rotten thorn, or a pool of ditch-water, to administer to their mystical necessities, they can never want subjects of profound and ecstatic contemplation.

This is what comes from imitating the German habit of holding "conversations with the air." When we commenced, we. proposed to have said a good deal more upon these matters, particularly upon Schlegel's discoveries in Shakspeare, and his critical theory of the "seminal idea" of every work of art; but (the periodical writer's old excuse) the want of present limits obliges us to defer our remarks to some future occasion.

ENGLISH GENEALOGY.-SUNDAY.

"I am no herald to enquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues." SIDNEY. "Sunday must needs be an excellent institution, since the very breaking of it is the support of half the villages round town." BONNEL THORNTON.

If it were possible to trace back the current of an Englishman's blood to its early fountains, what a strange compound would the mass present! What a confusion and intermingling of subsidiary streams from the Britons, Romans, Danes, Saxons, and Normans; amalgamating with minor contributions from undiscoverable sources, mocking the chemist's power to analyse, and almost bewildering imagination to conceive! Being myself "no tenth transmitter of a foolish face," I have sometimes maliciously wished that a bona fide, genuine, scrupulously-accurate family tree, shooting its branches up into the darkness of antiquity, could be displayed before some of our boasters of high descent and genealogical honours. Heavens! how would it vary from their own emblazoned parchment and vellum records! What confusion of successionwhat scandal thrown upon Lady Barbaras and Lady Bridgets, all immaculate in their time-what heraldic bars in noble scutcheons, ancient and modern, from the now first-detected intrigues of chaplains, captains, pages, and serving-men, with their frail mistresses, whose long stomachers, stuck up in the picturegallery of the old Gothic hall, look like so many insurance-plates against the fire of Cupid's unlawful torch! Strange that there should be a limit to this pride of ancestry! If it be glorious to trace our family up to Edward the First, it should be still more so to ascend to Edward the Confessor; yet pride seldom mounts higher than the first illustrious name, the first titled or celebrated progenitor, whom it chooses to call the founder of the family. The haughtiest vaunter of high pedigree and the honours of unbroken descent, from the time of William the Conqueror, would probably weep with shame at being enabled to follow his name three hundred years farther back, through a succession of ploughmen, mechanics, or malefactors. As it cannot be denied that all families

are, in point of fact, equally ancient, the distinction consists in possessing records to prove a certain succession; and even this, it appears, ceases to be a boast beyond a certain point. Fantastical vanity which, while it cannot deny to the beggar at the gate the privilege of being equally descended from Adam and Eve, rests its own claim to superiority upon being enabled to prove a fiftieth part of the same antiquity, struts, like the jay in the fable, in others' finery, and piques itself upon the actions of ancestors, instead of its own. Give me the man, who is an honour to his titles; not him whose titles are his honour!

But, if an Englishman be such an heterogeneous compound as to his personal composition, he has the consolation of knowing, that his language is, at least, equally confused and intermingled with Teutonic, Celtic, and classical derivations. Let us consider, for instance, the hebdomadary (as Dr. Johnson would call it,) or the days of the week, named after the Sun, the Moon, Tuisco, Woden or Odin, Thor, Freya, and Saturn; four Scandinavian or northern deities, three Pagan gods worshipped in the south, and not one Christian sponsor! Let the reader lift up the curtain of time, and taking a hasty glimpse of the last ten or twenty centuries, suffer his imagination to wander amid the scenes and associations suggested by the enumeration we have just made. Perched on the crags of rocks and mountains, and frowning at the rolling clouds and snow-storms that lour beneath, he will mark the gigantic heroes of the north; the warriors of Ossian will stalk gloomily before him; he will roam through the five hundred and forty halls of Thor's palace, till he find him seated on his throne with his terrific wife Freya by his side, and in his hand the gigantic hammer of which he has read in the Runic poetry; and finally, he will ascend into the Scandinavian elysium, or palace of Valhalla, where he will behold the beatified warriors drinking mead out of the skulls of their enemies, administered by the fair hands of the Valkyria, those virgin Houris of the north, blessed with perpetual youth and never-fading beauty. Turning from the appalling sublimity of these cold, desolate, and warlike regions, let his fancy revel in the rich and sunny luxuriance of Grecian landscape, awakening from their long sleep all the beautiful realities and classical fictions connected with the glorious god of the Sun, the Apollo of the poets, the patron deity of Delphi and of Delos. How beautiful is the morning! Slowly rising above the mountains of Argos, the sun shoots a golden bloom over the undimpled waters of the Egean and the sea of Myrtos, gilding every height of the Cycladean Islands, as if the very hills had caught fire to do honour to the quinquennial festival of Apollo, now celebrating at Delos. See! in every direction the green ocean is studded with the white sails of barks (like daisies in the grass) hastening to the ceremony from Attica, Boeotia, and Thessaly; from Lesbos and Crete;

from Ionia and the coasts of Asiatic Greece. As they approach, their crews are seen doing reverence to the sun, and the faint dulcet sound of flutes and hautboys melts along the wave. But what stately vessel is that hurrying from the east, whose numerous rowers make the waters sparkle with their gilded oars? It is the Paralos, or sacred bark of Athens. Hark! what a high and swelling symphony pours from the numerous band on board;she approaches the shore of Delos, whose inhabitants flock to the beach, and as the band, and dancers, and choristers, debark, they are compelled, by immemorial usage, to rehearse their lessons, and chaunt their new hymn to Apollo. Other boats have now landed their crews in various parts of the island, and as they advance towards the temple with music, dancing, and singing, behold! the priests of Apollo, and a long procession of choristers, descending from Mount Cynthus, wind along the banks of the Inopus, chaunting the ancient hymns composed by Homer and Hesiod when they visited the island. As, with their right hands pointed to the sun, the whole population celebrate the praises of Apollo, every face is lighted up with enthusiasm and joy; and while the air is loaded with the melody of pipes, timbrels, and lutes, and the nobler harmony of human voices, the god of day, slowly ascending in cloudless magnificence, seems, with his lidless eye of fire, to smile with complacency upon the homage of his worshippers.

Let me stop while I can, Mr. Editor, for I have got astride upon my favourite hobby-horse, and if I am suffered to proceed, I shall gallop to every province of Greece, and visit every scene of jubilee, from the great Olympic Games to the Feast of Adonis, which the Syracusan gossips of Theocritus were so anxious to witness. Suffice it that a slight sketch has been attempted of a Sun-day among the people of Delos. Let us see how it has been celebrated by other nations. In Hebrew, the word Sabbath signifies rest; and the Jews fixed it on the Saturday, the last day of the week, to commemorate the completion of the work of creation, and the reposing of the Lord. It was not distinguished by a mere cessation from labour, but was enlivened by every species of rejoicing, they who took the most pleasure deeming themselves the most devout; and, amid a variety of puerile and superstitious ceremonies, they were particularly enjoined to lie longer in bed on that morning. If it were allowable to reverse the profane jest of the pork-lover, who wished to be a Jew, that he might have the pleasure of eating pork and sinning at the same time, I should be tempted to express a similar desire for the contemporaneous comfort of lying in bed and performing a religious duty. The Sunday, or Christian Sabbath, was appropriated to the first day of the week, in eternal remembrance of the resurrection of Christ; but was not strictly solemnized as a period of cessation from all business until about the year 321, when Constantine ordered its

more rigorous observance, and interdicted all prosecutions, pleadings, and juridical processes, public or private. Of all the blessings ever bestowed on the world, it may be questioned whether any have been attended with more beneficial consequences to morals, health, and happiness, than the institution of a seventh day of rest, without which the lot of mortality, to the mass of mankind, would be hardly endurable. What contemplation so kindly, social, and endearing, as to behold the great human family linked by religion in one domestic brotherhood, and reduced to one common level, assembling weekly under the same roof to pour forth their gratitude to God, their universal benefactor and father? And yet how various have been the temper and spirit, with which the Sabbath has been solemnized in different ages, fluctuating from the sternest self-mortification and the most inexorable rigour, to the opposite extreme of irreverend and licentious hilarity. Well might Erasmus say, that the human understanding was like a drunken clown attempting to mount a horse ;-if you help him up on one side, he falls over on the other. The old Puritan, who refused to brew on a Saturday, lest his beer should work on the Sunday, was scarcely more ridiculous than the sceptical G. L. Le Sage of Geneva, who, according to his biographer Prevost, being anxious to ascertain whether the great Author of nature still prescribed to himself the observance of the original day of rest, measured, with the nicest exactitude, the daily increase of a plant to ascertain whether it would cease growing on the Sabbath, and finding that it did not, of course decided for the negative of the proposition. By statute 1 Car. I. no persons on the Lord's day

shall assemble out of their own parishes, for any sport whatsoever; nor, in their parishes, shall use any bull or bear-baiting, interludes, plays, or other unlawful exercises or pastimes; on pain that every offender shall pay 3s. 4d. to the poor." In 1618 King James, on the other hand, was graciously pleased to declare, "That for his good people's recreation, his Majesty's pleasure was, that after the end of divine service they should not be disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreations; such as dancing, either of men or women; archery for men; leaping, vaulting, or any other harmless recreations; nor having of Maygames, Whitsun-ales, or Morrice-dances; or setting up of Maypoles, or other sports therewith used, so as the same may be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or let of divine service." A statute, the 29 Charles II. enacts, "that no person shall work on the Lord's day, or use any boat or barge;" and by the non-repeal of this absurd law, the population of London, on the only day when its labouring classes have leisure for recreation, are denied the healthy enjoyment of their noble river, unless they choose to subject themselves to a penalty of 5s.

Our own times have had their full share of this pendulating

between extremes. To the lively Parisians nothing appeared more atrociously tyrannical, than that their lately restored sovereign should shut up the shops on a Sunday, and compel some little external reverence to the day, beyond the mere opening of the church-doors for the accommodation of a few devout old women. His pious inflexibility, on this point, had very nearly occasioned a counter-revolution. "Eh! mon dieu," said the Frenchman in London, when he looked out of window on a Sunday morning in the city, "what national calamity has happened?" The houses all shut up the silent and deserted streets forming such a sepulchral contrast to their ordinary bustle-the solemn countenances of the few straggling passengers, and the dismal tolling of innumerable bells, might well justify this exclamation in a foreigner; nor would his wonder be diminished, upon learning that this was the English mode of exhibiting their cheerfulness and gratitude to Heaven. What would such a man say, especially when he reflected upon the Sunday theatres, dances, and festivities of France, were he to be told that, even in these times, the lawfulness of shaving on a Sunday had been seriously discussed by one of our most numerous sects? The question was thus gravely submitted to the Methodist conference of 1807: "As it has been suggested that our rule respecting the exclusion of barbers, who shave or dress their customers on the Lord's day, is not sufficiently explicit and positive, what is the decision of the conference on this important point?" And thus replieth that august body to the weighty interrogatory: "Let it be fully understood that no such person is to be suffered to remain in any of our societies. We charge all our superintendants to execute this rule in every place, without partiality and without delay." Poor human nature! how often in thy failure to enforce these and other unattainable austerities, dost thou verify the lines of Dryden:

Reaching above our nature does no good,

We must fall back to our old flesh and blood."

Is there no island of rest for thee between Scylla and Charybdis; must thou be for ever bandied to and fro by the conflicting battledores of fanaticism and indifference?

It may not be unamusing, perhaps not uninstructive, to consider the mode, in which some of the various classes of London society dispose of themselves upon the Sabbath.

The rational Christian goes to church in an exhilarating spirit of grateful devotion to God, and universal charity to mankind; and feeling persuaded that the most acceptable homage to the Creator must be the happiness of the creature, dedicates the rest of the day to innocent recreations, and the enjoyment of domestic and social intercourse.

The bigot enters his Salem or Ebenezer, hoping to propitiate the