WORTH OF THE SERIOUS. The great Lord Shaftesbury has said, "Gravity is the very essence of imposture." Walpole has said nearly the same thing in a livelier vein. "I have never yet," says Horace, 66 seen or heard anything serious, that was not ridiculous. Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopedists, the Humes, the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt-are all to me but impostors in their various ways. Fame or interest is their object; and after all their parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanack, and believes the stars but so many farthing candles, created to prevent his falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational being, and I am sure an honester than any of them. Oh! I am sick of visions and systems, that shove one another aside, and come over again, like the figures in a moving picture. Rabelais brightens up to me as I see more of the world; he treated it as it deserved, laughed at it all, and, as I judge from myself, ceased to hate it; for I find hatred an unjust preference."Walpole's Letters, vol. iv. GIBBON IN LOVE. Gibbon, the historian, as is well known, spent his life in celibacy. There is a story representing him as falling in love, while at Lausanne, with a young lady of great beauty and merit, and which goes on to describe him as one day throwing himself at her feet to declare his passion, when, he being very corpulent, it was found impossible for him to rise again till he was extricated by the laughing damsel from his ludicrous position. George Colman the Younger has thus painted the scene: 66 the fair pursued Her prattle, which on literature flowed; Now changed her author, now her attitude, And much more symmetry than learning showed. Flounced on his knees, appearing like a round "Could such a lover be with scorn repulsed? Oh no! disdain befitted not the case; And Agnes at the sight was so convulsed Looked sheepish, nettled, or wished himself away; But fat and corpulency seemed to say, Here's a petitioner that must for ever pray! The falling in love with a young lady at Lausanne is undoubtedly true; but it happens that the incident took place in Gibbon's youth, when, so far from being fat or unwieldy, he was extremely slender-for, be it observed, the illustrious historian was in reality a small-boned man, and of more than usually slight figure in his young days. He was about twenty years of age, and was dwelling in Switzerland with a Protestant pastor by his father's orders, that he might recover himself as he ultimately did) from a tendency to Romanism which had beset him at College, when Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, the daughter of the pastor of Crassy in Burgundy, came on a visit to some relations in Lausanne. The father of the young lady, in the solitude of his village situation, had bestowed upon her a liberal education. She surpassed,' says Gibbon, his hopes, by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make two or three visits at her father's house. I passed some happy days there in the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connexion. In a calm retirement, the vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom; she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassy and Lausanne, I indulged my dream of felicity; but, on my return to England, I soon found that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son. My wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided into friendship and esteem." Susan Curchod eventually married M. Necker, the minister; and they were the parents of Madame de Stael Holstein.* GIBBON AND WALPOLE QUARREL. "You will be diverted," writes Walpole to Mason, "to hear that Mr. Gibbon has quarrelled with me. He lent me his second volume in the middle of November. I returned it with a most civil panegyric. He came for more incense; I gave it, but, alas! with too much sincerity. I added, 'Mr. Gibbon, I am sorry you should have pitched on so disgusting a subject as the Constantinopolitan History. There is so much of the Arians and Eunomians, and semi-Pelagians; and there is such a strange contrast between Roman and Gothic manners, and so little harmony between a Consul Sabinus and a Ricimer, Duke of the palace, that though you have written the story as well as it could be written, I fear few will have the patience to read it.' He coloured: all his round features squeezed themselves into sharp angles; he screwed up his button-mouth, and rapping his snuff-box, said, "It had never been put together before "--so well, he meant to add—but gulped it. Well, from that hour to this I have never seen him, though he used to call once or twice a week, nor has he sent me the third volume, as he promised. I well knew his vanity, even about his ridiculous face and person, but thought he had too much sense to avow it so palpably." Walpole allows the "History" to be admirably written; "but the style is far less sedulously enamelled than the first volume, and there is flattery to the Scots, who can gobble feathers as readily as thistles." MARRYING FOR MONEY. A poor nobleman was about to marry a rich heiress: he was asked by a friend, how long the honeymoon would last? He replied, "Don't tell me of the honeymoon; it is harvest moon with me." * Abridged from Chambers's Book of Days. DEATH OF DR. HENRY, THE HISTORIAN. 66 About 1790, Dr. Henry was living at a place of his own, in his native county of Stirling. He was about 72, and had been for some time very feeble. He wrote to Sir Harry Moncrieff that he was dying, and thus invited him for the last time— "Come out here directly. I have got something to do this week; I have got to die." Sir Harry went; and found his friend plainly sinking, but resigned and cheerful. He had no children, and there was nobody with him except his wife. She and Sir Harry remained alone with him for about three days, being his last three; during a great part of which the reverend historian sat in his easy chair, and conversed, and listened to reading, and dozed. While engaged in this way, the hoofs of a horse were heard clattering in the court below. Mrs. Henry looked out, and exclaimed that it was that wearisome body," meaning a neighbouring minister, who was famous for never leaving a house after he had once got into it. "Keep him out," cried the Doctor, "don't let the cratur in here." But before they could secure his exclusion, the cratur's steps were heard on the stair, and he was at the door. The Doctor instantly winked significantly, and signed to them to sit down and be quiet, and he would pretend to be sleeping. The hint was taken; and when the intruder entered, he found the patient asleep in his cushioned chair. Sir Harry and Mrs. Henry put their fingers to their lips, and pointing to the supposed slumberer as one not to be disturbed, shook their heads. The man sat down near the door, like one inclined to wait till the nap should be over. or twice he tried to speak; but was instantly repressed by another finger on the lip, and another shake of the head. So he sat on, all in perfect silence, for above a quarter of an hour, during which Sir Harry occasionally detected the dying man peeping cautiously through the fringes of his eye-lids, to see how his visitor was coming on. At last Sir Harry tired, and he and Mrs. Henry, pointing to the poor Doctor, fairly waved the visitor out of the room; on which the Doctor opened his eyes wide, and had a tolerably hearty laugh; which was renewed when the sound of the horse's feet made them certain that their friend was actually off the premises. Dr. Henry died that night.-Lord Cockburn's Memorials. Once THEORIZING. Dr. Robertson was a perfect master of conversation, and very desirous to lead it, and to make dissertations and raise theories that sometimes provoked the laugh against him. Once, when he had taken a jaunt into England, with some of Henry Dundas's (Lord Melville's) family, he (Dundas) and Mr. Baron Cockburn and Robert Sinclair were on horseback, and seeing a gallows on a neighbouring hillock, they rode round to have a nearer view of the felon on the gibbet. When they met at the inn, Robertson immediately began a dissertation on the character of nations, and how much the English, like the Romans, were hardened by their cruel diversions of cock-fighting, bull-baiting, boxing, &c.; for had they not observed three Englishmen on horseback do what, as Scotchmen, or-Here Dundas compassionately interrupted him, and said, "What! did you not know, Principal, that it was Cockburn, and Sinclair, and me?" This put an end to theories, &c., for that day. UNCOMPLIMENTARY GUESS. John Home, the author of Douglas, was a very singular person. When he was travelling in England with Dr. Carlyle and some other friends, on reaching Warwick, the party put up at an inn, where Home, having thrown off his boots, would not put them on again, but pranced about the room in a truly poetical style. At this moment, he turned short upon the boot-catch (boots) who had brought in clean boots; and finding the fellow staring at him with seeming admiration,— "And am not I a pretty fellow?" said Home. "Ay," said he, "sir," with half a smile. "And who do you take me for?" said Home. "If you binna Jamy Dunlop, the Scotch pedlar, I dinna ken whar ye are ; but your ways are very like his." Home, on reaching Birmingham, was so wearied with the details of its manufactures, that he said, "it seemed there as if God had created man only for making buttons." A CHILD OF NATURE. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the father of the well-known novelist, married four wives, by all of whom he had issue. The number of his children, and their unusual difference in |