LEIGH HUNT LEIGH HUNT, born in Southgate, Eng., 1784; died in 1859. He began writing poetry in his juvenile years. In 1808 he, with his brother, established a newspaper, called the "Examiner." The severity of its political criticisms finally landed Leigh Hunt in jail, where he continued editing his paper and wrote many of his most noted poems. He was an industrious author, who turned out many books, most of which are not much known to the reading public to-day. A noted incident of his life was a transient association with Lord Byron, which ended in a total rupture of their friendship. A ABOU BEN ADHEM BOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!) And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An angel writing in a book of gold:— Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, "What writest thou?"-The vision rais'd its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord, 66 But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then, The angel wrote, and vanish'd. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. CHARACTERISTICS OF BYRON HE E was anxious to show you that he possessed no Shakespeare or Milton; "because,” he said, “I have been accused of borrowing from them!" He affected to doubt whether Shakespeare was so great a genius as he has been taken for, and whether fashion had not a great deal to do with it. Spenser he could not read-at least he said so. All the gusto of that most poetical of the poets went with him for nothing. I lent him a volume of the Faerie Queene, and he said he would try to like it. Next day he brought it to my study window, and said: Here, Hunt, here is your Spenser. I cannot see anything in him;" and he seemed anxious that I should take it out of his hands, as if he was afraid of being accused of copying so poor a writer. That he saw nothing in Spenser is not likely; but I really do not think that he saw much. Spenser was too much out of the world, and he too much in it. ... He would make confessions of vanity, or some other faults, or of inaptitude for a particular species of writing, partly to sound what you thought of it, partly that while you gave him credit for the humility, you were to protest against the concession. All the perversity of his spoiled nature would then come into play; and it was in these, and similar perplexities, that the main difficulty of living with him consisted. If you made everything tell in his favor, as most people did, he was pleased with you for not differing with him; but then nothing was gained. He lumped you with the rest, and was prepared to think as little of you in the particular as he did of anyone else. If you contested a claim, or allowed him to be right in a concession, he could neither argue the point nor readily concede it. He was only mortified, and would take his revenge. Lastly, if you behaved, like his admirers in general, in a sulky or disputatious manner, but naturally, and as if you had a right to your jest and your independence-whether to differ or admire, and apart from an eternal consideration for himself— he thought it an assumption, and would perplex you with all the airs and humors of an insulted beauty. Then nobody could rely, for a comfortable intercourse with him, either upon admissions or nonadmissions, or even upon flattery itself. An immeasurable vanity kept even his adorers at a distance; like Xerxes enthroned with his millions a mile off. And if in a fit of desperation he condescended to come close, and be fond, he laughed at you for thinking you were of consequence to him, if you were taken in; and hated you if you stood out, which was to think yourself of greater consequence. Neither would a knowledge of all this, if you made him conscious, have lowered his self-admiration a jot. He would have thought it the mark of a great man-a noble capriciousness-an evidence of power, which none but the Alexanders and Napoleons of the intellectual world could venture upon. 66 Mr. Hazlitt had some reason to call him a sublime coxcomb." Who but he (or Rochester, perhaps, whom he resembled) would have thought of avoiding Shakespeare, lest he should be thought to owe him anything? And talking of Napoleon-he delighted, when he took the additional name of Noel, in consequence of his marriage with an heiress, to sign himself "N. B.," "because," said he, "Bonaparte and I are the only public persons whose initials are the same."-Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries. THE THE MONTHLY NURSE HE Monthly Nurse-taking the class in the lump, without such exceptions as will be noticed before we conclude—is a middle-aged, motherly sort of a gossiping, hushing, flattering, dictatorial, knowing, ignorant, not very delicate, comfortable, uneasy, slip-shod kind of a blinking individual, between asleep and awake, whose business it is-under Providence and the doctor-to see that a child be not ushered with too little officiousness into the world, nor brought up with too much good sense during the first month of its existence. All grown people, with her (excepting her own family), consist of wives who are brought to bed and husbands who are bound to be extremely sensible of the supremacy of that event; and all the rising generation are infants in laced caps, not five weeks old, with incessant thirst, screaming faces, thumpable backs, and red little minikin hands tipped with hints of nails. She is the only maker of caudle in the world. She takes snuff ostentatiously, drams advisedly, tea incessantly, advice indignantly, a nap when she can get it, cold whenever there is a crick in the door, and the remainder of whatsoever her mistress leaves to eat or drink, provided it is what somebody else would like to have. But she drinks rather than eats. She has not the relish for a "bit o' dinner" that the servant-maid has; though nobody but the washerwoman beats her at a dish o' tea," or that which "keeps cold out of the stomach and puts weakness into it. If she is thin, she is generally straight as a stick, being of a condition of body that not even drams will tumefy. If she is fat, she is one of the fubsiest of the cosey, though rheumatic withal, and requiring a complexional good nature to settle the irritabilities of her position and turn 66 " the balance in favor of comfort and hope. She is the victim of watching; the arbitress of her superiors; the servant, yet rival, of doctors; the opposer of innovations; the regretter of all old household religions as to pap-boats, cradles, and swatches; the inhabitant of a hundred bedrooms; the Juno Lucina of the ancients, or goddess of childbirth, in the likeness of a cook-maid. Her greatest consolation under a death (next to the corner-cupboard and the not having had her advice taken about a piece of flannel) is the handsomeness of the corpse; and her greatest pleasure in life is when lady and baby are both gone to sleep, the fire bright, the kettle boiling, and her corns quiescent. She then first takes a pinch of snuff, by way of pungent anticipation of bliss, or as a sort of concentrated essence of satisfaction; then a glass of spirits; then puts the water into the teapot; then takes another glass of spirits (the last having been a small one, and the coming tea affording a "counteraction"); then smooths down her apron, adjusts herself in her armchair, pours out the first cup of tea, and sits for a minute or two staring at the fire, with the solid complacency of an owl,—perhaps not without something of his snore, between wheeze and snuff-box. Good and ill nature, as in the case of every one else, make the great difference between the endurability, or otherwise, of this personage in your house; and the same qualities in the master and mistress, together with the amount of their good sense, or the want of it, have a like reaction. The good or ill, therefore, that is here said of the class in general becomes applicable to the individual accordingly. But as all people will get what power they can, the pleasant by pleasant means, and the unpleasant by the reverse, so the office of the Monthly Nurse, be her temper and nature what it will, is one that emphatically exposes her to temptation that way: and |