holding it airily and uncompress'd, looks round him, as if he fought for an object to share it with In doing this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate the arteries beat all chearily together, and every power which sustained life, perform'd it with so little friction, that 'rwould have confounded the most physical precieuse in France: with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine - I'm confident, said I to myself, I should have overfet her creed. The acceffion of that idea, carried nature, at that time, as high as she could go I was / at peace with the world before, and this finish'd the treaty with myself ー I - Now, was I a King of France, cried what a moment for an orphan to have begg'd his father's portinanteau of me! THE THE MONK. CALAIS. I had scarce utter'd the words, when a poor monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his convent. No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies - or one man may be generous, as another man is puissant - fed non, quo ad hanc or be it as it may for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the saine causes, for ought I know, which influence the tides themselves- 'twould oft be no difcredit to us, to suppose it was so: I'm sure at least for my. self, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied, to have it said by the world, "I had had an affair with the moon, in which "there was neither fin nor shame," than have it pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much of both. The moment I But be this as it may. cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single fous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket - button'd it up set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him: there was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deferved better. The monk; as I judged from the break in his tonfure, a few scatter'd white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy - but from his eyes, and that fort of fire which was in them, which feemed more temper'd by courtesy than years, could be no more than fixty - Truth might lie between - He was certainly fixtyfive; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something feem'd to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account, It was one of those heads, which Guido has often painted - mild, pale - penetrating, free from all common-place ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth it look'd forwards; but look'd, as if it look'd at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows: but it would have suited a Bramin, and had I met it upon the plains of Indoftan, I had reverenced it. The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither elegant or othorwife, but as character and expression made it so: it was a thin, spare form, something above the common fize, if it loft not the distintion by a bend forwards in the figure but it was the attitude of Intreaty; and as it now stands presented to my imagination, it gain'd more than it loft by it. When he had enter'd the room three paces, he stood still; ond laying his left hand upon his breast, (a slender white staff with which he journey'd being in his right) - when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order and did it with fo fimple a grace and such an air of depreca tion was there in the whole cast of his look and figure - I was bewitch'd not to have been struck with it A better reason was, I had predetermi ned not to give him a fingle sous. autem that THE MONK. CALAIS. - 'Tis very true, said I, replying to a caft - upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address and 'tis very true heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I Lear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it. As I pronounced the words great claims, he gave a flight glance with his eye downwards upon the fleeve of his tunick I felt the full force of the appeal - I acknowledge it, said I a coarse habit, and that but once in three years, with meagre diet -- are no great matters; and the true point of pity is, as they can be earn'd in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by preffing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm the captive who lies down counting over and over again the days of his afflictions, languishes alfo for his share of it; and had you been of the order of mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis, |