ce and sloth. She followed him to New York and married him,
_nolens volens_; and Providence assigned to him an energetic woman, to
make his castle of indolence a bed of roses to the satisfaction of them
both,--supplying for each the energy and the repose, both
constitutional, both unvicious, which the other lacked.

Highwaymen beset the highways, as burglars invaded the residences; and
Macaulay chuckles over the fact that his _bete noire_--the noble
Marlborough--was eased of 5000_l._ in gold in one of his trips between
London and St. Alban's.

From the regions of ministers and misers we may descend to the equally
disputed realms of the muses. Horace terms it "the peevish and inhuman
muse," which those who drink of Aganippe's fountain woo; whilst others
are apt to equal their Castalian spring and Parnassus with the height of
the empyreal, regarding with pity the toilers on the land and deep. But
herein, as in aught else, it is the mind, and not the outward
circumstances, which makes the happiness suited to its strength and
position; for it must be confessed it is from the weak in bodily frame,
the lame, and the blind, that we draw our poets: and when we find a rare
bodily exception to the rule, we find too often a mind insatiate of
applause, and pining for more appreciation of their productions. The
votaries of the muse cannot be set down as so happy and contented as
many a ploughman, nor does the smoothness of the lines gratify the eye
more than the smoothness of the furrow. But these rhymes of Gay hardly
aspire to the height of poesy, nor do they possess the banter and
raciness, such as we find in Butler's 'Hudibras':--

"When oyster-women lock their fish up,
And trudge away to bawl, 'No bishop!'"

Neither has it the deep pathos of the Spenserian stanza, which perhaps
strives at the deepest vein of poetry. Take two of Thomson's, for
example:--

"O mortal man, who livest here by toil,
Do not complain of this thy hard estate;
That like an emmet thou must ever moil,
Is a hard sentence of an ancient date:
And, certes, there is for it reason great;
For though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail,
And curse thy star, and early drudge and late,
Withouten that would come a heavier bale,--
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale."

And another stanza runs thus:--

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;