Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/178

 more strength than wandering through this fine weather has left me for landscape pictures of the same, before I could attempt, with any well-founded hope, to draw out a mathematical estimate of the length and thickness, and the vibrations and accordant relations to each other, of the various strings, which combined together to form for his heart a Music of the Spheres, on this day of Trinity-term, though such a thing would please myself as much as another…… Do not ask me! In my opinion, when a man preaches on Sunday, before all the peasants, who had carried him in their arms when a gardener's boy; further, before his mother, who is leading off her tears through the conduit of her satin muff; further, before his Lordship, whom he can positively command to be blessed; and finally before his muslin bride, who is already blessed, and changing almost into stone, to find that the same lips can both kiss and preach; in my opinion, I say, when a man effects all this, he has some right to require of any Biographer who would paint his situation, that he—hold his jaw; and of the reader who would sympathize with it, that he open his, and preach himself.——

But what I must ex officio depict, is the day to which this Sunday was but the prelude, the vigil, and the whet; I mean the prelude, the vigil, and the whet to the Martini Actus, or Martinmas Exhibition of his school. On Sunday was the sermon, on Wednesday the Actus, on Tuesday the Rehearsal. This Tuesday shall now be delineated to the universe.

I count upon it that I shall not be read by mere people of the world alone, to whom a School-Actus cannot truly appear much better, or more interesting, than some Investiture of a Bishop, or the opera seria of Frankfort