some dislike they had taken to the author,
who was a friend to one of Mr. Nightingale's
acquaintance." Fielding adds that
"this sort of fun our hero, we are ashamed
to confess, would willingly have preferred"
to an appointment with a lady. Personal
hostility—a few disaffected people operating
by chance upon the animal spirits of others
of the audience who love "a row" for its
own sake—has destroyed many plays, and
flung some good ones on the shelf for twenty
or more years. Was it to force She stoops
to Conquer down the throat of the public
that Dr. Johnson made one of a large party
to cheer that exquisite comedy? No; it was
to bring it through the first night, which is
everything to a good play, and little indeed
to a bad one. It is observable, and perhaps
remarkable, that after the first night, an
audience never makes any manifestation of
dislike. A play soon finds its own level. If,
from whatever cause, it is liked, it is run
after; if not, any applause verdict of the first
night is of no avail.

Let us adopt the practice of Mr. Lovelace,
(though by no means a model in other respects)
who tells his friend Belford, in Clarissa, "I
have never given noisy or tumultuous  instances
of dislike to a new play, if I thought
it ever so indifferent. For I concluded, first,
that every one was entitled to see quietly
what he paid for; and next, as the theatre,
the epitome of the world, consisted of pit,
boxes, and gallery, it was hard, I thought, if
there could be such a performance exhibited,
as would not please somebody in that mixed
multitude; and if it did, those somebodies
had as much right to enjoy their own judgment
undisturbedly, as I had to enjoy mine.
This was my way of showing disapprobation
—I never went again. And as a man is at
his option whether he will go to a play or
not, he has not the same excuse for expressing
his dislike clamorously as if he were
compelled to see it."

THE BELLS.

As one, who would yon city reach,
Was slowly rowed to shore;
For whose strange tone and broken speech
They lightly dipp'd the oar;
His failing voice, his mild dark eye,
Won the rude boatmen's sympathy.

He told them how, when he was young,
In his bright southern land,
A grand old church with bells was hung,
All fashion'd by his hand;
How they had won him much renown
And honour, in his ancient town.

How love first glided with their sound
Into one gentle heart;
And how their tones had linked it round,
Until the Bells were part
Of its own nature, and were fraught
With beautiful and holy thought.

And when, upon his wedding-day,
His ear those joy-bells met;
His own heart-beatings, quick and gay,
Seemed to their music set.
And how that day, hope, love, and pride—
His whole full heart was satisfied.

How she would say those chimes were meet
To mark their pleasant hours,
Which were but the unfoldings sweet
Of joy's fresh-springing flowers.
How their young daughter would rejoice
At theirs, as at its mother's voice.

Like rainbows, many-hued, had shone
Those hours of youthful prime.
At length a fatal storm fell on
The rushing gulf of time;
And smote him in a single day—
One wave took wife and child away!

And then the bells poured out a peal
So sorrowful and slow.
To his sick heart they seem'd to feel
For their old master's woe;
And they had cause; for War's red hand
Drove him an alien from the land

Now, for the sake, an ocean far
In his old age he crossed.
For in that dire distressful war,
The sweet bells had been lost;
And yearning for their sound again,
He came to seek them o'er the main—

Was there, because that western town
Some foreign bells possess'd,
And the fond hope they were his own
Flutter'd his aged breast.
He had in them a father's pride:
He fain would hear them ere he died.

The boatmen said, for lovely sound,
His bells they well might be;
And sooth to say they had been found
Somewhere in Italy.
Their voices soon would fill his ear;
The time of evening prayer was near.

And, as the sunset deepen'd more
The silence and the glow,
They rested lest one plashing oar
Might break the calm below;
And as they heard the light waves float
Their rippling silver 'gainst the boat,

Those glorious chimes told out the hour
With stronger waves of sound;
And when the full peal left the tower.
He knew them—they were found!
And, with strained ear and lips apart,
He drank tlieir music to his heart.

O! trembling like an under strain
Their sweeping anthem through,
Fame's whisperings grew clear again,
And Hope's old carols, too.
Though all without their ancient thrill,
The true bells kept their echo still.

Fond words from wife and child he caught,
As exquisitely clear
As though some breeze from heaven had brought
Their voices to his ear.
He lost, in that one moment's ray,
The gloom of many a lonesome day.

The boatmen saw the flushing smile
The faded eye that fired;
The thin hand that kept time a while,
Until it sank as tired;
They saw not as the sun went down,
How the pale face had paler grown: