in the face. There was no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realised themselves; for they both have married since, I am told, more than respectably.

inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever persuaded, not for any half hour together to have met with the poem in question. But did they ever look their own prospects fairly that was no matter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family importance. It diffused a learned air through the apartment, the little side casement of which (the poet's study window), opening upon a superb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of -vanity shall I call it ?-in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in, and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hospitality; it was going over his grounds; he was lord for the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnificence.

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, or I should wish to convey some notion of the manner in which the pleasant creature described the circumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly remember something of a chaise-and-four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad

When we came down through Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.

I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his own actual splendour at all corre

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes-you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say, "Hand me the silver sugar tongs;" and before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of " the urn" for a tea-sponded with the world's notions on that kettle; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind; not that which is properly termed Content, for in truth he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion.

Enthusiasm is catching; and even his wife, a sober native of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was not proof against the continual collision of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young women; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am

subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by what ever humble vehicle they chanced to be transported in less prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one day's state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from which no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge him.

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them before strangers, may not be always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson.

lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour; and livelily expressing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but comfortable.

IF peradventure, Reader, it has been thy and little tradesfolks, with here and there a lot to waste the golden years of thy life-thy | servant-maid that has got leave to go out, shining youth-in the irksome confinement who, slaving all the week, with the habit has of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance.

It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the desk in Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the frequently-intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content-doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages.

But besides Sundays, I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christinas, with a full week in the summer to go and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me? or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admirable as the institution of them is for purposes of worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers—the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, Independently of the rigours of attendance, pictures, all the glittering and endless succes- I have ever been haunted with a sense sion of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for displayed wares of tradesmen, which make business. This, during my latter years, had a week-day saunter through the less busy increased to such a degree, that it was visible parts of the metropolis so delightful-are in all the lines of my countenance. My shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle health and my good spirits flagged. I had over-No busy faces to recreate the idle man | perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which who contemplates them ever passing by-the I should be found unequal. Besides my very face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy countenances—or half-happy at best-of emancipated 'prentices

daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years

of age, and no prospect of emancipation that I accepted their proposal, and I was told presented itself. I had grown to my desk, that I was free from that hour to leave their as it were; and the wood had entered into service. I stammered out, a bow, and at just my soul. ten minutes after eight I went home-for ever. This noble benefit-gratitude forbids me to conceal their names-I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in the world-the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet, and Lacy.

Esto perpetua!

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the trouble legible in my countenance; but I did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the fifth of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L, the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly For the first day or two I felt stunned, inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my honestly made confession of my infirmity, felicity; I was too confused to taste it sinand added that I was afraid I should even- cerely. I wandered about, thinking I was tually be obliged to resign his service. He happy, and knowing that I was not. I was spoke some words of course to hearten me, in the condition of a prisoner in the old and there the matter rested. A whole week Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' I remained labouring under the impression confinement. I could scarce trust myself that I had acted imprudently in my dis- with myself. It was like passing out of closure; that I had foolishly given a handle Time into Eternity-for it is a sort of Eteragainst myself, and had been anticipating nity for a man to have his Time all to himmy own dismissal. A week passed in this self. It seemed to me that I had more manner, the most anxious one, I verily time on my hands than I could ever manage. believe, in my whole life, when on the evening From a poor man, poor in Time, I was of the 12th of April, just as I was about suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I quitting my desk to go home (it might be could see no end of my possessions; I wanted about eight o'clock) I received an awful some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage summons to attend the presence of the my estates in Time for me. And here let whole assembled firm in the formidable me caution persons grown old in active busiback parlour. I thought now my time is ness, not lightly, nor without weighing their surely come, I have done for myself, I am own resources, to forego their customary going to be told that they have no longer employment all at once, for there may be occasion for me. L, I could see, smiled danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know at the terror I was in, which was a little that my resources are sufficient; and now relief to me,—when to my utter astonishment that those first giddy raptures have subsided, B—, the eldest partner, began a formal I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedharangue to me on the length of my services, ness of my condition. I am in no hurry. my very meritorious conduct during the Having all holidays, I am as though I had whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could did he find out that? I protest I never had walk it away; but I do not walk all day the confidence to think as much). He went long, as I used to do in those old transient on to descant on the expediency of retiring holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the at a certain time of life (how my heart most of them. If Time were troublesome, panted !), and asking me a few questions as I could read it away; but I do not read in to the amount of my own property, of which that violent measure, with which, having no I have a little, ended with a proposal, to Time my own but candlelight Time, I used which his three partners nodded a grave to weary out my head and eyesight in byassent, that I should accept from the house, gone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as which I had served so well, a pension for now), just when the fit seizes me. life to the amount of two-thirds of my longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come to accustomed salary-a magnificent offer! I me. I am like the man do not know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, but it was understood

I no

that's born, and has his years come to him, In some green desert.

"Years!" you will say; "what is this superannuated simpleton calculating upon? He has already told us he is past fifty."

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. "Tis a fair rule-of-three sum.

then, after all? or was I a coward simply? Well, it is too late to repent; and I also know that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch, dry, sarcastic, and friendly! Do—, mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly! Pl, officious to do, and to volunteer, good services!—and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately house of Among the strange fantasies which beset Merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, me at the commencement of my freedom, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where and of which all traces are not yet gone, one candles for one-half the year supplied the was, that a vast tract of time had intervened place of the sun's light; unhealthy contrisince I quitted the Counting House. I could butor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. farewell! In thee remain, and not in the The partners, and the clerks with whom obscure collection of some wandering bookI had for so many years, and for so many seller, my "works!" There let them rest, hours in each day of the year, been closely as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy associated-being suddenly removed from shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas them they seemed as dead to me. There left, and full as useful! My mantle I beis a fine passage, which may serve to illus-queath among ye. trate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death :

'Twas but just now he went away;

I have not since had time to shed a tear;
And yet the distance does the same appear
As if he had been a thousand years from me.
Time takes no measure in Eternity.

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was left; an unsettling sense of novelty; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the world.

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them once or twice since; to visit my old desk-fellows-my cobrethren of the quill-that I had left below in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me could quite I am now as if I had never been other than restore to me that pleasant familiarity, which my own master. It is natural to me to go I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We where I please, to do what I please. I find cracked some of our old jokes, but methought myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bondthey went off but faintly. My old desk; street, and it seems to me that I have been the peg where I hung my hat, were appro- sauntering there at that very hour for years priated to another. I knew it must be, but past. I digress into Soho, to explore a bookI could not take it kindly. D-1 take me, stall. Methinks I have been thirty years if I did not feel some remorse-beast, if a collector. There is nothing strange nor I had not-at quitting my old compeers, the new in it. I find myself before a fine faithful partners of my toils for six-and-picture in the morning. Was it ever otherthirty years, that smoothed for me with their wise? What is become of Fish-street Hill? jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old professional road. Had it been so rugged Mincing-lane, which I have worn with my

I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those accursed cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down

As low as to the fiends.

daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty years, to invitation to take a day's pleasure with me the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are to Windsor this fine May-morning. It is your everlasting flints now vocal? I indent Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change whom I have left behind in the world, carktime, and I am strangely among the Elgin ing and caring; like horses in a mill, drudgmarbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- ing on in the same eternal round-and what tured to compare the change in my condition is it all for? A man can never have too to a passing into another world. Time stands much Time to himself, nor too little to do. still in a manner to me. I have lost all dis- Had I a little son, I would christen him tinction of season. I do not know the day NOTHING-TO-DO; he should do nothing. Man, of the week or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself that unfortunate failure of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of itis melted down into a week day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holiday. I have Time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an

I am no longer **, clerk to the Firm of, &c. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known by my vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk about; not to and from. They tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task-work, and have the rest of the day to myself.

THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.

Ir is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord | elbow-chair and undress. What can be Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are more pleasant than the way in which the models of the genteel style in writing. We retired statesman peeps out in his essays, should prefer saying-of the lordly, and the penned by the latter in his delightful retreat gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen and the than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaf- Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under tesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a Temple. The man of rank is discernible in" Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it both writers; but in the one it is only in- was frequent in his country for men, spent sinuated gracefully, in the other it stands out offensively. The peer seems to have written with his coronet on, and his Earl's mantle before him; the commoner in his

with age and other decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or two of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, and after their arrival there to go on a great