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THE

METROPOLITAN.

No. LXXII.

FOR APRIL, 1837.

THE TRISMEGISTIAN RECORDS.* | and as hardly to be pleased as you are

RECORD THE FIRST.

Which showeth that virtue is not altogether, phantom; and, if ardently pursued, will be assuredly overtaken-in the next world; and that the chase of it is, for the soul, rather a healthy amusement than otherwise; and for the body, as accidents, the climate, and the doctors determine.

SO

prejudiced. It must be confessed that, in general, you are but sorry orators; yet are you, for the most part, excellent listeners, and have very long ears, and by these you are as willingly led by those who know how to whistle the right tune into them, as is the antiquated spinster of fifty to the matrimonial altar of the youth of twenty-and-five. Though you are docile to your own injury, who more rampant and outrageous than yourselves when your caprices are thwarted, your prepossessions ridiculed, or your power doubted? But none of these irritatives will I willingly put to you. Your power I submissively acknowledge; for, like Cain, you are the prosecutor, the judge, and executioner of every cause that is brought, or which you bring, before you; your prejudices I venerate, for seeing the capacious tolerance that they have given you for all kinds of mediocrity, these Records may find much favour in your sight; and I trust that I shall conciliate your good-will, by writing as little as may be above your understanding, and beneath my own.

MANY years ago I said to myself, "Supposing that these Records should ever see the light, my readers and the public, it is thus that I will address you. Nothing do I know of your gentleness, therefore gentle I shall not call you-nor of your courtesy, therefore will I not strain mine, and address you as courteous-neither will I apostrophise you as intelligent, for of your judgment I am no judge. I might call you beneficent, which would be adventuring over much; to name you indulgent, I should run a much less risk, at least as respects yourselves. But I will endeavour to conciliate you by none of these epithets, seeing how random must be their application, and how unjust also in ninety-and-nine cases out of the hun-world reciprocate to me my conduct. I dred.

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No-all this is wrong-it is too truculent, my most excellent masters; you are not to be sneered into approbation. I will treat the world with respect-may the

fling not the hero of these Records into the midst of you rashly, suddenly, and unannounced. He shall not be found sprawling awkwardly among you, like a frog descended in a thunderstorm. These violences, these bold challenges for admiration, I abhor. In order that I may bring him forward before you gently, and, as it were, upon an inclined plane, I will revert-not quite back to the creation-I will pass silently over the Deluge-I will

be even more forbearing; for, as the scene of these records must be laid in England, I will only glance at the Norman Conquest, and hurrying over the wars of the rival roses, content myself with stating the astounding fact, that my hero had a father: and, as I like to leave a few difficult points for solution to the discrimination of my readers, they may determine for themselves whether this father had a son, and that son my hero.

Alfred Aspenall had been born to an unencumbered estate of some three thousand a year. Until the age of fifty he had lived for himself; and by so doing, he very nearly brought his life to a close at that comparatively early age. In this dilemma, after signing his will most unwillingly, after gazing intensely upon that most disastrous of all views, the receding physician, and seen him

"Take his leave with signs of sorrow,
Despairing of his fee to-morrow;"

and listening, with intolerable anguish, to the blessed tidings of the eternal joys that, in all human probability, awaited him in paradise, in the course of an hour; he rallied miraculously, refused his physic, became rapidly convalescent, and, for the first time in his life, fell desperately in love with virtue, and soon after with the young and gentle daughter of that most pitiable, yet often most worthy of all objects, a decayed gentleman.

When a man of fifty falls in love, and for the first time, it is an affair of some moment, seeing how precious, at that late period, every moment must be to him. I never yet saw the torch of Love properly depicted, either by poet or by painter. On its length should be truly represented a scale of years of human life. I might be very profound on this matter; but, for the present, I decline letting the reader drop the leaden plummet of his perception into the deep well of my knowledge, and shall content myself with saying, that, when Love's torch is lighted for an old gentleman of fifty, provided that the said old gentleman has not been burning it at both ends before, it burns with a clear steady flame, like a watch-fire upon a beacon, giving much more light than heat, and almost always acting as a cautionary light, warning the adventurous not to approach too closely.

It was Mr. Aspenall's grande passion, and coming late, he made the most of it, by making himself, and trying to make his young wife, very happy. How the early frosts of autumn could have induced the genial breath of spring to thaw and warm its congealing dews into affection, I know not, unless that

Love has an intellect that runs through all The scrutinous sciences; and, like a cunning poet,

Catches a quantity of every knowledge,
And brings all home, into one mystery,
Into one secret;

which, probably, we all shall know, if we should happen to fall in love at fifty. But I must take care not too often to let my Records run into blank verse, for if I do, it would cast a shadow of doubt over their authenticity, for which on the reader's account, I should be heartily sorry. A year had scarcely elapsed, after this eventful marriage, before it was made still more eventful, by the advent into this eventful world, of our hero, to the great delight, as all old chronicles say upon such events, of his happy parents. Indeed, this very young gentleman was their delight most emphatically, and was the only denght that ever I heard of that proved the truth of that fine line of the old poet"Our best delights are, evermore, born weeping."

Indeed, Trismegistus had not been in the house three minutes, before he let every one know that he had come home, and that he intended his voice shold be "the most potential" in the mansion. But, alas! no sooner had the young heir left off his long clothing for his short coating, than poor Alfred Aspenall, Esq., had brought home to him, in a most fearful manner, what a complete glucupicron is this life which we must endure, though we can no longer enjoy. He was fated to experience, in all its bitterness, that there is truth in the savage words

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Death suddenly closed the eyes of his beloved wife, and a little opened his own. She died of hysteria. The third paroxysm that attacked her proved fatal. It must be confessed that notwithstanding the many virtues of Squire Aspenall, dicovered and undiscovered, the latter bearing a tremendous disproportion to the former, that his wedding with his very young wife was a sort of an Old Robin Gray affair. We must suppose, at the time, that the merry archer had, after he had struck the fifty-year old heart of our hero's father, taken the bandage off his eyes, in order to examine the depth of the wound that he had made, and finding that he had not only made a wound, but a mistake also, like a good little boy as he is sometimes pleased to be, he lent the wounded the said bandage to staunch the great effusion of sighs, and as a first dressing for the wound; but the old gentleman not choosing to use it for so wholsome a purpose, clapped it partially over his own eyes, thus hood-winking them, and leaving his withered bosom bleeding. If he mistook the obedience of filial piety in his wife for the silent and deep feeling of attachment to his person, he was happy

in the mistake. That man is no philoso- and would have fallen to the earth, had pher who knows not that mistakes are the she not been caught in the arms of a most pregnant parents of our felicities. stranger, who made his appearance, as This we will prove at our leisure, and if by miracle. in the language of the world's commander -no mistake.

Mr. Alfred Aspenall had lived too long in the world to be surprised at any-Now, if there be any truth in the more thing. It was upon principle that he never occult doctrines of physiology, one of wondered. Having, in himself, contemthese hysterical attacks, perhaps two of them, had a great and lasting influence on the character of our hero, concerning whom I have thought fit to collect these Records; and, though the narration is a little more dolorous than I could wish, I shall give the history of these three paroxysms.

plated the greatest wonder of the world, at what had he to be surprised? Absolutely nothing. Moreover, the intruder was only the pale, silent, thin, young curate.

Seeing that, for the present, the insensible lady was properly bestowed, Mr. Aspenall bowed gratefully to the gentleman; then taking off his spectacles, and deliberately and carefully placing them on the book, to mark the exact place in which he had ceased to read, he put them both into his pocket, and began to assist the young divine in supporting and administering restoratives to his future bride.

Looking beneficently on the curate, he exclaimed. "It will soon be over. What exq.site sensibility my Griselda possesses! How she must love me! It was the passion that I threw into my voice. I was reading to her-did you hear me, Mr. St. John?"

Mr. Alfred Aspenall had a long, hollow, and bony nose. The skin was drawn over this osseous structure with e tightness of the parchment upon a kettledrum. Not a wrinkle was discoverable upon it. Its owner treated it with much reverence, and always blew it with becoming gravity. Judging from the resonance it made, it is no slander to say of it, that it was, like Slander herself, "trumpettongued." Is it to be wondered, then, that, having so goodly an engine, the possessor put it to manifold and singular uses? But there was one legitimate use to which he could not put it, owing to the tightness of the skin which bound it to his face, he could not turn it up, however sovereign might be his contempt, or sublime his disdain. As a kind of indemnity for this de-angel?" was the thought that flitted for privation of a faculty so natural to his nose, whenever he read, and he read often, he invariably read through it; and, like every other person with a similar habit, he fancied that he read superhumanly well.

Being thus prone, like Callicratides, adversa amica sedere, ut suave loquentem audiat; or, as the Irish express it more chastely and more classically, being mightily smitten with the sound of his - own voice, two days before his marriage he enticed his patient lady-love into an arbour, and commenced reading to her a love story. It was but a simple tale; and yet the grey-haired lover read it so sonorously, and with so much unction, that it visibly affected the gentle listener. The story book merely told of two young hearts divided for the interest of the old, and Hypocricy consecrating the double moral murder by the title of duty. Good Mr. Aspenall had just reached a part, where the broken-hearted lover obtains permission to take his final leave of his mistress, when he observed his listener tremble excessively. Proud of the success of his reading, he threw more energy into his voice, and more pathos into his tones, and so wonderful was the effect of his eloquence, that, when he read from the page these words-"Better, O my beloved, to die at once than linger thus through years of torture!" his betrothed suddenly jumped upon her feet, shrieked,

"No-yes-indeed, sir-ah! I was-that is-but she, the angel, revives."

"Why does he call my future wife an

one moment across his mind; but Vanity just then whispering in his ear "The poor young man has been excited by my reading," he dismissed it from his memory for ever.

"This is very foolish," said the lady, opening her eyes with a slight shudder.

"Not at all, my love; it was quite natural that you should feel acutely when I read to you as I just now read."

"And very wicked," she continued, throwing the slightest glance of reproach possible into a look that she cast upon her younger companion.

Say not so, my Griselda: you could not help it. I will be more careful of my thrilling tones for the future. We had better go up to the house. Mr. St. John, take Miss Grainger's other arm, she requires your support as much as mine. Gently, calm your agitation, my dear. Mr. St. John, I believe you to be a worthy young man-a very worthy young man; but it must be confessed-you must confess it yourself-you do not read well. I am not sorry you heard me read. I have no objection to read with you-come any evening you like after my marriage, and I will read over the whole ritual with you. Do not be depressed-I can improve you, sir-I say I can improve you."

"I am so much better now," said the gentle Griselda, "that your arm alone, sir, will be a sufficient support. Mr. St. John's time must be precious to him."

"What now is time-what eternity, to | taken-I'll speak to the doctor-you shall me?" said the young clergyman, in a low read the ceremony-you-there-you!!" voice that reached not the ears of Mr. Mr. Aspenall emphasised the last word Aspenall; for the lady, while he spoke, significantly, and then at the same mocontinued to speak also, and in a much ment, by means of his never-failing hold louder tone. of the button, pushing the fragile young "He had therefore at once better deliv-man first from him and then jerking him ver his message, or impart to Mr. Aspen- back violently, repeated "I say YOU!" all the business to which he owes this "Mr. Aspenall, Aspenall, you will drive visit." Having, as she finished these me mad!" words, reached the threshold of the door, she curtsied to the gentleman and disappeared within the house.

"No. no-I'll make a man of you-teach you how to read-come into my library directly-I'll give you the first lesson now: in three lessons there will not be a man shall read the marriage ceremony with you in the country-excepting myself." "You must excuse me I cannot." "Pooh, pooh!-you shall marry me, show you how to do it."

Mr. St. John was hurrying away also, when Mr. Aspenall caught him by the button of his coat, exclaiming, "Whither away so fast, good sir; whither away? Your message?-your business?-you came from your rector, no doubt. How-and does my good friend, Mr. Blubberbach ?" "Exceedingly well, sir; and-and-" "He sends his compliments to me?" "He does, sir."

"And will be glad of my company to dinner-five, five is his hour-is it not SO ?"

"It is, sir."

"I thought so; tell him I shall be sure to come." So having thus unconsciously invited himself to dinner, to the present amazement of the confused Mr. St. John, and to the future astonishment of the fat rector, the unwilling author of this mistake again essayed to escape, being infinitely obliged to Mr. Aspenall for having thus invented an excuse for him for being found in his pleasure grounds.

"I won't."

"I say you shall."

sir

"I won't, by G-d!" said the youth, as, almost exasperated into insanity, he burst away from his persecutor, and rushed out of the garden gate, from which some sounds not wholly unlike "hoary old villian" came undulating up the avenue.

Good Mr. Aspenall stood for some minutes astounded, and as fixed as one of the quaint old statues with which his garden was so populous, still holding the curate's button in his hand, with a triangular piece of cloth attached to it. When at length he found words, he thus delivered himself: "Here's a reprobate young parson for you! Comes to me from his rector with an invitation to dinner-picks But people who trespass upon the pro- up my future wife in a swoon-offer to perty of others should remember, that teach the ignorant young puppy how to there are other traps beside those that are read-consent to let him marry me-for constructed of steel. Mr. Aspenall, when all which he swears at me, dashes off with he got upon a favourite subject, would all show of contempt, and finally winds viciously, with all the fixidity of a vice, up his very clerical conduct by calling hold on a button, provided that that but-me-the owner of the whole parish and ton had a pair of open ears above it. In such conjunctures, he was more tenacious than a man-trap. Mr. Aspen all thus continued: "I know, sir, that one day you will become a worthy member of the church. But you should improve your reading, sir; you should indeed. You have seven bad accents, three erroneous suspensions of the voice, and two false emphases in the reading of the Lord's Prayer. You see I profit by my devotions. We have souls to be saved, sir, rich and poor: very few hearers have you, Mr. St. John, so attentive as myself -I wish you would show me a like courtesy, for you hardly seem to listen to a word that I say."

"Sir, I am indeed eager to depart; I have the most pressing business."

the patron of the living-'a hoary old villain! I have a great mind to go with this button in my hand, and lay it, with my complaint, before the doctor."

However, he first went into the room where Miss Grainger was sitting, and having vented his indignation before her, she soon soothed him into a better frame of mind, and easily prevailed upon him to take no notice whatever of the apparent rudeness of the young curate. Indeed she did more. In order that the sight of the black button and well worn piece of cloth that had been torn from the breast of St. John, might not, by being intruded on the sight of her future husband, exasperate him, she put them by very carefully in her work-basket, and locked them up afterwards in one of the most secret recesses of her private drawers.

"Not at all. Disquiet not yourself-do not be dispirited-you read better than Dr. Blubberbach-infinitely. You can A great deal to the surprise, and not less oblige me-you know that I am to be mar- to the contentment of the jolly rector, ried next Monday morning: the doctor, punctually at five came Mr. Aspenall, and, by his snufling reading, will mar the ritual, unembarrassed by explanations, enjoyed sir-he will mar it-no offence shall be his dinner quite as heartily as if he had

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stroyed the effect of that beautiful psalm, the thirty-ninth, that he pretended to read this morning? No emphasis-no unction. When he came to the verse 'Lord, let me know my end, and the number of my days, that I may be certified how long I have to live,' he seemed to be almost in the act of dying-the words laboured through his throat as if struggling with the death rattle."

"O, spare him!"

The history of the second fit is as follows. At the appointed time Mr. Aspenall was married by Dr. Blubberbach to Miss Grainger in a most slovenly manner; and, according to the bridegroom, as far as spoiling the ceremony by all manners of faults of pronunciation could invalidate a marriage, he was scarcely married "Very good of you-you are all goodat all; however, the rector more than ness. But still you must also have observed balanced the accounts in his own favour the very improper manner in which he got by the masterly manner in which he play-through the last verse-a verse that is so ed his part at the ensuing dinner. In the meantime, each succeeding Sunday, the young curate read worse and worse. His voice grew husky and hollow, and was at last quite distressing to hear. Mr Aspenall forgot his anger, and pitied him extremely. To all overtures the curate was insensible. He would neither come to breakfast, to dinner, or to tea-he could not even be bribed by the inestimable advantage held out to him of being taught to read gratuitously.

simple yet so beautiful. Instead of rallying up his voice at 'O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength; before Í go hence and be seen no more, he seemed to have lost all management of his tones-it was no longer a voice that was heard, but something that might have been deemed to be the echoes of the rustling of the wings of death in the vaultings of a corroding heart."

"O! spare me!"--the wife let fall her head frantically upon the shoulders of the old man, and catching him to her bosom, burst into tears. Why, let philosophy determine.

Mrs. Aspenall soon recovered her selfpossession, and looking up into her husband's face, with a smile of resignation that would have poured down glory on the brow of a martyred saint, said, "Let us speak no more about Mr. St. John-the subject ispainful to me."

Mrs. Aspenall had been enceinte about four months with this most singular of all Trismegistuses, whose wanderings are the subject of these records, when she return- "Compose yourself, my gentle Griselda ed, one Sunday, duly escorted by her lov--she doats on me-but I am too eloquent. ing lord, from hearing the morning ser- I must simplify my language—I am a hapvice at the parish church. She was in py man." miserable spirits. She had been regarding, with painful anxiety, the contrast between matured spirituality and happy animality. Emanuel St. John had, with the pallor of death on his countenance, wasted figure, and with reedy and broken voice, performed divine service and preached above, whilst, with rounded figure and rubicund visage, deeply ensconced in crimson-velveted cushions in his pew below, Dr. Blubberbach did all but dose beneath. The lady returned home in silent abstraction; and when, with a becoming marital assiduity, Mr. Aspenall had arranged pillows for her on the sofa, the fololwing conversation ensued.

Mr. Aspenall first, with the gallantry of la vieille cour, which is laudable, and the affection of a doating husband, which is much better, taking hold of the white, listless, almost lifeless hand of his lady, pressed it to his lips, and said, "My Griselda, I observe with pain your increasing dislike to that perverse and very opinionated young divine, Mr. St. John. You always treated him with indifference -deservedly-your feeling in his disfavour has lately assumed a character still more positive-you shall suffer this infliction no longer-his enunciation has become intolerable. Till your spirits be improved we will have divine service at home."

"And no wonder; (half aside;) the puppy was too proud to take lessons;" and then in his usual tone he continued, " 'as, my Griselda, the weather is really too warm to permit us to think of going abroad, I will undo all the disagreeable impressions of the morning-place that pillow a little more under that pretty pale cheek-there, your tiny little feet a little more this way-are you now perfectlyentirely comfortably well? Listen to me. I will read the whole morning service over to you as it ought to be read, and then perhaps, Blair's excellent sermon against vanity. Depend upon it, it will have a decidedly different effect upon you than has had the sorry attempt at the reading of the morning."

It had indeed.

This exemplary husband had scarcely got into the litany, before his lady was enjoying a more sound and refreshing sleep than had fallen to her lot for months. The good man read on, performing at once the several parts of parson, clerk, and congregation. Nor did the lady awake until the cessation of his voice pro"O! most gladly." claimed the finish of the service. She "Did you observe, my love, how he de- then drew aside the cambric handkerchief

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