COLLOQUY IV.

CONCERNING, CHIEFLY,

66 THE BLIND OLD MAN, AND HIS IMMORTAL STORY OF A LOST PARADISE."

Ir would be a mode of proceeding quite un-English, to enter upon several consecutive colloquies, without commenting on the state of the weather. Moreover, when, without violating Truth to gratify Patriotism, a compliment can be paid to the climate of his country, it is a Briton's duty to do so; for foreign calumnies upon our native skies are permitted to provoke undue contumely from a people incontinently prone to grumble among themselves, at much that invigorates their individual constitution and national. Touching that basely-traduced atmospherical production, called English weather, we owe an immense amount of gratitude to that more dauntless class of Nature's minstrels, who, leaving gentler poets to tune their pæans to stars and zephyrs, proclaim the sterner

charms of hail, snow, wind, storm, and vapour. And, because eccentric and half-anomalous, among this “dauntless” band, let us elect the mild Cowper, for himself and clan, as the recipient of our gratulations. It is pleasure, slightly tinged with pity, to find the valiant valetudinarian-bold in seclusion, timid in the shock of men—scourging the pleasant vices of the herd, which he, "a stricken deer," had quitted;right comfortable is it, to see him putting upon his country a commanding aspect which he could not put upon himself; and to hear him thus venting the healthy vigor of his English heart, before one of the gloomiest of national pictures—

"Though thy clime

Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines, nor for Ausonia's groves

Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers."

Now in the creed of one at least (and of the least) of his compatriots, of few pleasanter sensations is this cold hut of human clay susceptible, than when the genial sun melts all the heart within it into a gladness so diffusive, that after inundating all surrounding objects with its viewless flood of joy, it extends a large flow of compassion to those blinded masses abroad, who imagine the Indomitable Isle to be en

veloped in perpetual brouillards. If our variations do frequently outstrip the almanack, and carry despair to elderly gentlemen subject à l'ennuyeuse maladie, ce de conserver la santé par un trop grand régime,* do they not also afford to our native authors a topic so inexhaustible, that every fact which may occur, or fiction which may be conceived, can, in description, be furnished with express circumambient drapery and decoration? There is in Britons a proverbial power to bear, a property which pleases our statesmen and has puzzled our foes; and the British skies possess a similar quality in an eminent degree; for those of any other country, having had to withstand an equal share of chiefly-abusive remark, would have been worn out by commentators. The canopy of Britain being more notable for the variety of its patterns than for their scenic sublimity, we have no artistes whose especial forte is firmamental; - there are, however, several literary aërial limners, of exquisite touch, within the United Kingdom of our Sovereign Lady the Queen,

-on whose august person may "the heaven rain odours," and, on her loyal realms, abundance and the spirit of Contentment.

The individual who presumes, by thus preambulating, to delay the enthusiastic Elder's entry, (the privilege of an uninterrupted parley after that event

* La Rochefoucauld.

W

being exceedingly hopeless,) has advocated more disheartening causes than that which now, in defence of his country, and without " consideration" of any kind, he undertakes on behalf of the climate of his client. He addresses, of course, a wise and discriminating jury; and contends, of course with deference, that to an English subject upon whose amiable temperament the evidence of sociality has a soothing effect, and who (perchance not having cared "to unsphere the spirit of Plato,") may, in the lower walks of practical philosophy, be contenting himself by simply making the best of his condition at all times and in all places, to such an one it cannot be merely reconciling, it must be a matter of active rejoicing, that the Four Seasons which preside over his country's year, and exercise extensive influence on his country's weal, should present, as they do, a truly edifying example of mutual good feeling in their intercourse with each other. Now this disposition is rarely found in a limited coterie, where separate interests strongly prevail, and jealousy is prompt to rise at officious intermeddling. Our Seasons maintain a most cordial intimacy, and exchange visits and compliments, sans cérémonie; and that lively movement of barometrical mercury at which a maledictory man might rail, the complacent jury I have the honor to address would delight in, as an incontestable token that one of the

subdominant three was on a visit to the regnant Season. Where, too, in this "low-thoughted" sphere, a small number of functionaries attain alternatively a chief and brief authority, their individual period of pre-eminency is very nicely marked:-our British Seasons scorn a duration of presidency so accurately defined:-there is a noble free-and-easiness in each one's entrance upon duty, and exit from it, that expands the ideas to reflect upon. And in this habit of intervisitation one with another, the more sanguine of the panel before which I am privileged to plead, will immediately recognize the interest which the entire Quaternity take in the affairs of Earth, under different control. It may not be absurdly unreasonable to regret, that when the veteran (though volatile) Herald of Father Christmas looks abroad out-of-season, there should be a cramping influence in his eye, which at one period leaves shrubs, etc. in a state of nudity when additional clothing is commonly preferred; and, at another period, creates a panic on the banks at which pale snowdrops sicken and go off in convulsions, -which staggers itinerant melodists in mid-air, excites a general shudder among nestlings, and hurries many a newly-perfected chrysalis to a bourne from whence no butterfly returns. His occasional visits to the mellow matron, Autumn, are, socially, beneficial, as reminders to the benevolent in high places that