Mr. Davy, who accompanied Colonel Cheney up the Euphrates, was for a time in the service of Mehemet Ali Pacha. "Pickwick" happening to reach Davy while he was at Damascus, he read a part of it to the Pacha, who was so delighted with it, that Davy was, on one occasion, called up in the middle of the night to finish the reading of the chapter in which he and the Pacha had been interrupted. Mr. Davy read, in Egypt, upon another occasion, some passages from these unrivalled "Papers" to a blind Englishman, who was in such ecstasy with what he heard, that he exclaimed he was almost thankful he could not see he was in a foreign country; for that while he listened, he felt completely as though he were again in England.—Lady Chatterton.
SWIFT'S DISAPPOINTMENT.
"I remember when I was a little boy, (writes Swift in a letter to Bolingbroke,) I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in, and the disappointment vexes me to this day; and I believe it was the type of all my future disappointments."
"This little incident," writes Percival, "perhaps gave the first wrong bias to a mind predisposed to such impressions; and by operating with so much strength and permanency, it might possibly lay the foundation of the Dean's subsequent peevishness, passion, misanthropy, and final insanity."
LEIGH HUNT AND THOMAS CARLYLE.
The following characteristic story of these two "intellectual gladiators" is related in "A New Spirit of the Age."
Leigh Hunt and Carlyle were once present among a small party of equally well known men. It chanced that the conversation rested with these two, both first-rate talkers, and the others sat well pleased to listen. Leigh Hunt had said something about the islands of the Blest, or El Dorado, or the Millennium, and was flowing on in his bright and hopeful way, when Carlyle dropt some heavy tree-trunk across Hunt's pleasant stream, and banked it up with philosophical doubts and objections at every interval of the speaker's joyous progress. But the unmitigated Hunt never ceased his overflowing anticipations, nor the saturnine Carlyle his infinite demurs to those finite flourishings. The listeners laughed and applauded by turns; and had now fairly pitted them against each other, as the philosopher of Hopefulness and of the Unhopeful. The contest continued with all that ready wit and philosophy, that mixture of pleasantry and profundity, that extensive knowledge of books and character, with their ready application in argument or illustration, and that perfect ease and good-nature, which distinguish each of these men. The opponents were so well matched, that it was quite clear the contest would never come to an end. But the night was far advanced, and the party broke up. They all sallied forth; and leaving the close room, the candles and the arguments behind them, suddenly found themselves in presence of a most brilliant star-light night. They all looked up. "Now," thought Hunt, "Carlyle's done for!—he can have no answer to that!" "There!" shouted Hunt, "look up there! look at that glorious harmony, that sings with infinite voices an eternal song of hope in the soul of man." Carlyle looked up. They all remained silent to hear what he would say. They began to think he was silenced at last—he was a mortal man. But out of that silence came a few low-toned words, in a broad Scotch accent. And who, on earth, could have anticipated what the voice said? "Eh! it's a sad sight!"——Hunt sat down on a stone step. They all laughed—then looked very thoughtful. Had the finite measured itself with infinity, instead of surrendering itself up to the influence? Again they laughed—then bade each other good night, and betook themselves homeward with slow and serious pace. There might be some reason for sadness, too. That brilliant firmament probably contained infinite worlds, each full of struggling and suffering beings—of beings who had to die—for life in the stars implies that those bright worlds should also be full of graves; but all that life, like ours, knowing not whence it came, nor whither it goeth, and the brilliant Universe in its great Movement having, perhaps, no more certain knowledge of itself, nor of its ultimate destination, than hath one of the suffering specks that compose this small spot we inherit.