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EXERCISE LVII.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES.

JUST one mile two furlongs and seven reds from my grandfather's house, on a sightly hill, called Moun leasant, stood the abode of Jonathan Oldbug, my fath

whose spacious but decaying mansion I spent part of my time; for I would not have the reader imagine that my parents were always so negligent as to leave me perpetually to write rebuses with my Uncle Gideon, or to eat turn-overs from the hand of my Aunt Hannah.

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My father was a tall, stately man, with one good coat, which he kept to wear to meeting; one decent pair of shoes, which lasted, in my memory, seven years; one cotton shirt, with a linen collar to it, and he was sometimes compelled to lie in bed, in order that it might be washed. He dwelt in a large house, whose exterior, though not splendid, was much preferable to some of the rooms within; it was surrounded with a white fence, with some of the parts broken down, a front gate swung upon one hinge, several of the window-panes were broken, on two of the front windows hung two shattered blinds, which had once been green, and before the house, as you entered the garden, grew two spacious lime trees, forming a grateful shade. As you entered the house, you came to a large, massy, oak door, big enough to be the gate of a castle, with an iron knocker on it, shaped for a lion, but looking more like a dog; and having entered the building, you saw a front entry, the paper torn and colored by the rain; on your left hand was one room covered with a carpet, containing an eight-day clock, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and telling the age of the moon; the other furniture passable; but the rest of the rooms in a condition which I blush to name. There, in this stately mansion, dwelt my venerable sire, who might justly be denominated a poor gentleman; that is, he was a gentleman in his own estimation, and poor in the esteem of everybody else.

My father was a man of expedients, and had spent his whole life, and exhausted all his ingenuity, in that adroit presentation of pretences, which, in common speech, is

called keeping up appearances. In this art he was really skilful; and I often suspected then, and have really concluded since, if he had turned half the talent to procuring an honest livelihood, which he used to slobber over his ill-dissembled poverty, it would have been better for his soul and body both. He was a man that never told a lie, unless it was to keep up appearances.

I hope none who hear me have been reduced to the miserable necessity of tying up their pantaloons with pack-thread, instead of lawful suspenders; of using a remnant of a pillow-case for a pocket-handkerchief; of sticking a bur on their rent stocking to cover up a hole; and after slitting their worn pantaloons on the knee, when they had got half way to meeting on the Sabbath, of being obliged to tie a pretended pocket-handkerchief over a pretended wound, seeming to be lame, and perhaps before they had walked ten rods, forgetting in which leg the lameness was seated. No, these are the incommunicable sorrows of me, of me, the sad hero of a sad family the prince and heir-apparent to the ragged generation.

To me, and to me alone, was reserved the awful destiny of being invited to a party where were to assemble the first beauties of a country village- not daring to go until evening, lest the light of heaven should expose a thread-bare coat-having no clean shirt - not even a dickey which had not been worn ten times-supplying its place with a piece of writing paper - afraid to turn my head, lest the paper should rattle or be displaced — and then, just as a poor wretch was exulting in the hope that the stratagems of poverty were to pass undetected, to have a lady, perhaps the youngest and most beautiful in the whole party, come provokingly near, and beg to examine your collar, because she admires the pattern. Often has it been my lot to return from the company, where all hearts seemed to bound with gladness, to water my couch with tears, amid sorrows which I could tell to none, and with which none would sympathize. I thought it poverty. But I was mistaken. It was something else which begins with a P.

EXERCISE LVIII.

FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL CHARACTER.

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How s the spirit of a free people to be formed, and animated, and cheered, but out of the store-house of its own historic recollections? Are we to be eternally ringing the changes upon Marathon and Thermopyla; and going back to read in obscure texts of Greek and Latin of the exemplars of patriotic virtue? I thank God that we can find them nearer home, in our own country, on our own soil; - that strains of the noblest sentiment that ever swelled in the breast of man are breathing to us out of every page of our country's history, in the native eloquence of our mother tongue;-that the colonial and provincial councils of America exhibit to us models of the spirit and character which gave Greece and Rome their name and their praise among the nations. Here we ought to go for our instruction; the lesson is plain, it is clear, it is applicable. When we go to ancient history, we are bewildered with the difference of manners and institutions. We are willing to pay our tribute of applause to the memory of Leonidas, who fell nobly for his country in the face of his foe. But when we trace him to his home, we are confounded at the reflection, that the same Spartan heroism to which he sacrificed himself at Thermopyla would have led him to tear his own child, if it had happened to be a sickly babe, - the very object for which all that is kind and good in man rises up to plead, from the bosom of its mother, and carry it out to be eaten by the wolves of Taygetus. We feel a glow of admiration at the heroism displayed at Marathon by the ten thousand champions of invaded Greece; but we cannot forget that the tenth part of the number were slaves; unchained from the workshop and door-post of their masters, to go and fight the battles of freedom. I do not mean that these examples are to destroy the interest with which we read the history of ancient times; they possibly increase that interest by the very contrast they exhibit. But they do warn us, if we need the warning, to seek our great practical lessons of patriotism at home; out of the exploits and sacrifices of

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whicl. our own country is the theatre; out of the characters of our own fathers. Them we know, souled, natural, unaffected, the citizen heroes. know what happy firesides they left for the cheerless camp. We know with what pacific habits they dared the perils of the field. There is no mystery, no romance, no madness, under the name of chivalry, about them. It is all resolute, manly resistance, for conscience and liberty's sake, not merely of an overwhelming power, but of all the force of long-rooted habits and native love of order and peace.

EXERCISE LIX.

THE RULING PASSION.

WITHOUT one word from the historian, and only by tudying a people's relics, and investigating the figurative expressions in their literature and law, one might see reflected, as from a mirror, the moral scale on which they arranged their ideas of good and great. Though history should not record a single line in testimony of the fact, yet who, a thousand years hence, could fail to read, in their symbols, in their forms of speech, and in the technical terms of their law, the money-getting, money-worshipping tendencies of all commercial nations, during the last and the present centuries? The word sovereign," we know, means a potentate invested with lawful dignity and authority; and it implies subjects who are bound to honor and obey. Hence, in Great Britain, a gold coin, worth twenty shillings, is called a "sovereign;" and happy is the political sovereign who enjoys such plenitude of power and majesty, and has so many loyal and devoted subjects, as this vicegerent of royalty. An ancient English coin was called an angel. Its value was only ten shillings, and yet it was named after a messenger from heaven. In the Scriptures, and in political law, a crown is the emblem and personification of might and majesty, of glory and blessedness. The synonyme of all these is a piece of silver worth six shillings and seven pence. As the king has his repre

sentative in a sovereign, so a duke has his in a ducat, the inferior value of the latter corresponding with the inferior dignity of its archetype. As Napoleon was considered the mightiest ruler that France ever knew, so, for many years, her highest coin was called a Napoleon; though now, in the French mint, they strike double-Napoleons. God grant that the world may never see a double-Napoleon of flesh and blood! Our forefathers subjected themselves to every worldly privation for the sake of liberty, and when they had heroically endured toil and sacrifice for eight long years, and at last achieved the blessing of independence, they showed their veneration for the Genius of Liberty by placing its image and superscription - upon a cent!

So, too, in our times, epithets the most distinctively sacred are tainted with cupidity. Mammon is not satisfied with the heart-worship of his devotees; he has stolen the very language of the Bible and the Liturgy; and the cardinal words of the sanctuary have become the business phraseology of bankers, exchange-brokers, and lawyers. The word "good," as applied to character, originally meant benevolent, virtuous, devout, pious;-now, in the universal dialect of traffic and credit, a man is technically called good who pays his notes at maturity; and thus, this almost divine epithet is transferred from those who laid up their treasures in heaven, to such as lay up their treasures on earth. The three days' respite which the law allows for the payment of a promis sory note, or bill of exchange, after the stipulated period has expired, is called "grace," in irreverent imitation of the sinner's chance for pardon. On the performance of a broken covenant, by which a mortgaged estate is saved from forfeiture, it is said, in the technical language of the law, to be saved by "redemption." The document by which a deceased man's estate is bequeathed to his survivors is called a testament; and were the glad tidings of the New Testament looked for as anxiously as are the contents of a rich man's last will and testament, there would be no further occasion for the Bible Societies. Indeed, on opening some of our law-books, and casting the eye along the running-titles at the top of the pages,

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