4 On Personal Identity. [JAN. 



and avocations that draw off his attention from the sole objects of our 

 idolatry, and which seem to us mere impertinences and waste of time ? 

 In that case, we at once lose all patience, and exclaim indignantly, " Give 

 us back our taste, and keep your pictures !" It is not we who should 

 envy them the possession of the treasure, but they who should envy us 

 the true and exclusive enjoyment of it. A similar train of feeling seems 

 to have dictated Warton's spirited Sonnet on visiting Wilton-House :- 



" From Pembroke's princely dome, where mimic art 



Decks with a magic hand the dazzling 1 bowers, 



Its living hues where the warm pencil pours, 



And breathing forms from the rude marble start, 



How to life's humbler scene can I depart ? 



My breast all glowing from those gorgeous towers, 



In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours ? 



Vain the complaint ! For fancy can impart 



(To fate superior and to fortune's power) 



Whate'er adorns the stately-storied hall : 



She, mid the dungeon's solitary gloom, 



Can dress the Graces in their attic-pall ; 



Bid the green landskip's vernal beauty bloom 



And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall." 



One sometimes passes by a gentleman's park, an old family-seat, with its 

 moss-grown ruinous paling, its " glades mild-opening to the genial day," 

 or embrowned with forest-trees. Here one would be glad to spend 

 one's life, " shut up in measureless content," and to grow old beneath 

 ancestral oaks, instead of gaining a precarious, irksome, and despised 

 livelihood, by indulging romantic sentiments, and writing disjointed 

 descriptions of them. The thought has scarcely risen to the lips, when we 

 learn that the owner of so blissful a seclusion is a thorough-bred fox- 

 hunter, a preserver of the game, a brawling electioneerer, a Tory mem- 

 ber of parliament, a <( no-Popery" man ! " I'd sooner be a dog, and bay 

 the moon !" Who would be Sir Thomas Lethbridge for his title and 

 estate ? asks one man. But would not almost any one wish to be Sir 

 Francis Burdett, the man of the people, the idol of the electors of West- 

 minster ? says another. I can only answer for myself. Respectable and 

 honest as he is, there is something in his white boots, and white breeches, 

 and white coat, and white hair, and red face, and white hat, that I cannot, 

 by any effort of candour, confound my personal identity with ! If Mr. 

 Hobhouse can prevail on Sir Francis to exchange, let him do so by all 

 means. Perhaps they might contrive to club a soul between them ! 

 Could I have had my will, I should have been born a lord : but one 

 would not be a booby lord neither. I am haunted by an odd fancy of 

 driving down the Great North Road in a chaise and four, about fifty 

 years ago, and coming to the inn at Ferry-bridge, with out-riders, white 

 favours, and a coronet on the panels ; and then I choose my companion in the 

 coach. Really there is a witchcraft in all this that makes it necessary to turn 

 away from it, lest, in the conflict between imagination and impossibility, 

 I should grow feverish and light-headed ! But, on the other hand, if 

 one was born a lord, should one have the same idea (that every one else 

 has) of a peeress in her own right ? Is not distance, giddy elevation, 

 mysterious awe, an impassable gulf, necessary to form this idea in the 

 mind, that fine ligament of " ethereal braid, sky-woven," that lets down 

 heaven upon earth, fair as enchantment, soft as Berenice's hair, bright 



