Sympathies." Even in the " Essay on Roast Pig," a mere epicure's dream, it would seem, the moral truth and delicacy of his mind appears in that story of his boyhood about the plumcake, consecrated (Corban) to his individual palate by his affectionate aunt, but in "the coxcombry of taught-charity" given away by him to a beggar, the whole cake. Not altogether prepared for a moral discussion, however brief, the reader lets the story go with the bundle of conceits with which it is wrapt. But in his letter to Coleridge, (Letters, Vol. 11. p. 72,) the germ of the " Dissertation," we find that the giving away of the cake was a clear case of conscience with him, and that he bitterly felt he had done wrong. And he did right to feel so. The sacred purposes of affection are not to be frustrated but upon the most unquestionable emergencies. Is it irreverent to fancy a slight resemblance between the moral aspect of the little incident related by Lamb, and that divine sensibility, which, defending the generous homage of the sister of Lazarus, postponed the claims of the poor and allowed the waste of that costly ointment? But we are transgressing our limits, without any prospect of doing justice to the manifold attractions of our author, without a word about the noble philosophy of "Old China," without a look into the "South Sea House," or a bow to "The Superannuated Man" as "he walks about" no longer to and from." His style we have pronounced all but perfect; the true picture of the thought. It is a style that may safely be proposed as a model. Let those imitate it who can. The attempt will do no injury. It is scarcely possible to study it in order to the appreciation of its beauties, without benefit to one's taste. It feeds as well as pleases us. Unlike the style of some other popular works that we might name, the reading of which is "a pleasure bordering almost on pain, from the fierceness and insanity of the relish," the style of Elia is healthy and invigorating, "no less provocative of the appetite and wholesome for the whole mental constitution," than it is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate." The longest periods are never tangled or involved, and yet they go winding on into a thousand little delicacies and qualifications, as, to mention one out of many instances at hand, in "The Chapter on Ears," when he describes the effect upon his undeveloped musical sense of his "good Catholic friend's" organ. "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 wits' 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, Edion, 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 pleasant-countenanced host and hostess." The defects of Lamb's style are chiefly those of carelessness. When he errs, we are persuaded he knew better. His negligence, however, heightens rather than injures the general effect. An air of extreme accuracy would have led to the suspicion that the singular beauties of his style, his old-English modes of expression, were the result of hard study rather than the inspirations of his own mind, cast from the first in the same mould with those racy old writers. We have room only to say a word of his biographer. He has executed his work with entire affection, and with the poetic grace to be looked for from the author of Ion. We have the impression that his language is sometimes a little too tender and fine. Lamb is dead; and that perhaps makes all the difference. But we are reminded of his earnest expostulation with Coleridge, "For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentlehearted in print. * *My sentiment is long since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking." We are not compe tent to say whether Mr. Talfourd has used judgment in his selections, for it would seem that he could scarcely fail. Every line of Lamb's, which he has given us, is characteristic and worth preserving. On the whole, we have a couple of rare volumes in "The Life and Letters." They show us, what indeed we could not have doubted before, that the Essays of Elia were not "put together like clockwork," but grew, like all nature's planting, and we welcome the corroboration; and they make us to know still more intimately, and love still more warmly, the beautiful Essayist, the contented Londoner, the toil-worn clerk of thirty years' standing, the finest of humorists, the most faithful of brothers. W. H. F. ART. V. — NOTICES OF THE LATE REV. NOAH WORCESTER, D. D. THE memory of Dr. Worcester is entitled to special honor in the pages of this Journal. He was the first sole editor of the "Christian Disciple," of which "The Examiner" is the successor, or continuation; and, for now more than a quarter of a century, has he been laboring by his persuasive writings and life, to promote those great principles of truth and charity, to which our work is devoted. That we might with some tolerable fidelity discharge what we counted but a just debt of respect and gratitude, we had collected the leading incidents of his history, and were just setting them in order, when we were informed, that with other manuscripts, Dr. Worcester has left behind him for the benefit of his children an Autobiography, which, we are gratified to learn, will shortly be published. To that, as of course the most authentic, and, it may easily be anticipated, the most satisfactory account that can be furnished, we take pleasure in referring our readers. And, though at some effort of self-denial and serious sacrifice of our choicest materials, we must content ourselves with only adverting to those prominent incidents, which contributed most to the development of his faculties, and led to the adoption of those enlightened views of truth, and engaging traits of character in the defence of them, which have given to his name its wide reputation, and in the enduring power of which he still lives and will long continue to instruct and bless. Noah Worcester was one among the signal examples, which it pleases God, the Father of our spirits and the arbiter of our lot, not seldom to exhibit, of an individual rising from an obscure condition, and amidst what are usually counted disadvantages to eminent usefulness and fame. The bare mention of the books of which he was the author, and of that truly philanthropic association, of which he was the founder, is sufficient to establish his claims to more than a common respect. Among works of controversial theology, his "Bible News" will readily be numbered with the most ingenious and skilful, even by those whom it fails to convince. And, when we have mentioned him also as originating the "Massachusetts Peace Society," we have pointed to his peculiar and appropriate distinction, on which, combined with his faithful and successful efforts in its cause, will rest his permanent and incontestable claims to a place with the benefactors of mankind. Of this society he was absolutely the founder. We shall have occasion to refer to it again. We may now only remark, that its object, being nothing less than the extermination of war and the diffusion of peace and good will among nations and individuals, was altogether in accordance with his own benevolent spirit, and seldom is there to be traced in the offspring so exact a resemblance of the parent. Of an individual, who has already exerted, and we make no pretensions to prophecy when we say, who is destined to exert so beneficial an influence on the opinions and interests of his fellow-men, it cannot be a subject of indifference to know, that his origin was exceedingly humble, and his early advantages few. He was the eldest of sixteen children of a farmer in a small village of New Hampshire, a man of unusual vigor of mind, but without any opportunities of education for himself, and without the means of furnishing them for his children. It is one of the few incidents which cannot be passed over in the early life of one, who afterwards contributed so much by his pen to the instruction of others, that "his father being too poor to furnish him with paper, Noah learnt to write principally on birch bark." And we commend, in passing, this circumstance to the consideration of those of our children and youth, who enjoy the very profusion of the ment, means and implements of instruction, and whose danger or temptation seems to lie not in the want, but in the fulness of their privileges. May it not be feared of some, that, while a bountiful Providence is giving them "their heart's desire," and multiplying the resources of their knowledge and enjoythere may be found, as with his favored children of former days, insensibility of heart and "leanness of soul?" Were we not unwilling to anticipate Mr. Worcester's own recital, we should here detail some of the touching incidents of his youth. And possibly we should amuse some of our readers with the contrast of "the Friend of Peace" and the meek "Patriarch" they have seen, with the youthful soldier, or rather we must say "Fife Major" (for that was his department of military service) at sixteen, quickening by his stirring melody the troops at Bunker Hill in 1775, and afterwards at the memorable fight of Bennington in 1777. He was attached to one of the regiments quartered in Cambridge under General Washington, and this, which could have amounted at most to being lodged within the enclosures of Harvard College, was, to adopt the expression of one, who knew his whole history, "the only taste he ever had of an academic education." Nor, to pass over other occupations of the most secular nature, as of a shoemaker, supplying his family and his neighbors with an indispensable commodity, at the same time that he was cultivating his farm, we may contrast with the quiet and retired habits of his advanced years, the duties of the successive offices he held soon after he had attained the manly age, and before he became established in the ministry. It was his happiness early to acquire the esteem and confidence of the people where he dwelt; so that of the town in his native New Hampshire, of which he was afterwards the pastor, he was first the schoolmaster, and then town-clerk, a justice of the peace, one of its selectmen, and finally its representative to the State legislature. The discernment and partiality of a then aged pastor singled out his young hearer as a fit person for his successor; and it was by his cordial recommendation, and by the no less cordial choice of the people, that Mr. Worcester was ordained the minister of Thornton. Here now the lover of dates and the recorder of seasons, who thinks that nothing is told unless the month and the year are told also, will doubtless be instant with the inquiry, in what year was he settled, and how long was his min |