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exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (cana fides). anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal.

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case— two shelves from the ceiling-scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser— was whilom the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties—but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons When I think of this man; his fiery when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here glow of heart; his swell of feeling; how stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in magnificent, how ideal he was; how great sober state. There loitered the Complete at the midnight hour; and when I com- Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream pare with him the companions with whom side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a I have associated since, I grudge the saving widower-volume, with "eyes closed," mourns of a few idle ducats, and think that I am his ravished mate. fallen into the society of lenders, and little

men.

One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws cased in leather covers than closed in iron up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have coffers, there is a class of alienators more a small under-collection of this nature (my formidable than that which I have touched friend's gatherings in his various calls), upon; I mean your borrowers of books-picked up, he has forgotten at what odd those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations!

places, and deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in these orphans, the twicedeserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am.-I charge no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.

That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !)—with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventura, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs,—itself an Ascapart!-that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the-knowing at the time, and knowing that I claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle?

knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio:—what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better

of thy friend?-Then, worst cut of all! comprehend a tittle !-Was there not Zimmerto transport it with thee to the Gallican man on Solitude? land

Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her
sex's wonder!

Reader, if haply thou art blest with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C.-he will return them (generally anti-hadst thou not thy play-books, and books cipating the time appointed) with usury; of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee enriched with annotations tripling their merry, even as thou keepest all companies value. I have had experience. Many are with thy quips and mirthful tales? Child of these precious MSS. of his—(in matter oftenthe Green-room, it was unkindly done of times, and almost in quantity not unfrethee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, betterpart Englishwoman!--that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook-of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to

quently, vying with the originals) in no very clerkly hand-legible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands. I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

EVERY man hath two birth-days: two | colour; nor was it a poetical flight in a condays, at least, in every year, which set him temporary, when he exclaimed,

upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnising our proper birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

I saw the skirts of the departing Year.

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those who

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books, new faces, new years,— Of all sound of all bells-(bells, the music from some mental twist which makes it nighest bordering upon heaven)—most solemn difficult in me to face the prospective. I and touching is the peal which rings out the have almost ceased to hope; and am sanguine Old Year. I never hear it without a gather- only in the prospects of other (former) years. ing-up of my mind to a concentration of all I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. the images that have been diffused over the I encounter pell-mell with past disappointpast twelvemonth; all I have done or suf-ments. I am armour-proof against old disfered, performed or neglected - in that couragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, regretted time. I begin to know its worth, old adversaries. I play over again for love, as as when a person dies. It takes a personal the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I

gulate the tone of my moral being!

once paid so dear. I would scarce now have the rule to my unpractised steps, and reany of those untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would no more alter them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. Methinks it is better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes of Alice W-n, than that so passionate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better that our family should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue.

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love?

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause: simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader-(a busy man perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia.

The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by If I know aught of myself, no one whose them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. mind is introspective—and mine is painfully-In those days the sound of those midnight so-can have a less respect for his present chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in identity, than I have for the man Elia. I all around me, never failed to bring a train know him to be light, and vain, and humour- of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I some; a notorious * * * ; addicted to * * * * then scarce conceived what it meant, or averse from counsel, neither taking it nor thought of it as a reckoning that concerned offering it ;-* .*** besides; a stammering me. Not childhood alone, but the young buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare man till thirty, never feels practically that not: I subscribe to it all, and much more he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if than thou canst be willing to lay at his door need were, he could preach a homily on the -but for the child Elia, that "other me," fragility of life; but he brings it not home to there, in the back-ground-I must take himself, any more than in a hot June we can leave to cherish the remembrance of that appropriate to our imagination the freezing young master-with as little reference, I days of December. But now, shall I confess protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and- a truth ?—I feel these audits but too powerforty, as if it had been a child of some other fully. I begin to count the probabilities of house, and not of my parents. I can cry my duration, and to grudge at the expendiover its patient small-pox at five, and ture of moments and shortest periods, like rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor misers' farthings. In proportion as the fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, years both lessen and shorten, I set more and wake with it in surprise at the gentle count upon their periods, and would fain lay posture of maternal tenderness hanging over my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I great wheel. I am not content to pass away know how it shrank from any the least" like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors colour of falsehood. God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed!-Thou art sophisticated. I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was-how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful! From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, and not some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give

solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would

set up my tabernacle here. I am content to evils, like humours, run into that capital stand still at the age to which I am arrived; plague-sore.—I have heard some profess an I, and my friends: to be no younger, no indifference to life. Such hail the end of richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be their existence as a port of refuge; and speak weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, of the grave as of some soft arms, in which as they say, into the grave.-Any alteration, they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, wooed death-but out upon thee, I say, puzzles and discomposes me. My house-thou foul, ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, hold-gods plant a terrible fixed execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to not rooted up without blood. six score thousand devils, as in no instance willingly seek Lavinian shores. to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as of being staggers me. an universal viper; to be branded, proscribed,

foot, and are
They do not
A new state

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary and spoken evil of! In no way can I be walks, and summer holidays, and the green-brought to digest thee, thou thin, melancholy ness of fields, and the delicious juices of Privation, or more frightful and confounding meats and fishes, and society, and the cheer- Positive! ful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself-do these things go out with life?

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces ? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading?

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Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and emperors in death," who in his life-time never greatly coveted the society of such bed-fellows ?-or, forsooth, that so shall the fairest face appear?"-why, to comfort me, must Alice W-n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the me with his odious truism, that "Such as smiling indications which point me to them he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, here, the recognisable face the "sweet friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the assurance of a look ?"— mean time I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of wine-and while that turncoat bell, that just now mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton.

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying to give it its mildest name-does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. Then we are as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances,-that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced in the Canticles : -I am none of her minions-I hold with the Persian.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind. All partial

THE NEW YEAR.

HARK, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us, the day himself's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall
Than direst mischiefs can befall.

But stay! but stay! methinks my sight,

Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow,
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His revers'd face may show distaste,
And frown upon the ills are past;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the New-born Year.
He looks too from a place so high,
The year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.

Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.

Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,

So smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good so soon as born?
Plague on't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason shou'd
Be superexcellently good :
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity

Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support,
Than those do of the other sort:

And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the New Guest
With lusty brimmers of the best:
Mirth always should Good Fortune meet,
And renders e'en Disaster sweet :
And though the Princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,

We better shall by far hold out,
Till the next Year she face about.

How say you, reader-do not these verses smack of the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected ?— Passed like a cloud-absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry-clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries-And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them to you all, my masters!

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.

"A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game of whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one game and lose another; that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them.

took, and gave, no concessions. She hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight: cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer." She sate bolt upright; and neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. All people have their blind side-their superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, that hearts was her favourite suit.

I never in my life-and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it-saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play; or snuff a candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a thoroughpaced partner, a determined enemy. She to take a hand; and who, in his excess of

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