sport for the Philistine lords. So well was he aware that "a jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him who hears it," that an evidently uncongenial company would seal his mouth for a whole evening; while to an audience that could appreciate and laugh heartily at his waggery, he would pour forth its inexhaustible stores without solicitation or stint.

every

This was eminently the case at our Noctes Sydenhamica, where boon companion could salute his brother guest with "Hey, fellow, well met;" where all gravity was prohibited; where each guest was sure to understand a joke when he heard it; whither every one came with a full determination to laugh and drown care. Small was the chance of escape for the luckless wight who presented any peculiarity which Mathews could seize and parody; what then must have been the predicament of our host, who was all peculiarity; who was considered fair game by all his guests;

and who was thus run down, like Actæon, by his own merry dogs? And yet the subject of this cursory notice, however prompt and voluble in general, was apt to lose his readiness at any unexpected encountering. On my return from the continent, after an absence of three years, I ran over to Worthing where he was then acting, to pay him a visit, when, after the first hearty salutation and an expression of surprise, he looked confused, and seemed quite at a loss what to say next. To relieve his embarrassment I asked after our old friend of Sydenham, the simple mention of whose name operating as a sort of charm, he instantly mimicked his voice and manner, his guttural " Pooh, pooh," and prodigious exaggerations, running on without a moment's pause, until he had given me a most amusing account of all our old fellow Symposiarchs. It might have been said, without a catachresis, that he became himself again as soon as he had thrown himself into another; he recovered his presence of mind by assuming that of an absent party.

His many bodily infirmities, and more especially the sad accident that lamed him for life, had tended to irritate a temper which his extreme sensitiveness sometimes rendered touchy, though his nature was always kind and genial. Among his little prandial peculiarities was a vehement objection to mock-turtle soup, on account of some unwholesome ingredient with which, as he asserted, it was usually thickened. Once I met him at a party where several servants in succession having offered him a plate of his "pet abhorrence," he at length lost patience, uttered an angry "No, I tell you!" and petulantly tossing up his elbow at the same time, upset a portion of the rejected compound upon his sleeve. Next day I again encountered him at dinner, when he related what had occurred, exclaiming, I am delighted beyond measure that my coat is spoiled; I have locked up; I wouldn't have it cleaned for twenty pounds; call to-morrow, and I'll show you the sleeve; it stands of itself, stiff as the arm of a statue. You wouldn't believe me when I told you, on good authority, that the lawyers sold all their old parchments to the pastrycooks, to make some villanous stuff called glaize or gelatine, or in plain English glue, out of which they manufacture jelly, or sell it to our poisoning cooks who put it into their mock-turtle, 'to make the gruel thick and slab.'

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it

"I have heard of a man eating his own words," said James Smith, "but if your statement be true, a man may unconsciously have eaten his own acts and deeds."

"He may, he may !" cried Mathews. "Egad, my friend, I thank you for the hint, it explains all about my confounded indigestion. Doubtless I have some other man's will in my stomach, which renders it so insubordinate to my own will; I myself love roast pork and plumpudding, but this alien will, transferred from some lawyer's office to my intestines, will not allow me to digest them. You have heard of the fellow with a bad asthma who exclaimed, 'If once I can get this troublesome breath out of my body, I'll take good care it shall never get in again;' and I may well say the same of this parchment usurper who has taken possession of my stomach. How he got there is the wonder, for years have elapsed since I swallowed glue-I mean jelly or mock

turtle."

Grievously was he annoyed by the lateness of the dinners, whereby people condemned themselves to two or three previous dark and idle hours of intolerable ennui. These dark hours, indeed, constituted his bète noire,

and formed the subject of his incessant complaint; nor did he fail to enter an additional protest when the long-deferred meal was not punctually served.

“Now a days,” I once heard him say, "I never know at what hour I may expect to get any thing to eat; but last week I was informed to a minute when I could not get a mouthful. While posting to Liverpool, where I had an appointment to attend a rehearsal, the sharp air made me uncommonly hungry, and as I perceived a decent road-side inn, with the landlord standing at the door, I told the postilion to draw up, and called out from the window of the chaise,

"Landlord, have you got any thing hot in the house?' ""No, sir.'

"Any thing cold in the house?'

""No, sir.'

"The deuce! what then have you got in the house?' "An execution, sir.'

"Poor fellow, sorry for you. Drive on, postilion.""

And this reminds me of another anecdote which-but if I run on in this manner I shall never have done, and I might unconsciously be repeating stories inserted in the delightful biography to which the reader has already been referred. An author's vanity and a graybeard's licence may, perhaps, plead my excuse when I state, in conclusion, that on the death of this unrivalled comedian and excellent man, I was honoured by an application from his family to write a poetical inscription for his tombstone in St. Andrew's church, Plymouth; which melancholy duty I performed, and gave vent to my feelings of sorrow and respect in a subsequent and longer tribute to his memory.

The man of the highest literary eminence among the visitors to Hill's cottage, at Sydenham, was indisputably the poet Campbell, and to him, therefore, I ought, perhaps, to have given precedence in the series of sketches which I am about to attempt. In this instance, however, mine will be hardly a sketch, hardly an outline, since his friend, Mr. Cyrus Redding, is contributing to the New Monthly Magazine a succession of papers which will constitute a portraiture much more finished and accurate than any that I could delineate. Another of his friends, Dr. William Beattie, who attended him during his last illness at Boulogne, and who has procured for the purpose a valuable mass of documents and letters, has announced his intention of publishing a regular biography; so that there is nothing left for the present writer but to pick up such anecdotical strays and waifs as may, perchance, have escaped the knowledge, or have been deemed hardly worth the gathering, of other and more regular collectors. Though few men were more competent to discuss elevated and learned subjects, and to convey information as well as to confer pleasure by his manner of treating them, the poet, who was naturally sociable and hilarious, loved to unbend Apollo's bow, and to indulge in the gibes, and gambols, and flashes of merriment "that were wont to set the table in a roar." In these moods he would freely communicate any little adventure in which he had been concerned, even though it turned the laugh of the auditory against himself, as was invariably the case when he related the following unexpected disappointment of his auctorial vanity.

Walking up Holborn-hill, he perceived that he had burst his boot, and as it happened that the streets were rather wet, he turned into the first

shop where he could provide himself with a new pair, which was soon accomplished, when he wrote down his name and residence in an addressbook kept for that purpose, directing the old boots to be sent home to him. No sooner had the shopkeeper read the words, "Thomas Campbell, Essex Chambers, Duke-street, St. James's," than his countenance underwent a change, and bowing with an air of profound reverence, he said, or rather whispered, as if his natural voice would not sufficiently express his homage,

"I beg your pardon, sir; I hope I am not taking too great a liberty; I would not for the world be guilty of the smallest disrespect, but may I venture to inquire whether I have the honour of seeing in my shop the celebrated Mr. Thomas Campbell ?"

"My dear friend," said the bard, in relating this anecdote to me, "I have heard so little lately of my literary reputation, for people have almost forgotten the 'Pleasures of Hope,' that having, as I fondly imagined, caught a new and an ardent admirer, I resolved to play with the hook a little; so I replied, looking as modest and unconscious as I could, "I don't exactly know whom you mean by the celebrated Mr. Thomas Campbell.'

"Oh, sir, cried the fellow, I meant Mr. Thomas Campbell, the African missionary-I never heard of any other!'

"An ignorant Muggletonian rascal!" ejaculated the bard, in narrating this misadventure, "I'll never buy another pair of boots of him as long as I live."

The poet's residence among the grave Algerines did not destroy his taste for jocular quirks and quiddits, for he addressed from that quarter a poetical epistle to the writer of these notices, full of puns and verbal conceits, to one of which I remember his alluding after his return to England. A reference having been made to him upon some question of chronology, he exclaimed,

"That is a point upon which you should never apply to a Scotch Cam'el (thus did he always pronounce his own name), the whole clan have short memories, and I shall never forget my amazement when I first saw an African camel carrying a load of dates without the least apparent inconvenience."

I have heard him state, that when a child, knowing nothing of his animal namesake, he felt offended at the association, on reading in the Old Testament, that Jacob had "much cattle, asses and camels," but he probably did not expect this anecdote to be taken au pied de la lettre.

Though he did not affect the character of a professed wag, he would sometimes indulge a vein of quiet, caustic drollery that might well have entitled him to his diploma as a successful jester, one instance of which I cannot refrain from recording.

It may be in the recollection of my elderly readers that, early in the career of Napoleon he gave orders for seizing a German bookseller named Palm, who had published a libel against his person and government, for which offence he was brought to a court-martial and shot. Some time subsequent to this occurrence, the eminent firm of Longman & Co., after one of their annual book sales, gave a dinner, to which were invited the principal publishers of London, as well as a few of the most eminent authors, including the subject of this notice. After dinner, the conversation turned upon the daily aggressions and enormities of Buonaparte,