at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not have endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits, which thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses' halls, and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.*

In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of the most consummate artist in the Book way that the world hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the reader the

exciting mirth, would have joined the rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not to see that counterfeited, which we would not have wished to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic inside of the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered person was passing, would have stepped over his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and the "strange bed-fellows which misery brings a man acquainted with?" heroic attributes of the character without Shade of Cervantes! who in thy Second Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehensive that he would spoil their pretty net-works, and inviting him to be a guest with them, in accents like these: "Truly, fairest Lady, Actaeon was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty: I commend the manner of your pastime, and thank you for your kind offers; and, if I may, serve you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command me for my profession is this, To show myself thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially of the rank that your person shows you to be; and if those nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should take up the whole world, I would seek out new worlds to pass through, rather than break them: and (he adds) that you may give credit to this my exaggeration, behold at least he that promiseth you this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to your hearing." Illustrious Romancer! were the "fine frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed to the jeers of Duennas and Serving men? to be monstered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great men ? Was that pitiable infirmity, which in thy First Part misleads him, always from within, into half-ludicrous, but more than half-compassionable and admirable errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men by studied artifices must devise and practise upon the humour, to inflame where they should soothe it? Why, Goneril would have blushed to practise upon the abdicated king are mostly selected; the waiting-women with heards, &c. Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures

relaxing; so as absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship of the clown. If it ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to laugh; or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion?— Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the relish with which his Reading Public had received the fooleries of the man, more to their palates than the generosities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea to the taste of his contemporaries. We know that in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to himas afterwards it did to his scarce inferior follower, the Author of "Guzman de Alfarache "--that some less knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious Second Part; and judging that it would be easier for his competitor to out-bid him in the comicalities, than in the romance, of his work, he abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire for his Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of Sancho? and instead of that twilight state of semi-insanity — the madness at second-hand - the contagion, caught from a stronger mind infected that war between native cunning, and hereditary deference, with which he has hitherto accompanied his master-two for a pair almostdoes he substitute a downright Knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following a confessed Madman; and offering at one time to lay, if not actually laying, hands upon him! From the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote is become-a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle him accordingly.

THE WEDDING.

Before the youthful part of my female readers express their indignation at the abominable loss of time occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of my old friend, they will do well to consider the reluctance which a fond parent naturally feels at parting with his child. To this

I Do not know when I have been better during his lifetime, at length prevailed; and pleased than at being invited last week to on Monday last the daughter of my old be present at the wedding of a friend's friend, Admiral having attained the daughter. I like to make one at these cere- womanly age of nineteen, was conducted to monies, which to us old people give back our the church by her pleasant cousin Jyouth in a manner, and restore our gayest who told some few years older. season, in the remembrance of our Own success, or the regrets, scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappointments, in this point of a settlement. On these occasions I am sure to be in good-humour for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being without a family, I am flattered with these temporary adoptions unwillingness, I believe, in most cases may into a friend's family; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season; I am inducted into degrees of affinity; and, in the participated socialities of the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral is going on in the house of a dear friend. But to my subject.

be traced the difference of opinion on this point between child and parent, whatever pretences of interest or prudence may be held out to cover it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for romance writers, a sure and moving topic; but is there not something untender, to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear herself from the paternal stock, The union itself had been long settled, and commit herself to strange graftings? but its celebration had been hitherto deferred, The case is heightened where the lady, as in to an almost unreasonable state of suspense the present instance, happens to be an only in the lovers, by some invincible prejudices child. I do not understand these matters which the bride's father had unhappily con- experimentally, but I can make a shrewd tracted upon the subject of the too early guess at the wounded pride of a parent upon marriages of females. He has been lec- these occasions. It is no new observation, turing any time these five years-for to that I believe, that a lover in most cases has no length the courtship has been protracted-rival so much to be feared as the father. upon the propriety of putting off the so- Certainly there is a jealousy in unparalleled lemnity, till the lady should have completed subjects, which is little less heart-rending her five-and-twentieth year. We all began than the passion which we more strictly to be afraid that a suit, which as yet had christen by that name. Mothers' scruples abated of none of its ardours, might at last are more easily got over; for this reason, be lingered on, till passion had time to cool, I suppose, that the protection transferred to a and love go out in the experiment. But husband is less a derogation and a loss to their a little wheedling on the part of his wife, authority than to the paternal. Mothers, who was by no means a party to these over- besides, have a trembling foresight, which strained notions, joined to some serious ex-paints the inconveniences (impossible to be postulations on that of his friends, who, conceived in the same degree by the other from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman, could not promise ourselves many years' enjoyment of his company, and were anxious to bring matters to a conclusion

parent) of a life of forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a surer guide here, than the cold reasonings of a

father on such a topic. To this instinct may and I have long shaken hands; but I could be imputed, and by it alone may be excused not resist the importunities of the young the unbeseeming artifices, by which some lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined wives push on the matrimonial projects of him at home, to act as parent on this occatheir daughters, which the husband, however, sion, and give away the bride. Something approving, shall entertain with comparative ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious indifference. A little shamelessness on this of all moments—a sense of my unfitness to head is pardonable. With this explanation, have the disposal, even in imagination, of forwardness becomes a grace, and maternal the sweet young creature beside me. I fear importunity receives the name of a virtue. I was betrayed to some lightness, for the But the parson stays, while I preposterously awful eye of the parson-and the rector's assume his office; I am preaching, while the eye of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no bride is on the threshold. trifle of a rebuke- was upon me in an instant, souring my incipient jest to the tristful severities of a funeral.

Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the sage reflections which have just escaped me have the obliquest tendency of application to the young lady, who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a change in her condition, at a mature and competent the ceremony, by one of the handsome age, and not without the fullest approbation of all parties. I only deprecate very hasty marriages.

locks (his custom ever at his morning studies)
to betray the few grey stragglers of his
own beneath them. He wore an aspect of
thoughtful satisfaction. I trembled for the
hour, which at length approached, when
after a protracted breakfast of three hours-
if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, botar-
goes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can
deserve so meagre an appellation-the coach
was announced, which was come to carry
off the bride and bridegroom for a season,
as custom has sensibly ordained, into the
country; upon which design, wishing them
a felicitous journey, let us return to the
assembled guests.

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
The eyes of men

Are idly bent on him that enters next,

strokes of chance as well as skill, which came opportunely on his side-lengthened out till midnight-dismissed the old gentleman at last to his bed with comparatively easy spirits.

I have been at my old friend's various times since. I do not know a visiting place where every guest is so perfectly at his ease; nowhere, where harmony is so strangely the result of confusion. Everybody is at cross purposes, yet the effect is so much better than uniformity. Contradictory orders; servants pulling one way; master and mistress driving some other, yet both diverse; visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs unsymmetrised; candles disposed by chance; meals at odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter preceding the former; the host and the guest conferring, yet each upon a so idly did we bend our eyes upon one different topic, each understanding himself, another, when the chief performers in the neither trying to understand or hear the morning's pageant had vanished. None told other; draughts and politics, chess and his tale. None sipped her glass. The poor political economy, cards and conversation on Admiral made an effort-it was not much. nautical matters, going on at once, without I had anticipated so far. Even the infinity the hope, or indeed the wish, of distinof full satisfaction, that had betrayed itself guishing them, make it altogether the most through the prim looks and quiet deport-perfect concordia discors you shall meet with. ment of his lady, began to wane into something of misgiving. No one knew whether to take their leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon a silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent of mine, which had otherwise like to have brought me into disgrace in the fore-part of the day; I mean a power, in any emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all manner of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma I found it sovereign. I rattled off some of my most excellent absurdities. All were willing to be relieved, at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the intolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morning bustle. By this means I was fortunate in keeping together the better part of the company to a late hour; and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favourite game) with some rare

Yet somehow the old house is not quite
what it should be. The Admiral still enjoys
his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it
for him. The instrument stands where it
stood, but she is gone, whose delicate touch
could sometimes for a short minute appease
the warring elements. He has learnt, as
Marvel expresses it, to "make his destiny
his choice." He bears bravely up, but he
does not come out with his flashes of wild
wit so thick as formerly.
His sea-songs
seldomer escape him. His wife, too, looks as
if she wanted some younger body to scold
and set to rights. We all miss a junior
presence. It is wonderful how one young
maiden freshens up, and keeps green, the
paternal roof. Old and young seem to have
an interest in her, so long as she is not
absolutely disposed of. The youthfulness of
the house is flown. Emily is married.

HH

REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.

gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The rest came, some in green, some in white-but old Lent and his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy Days came in, dripping; and sunshiny Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear, Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent word—he might be expected. April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme upon-good Days, bad Days, were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy.

THE Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing would serve the young spark but he must give a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in the year were invited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards, were mightily taken with the notion. They had been engaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for mortals below; and it was time they should have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly debated among them whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting. But the objection was overruled by Christmas Day, who had a design He had stuck the Twenty-First of June upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear), and next to the Twenty-Second of December, and a mighty desire to see how the old Domine the former looked like a Maypole siding a would behave himself in his cups. Only marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got wedged the Vigils were requested to come with in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night.

All the Days came to their day. Covers were provided for three hundred and sixtyfive guests at the principal table; with an occasional knife and fork at the side-board for the Twenty-Ninth of February.

Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him-to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd,

I should have told you that cards of and protested there was no faith in dried invitation had been issued. The carriers ling, but commended it to the devil for a were the Hours; twelve little, merry, sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-powhirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a see, that went all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and a few such Moveables, who had lately shifted their quarters.

gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood before his left hand neighbour, and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would have taken him for the Last Day in December, it so hung in icicles.

Well, they all met at last, foul Days, fine Days, all sorts of Days, and a rare din they At another part of the table, Shrove made of it. There was nothing but, Hail! Tuesday was helping the Second of September fellow Day, well met-brother Day-sister to some cock broth,-which courtesy the Day-only Lady Day kept a little on the latter returned with the delicate thigh of a aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet hen pheasant-so there was no love lost for some said, Twelfth Day cut her out and out, that matter. The Last of Lent was spunging for she came in a tiffany suit, white and upon Shrovetide's pancakes; which April

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