We cannot better conclude our description than with a sketch from Sir Richard Phillips's "Morning's Walk to Kew." He was walking on the opposite banks of the river, when on a sudden he caught the sound of a ring of village bells. "Surely," he exclaimed, "they are Chiswick bells!—the very bells under the sound of which I received part of my early education, and, as a schoolboy, passed the happiest days of my life!—Well might their tones vibrate to my inmost soul, and kindle uncommon sympathies!" I now recollected that the winding of the river must have brought me nearer to that simple and primitive village than the profusion of wood had permitted me to perceive, and my memory had been unconsciously acted upon by the tones which served as keys to all the associations connected with these bells, their church and the village of Chiswick! I listened again, and now discriminated those identical sounds which I had not heard during a period of more than thirty years. I distinguished the very words in the successive tones, which the school-boys and puerile imaginations at Chiswick used to combine with them. In thought, I became again a schoolboy—"Yes," said I, "the six bells tell me that my dun cow has just calv'd, exactly as they did above thirty years since!"—Did the reader never encounter a similar key-note, leading to a multitude of early and vivid recollections? Those well-remembered tones, in like manner, brought before my imagination numberless incidents and personages no longer important, or no longer in existence. My scattered and once-loved schoolmates, their characters and their various fortunes, passed in rapid review before me; my schoolmaster, his wife, and all the gentry, and heads of families, whose orderly attendance at divine service on Sundays, while those well-remembered bells were "chiming for church," (but now gone and mouldering in the adjoining graves,) were again presented to my perceptions! With what pomp and form they used to enter and depart from their house of God! I still saw with the mind's eye the widow Hogarth, and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle dressed in their silken sacks, their raised head-dresses, their black hoods, their lace ruffles, and their high-crook'd canes, preceded by their aged servant, Samuel; who, after he had wheeled his mistress to church in her Bath-chair, carried the prayer-books up the aisle, and opened and shut the pew! There too was the portly Dr. Griffiths, of the Monthly Review, with his literary wife in her neat and elevated wire-winged cap! And oftimes the vivacious and angelic Duchess of Devonshire, whose bloom had not then suffered from the canker-worm of pecuniary distress, created by the luxury of charity! Nor could I forget the humble distinction of the aged sexton, Mortefee, whose skill in psalmody enabled him to lead that wretched group of singers, whom Hogarth so happily portrayed; whose performance with the pitch-fork excited so much wonder in little boys; and whose gesticulations and contortions of head, hand, and body, in beating time, were not outdone even by Joah Bates in the commemorations of Handel! Yes, simple and happy villagers! I remember scores of you;—how fortunately ye had, and still have, escaped the contagion of the metropolitan vices, though distant but five miles; and how many of you have I conversed with, who, at an adult age, had never beheld the degrading assemblage of its knaveries and miseries!

I revelled in the melancholy pleasure of these recollections, yielding my whole soul to that witchery of sensibility which magnifies the perception of being, till one of the bells was overset, when, the peal stopping, I had leisure to think on the rapid advance of the day, and on the consequent necessity of quickening my speed.

THE SKETCH-BOOK

NO. XLIV

THE BLUE BOTTLE

"A fly your honour."—Brighton Cliff

Talk of musquitoes!—a musquito is a gentleman who honourably runs you through with a small sword, and from whom (as from a mad dog) we may easily seek a defence in—muslin.

But your rory-tory, hurly-burly blue-bottle, is no better than a bully. His head is a humming-top, and his tight blue little body like a tomahawk, cased in glittering steel, which he takes a delight in whirling against your head. I really believe, that to confine a nervous man in a room with one of these winged tormentors, on a July day, would inevitably destroy him in less than an hour.

He rudely and unceremoniously bumps away all sober reflection,—(I wonder whether the phrenological Spurzheim ever felt the bumps of a blue-bottle!) then his whimsical vagaries effectually defy repose; now settling with his tickling bandy legs upon your nose, and industriously insinuating his sharp proboscis, and anon abruptly buzzing in your ear—no secret—off he shoots again to his own music.

Now, truly, his hum-drum puts me in mind of the whirring tone of the hurdy-gurdy, while his ad libitum bumping against the booming window-panes sounds, to my fancy, like the unskilful accompaniment of a double drum, beaten by some unmusical urchin.

The house spider who spreads with so much care his beautiful nets for gnats, and moths, and smaller flies, finds alike his labour and his toils in vain to secure this rampaging rogue; and, indeed, when the turbulent blue-bottle chances, in his bouncing random flight, to get entangled in the glutinous meshes, he shakes and roars, and blusters so loudly, until he breaks away, that the spider affrighted, invariably takes advantage of his long legs to scamper off to his sanctum in the cracked wainscot—like some imbecile watchman, who fearing to encounter a tall inebriated bruiser, sneaks away with admirable discretion to the security of his snug box, praying the drunkard may speedily reel into another beat.

Your noisy people generally grow taciturn in their cups—but Sir Blue-bottle, though he drinks deep draughts of your wine, particularly if it abound in sweetness, is never changed. He is naturally giddy, and according to entomologists, always sees more than double, while his head was never made to be turned. So may you hope for peace—only in his flight or death!—Absurdities: in Prose and Verse.

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 269, August 18, 1827

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THE SKETCH-BOOK

NO. XLIV

THE BLUE BOTTLE

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