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The times in which we live are in reality the oldest; and if mere antiquity deserve our homage, let us pay it to the existing generation, for we are the real Simon Pures, and the ancients were but the sucklings and children of the world's growth. If wisdom were occasionally ordained out of their mouths, we possess it superadded to our own, with all the experience of the intervening ages. They were the raw youngsters, and we are the true Nestors. We show deference to the matured sagacity of the man, not to the crude attempts of the schoolboy: why then are we to reverence those collections of men, who, in the pupilage of time, were deemed miracles of precocity if they advanced beyond their A B C? All our impressions upon this subject are but so many mischievous prejudices, which, if we could reduce them to action, would compel the moral world to go backward instead of forward; and we must totally reverse the usual operation of our minds, if we would render proper justice to ourselves and to Antiquity. Nothing can be more ephemeral than our individual existence; but we are the constituents of an immortal community-the deciduous leaves of an imperishable trunk; for though generations pass away, the British public is perennial. We are the identical gentlemen to whom our ancestors have made so many pathetic appeals and apostrophes under the name of Posterity; and we are moreover the worshipful personages destined to be hereafter revered, and regretted, and eulogized, under the respectable designation of "our wise Ancestors." Let us then hold up our heads, for we stand between two mighty congregations, the past and the future, and our measure remains to be fairly taken. Whatever we contribute to the general stock of wisdom, we shall bequeath in addition to that which we have inherited; and if we are disposed to pride ourselves on the possession of a greater store than was enjoyed by our ancestors, we may learn humility from reflecting, that our successors will in the same proportion be still richer than ourselves. We have only, therefore, to assign to Posterity that gravity, and experience, and wisdom, which we ignorantly impute to the raw, boyish simpleton, Antiquity, and the two candidates for our favour will receive the fair award of their respective merits.

But I have a terrible crow to pick with this latter personage, Signor Antiquity, as a mighty stalking-horse on which knaves and bigots invariably mount when they want to ride over the timid and the credulous. We never hear so much palaver about the time-hallowed institutions and approved wisdom of our Ancestors, as when attempts are made to remove some staring monument of their folly. Sir Matthew Hale, that great luminary of law, after having condemned a poor woman to death for witchcraft, took occasion to sneer at the rash innovators who were then advocating a repeal of that statute; and falling on his knees, thanked God for his being enabled to uphold one of the sagest enactments handed down to us by our venerable forefathers. Bacon, who was so far beyond his age in all matters of science, was not less credulous than the weakest of his contemporaries, and published very minute directions for guarding against witches, under which imputation many scores of wretched old women were burnt in the reign of that sapient Demonologist James the First. The worthy Druids, who sacrificed human victims to their idols, were our "illustrious Ancestors ;" and if required to select instances from more mo

dern and civilized times, I would point to those of "our enlightened forefathers," who wasted their lives and fortunes in seeking the Elixir Vitæ and Philosopher's Stone-who practised torture upon suspected criminals who believed in the efficacy of the King's touch for curing the Evil, and transmitted to us many other practices of barbarism and ignorance, which have become happily exploded, though not without great difficulty and opposition. Nay, have not we ourselves, who are fated to be the sage and revered progenitors of future canters, seen a Spanish army fighting for the restoration of the Inquisition and despotism? Have we not in our own country witnessed the existence of the Slave Trade, and heard the denunciations of its supporters against those who would subvert the glorious institutions handed down to us?" Have we not moreover living believers in Joanna Southcote, and metallic tractors, and animal magnetism, and fortune-tellers, and the efficacy of the Sinking Fund, and the danger of Popery, and innumerable other phantasms and delusions which poor Posterity will be bound to adopt as gospel, if the seal of time is to be always acknowledged as the signet of truth?

The lawyers of all ages are generally among the blind advocates of Antiquity. As a body, I believe them to have made incalculable advances in respectability and principle since the days of James the First, who, on receiving the great seal which Bacon had been compelled to resign for his manifold corruptions, exclaimed-" Now, by my saul, I am pained at the heart where to bestow this, for as to my lawyers I think they be all knaves :"-but in expansion of intellect, in capacity for enlarged views, or perception of abstract truth, I apprehend them to be still far behind the age in which they live. Certain trades invariably injure the organ of bodily sight, and the law seems to be a profession which has a strong tendency to contract and debilitate the mental pupil. Its disciples are so accustomed to look with other people's eyes, that they lose the use of their own; because precedent is omnipotent in the Courts, they think it must be infallible. in the world. They study acts of parliament, commentaries, cases, arguments, dicta of judges, and receive their fiat with such implicit deference, that they cannot, or dare not, find their way out of the maze to look for any thing so simple and elemental as truth. Habituated

to follow the bark of the leading hounds, they cannot recognise the game even if it crosses their path; or, if this simile be deemed too canine, I would respectfully hint that they worship the priests and the shrine too much to have any reverence left for the goddess. They argue with examples, not reasons, and adduce what people thought centuries ago, not what they ought to think now. They have deputed their faculties to Blackstone and other sages-they speak judgments, but use none, and generally go astray if left to the guidance of their original sagacity, as horses, if they miss their driver, will run their heads. against a post or a wall. What they have spent their lives to learn, they would not willingly unlearn you may prove that it is cruel, or false, or pernicious, which they will not gainsay, for these are points which they have not studied; but they silence you with one triumphant argument-it is law; a declaration which they usually wind up with the established flourish about hallowed institutions and approved wisdom, and so forth.-I describe the influence of their studies upon

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the profession in general, and need not offer my testimony to the honourable and splendid exceptions which it has furnished in all times, and in none more signally than our own.

Bibliomania is an amusing illustration of this blind idolatry for whatever is ancient; though I will venture to assert that no good book, since the invention of printing, ever became scarce, and that in an immense majority of cases rarity is in exact proportion to worthlessness. The old types, and binding, and decorations, might be adored, as savages worship idols for their barbarism and ugliness; but when they ventured upon the experiment of reprinting some of these treasures of antiquity, the bubble burst at once. The Archaica and Heliconia induced people to read what they had hitherto only thought of buying, and they then discovered upon what gross trash and woeful rubbish they had wasted their precious guineas.

While we are lavishing the affections of our hearts and purses upon that egregious dotard, Antiquity, we evince towards our lineal, legitimate descendant, Posterity, a most scurvy and unpaternal disregard, although the poor creature has done nothing to merit such treatment. We bequeath him books enough, indeed, to complete his education, though most of them will be probably moth-eaten, or obsolete, before he is breeched; but in the olden time it was customary to provide him with ready-made houses, and churches, and palaces, none of which can he hope to inherit from the present generation. Our houses regularly fall in before the leases; our churches will never come down to him, unless it be their roofs; and as to our thatched palaces, and others in imitation of Chinese Pagodas, and Moorish Alhambras, being fortunately as bad in construction as they are in taste, even we ourselves may hope to witness the decadence of these flimsy gewgaws. Waterloo-bridge is almost the only structure which seems likely to descend to the great unborn heir of the present community; and if we have enabled him to keep his head above water in one sense, we have rendered it almost impossible in another, by tying about his unbegotten neck, the tremendous millstone of the national debt. Now I have very grave and compunctious doubts whether the social compact confers upon us any right to commit this doubly-noxious injustice. Individuals are not responsible for the debts of their parents,-why should a collection of individuals be so? Why should I, or you, taxpaying reader, be at this moment putting our hands in our pockets to defray the charges of all the mad wars waged since the time of our revolution, when the perverse folly of" our sage ancestors" first discovered the secret of the Funding System ?-What authority have we to mortgage the flesh, and bones, and sweat of many generations, to gratify the insane pugnaciousness or extravagance of one ?-what charter empowers us to discount futurity for blood-money? O fatal discovery, which torments whole ages with war, and its successors with debt, thus spreading misery over a surface of centuries! If the Holy Alliance would really merit the title of benefactors of the human race, let them invite the whole of Europe to join them in a solemn compact and agreement that every nation shall hereafter fight its own battles, and pay for its own wars; and they will have done more in one day for the maintenance of perpetual peace than they will now effect in a hundred Congresses.-Let them proclaim a public

universal law, absolving our successors from all responsibility, legal or moral, for the hostilities of their forefathers; and they will not only have conferred a signal blessing upon the present generation, but have performed a great act of justice towards that ill-used gentleman, who has been subjected to such a series of ante-natal, inflictions-poor Mr. Posterity.

H.

THE BARD'S SONG TO HIS DAUGHTER.

O DAUGHTER dear, my darling child,
Prop of my mortal pilgrimage,
Thou who hast care and pain beguiled,
And wreathed with Spring my wintry age,-
Through thee a second prospect opes

Of life, when but to live is glee,

And jocund joys, and youthful hopes,

Come thronging to my heart through thee.

Backward thou lead'st me to the bowers

Where love and youth their transports gave;
While forward still thou strewest flowers,
And bidst me live beyond the grave;
For still my blood in thee shall flow,
Perhaps to warm a distant line,
Thy face, my lineaments shall show,
And e'en my thoughts survive in thine.
Yes, Daughter, when this tongue is mute,
This heart is dust-these eyes are closed,
And thou art singing to thy lute

Some stanza by thy Sire composed,
To friends around thou may'st impart
A thought of him who wrote the lays,
And from the grave my form shall start,
Embodied forth to fancy's gaze.

Then to their memories will throng

Scenes shared with him who lies in earth,

The cheerful rage, the lively song,

The woodland walk, or festive mirth;
Then may they heave the pensive sigh,
That friendship seeks not to control,

And from the fix'd and thoughtful eye
The half unconscious tears may roll:-
Such now bedew my cheek-but mine
Are drops of gratitude and love,
That mingle human with divine,
The gift below, its source above.-
How exquisitely dear thou art

Can only be by tears exprest,

And the fond thrillings of my heart,
While thus I clasp thee to my breast.

H.

F

ON VAMPYRISM.

"Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris,
Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent."

Ovid.

VOLTAIRE was astonished that, in the eighteenth century, people should believe in vampyres; and that the doctors of the Sorbonne should give their imprimatur to a dissertation on these unpleasant personages. The philosopher of Ferney would scarcely have experienced less surprise had he lived to see them introduced into popular novels, represented as figuring at the drawing-room, shining in fashionable assemblies, favourites with the ladies, and this not alone in barbarous London, but forming the delight and admiration of elegant audiences in the superlatively polished capital of his own country. Indeed, their success among our refined and delicately-nerved neighbours has infinitely surpassed what they have met with among ourselves. We are not aware that many of our dramatists have hitherto attempted to draw tears from the pathetic amours of these interesting bloodsuckersthat source of sympathetic tears has been only sparingly unlocked”— and except the strange history of the "leaden-eyed" vampyre Lord Ruthven, which the circumstances attending its composition principally contributed to force into the hands of all the lovers of the marvellous, we are not aware that the "Broucolaca" has hitherto become a favourite in the English closet. But at Paris he has been received with rapturous applause at almost all the spectacles from the Odeon to the Porte St. Martin; all the presses of the Palais Royal have for the last two years been employed in celebrating, and describing, and speculating on him and his adventures, and in putting forth perpetual nouveautés on all the cognate topics-" Infernal Dictionaries"-" Demoniana”— "Ombres Sanglantes"-" Diable peint par lui-même," &c. &c. Where are the descendants of the Encyclopædists and the worshippers of the goddess Reason, when Parisian readers and audiences are running mad after "loups-garoux," and "apparitions nocturnes," "cadavres mobiles," &c., all "puisées dans les sources réelles"? Thirty years ago, what bookseller in the Palais Royal would have risked the conflagration of his whole stock by exposing for sale any of these superstitious treasures drawn from sacred legends and monkish mpositions? The revulsion has indeed been somewhat sudden, and does not tend to remove prevalent impressions on the instability of Parisian sentiments and opinions. From believing in the eternal sleep of death, and persecuting every one who hinted a suspicion unfavourable to the absolute supremacy of matter, it is rather a rapid bound to the study of demonolatry, and a lively interest in apparitions and spectres of all sorts.

If we are disposed to partake any interest in these subjects, it may, perhaps, be forgiven to us who have never professed ourselves votaries of Diderot and Bayle. We call our readers to witness, we have never said a syllable derogatory to the ghost of Mrs. Veal, or General Clavering, or any other respectable individual of spiritual memory. We have, therefore, a fair right, without inconsistency or fickleness, to say a few words on the subject of that most appalling of the whole corps demoniaque, the Vampyre. The belief in the existence of vampyres is one of the most extraordinary and most revolting superstitions which ever disturbed the brains of any semi-barbarous people. It is the

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