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 Party in a parlour, All silent, and all DAMNED! Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of music, as they are called, do plague and embitter my apprehension.-Words are something; but to be exposed to an endless battery of mere sounds; to be long a dying, to lie stretched upon a rack of roses; to keep up languor by unintermitted effort; to pile honey upon sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable tedious sweetness; to 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 mimethese 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 * Rev. chap. x. ver. 10. 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 the last the SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being now habitated to such meditations and solitary places, can endure 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 that, in which the psalmist, weary of the persecutions of had men, wisheth to himself dove's wings-or that other, which, with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth by what means the young man shall best cleanse his mind)— +Anatomy of melancholy. I have been there, and still would go; a holy calm pervadeth me.-I am for which bear my signature, in this Mathe time rapt above earth, And possess joys not promised at my birth. But when this master of the spell, not content to have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his "heavenly,"still pouring in, for protracted hours, fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from that inexhausted German ocean, above which, in triumphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions Haydn and Mozart, with their attendant tritons, Bach, Beethoven, and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps,-I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and fro at my wit's end;-clouds, as of frankincense, oppress me-priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me-the genius of his religion hath me in her toils--a shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late so naked, so ingenuous-he is Pope,-and by him sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too,--tri-coroneted like himself!-I am converted, and yet a Protestant;-at once malleus hereticorum, and myself grand heresiarch: or three heresies centre in my person:-I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus--Gog and Magog-what not? -till the coming in of the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to the rationalities of a purer faith; and restores to me the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasantcountenanced host and hostess P. S. A writer, whose real name, it seems, is Boldero, but who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with some very pleasant lucubrations, under the assumed signature of Leigh Hunt ;* in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has thought fit to insinuate, that I Elia do not write the little sketches gazine; but that the true author of them is a Mr. Lb. Observe the critical period at which he has chosen to impute the calumny !-on the very eve of the publication of our last number affording no scope for explanation for a full month-during which time, I must needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of non-entity.-Good heavens ! that a plain man must not be allowed to be— They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of antipersonality (if I may so express it) is something worse. Take away my moral reputationI may live to discredit that calumny. Injure my literary fame,-I may write that up again— But when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, where is he? Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing trifle at the best. But here is an assassin, who aims at our very essence; who not only forbids us to be any longer, but to have been at all. Let our ancestors look to it.— Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes-street, Cavendish-square, where we saw the light six and forty years ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous name of Boldero + was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly scion of our name, transplanted into England, in the reign of the seventh Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steel yard, in succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our envious enemies) showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants down to the period of the commonwealth, nothing? Why then the world, and all that's in't is The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nonothingthing. I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power to move me so. ELIA. Clearly a fictitious appellation; for if we admit the latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh? Christian nomenclature knows no such. + It is clearly of transatlantic origin. Ande bade it, sparklinge onne thy hande, Whose constante memorie, Was fulle of lovelinesse ande thee. Her love is buriede with thatte stone. Yette HELENE love, believe The hearte thatte never coulde deceive. I'll heare thy voice of melodie In the sweete whisperres of the aire ; I'll see the brightnesse of thine eye In the blue Eveninge's dewie starre; In crystalle streames thy puritie, And looke on Heavenne, to look on thee. GUILLIAME. LINES Written in the First Leaf of a Friend': Album. THE warrior is proud when the battle is won: The miser is glad when he adds to his hoard ;- But my pride and my pleasure are chasten'd by fears, Yet idle, and thankless it were,-to allow BERNARD BARTON. STANZAS. "I had a dream which was not all a dream." Ir is not alone in the visions of night, Byron The child, who the beautiful rainbow would span, But when forms rise upon us, like some I have met, 'Tis but gen'rous-but grateful to bless the bright beam, And O! when the loveless and joyless in soul, Can we wonder that such, while they gaze upon eyes, Where kindness, a lustre undazzling supplies, When they listen to lips too sincere to deceive,— That such smiles, and such accents-their hearts should believe? O no! if it be but a dream,—and, as such, Must be woke from,-and shun, like the rainbow, our touch, It is something to prize-while its presence is known, And sweet to recal-when for ever 'tis flown. The rose, and the jasmine, are loved; though they fade Shall we chide it, because in its nature 'tis brief? Shall we call it deceitful, and meant to betray? The fault is in man, after all, who beguiled Let us learn to prize both, as intended to show, N. FROM THE GERMAN. The sun sinks low, the evening's glow The breezes now on the sickly brow, How still around! no voice-no sound- The golden clouds speed by in crowds, And sail ere the breezes die. Haste, clouds! for now the night-Queen's brow Is darken'd at your stay; She cannot bear, in her subject air, A rival ;-so speed away. How sweet to sleep, where the roses weep ON RIDING ON HORSE-BACK. I had rather be a good horseman, than a good logician. No. II. As I intend to continue these articles occasionally, till time-or, which is the same thing, till this Magazine,―shall be no moree-(I say nothing of life and health permitting; for people who write and ride on horseback live for ever,)-I hope and expect that our good-natured and considerate readers will allow me and my steed to keep ourselves in proper travelling condition, by using all our different paces alternately. A man who writes ten pages, or rides ten miles, right anend, as the phrase is, does not properly know what belongs to his steed or to himself.-For my part, I would be chary of whatever natural or acquired powers we may either of us possess, if it were only from the love I bear to BALDWIN'S MAGAZINE; and that can only be done effectually, by adapting our paces to the ground we are upon, and by taking a fair and reasonable time to do our work. With these precautions, a common hackney-if he is but sound and young-may be made to carry his rider all over the world, Montaigne. -as I intend to prove ;-and, without them, a descendant of Childers, or of Eclipse, may be ridden out in a season, and come to the dogs.When we feel our feet upon turf we shall never need the spur to put us into a gallop; and we shall not refuse any leap that comes in our way, When, too, we find ourselves upon a sound, firm, well-laid turnpikeroad, we shall not scruple to go along at a hand canter, or even a good spanking trot. But when, by accident, we get into a hard stony lane, our readers must not be impatient if we stay to pick our way a little. And, above all, they must bear with us while we go "gently over the stones." There cannot be a more certain co-lateral indication of that most anti-equestrian of all animals, a cockney, than the act of riding fast through the streets of London. It evinces an ambition altogether civic; and the man who practises it habitually, will surely, one day or other, end in being a common-councilman. I do not deny that, to canter along Pall-Mall, or |