nd, will be as it will be, and is not for me to alter. What is
it then that I am doing? I am desiring to become charitable myself; and
why may I not plainly say so? Is there shame in it, or impiety? The wish
is laudable: why should I form designs to hide it?

'Or is it, perhaps, better to be brought about by indirect means, and in
this artful manner? Alas! who is it that I would impose on? From whom
can it be, in this commerce, that I desire to hide any thing? When, as
my Saviour commands me, I have _entered into my closet, and shut my
door_, there are but two parties privy to my devotions, GOD and my own
heart; which of the two am I deceiving?'

He wished to have more books, and, upon inquiring if there were any in
the house, was told that a waiter had some, which were brought to him;
but I recollect none of them, except Hervey's _Meditations_. He thought
slightingly of this admired book. He treated it with ridicule, and would
not allow even the scene of the dying Husband and Father to be
pathetick[941]. I am not an impartial judge; for Hervey's _Meditations_
engaged my affections in my early years. He read a passage concerning
the moon, ludicrously, and shewed how easily he could, in the same
style, make reflections on that planet, the very reverse of
Hervey's[942], representing her as treacherous to mankind. He did this
with much humour; but I have not preserved the particulars. He then
indulged a playful fancy, in making a _Meditation on a Pudding_[943], of
which I hastily wrote down, in his presence, the following note; which,
though imperfect, may serve to give my readers some idea of it.

MEDITATION ON A PUDDING.

'Let us seriously reflect of what a pudding is composed. It is composed
of flour that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the
morning; of milk pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of
the beauteous milk-maid, whose beauty and innocence might have
recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged
no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the
destruction of her fellow-creatures: milk, which is drawn from the cow,
that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us
with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age
which the poets have agreed to call golden. It is made with an egg, that
miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet[944] has compared to
creation. An egg contains water w