posite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent rendered more intense by numbers, and by sym- to molest you—for ye sat betwixt the fires of two pathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto persecutions, the outcast and offscouring of church deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and and presbytery.-I have seen the reeling sealess; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle, great obscurity of midnight.

with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, There are wounds, which an imperfect solitude from the very spirit of the place receive in a mocannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a ment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that lamb amidst lambs. And I remembered Penn bewhich he can sometimes attain in crowds, but no- fore his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock, where where so absolutely as in a Quaker's Meeting. he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and “the Those first hermits did certainly understand this judge and the jury became as dead men under principle, when they retired into Egyptian soli- his feet.” tudes, not singly, but in shoals, to enjoy one an- Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I other's want of conversation. The Carthusian is would recommend to you, above all church narrabound to his brethren by this agreeing spirit of in- tives, to read Sewel's History of the Quakers. It communicativeness. In secular occasions, what is in folio, and is the abstract of the journals of 80 pleasant as to be reading a book through a long Fox, and the primitive Friends. It is far more winter evening, with a friend sitting by-say, a edifying and affecting than any thing you will wife-he, or she, too, (if that be probable,) read- read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing another, without interruption, or oral commu- ing to stagger you, nothing to make you misnication ?--can there be no sympathy without the trust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the gabble of words ?-away with this inhuman, shy, worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read single, shade-and-cavern haunting solitariness. the true story of that much injured, ridiculed man Give me, Master Zimmerman, a sympathetic soli- (who perhaps hath been a by-word in your mouth) tude.

-James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with To pace alone in the cloisters, or side-aisles of what patience he endured, even to the boring some cathedral, time-stricken:

through of his tongue with red-hot irons without “Or under hanging mountains,

a murmur; and with what strength of mind, when Or by the fall of fountains :"

the delusion he had fallen into, which they stig. is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which

matised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer those enjoy, who come together for the purposes

thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of more complete, abstracted solitude. This is of the beautifulest humility, yet keep his first the loneliness “to be felt.” The Abbey Church grounds, and be a Quaker still !—so different from of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit- the practice of your common converts from enthusisoothing, as the naked walls and benches of a asm, who, when they apostatize, apostatize all, and Quaker's Meeting. Here are no tombs, no in

think they can never get far enough from the sa scriptions,

ciety of their former errors, even to the renuncia- sands, ignoble things

tion of some saving truths, with which they had Dropt from the ruined sides of kings~" been mingled, not implicated. but here is something, which throws Antiquity and love the early Quakers.

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart; herself into the fore-ground—SILENCE-eldest of

How far the followers of these good men in our things-language of old Night-primitive Discourser—to which the insolent decays of moul-days have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what dering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, the Judge of Spirits can alone determine. I have

proportion they have substituted formality for it, and, as we may say, unnatural progression.

seen faces in their assemblies, upon which the “How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, dove sat visibly brooding. Others again I have Looking tranquillity!"

watchod, when my thoughts should have been Nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, unmischie- better engaged, in which I could possibly detect vous synod! convocation without intrigue! par- nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet was in liament without debate! what a lesson dost thou all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the abread to council, and to consistory!-if my pen sence of the fierce controversial workings. If the treat of you lightly

y-as haply it will wander---yet spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your at least they make few pretences. Hypocrites custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, they certainly are not, in their preaching. It is which some out-welling tears would rather con- seldom indeed that you shall see one get up firm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of amongst them to hold forth. Only now and then your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by a trembling, female, generally ancient, voice is Fox and Dewsbury. I have witnessed that, which heard—you cannot guess from what part of the brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, meeting it proceeds—with a low, buzzing, mu

soprano from a tenor. Only sometimes the tho- | honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to rough bass I contrive to guess at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagreeable. I tremble, however, for my misapplication of the simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I profess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me; and Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, is as conjuring as Baralipton.

It is hard to stand alone-in an age like this,(constituted to the quick and critical perception of all harmonious combinations, I verily believe, beyond all preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut)—to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic influences of an art, which is said to have such an especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the passions. Yet rather than break the candid current of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have received a great deal more pain than pleasure from this so cried-up faculty.

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds, are nothing to the measured malice of music. The ear is passive to those single strokes; willingly enduring stripes, while it hath no task to con. To music it cannot be passive. It will strive-mine at least will— 'spite of its inaptitude, to thrid the maze; like an unskilled eye painfully poring upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention! I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest commonlife sounds;--and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician becomes my paradise.

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I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory in the pit, (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience,) immoveable, or affecting some faint emotion,-till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of what delighted us in this) I have imagined myself in some cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoyment; or like that

fill up sound with feeling, and strain ideas to keep pace with it; to gaze on empty frames, and be forced to make the pictures for yourself; to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter; to invent extempore tragedies to answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime these are faint shadows of what I have undergone from a series of the ablest executed pieces of this empty instrumental music.

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have experienced something vastly lulling and agreeable:-afterwards followeth the languor, and the oppression. Like that disappointing book in Patmos; or, like the comings on of melancholy described by Burton, doth music make her first insinuating approaches :-"Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect him most, amabilis insania and mentis gratissimus error. A most incomparable delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done. So delightsome these toys at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from them-winding and unwinding themselves as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until at last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being now habited to such meditations and solitary places, can en dure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else: continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds which now, by no means, no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, they cannot be rid of it, they cannot resist."

Something like this "SCENE-TURNING" I have experienced at the evening parties at the house of my good Catholic friend Nov; who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself the most finished of players, converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his week days into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.*

When my friend commences upon one of those solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my heedless ear rambling in the side aisles of the dim abbey, some five-and-thirty years since, waking a new sense, and putting a soul of old religion into my young apprehension-(whether it be