EXTRACT FROM ANOTHER TO THE SAME.

THE BERKELEIAN SYSTEM.

You know, my dear Tom, that the objects we see,
Are not, on the whole, what we take 'em to be;
And that colour, shape, surface, are modifications,
At least more or less, of our purblind sensations.
A set now of needles, like certain smooth souls,
Are as rough, on inspection, as old iron poles ;
The sun, to us dim little critics, Lord love us !
Seems hardly worth measuring, he's so much above

And mountains, like lovers, whatever their hue,
When kept at a distance, are sure to look blue.

The thing is notorious. Nay, as for that matter,
To talk about colour is only to chatter ;
For like a complexion put on for the night,
'Tis all but a business of optics and light;
And a pair of red garters, although 'twould be wrong

to

Are just, in the dark,-like the girl they belong to.

This truth, though it's stale to the present deep age,
Had once such effect on a good mitred sage,
That mistrusting those brilliant deceivers the eyes,
He resolved to put faith in no sort of disguise ;
And (how he contrived, I don't know, with St. Paul)
Concluded there really was nothing at all.

Friends, pictures, books, gardens, like things in

romances,

Did he cry,

To him were but fictions,-agreeable fancies ; And things not so pleasant, of course, such as aches, Wounds, fractures, and thumps, were but cruel mistakes. “ A thought strikes me,” you

turn'd round to know What thought 'twas he spoke of, a kick or bon-mot; Had your brains been displaced by a bullet of lead, 'Twas a painful idea had got into your head; And did any one speak of a wreck on the ocean, He fell, as the crew had done, into a notion.

TO WILLIAM HAZLITT.

Et modd quà nostri spatiantur in urbe Quirites,
Et modd villarum proxima rura placent.

Miron, Eleg. 7.
Enjoying now the range of town at ease,
And now the neighb'ring rural villages.

Dear Hazlitt, whose tact intellectual is such
That it seems to feel truth, as one's fingers do

touch,

Who in politics, arts, metaphysics, poetics,
To critics in these times, are health to cosmetics,
And nevertheless,-or I rather should say,
For that very reason,-can relish boy's play,

And turning on all sides, through pleasures and

cares,

Find nothing more precious than laughs and fresh

airs ;

a

One's life, I conceive, might go prettily down
In a due easy mixture of country and town;
Not after the fashion of most with two houses,
Who gossip, and gape, and just follow their spouses,
And let their abode be wherever it will,
Are the same vacant, house-keeping animals still ;-
But with due sense of each, and of all that it

yields, In the town, of the town,-in the fields, of the

fields; In the one, for example, to feel as we go on, That 'streets are about us, arts, people, and so on;

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