His grace * was as long as his face. The gnat, like Macbeth's “Amen,” stuck in his throat; but the camel slid down merrily. What a weary, working-day world would this have been under his unhospitable dominion! ** How unlovely and lachrymose! how sectarian and sinister! A bumper of bitters, to be swallowed with a rising gorge, and a wry face! All literature would have resolved itself into--
* One Lady D'Arcy, a well-jointured, puritanical widow, having invited the next heir in the entail to dine with her, asked him to say grace. The young gentleman, thinking that her ladyship had lived quite long enough, expressed his wishes thus graciously:--
“Good Lord of thy mercy, Take my good Lady D'Arcy Unto her heavenly throne; That I, little Frank, May sit in my rank, And keep a good house of my own!”
** John Knox proclaimed the mild sentence, which was loudly re-echoed by his disciples, that the idolator should die the death, in plain English (or rather, God be thanked! in plain Scotch) that every Catholic should be hanged. The bare toleration of prelacy--of the Protestant prelacy!--was the guilt of soul-murder. These were the merciful Christians! the sainted martyrs! who conducted the inquisitorial tyranny of the high commission, and imposed the test of that piece of impious buffoonery, the “Holy League and Covenant!!” who visited the west of Scotland with the free quarters of the military, and triumphed so brutally over the unfortunate, patriotic and gallant Montrose. The Scotch Presbyterians enacted that each episcopalian was liable to transportation who should baptize a child, or officiate as a clergyman to more than Jour persons, besides the members of his own family!
--“_The plain Pathway to Penuriousness;” Peachwns “Worth of a Penny, or a caution to keep Money;” and the “Key to unknowne Knowledge, or a Shop of Five Windows_”
“Which if you do open, to cheapen and copen,
You will be unwilling, for many a shilling,
To part with the profit that you shall have of it;”
and the drama, which, whether considered as a school of eloquence or a popular entertainment, is entitled to national regard, would have been proscribed, because--having neither soul for sentiment, eye for beauty, nor ear for poetry, it was his pleasure to be displeased. His humanity may be summed up in one short sentence, “I will take care, my dear brother, you shall not keep your bed in sickness, for I will take it from under you.” There are two reasons why we don't trust a man--one, because we don't know him, and the other because we do. Such a man would have shouted “_Hosan-nah!_” when the Saviour entered Jerusalem in triumph; and cried “_Crucify him!_” when he went up the mountain to die.