1830.] . The Musing Musician. 409 



trivial objects had become hallowed in my absence. How anxiously I 

 longed to see the " Times :" even the advertisements would have been 

 welcome. 



From this dream, or whatever it may be called, I was at length 

 aroused by the actual breaking up of the party. They were positively 

 going. I had glimpses at first, and then full views, of hats and cloaks 

 my dungeon-bolts were withdrawn. Alas ! 1 felt myself in the situa- 

 tion of the " Prisoner of Chillon," so affectingly described by our great 

 poet. I had become so accustomed to my confinement, that I was almost 

 indifferent to release and at length 



" Regained my freedom with a sigh !" 



I resembled a person that was so exceedingly hungry that he had lost 

 his appetite. I would as soon stay as go. I had no relish for home 

 indeed I had almost forgotten the way to it. With some difficulty I 

 succeeded in tracing it out, and reached it in time for breakfast. There, 

 faithful as the eggs and coffee themselves, presided my wife, who, not- 

 withstanding my friend, had never even dreamed of eloping. The girls 

 were as guiltless of marriage, and the boys as innocent of music, as when 

 I left them. One of them was spoiling my favourite violin and a 

 newly-published air at the same moment ; and the other was, as usual, 

 playing the jew's-harp to a favourite poodle, who sat shaking his ears 

 over it with all the solemnity of a profoundly fashionable critic at a 

 composition of Handel's. B. 



PAUAGRAPHS ON PREJUDICE I BY THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



IT is not an easy matter to distinguish between true and false preju- 

 dice ; for it is a mistake to suppose that all prejudices are false. Pre- 

 judice is properly an opinion or feeling, not for which there is no reason, 

 but of which we cannot render a satisfactory account on the spot. It is 

 not always possible to assign a " reason for the faith that is in us," not 

 even if we take time and summon up all our strength ; but it does not 

 therefore follow that our faith is hollow and unfounded. A false impres- 

 sion may be defined to be an effect without a cause, or without any ade- 

 quate one; but the effect may remain and be true, though the cause is 

 concealed or forgotten. The grounds of our opinions and tastes may be 

 deep, and be scattered over a large surface ; they may be various, 

 remote, and complicated ; but the result will be sound and true, if they 

 have existed at all, though we may not be able to analyse them into 

 classes, or to recal the particular time, place, and circumstances of each 

 individual case or branch of the evidence. The materials of thought and 

 feeling, the body of facts and experience, are infinite, are constantly 

 going on around us, and acting to produce an impression of good or evil, 

 of assent or dissent to certain inferences ; but to require that we should 

 be prepared to retain the whole of this mass of experience in our memory, 

 to resolve it into its component parts, and be able to quote chapter 

 and verse for every conclusion we unavoidably draw from it, or else to 

 discard the whole together as unworthy the attention of a rational 

 being, is to betray an utter ignorance both of the limits and the several 

 uses of the human capacity. The feeling of the truth of anything, or 



M.M. New Series. VOL. X. No. 58. 3 F 



