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Tighe." Pray who is Psyche? It's a very ugly-looking word: I would not attempt to pronounce it for the best bonnet in the Soho bazaar. I suppose it is somebody or something of Lord Byron's. Have you read his three last cantos of Don Juan? I have: but don't mention it to Harry Marmoset; I promised him that I would not. I don't think them so good as the two first; when I say not so good, I mean not so bad for they say that the goodness of Lord Byron depends upon his badness. The fact is, I read very little; because, when I do read, I have contracted a habit of muttering the words, and of running my head backwards and forwards along the lines. Nobody ever told me of it, till that rude boy George mentioned it yesterday. I was reading the Poet Laureat's Vision of Judgment, and the lines were so very long, that George told me my nose swung like a pendulum. I don't mean to go on with it, till Southey shortens the lines. At all events I shall wait for the octavo edition. But to return to the miniature. Harry Marmoset tells me that you are doing his also. How interesting! Pray do make haste, my dear Mr. J. and finish us both in time for the Exhibition. Harry knows a stationer in Fetter-lane who sells India-rubber to one of the hanging committee. Harry means to make interest with him, to get the two miniatures hung, answering one another, tête-à-tête, " like King William and his Queen," as some great poet sings. This will be pure! Our attitudes have been studied to produce that effect. He leers over his left shoulder; I sigh over my right. Quite in the Novel line"Their eyes accidentally met; his looked unutterable things; her's dropped down, while a blush suffused her lovely cheek." Oh! what shall I do to pass the time till the Exhibition opens? We mean to go a party on the very first day. Sir Hildebrand Hornsey, from Doctors' Commons, that's one; his second daughter, Cecilia, that's two; Jack Juniper, of Liquorpond-street, that's three; Sally and Jane Tick, from Hoxton-square, that's five. Poor Elizabeth won't be able to go; a monkey at Bartholomew fair has nibbled off the tip of her little finger. Stay! where was I?—oh, five! Well, then there's myself, six; and my brother George, seven- a nice snug little hackney-coach party. We mean to go up stairs at once to the miniature-room, without waiting below to look at the statues. Indeed I don't think it proper. I wonder they don't dress them. There should be a meeting of auxiliary ladies in the Egyptian Hall, to subscribe for flannel and broad-cloth. I'll speak to papa, to speak to Mrs. Fry, to speak to the Lord Mayor. Well, then, we shall elbow our way up to the two miniatures; and if they do but look in Somerset-house as they look in Frith-street, every body will set it down for a match; and then papa must give his consent. Oh dear! dear! when will the Exhibition open!

MODERN PILGRIMAGES-AUBURN.

"If, when the robin warbles from her bough
The latest accents of adoring love,

To yon fair star that gilds the twilight trees,
Thou canst not give a moral to her song;
If, when the moon sheds her still sober light
Upon this water, and deludes the eye

With show of motion, there is in thy heart

No pulse of pleasure ;-hence, for ever hence,

Oh, shun this bank! it is the Poet's haunt !"-ANSTER.

I HAVE heard and read of many great names, have worshipped and envied them; yet it must be owned, with more feelings of selfishness and ambition, than of admiration and regard. Statesmen and scholars, in fortune and in adversity, in trying and in eminent stations of life, have passed in the mirror of history before me; they have excited much emulation, but little tenderness. The memory of a man of the world, however renowned he may have been, is a mere abstraction, associated with deeds and events as unsubstantial and invisible, when once over, as the names to which they are attached. The author of this law, or of that theory, has no farther grasp on our sympathies, than as we are acquainted with the scope and matter of these ideal productions. And even then, they act so generally, and on such multitudes, that we feel bound but to bestow on them a mite of consideration. Real fame or existence in the thoughts of posterity is not meted in proportion to superiority of genius or exertion, but by the associations which call up and hallow a name;" the local habitation and the name" is every thing, and this is acquired by chance as much as by merit.

The paramount association is certainly that of having been attached to a particular and exclusive spot of earth. Over field and forest, and the beauties of landscape, we seek for a name to join with them-we look for the genius loci, the genius of the place; and there is a void in the prospect, a vacuity in the contemplation, when we cannot conjure up some proud title of ancient race, or earned renown, to be the animating spirit of the scene. We experience a contrary wish, yet corroborative of the same principle, pages of history or memoir-the names are presented to us, and we must conjure up the scenes they have mingled in. But here the just course is inverted-too much is required of the imagination, whose province, in bestowing real pleasure, is more to embellish than to create.

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It is this want of link with the soil, of attachment to a particular spot, which gives the life of a metropolitan that ideal insignificance so happily embodied in the term Cockney. From having a village, a mountain, or a desert for a dwelling or birth-place, we may derive some pride: whatever honours they bestow, few lay claim to;-but what honour is to be drawn from being one of ten mil

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lions, except, indeed, the vaunt be addressed to foreigners? What native of London can enter that city with the same endearing recollections with which the native of the village revisits his long-absent home, or apostrophize his gloomy mansion in the Minories or Strand with

"Hail! ye blest haunts of my childhood,

The lawns and the bowers that I loved ?"

Yet in the possession of all the real associations that adorn and dignify life, the inhabitant of our great metropolis yields to none. Not only with wealth and power, with universal munificence and philanthropy, does his name stand united; but he can shew on the same roll of nativity with himself, the names of genius of every cast and in every station-poets, philosophers, and statesmen, the beings who most embellished, and instructed, and benefited the world.

But in the matter of glory and such feelings, great towns resemble the old fable of the lion's den-they take, but they never repay; they absorb all the honour of producing and possessing so much greatness, yet they shed little lustre on their less eminent inhabitants. They even narrow the glory of their most renowned names; they circumscribe the shrine of genius, and confine it to the petty circumference of a tablet or a tomb. What an unpleasant mixture of feeling does our Poet's Corner excite,—as if the mighty spirits of our country were bottled up and strung against a wall! Each must keep within his own square foot of marble, and make no more than his share of impression on the beholder. How different are the sentiments excited by the poet's resting-place upon the Avon! Shakspeare is the animating spirit of the place; his image seems stamped on the aspect of each old brick house,is seen mirrored in his own beautiful stream, and stirring in the lofty elms that overshade its banks.

Above all poets Goldsmith was least qualified to have been the inhabitant of a great city, and to become identified with it. He should have dwelt in the rural scenes which he has so beautifully described, and sported his peach-coloured coat at the village church. But his evil fortune has handed him down to us, misplaced by the side of that giant of words-Johnson, held up merely as a foil to him-an object of laughter and pity. And although the situation shews his simplicity of genius and heart in the strongest and most amiable light, yet it is painful to contemplate the poet of "The Hermit" as poor Goldy in the pages of Boswell. His epitaph too in Westminster Abbey, beautiful as it is, is false in the chief point-the place of his birth. He was not born at Fernes or Pallas, according to the monument, but at Elphin, in the county of Roscommon. But it is not at his birthplace or his tomb that the name of the poet is held most sacred.

His memory has found, I dare say, a more grateful shrine, in a country where he long resided with his brother-which he frequently mentions in his works with affection and regret, and from whence, it is more than probable, he took the scene of his "Deserted Village."

About three miles from Ballymahon, a very central town in the sister-kingdom, is the mansion and village of Auburn, so called by their present possessor, Captain Hogan. Through the taste and improvement of this gentleman, it is now a beautiful spot, although, some fifteen years since, it presented a very bare and un poetical aspect. This, however, was owing to a cause which serves strongly to corroborate the assertion, that Goldsmith had this scene in view when he wrote his poem. The then possessor, General Napier, turned all his tenants out of their farms, that he might enclose them in his own private domain. Littleton, the mansion of the General, stands not far off, a complete emblem of the desolating spirit lamented by the poet,-dilapidated, and converted into a barrack.

The chief object of attraction is Lishoy, once the parsonagehouse of Henry Goldsmith, that brother to whom the poet dedicated his "Traveller," and who is represented as the villagepastor,

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Passing rich on forty pounds a year."

When I was in the country, the lower chambers were inhabited by pigs and sheep, and the drawing-rooms by oats. Captain Hogan, however, has, I believe, got it since into his possession, and has, of course, improved its condition.

Though at first strongly inclined to dispute the identity of Auburn, Lishoy-house overcame my scruples. As I clambered over the rotten gate, and crossed the grass-grown lawn or court, the tide of association became too strong for casuistry: here the poet dwelt and wrote, and here his thoughts fondly recurred, when composing his "Traveller," in a foreign land. Yonder was the decent church, that literally "topped the neighbouring hill." Before me lay the little hill of Knockrue, on which he declares, in one of his letters, he had rather sit with a book in hand, than mingle in the proudest assemblies. And, above all, startlingly true, beneath my feet was

"Yonder copse, where once the garden smil❜d, And still where many a garden flower grows wild."

A painting from the life could not be more exact. The stubborn currant-bush lifts its head above the rank grass, and the proud hollyhock flaunts where its sisters of the flower-knot are no

more.

In the middle of the village stands the old "hawthorn tree," built up with masonry, to distinguish and preserve it; it is old

and stunted, and suffers much from the depredations of postchaise travellers, who generally stop to procure a twig. Opposite to it is the village ale-house, over the door of which swings "The Three Jolly Pigeons." Within, every thing is arranged according to the letter:

"The white-wash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor,

The varnish'd clock, that click'd behind the door :
The chest contrived a double debt to pay,

A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day;

The pictures placed for ornament and use,

The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose," &c.

Captain Hogan, I have heard, found great difficulty in obtaining "the twelve good rules," but at length purchased them at some London book-stall, to adorn the white-washed parlour of the "Three Jolly Pigeons." However laudable this may be, nothing shook my faith in the reality of Auburn so much as this exactness, which had the disagreeable air of being got up for the

occasion.

The last object of pilgrimage is the quondam habitation of the schoolmaster,

"There in his noisy mansion skill'd to rule." It is surrounded with fragrant proofs of its identity in

"The blossom'd furze, unprofitably gay."

Here is to be seen the chair of the poet, which fell into the hands of its present possessors at the wreck of the parsonagehouse; they have frequently refused large offers of purchase; but more, I dare say, for the sake of drawing contributions from the curious, than from any reverence for the bard. The chair is of oak, with back and seat of cane, which precluded all hopes of a secret drawer, like that lately discovered in Gay's. There is no fear of its being worn out by the devout earnestness of sitters-a wear-and-tear that Geoffrey Crayon so humorously describes-as the cocks and hens have usurped undisputed possession of it, and protest most clamorously against all attempts to get it cleansed, or to seat oneself.

The controversy concerning the identity of this Auburn was formerly a standing theme of discussion among the learned of the neighbourhood, but since the pros and cons have been all ascertained, the argument has died away. Its abettors plead the singular agreement between the local history of the place and the Auburn of the poem, and the exactness with which the scenery of the one answers to the description of the other. To this is opposed the mention of the nightingale

"And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made;❞— there being no such bird in the island. The objection is slighted

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