At my Nativity, my Ascendant was the watery sign of _Scorpius_; I was born in the Planetary hour of _Saturn_, and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof: were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I chuse for my devotions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed. [Sidenote: _Religio Medici_] He is rich, who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. _He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord;_ there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence, than in a Library of Sermons; and indeed if those Sentences were understood by the Reader, with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author, we needed not those Volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an Epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities with my Purse, or his Soul with my Prayers; those _scenical_ and accidental _differences_ between us, cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both; there is under these _Cantoes_ and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose Genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to Salvation as our selves. "PLEASE TO RING THE BELLE" [Sidenote: _Hood_] I'll tell you a story that's not in Tom Moore:-- Young Love likes to knock at a pretty girl's door: So he call'd upon Lucy--'twas just ten o'clock-- Like a spruce single man, with a smart double knock. Now, a handmaid, whatever her fingers be at, Will run like a puss when she hears a _rat_-tat: So Lucy ran up--and in two seconds more Had questioned the stranger and answered the door. The meeting was bliss; but the parting was woe; For the moment will come when such comers must go: So she kissed him, and whispered--poor innocent thing!-- "The next time you come, love, pray come with a ring." THE HAPPY DEAN [Sidenote: _Dean Hole_] My dear Hall,--I don't like the writing of this letter. I feel as I felt in childhood when they were measuring out the castor-oil in a spoon; or when, in boyhood, it was suggested "that kind Mr. Crackjaw should _just look_ at my teeth." But the gulp and the "scrawnsh" must come. My Master, the Archbishop, wishes me to speak at the Annual Meeting of the Church Defence Society in London, on the 9th of July, and as this is his first invitation to duty since I became his Chaplain, I cannot plead pleasure as an excuse.