THE 
MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 
Neo Series, 
Vou. VI.] JULY, 1828. [No. 31. 
MEDITATIONS ON MOUNTAINS. 
Part Second—Aneus GILCHRIST- 
WELL, what was your entertainment, and how did you sleep, in the 
turf castle under the coppice? Charming ;—and you care not though 
there were not a city or a town on the face of the earth. In these, all is 
toil; amusement is labour, and pleasure itself is fatigue. Is it in 
private?—there you must keep up your dignity—must sink the man, 
in order to exhibit the statue. With your own sex, you must cram and 
ill till you are in a fever ; stupify yourself with cigars or opium ; 
7p into a disturbed and painful sleep ; and, when you have wearied 
t hold light colloquy about forms and feet, the fascinations of 
shes of hair, and tatters of taffety; or be in ecstasies when some 
_ dowdy lass macadamizes the King’s English, misplaces all the fragments, 
and, as she slides from /’ Allegro of her own charms and conquests to 
il Penseroso of the more sadly successful ones of her cousin Jane, you are 
by turns choked with dust and covered with mud, worse than if you 
re in the midst of that chef-d’euvre of the great man of mud, New 
ridge-street, Blackfriars ;—old, you must make your election between 
the notable and the bas bleu, and have your mind stored with the bitter 
of dentition, or the sweets of poesy, according as the “ link-boy god” 
may or may not have'crossed the path of your charmed and charming 
confabulatrix. Escape you upon the water >—Faugh! the Thames runs 
coal-tar and sopers’-waste ; the oar splashes you with oil, or the wheel 
of the steam-boat stirs you up a hell-broth, worse than weird sister ever 
messed together for the purpose of stenching the devil out of his spiritual 
invisibility, and giving him a visible, tangible, and credible shape. 
M.M. New Series—Vou. VI. No. 31. B 
