erefore, as
we have gone on, ventured to suggest some subjects--but, above all, we
would recommend Mr Mulready to supply a few portraits, heads only, such
as that of the "Schoolmaster in the Deserted Village," by the Etching
Club.

* * * * *

THE ATTORNEY'S CLERK IN THE MONK'S HOOD.

"I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy--
The sleepless soul that perish'd in his pride."

Had the "resolution and independence" which dignify the lowly, and
strengthen the unhappy, when no visible eye befriends them, been among
the rich endowments of Chatterton's wonderful mind--had he possessed and
cherished the courage that bears up against obloquy and neglect--had he
pursued the rough tenour of his way undaunted, in spite of "solitude,
pain of heart, distress, and poverty," how different must have been the
fate of the inspired boy of Bristol! He might be alive yet; he would be
ninety years old, graced with honour, love, obedience, troops of
friends, and all that should accompany old age. He might have achieved
some great epic, or some gorgeous historical dramas,--have finished the
Fairy Queen, or given us a Fairy King of his own creation.

Among the lighter honours of social distinction, we can fancy his
reception as a London "lion," by the fair and noble in proud places.
Still pleasanter is the vision of his less public hours of idleness
spent among congenial spirits. We can fancy him, the patriarch of living
poets, seated as a guest at the breakfast-table of Samuel Rogers, who is
about twelve years his junior, and those fine lads, Lisle Bowles, James
Montgomery, and William Wordsworth, and those promising children, Tom
Moore and Tom Campbell, and that braw chiel John Wilson--(_palmam qui
meruit ferat_)--the youngest of the party something, perhaps, but not
much, under seventy, except the bard of the Isle of Palms, who is no
chicken; and unless the master of the feast have summoned those pretty
babes from the Wood, the two Tennysons. But alas for Chatterton! the
vision will not hold: he disappears from his chair at the feast, like
Banquo--"and, when all's done, you look but on a stool." The ghost of
the slayer of himself, after long haunting Strawberry Hill, to rebuke
the senile complacency of the chronicler of royal and noble authors,
repaired, after the death of that prosperous man of wit and fashion, to
his native town, to prowl in Redcliff church, and about the graves of
his