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THE CHATEAU. 

 A PAPER OP MY UNCLE'S. 



" We have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar things super- 

 natural and causeless. Hence it is, that we make trifles of terrors ; esconcing 

 ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown 

 fear." _4f/' Well that Ends Well. 



EVERY man who is disposed, as he imagines, to retirement, should 

 try its strength when totally divested of its pleasures. Loneliness is a 

 formidable antagonist, to those, at least, whose lives have been expended 

 in the daily intercourse of towns ; of which we seriously admonish their 

 habitual inhabitant, on no account to take a peevish leave, without a 

 little previous probation of the woods and groves in winter. Let our 

 half-intended solitaire, without the aid of extraordinary stimulants, 

 whether bodily or mental, seek his hermitage on an inclement day, when 

 the atmosphere has touched his temperament ; when his pulse is low, the 

 spirits flaccid, and the heavens are overcast ; when the horizon is a hard 

 outline, resting on a sullen, sunless sky : no sound around him but a 

 fitful gust, or the lugubrious moaning of an autumnal day ; when the 

 rooks commence their visits to their nests, and the greenfinches flock, 

 and the sere honors of the wood are scattered by the breath of heaven, 

 like the deciduous generations of mankind. He will then find the 

 "genius loci" arrayed in his repulsive influence, and may infer from his 

 impressions whether he is equal to that conflict, in which the gaiety of 

 youth, and even more, the staid sobriety of age, have so frequently, so 

 forlornly, and confessedly succumbed. If thus conditioned as to heaven 

 and earth, with a bottle of good Bordeaux, for we allow him that, and a 

 Seneca in his pocket, he can relish both the author and his wine, the 

 hermit is victorious. But we admit, in this experiment, of no stiff 

 reeking mixtures, half and half, no shutting out of daylight ere the 

 time, no cribbage-board and pot-companion ; no, we admit of no such 

 monstrous odds against the mute and invisible spirit of seclusion as the 

 coward asked against the ghost " with the fellow of his heart, and 

 brandy, and a blunderbuss, he dared it to approach him !" 



It is the business of the reader to remember where we left " my 

 uncle" in our last ; and if he has forgotten the tenor and conclusion of 

 the " Table d'Hote," we commend him to our August number, that his 

 memory may be refreshed, and his combining faculty enabled to pursue 

 the course of our relation ; for it is absolutely necessary that a narrative 

 should be intelligible, indeed, parliamentary speeches are the only spe- 

 cies of intellectual effusion exonerated from the vulgar laws of reason 

 and deduction ; whence it is, that nineteen out of twenty contributions 

 which assail us from the villas of senatorial ease are rejected, as requir- 

 ing the Sibylline exposition ; for, notwithstanding all our gallantry, we 

 hold it an inviolable rule to close the porch of our fastidious coryphaeus 

 against all intrusions of old women, a resolution taken with the less 

 compunction, as we see so many sanctuaries opened as the refuge of their 

 harmless dotage and prolixity. 



There is something so ungracious in the frequent introduction of that 

 selfish pronoun which supplies us with the etymon of egotism, that we 



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