GARRULITY IN SAYING GRACE.

335

time,- -“After this manner therefore pray ye,”—even in the terse, compact, comprehensive form of the Lord's Prayer.

the means of pampering the carcase. It is in some sort a parallel passage to the one just now quoted from South, that in which Elia professes to be theoretically no enemy to graces, but practically owning that (before meat especially) they seem to him to involve something awkward and unseasonable-the moment of appetite being, perhaps, the least fit season for that

exercise.

Montaigne on his travels found matter for note-taking and book-making in the fact that when he dined with the Cardinal de Sens, "the blessing and the grace, both very long, were said by two chaplains, who made responses to each other, in the same way as in the Church Service." Monsignor's grace before meat was pitched in a quite different key from that, the keynote of which Ben Jonson struck in perhaps his most characteristic comedy of manners, where we have "an old elder come from Banbury," who "puts in at meal tide, to praise the painful brethren," and " says a grace so long as his breath lasts him." "Dost thou ever," quoth Quarlous to Winwife, "think to bring thine ear or stomach to the patience of a dry grace, as long as thy table-cloth; and droned out till all the meat on thy board has forgot it was that day in the kitchen?" In the Diary of the Rev. John Ward, of Stratford-upon-Avon, occurs this entry : "Because conventicles were forbidden in Scotland, one there said grace of an hour and a half long, so couching a conventicle in it." The national usage of long graces, at least in some quarters, is a subject of frequent allusion by Burns; as in the verse

"The auld Guidmen, about the grace,

Frae side to side they bother,

Till some ane by his bonnet lays,

And gies them't like a tether,

Fu' lang that day.'

Or as in the Dedication to Gavin Hamilton: "Learn three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces, wi' weel-spread loaves, an' lang, wry faces." Or as in the first stanza of the Address to a Haggis, "Weel are ye worthy o' a grace as lang's my arm"-at which words Sir Walter Scott, in repeating them, would extend his arm over the haggis, a dish after his own heart in the days of his prime. In those days it was, at a dinner of the Abbotsford Hunt, that Dominie George Thomson (himself an eager sportsman) would, as Mr. Lockhart describes it, "favour us with a grace, in Burns's phrase, as long as my arm,' beginning with thanks to the Almighty, who had given man dominion over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, and expatiating on this text with so luculent a commentary, that Scott, who had been fumbling with his spoon long before he reached his Amen, could not help exclaiming as he sat down, 'Well done, Mr. George! I think we've had everything but the view holla!"" In the Haggis poem of Burns it is observable that when grace is said after meat, the very shortest possible form is muttered by the over-crammed master of the feast:

6

"Then auld guidman, maist like to rive,

Bethankit hums."

The one word in Burns's italics is seemingly identical with the two which Mrs. Gore indicates in small capitals, when she thus writes of a dinner in

unwonted company, and of a grace of unwonted longitude, in her Memoirs of a Peeress: "Unaccustomed to the jargon of people of their class, I confess that their familiar adaptation of scriptural language appeared to me little short of blasphemy; nor could I help admiring. by what copious replenishments of Sir Obadiah's East India Madeira, Mr. Bumptext repaid himself for the grace in many sections, wherein is diffused the simple thanksgiving before meat, expressed IN TWO WORDS by wiser Christians." Dr. Holmes is careful to make one of his venerable pastors eschew all verbiage when summoned at a dinner-party by that "peculiar look which he understood at once, as inviting his professional services;" the good old man is described as uttering a few simple words of gratitude, very quietly, -much to the satisfaction of some of the guests, who had expected one of "those elaborate effusions, with rolling up of the eyes and rhetorical accents, so frequent with eloquent divines when they address their Maker in genteel company." It is of New England the Doctor is treating, be it remembered; not of Old. And perhaps it should be added, of New England when it was newer than it is now; that is to say, older; only not Old. Edward Irving says in an Ordination charge, "Our fathers would not break bread without a solemn word of prayer which would weary a congregation in these times." The Presbyterian chaplain at Sir Duncan Campbell's castle of Ardenvohr, delays Dugald Dalgetty's assault on the huge piece of beef that smokes on the board, until the conclusion of a very long grace, betwixt every section of which the famished Rittmaster handles his knife and fork, as he might have done his musket or pike when going into action, and as often resigns them when the prolix chaplain commences another clause of his benediction. When Old Mortality is with difficulty prevailed upon to join his host, Jedediah Cleishbotham, (is it not written in the Tales of my Landlord?) in a single glass of liquor, and that on condition that he shall be permitted to name the pledge, he prefaces the latter (to the memory of Kirk martyrs) with a grace of about five minutes. When Lady Peveril in person marshals Major Bridgenorth and Alice to the separate room where ample good cheer is provided for them, it is emphatically noted that she "had even the patience to remain while Master Nehemiah Solsgrace pronounced a benediction of portentous length, as an introduction to the banquet," her presence indeed tending to make his prolusion last the longer, and become more than usually intricate and involved, inasmuch as he felt himself debarred from rounding it off with his wonted petition, pungently alliterative, for deliverance from Popery, Prelacy, and Peveril of the Peak. Dominie Sampson, called upon by his patron to say grace, "did accordingly pronounce a benediction, that exceeded in length any speech which Mannering had yet heard him utter.' (According to Miss Mannering, some twenty years later, the creature "pronounces a grace that sounds like the scream of the man in the square that used to cry mackarel.") Old Joseph, in Wuthering Heights, shrewdly conjectures that Catherine and Heathcliff are staying away from the supper-table in order to avoid hearing his protracted blessing: "And on their behalf he added that night a special prayer to the usual quarter of an hour's supplication before meat," and would have tacked another to the end of the grace but for a decisive interruption. The veteran was a relic of what Scott calls the righteous period,

"When folks conceived a grace

Of half an hour's space,

And rejoiced in a Friday's capon."

SPOILT SUPPER AND GRACELESS TEA. 337

Not that the eighteenth century, or its immediate predecessor, monopolized this conception-conception is a blessing, as Hamlet says. The author of Harold, describing a banquet under the royal roof of Edward the Confessor, is careful to tell us that, hungry as were the guests (William of Normandy and Odo of Bayeux included), it was not the custom of that holy court to fall to without due religious ceremonial. The rage for psalmsinging was then at its height in England; psalmody had excluded almost every other description of vocal music; and it is even said that great festivals on certain occasions were preluded by no less an effort of lungs and memory than the entire songs bequeathed to us by King David. This day, however, Hugoline, Edward's Norman chamberlain, had been pleased to abridge the length of the prolix grace, and the company were let off, to Edward's surprise and displeasure, with the curt and unseemly preparation of only nine psalms and one special hymn in honour of some obscure saint, to whom the day was dedicated.' This performed, the guests resumed their seats, while Edward murmured an apology to William for the strange omission of his chamberlain, thrice repeating to himself, deprecatingly, "Naught, naught―very naught."

The late Mr. Irving has been cited in the foregoing paragraph, as glancing at the impatience of degenerate to-day's men with what our fathers looked for as a matter of course. Of him a story is told by the Rev. Edward Craig, formerly of Edinburgh, who met him at a supper-party, some of the guests at which had three miles to walk home after that meal; before the commencement of which, however, the host requested the great preacher, then lionizing in the North, to read the Bible and expound. This he did, and without a sign of nearing an end until midnight. "The supper was of course either burnt up or grown cold. When the clock struck twelve, Mr. P. tremblingly and gently suggested to him that it might be desirable to draw to a close. 'Who art thou,' he replied, with prophetic energy, who darest to interrupt the man of God in the midst of his administrations?" " He pursued his commentary, it seems, for some time longer, then closed the book, and waving his long arm over the head of his host, uttered an audible and deliberate prayer that his offence might be forgiven him. But possibly Mr. Craig did not care to paint his picture in faint water-colours.

In his inimitable way, Elia relates his once drinking tea in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions, one of whom, before the first cup was handed round, put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to " 'say anything." The reverend brother replied that it was not a custom known in his church (before tea); and in this courteous evasion the other acquiesced for good manners' sake, or in compliance with a weak brother, so that the supplementary or tea-grace was waived altogether. Lamb speculates on the spirit with which Lucian might have painted two priests, of his religion, playing into each other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting a sacrifice-the hungry god, meantime, doubtful of his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away in the end without his

supper.

H'

FEARLESS AND DEFIANT.

ST. LUKE xviii. 2, 4.

It is

To fear God, is the And he is best pre

EAR what the unjust judge saith: "I fear not God, nor regard man." Fearing nothing, is his device. Few things are nobler than fearlessness proper. But there is such a thing as fearlessness improper, fearlessness to a fault. the devout man alone who can be bold-be bold and be not too bold; fearless in a good cause, but defiant only of evil; so that he may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me." He both fears God and regards man; but he so fears God as not to regard the menaces or machinations of wicked men. first article in the whole duty of man. pared to fear not what man shall do unto him, who makes it his law of life, and a law of love, to serve God with reverence and godly fear. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident." Fearlessness like this comes of the fear of God, and depends for very existence upon it; grows with its growth, strengthens with its strength, declines with its decline.

Fearlessness that is not the result of godly fear, may discover or assert itself in a variety of forms. Besides the defiant recklessness of the unjust judge, there is the fearlessness that arises from sheer stolidity, from mere incapacity to realize the nature or the extent of imminent peril. Dr. Croly observes of the singular presence of mind found in some men in the midst of universal perturbation, which is one of the most effective qualities of our nature, and is commonly attributed to the highest vigour of heart and understanding, that it is not always deserving of such proud parentage; it is sometimes the child of mere brute ignorance of danger, sometimes of habitual ferocity, sometimes of madness-of the fierce energy that leads the maniac safe over roofs and battlements.

a

But that may only indicate how inferior the poltron is to the brave in clearsightedness as well as in constitutional courage. There, may be, as Mr. Carlyle says, an absence of fear which arises from the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury: "We do not value the courage of the tiger highly. The tiger before a stronger foe-flies: the tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel." In another of his works the same writer recognizes in a certain notorious French adventuress " strength of transcendent audacity, amounting to the bastardheroic," yet accounts her the furthest in the world from a brave woman. Without intellect, imagination, power of attention, or any spiritual faculty, how brave were one, he exclaims,"with fit motive for it, such as hunger!" How much might one dare, by the simplest of methods, by not thinking of it, not knowing it! Shakspeare's Orleans will not accredit the English with any but stupid brute courage: if they had any apprehension, they would run away from him; and his reply to a companion's remark, that the island of England breeds very valiant creatures, their mastiffs being of unmatchable courage, is the exclamatory, "Foolish curs! that run winking into the mouth of a Russian bear, and have their heads crushed like rotten apples. You may just as well say,-that's a valiant flea, that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion." "Just, just," assents the Constable of France, it is on the eve of Agincourt,-" and the men do sympathise with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their wives." One of Byron's battle pictures includes

Mere virgin valour never dream'd of flying,

From ignorance of danger, which indues

Its votaries, like Innocence relying

On its own strength, with careless nerves and thews."

Discoursing of the possibility of some virtues coming to a