Sound sleep by night!-study and ease

Together mix'd; sweet recreation?

And innocence, which most does please
With meditation."

The "Beatus ille" of Horace is too long to introduce; and Claudian's old man of Verona, though a good specimen of local attachments, has nothing in common with a Country 'Squire, except in running a race with the trees planted in his childhood, around the house where he first drew his breath. Claudian evidently borrowed from Horace, and Horace from Virgil; classical readers may consult them all, for the "Vita Rustica Laudes;" I shall at present confine myself to English authors or translators. The following is from Sylvester's Du Bartas, 1606. Du Bartas himself was an amiable man, but not a good poet; being engaged in public affairs, his love of retirement is the more striking; I question however, whether he did not borrow from Claudian, and so the wheel goes round. Thus Sylvester makes him speak.

O thrice, thrice happy he, who shuns the cares

Of City troubles, and of State-affairs;

And, serving Ceres, tills with his own team,
His own free land, left by his friends to him!

And leading all his life at home in peace,
Always in sight of his own smoke; no seas,
No other seas he knows, no other torrent,
Than that which waters with his silver current
His native meadows; and that very earth
Shall give him burial, which first gave him birth.
To summon timely sleep, he doth not need
Æthiop's cold rush, nor drowsy poppy seed,
The stream's mild murmur, as it gently gushes,
His healthy limbs in quiet slumber hushes.

Even the consequence assumed by these Country Residents had its importance; the common people stood more in dread of offending the 'Squire than the King; not through any want of loyalty, but because the one was present, the other remote; because the one was known to them more as the dispenser of punishments than the assigner of rewards, while the other was constantly before their eyes, the daily dispenser of numberless rustic hospitalities, the promoter of all their festivities and amusements; the patron of the young, and the friend of the old. Nor should it be omitted, that when the 'Squire acted as a Justice of the Peace, he was an object of public as well as private awe and veneration. "The hall of the 'Squire," says honest Aubrey, was usually hung round with the in

66

signia of the 'Squire's amusements, such as hunting, shooting, fishing, &c. but in case he were a Justice of Peace, it was dreadful to behold. The skreen was garnished with corslets and helmets, gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, launces, pikes, halberts, brown-bills, bucklers, &c." Such 'Squires were probably often very illiterate, but their deficiencies in this respect, were the best excuses that could be offered, for the many coarsenesses and vulgarities, into which no doubt they were often betrayed; while perhaps these failings were compensated to the public, by virtues, too often missing in the more refined. When they offended against good manners, their known ignorance could not but suggest to wiser persons, the ready excuse, that "they knew no better;" a plea of which many of quicker parts, and better education, would have been glad to have availed themselves, had it been in their power. Our old friend and acquaintance, Sir Roger de Coverly, was wont to say, "that none but men of fine parts deserved to be hanged." "The reflections of such men," he would add,

are so delicate upon all occurrences which they are concerned in, that they should be exposed to more than ordinary infamy and punish

ment for offending against such quick admonitions as their own souls give them, and blunting the fine edge of their minds in such a manner; that they are no more shocked at vice and folly than men of slower capacities." In the days of Sir Roger, the difference probably between the Town and Country 'Squire, was exactly to be traced in these words. The one was coarse but honest, and had the excuse of ignorance and confined education to plead for his occasional transgressions; the other was more refined and polished, but vicious and dissipated against the plainest dictates of an enlightened understanding.

Such were their natures, and their passions such,
Those did disguise too little, these too much.

Aristotle, in treating of substantial forms, observes that the statue lies hid in a block of marble, which must be brought into life and order by the art of the statuary. "In the same manner,” says Johnson," the philosopher, the saint, or the hero, the wise, the good, or the great man, very often lie hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred and brought to light;" and carrying on the comparison, "sometimes," says he, "we see the block

only begun to be chipped, sometimes rough hewn, and but just sketched into a human figure; sometimes we see the man appearing distinctly in all his limbs and features: sometimes we find the figure wrought up to great elegancy, but seldom meet with any to which the hand of a Phidias or Praxiteles could not give several nice touches and finishings."

The Country 'Squire of old times was but rough, hewn, chipped, and sketched into a human figure, but it is to be doubted whether Phidias

or Praxiteles would have mended him by softening his roughnesses, at the expence of his simplicity, solidity, and weight. We have an admirable specimen of the honest feelings and principles, as well as of the simplicity of some of our retired ancestors in the Memoirs of a Country Gentleman, in the 622d No. of the Spectator. It is somewhat remarkable that the present Autocrat of Russia should be reported to have said, The man within whose reach Heaven has placed the greatest materials for making life happy, is an English Country Gentleman." See Carr's Northern Tour *.

* There is nothing perhaps so much wanting in Alexander's own dominion, which at the best can scarcely yet be said to be more than