80 A MORAL. 



ever gladly associated tliem with reminiscences of the cus- 

 toms of the village now fled away, and with the descriptions 

 and moralities of our native poets ; and nothing loth am I to 

 follow, when they throw me back upon a period of early life 

 and its amusements, to which I ever recur with fond delight. 

 And, moreover, I plead the authority of some early fathers 

 in natural history, who, in their good old-fashioned way, 

 never failed to append a chapter or verse, headed, " The 

 Moral," to all their themes ; and, under the protection of 

 their names, I will even venture to give you one more quota- 

 tion, fraught with wisdom, and which, if duly pondered, 

 shall more than compensate for all my previous puerilities. 

 What says the learned Dr. Donne : — 



" Be then thine own home, and hi thyself dwell ; 

 In anywhere ; 



And seeing the Snail, which everywhere doth roam, 

 Carrying his own home still, still is at home. 

 Follow (for he is easy paeed) this snail ; 

 Be thine own palace, or the World's tliy jail."* 



* Athenteus mentions that Hesiod calls the snail (j)epfoiKos, " house- 

 carrier ;" and he quotes from Anaxilas : — 



" You are much more suspicious than the snails. 

 Which through distrust always carry their liouse along with them." 

 I need scarcely remind the reader of Vincent Bourne's Ode, "Ad Limacem," 

 nor of its translation hy Cowper. 



