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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Listen , ' York , you ' re wanted . And yet it lacked the dignified solemnity with which r Milton , you are Wanted / is parapnrased by Wordsworth into ' Milton ! thou should ' st be living- at this hour : England hath need of thee : '
It betokened a homelier want than that expressed by the great poet of his greater predecessor . It was a worky-day want , such as might come home to all people ' s business and bosoms . Perhaps the familiarity of the name aided this impression . Thomson is not a high sounding appellation . It wears no
heraldic dignity . There is no Lord Thomson in the Peerage . It will not etymologize into grandeur or peculiarity . Thomson is only the son of Tom , that is to say , an undistinguished grandson of Adam . We cannot apply what was said of a certain large and distinguished family , and say that ' there are three classes of persons in the world , men , women , and Thomsons ; ' for , with
some exceptions , the men and women are Thomsons ; and all the Thomsons are men and women , except the children , who will also be men and women in due time , should their lives be spared . So far , indeed , does this identification extend , that it colours the language in which we speak of the physical and universal phenomena of the earth ' s revolutions . The revolving months , with their beautifully diversified appearances and influences , constitute , at once , Nature ' s year and Thomson ' s Seasons .
Of course I instantly looked in the direction which the voice of the cad indicated . There stood Mrs . Thomson , leaning , but sli ghtly , and not as if she needed support on account of weariness or decrepitude , against the Elephant and Castle . She was in an attitude of mingled contemplation and reflection ; as if the matter in her mind were weighty , but its weight as manageable as if in
the grasp of an elephant ' s trunk , and as portable as the many trunks of that castellated elephant which were tossing about in all directions . Her face had in it all the quietness of power , and all the power of quietness . Her features were strongly marked enou gh for a first-rate tragic actress ; and yet there was on them no working of emotion . Her head reminded one of that cast of a German philosopher on which Spurzheim used to lecture when craniology was young . It had similar expansion , the same loftiness of brow , and , if one might argue by analogy , or by inference from the seen to the unseen , a like absence of the devotional
pinnacle ; a cathedral without a spire . There was the anomaly of greatness without veneration . From under those frontal towers the eye looked not up heavenwards , and yet earth was not enough for its gaze . Itself was worthier ; and it looked where it would , and because it would . The want of Mrs . Thomson was not the want of a priest , any more than it was the want of a servant , or the want of a mistress . Her dreaa corresponded with this impres-
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Mrs . Thomson , yon are wanted . 289
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 283, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/51/
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