slender guesses at what passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old-established play-goer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian-as a piece of news! He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me, knowing me to be a great walker, in my own immediate vicinity

quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome limited sympathy with what you feel or do. presence, and shining sanguine face, that He lives in a world of his own, and makes indicates some purchase in his eye-a Claude -or a Hobbima-for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's and Phillips's --or where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he must do-assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his hands——who have haunted the identical spot any wishes he had fewer holidays-and goes off time these twenty years!—He has not much Westward Ho!-chanting a tune, to Pall respect for that class of feelings which goes Mall-perfectly convinced that he has con- by the name of sentimental. He applies the vinced me while I proceed in my opposite definition of real evil to bodily sufferings direction tuneless. exclusively-and rejecteth all others as It is pleasant, again, to see this Professor imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or of Indifference doing the honours of his new the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You to a degree which I have never witnessed must view it in every light, till he has found out of womankind. A constitutional acutethe best-placing it at this distance, and at ness to this class of sufferings may in part that, but always suiting the focus of your account for this. The animal tribe in parsight to his own. You must spy at it ticular he taketh under his especial protecthrough your fingers, to catch the aërial tion. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse perspective though you assure him that to is sure to find an advocate in him. An overyou the landscape shows much more agree-loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the able without that artifice. Woe be to the apostle to the brute kind—the never-failing luckless wight who does not only not respond friend of those who have none to care for to his rapture, but who should drop an un- them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, seasonable intimation of preferring one of or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that his anterior bargains to the present!-The "all for pity he could die." It will take the last is always his best hit-his "Cynthia of savour from his palate, and the rest from his the minute."-Alas! how many a mild Ma- pillow, for days and nights. With the indonna have I known to come in-a Raphael! tense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted -keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of -then, after certain intermedial degrada- purpose, of that "true yoke-fellow with tions, from the front drawing-room to the Time," to have effected as much for the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,- Animal as he hath done for the Negro Creaadopted in turn by each of the Carracci, tion. But my uncontrollable cousin is but under successive lowering ascriptions of imperfectly formed for purposes which defiliation, mildly breaking its fall-consigned mand co-operation. He cannot wait. His to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti! which things when beheld-musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that woeful Queen of Richard the Second

set forth in pomp,

She came adorned hither like sweet May.
Sent back like Hallowmass or shortest day.

amelioration plans must be ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving, while they think of debating. He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief of

because the fervour of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension, and creep

With great love for you, J. E. hath but a ing processes, of his associates. I shall always

consider this distinction as a patent of nobi- my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, lity in the Elia family!

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good manners, and the understanding that should be between kinsfolk, forbid !— With all the strangenesses of this strangest of the Elias-I would not have him in one jot or tittle other than he is; neither would I barter or exchange

and every way consistent kinsman breathing.

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account of my cousin Bridget—if you are not already surfeited with cousinsand take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two since, in search of more cousins

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

Religio Medici; but she must apologise to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one-the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, —but again somewhat fantastical, and original brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have wished, to have had for her associates and mine, free-thinkers

BRIDGET ELIA has been my housekeeper | her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the for many a long year. I have obligations to road of common sympathy. She "holds Bridget, extending beyond the period of Nature more clever." I can pardon her memory. We house together, old bachelor blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits-yet so, as "with a difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings as it should be among near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind-leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She must have a story-well, ill, or indifferently told-so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in fiction—and almost in real life-have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions-heads with some diverting twist in them-the oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of anything that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with

and systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions. That which was good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding.

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this

that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I am sure always, in the long-run, to be brought over to her way of thinking.

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again—some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, The oldest thing I remember is Mackery indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; End; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her more properly, in some old maps of Hertford- affections-and she traversed every out-post shire; a farm-house,-delightfully situated of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the

palace-or so we thought it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally-we,

The only thing left was to get into the house and that was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; and our friend that was with us.-I had for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all-more comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her-it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins! There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a

almost forgotten him-but B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far distant shores where the kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing.— With what corresponding kindness we were received by them also-how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her own--and to the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was not a cousin there,-old effaced images of more than half-forgotten names and circumstances still crowding back upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth,—when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget me; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge- as I have been her care in foolish manhood since-in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire.

MY FIRST PLAY.

beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

Ar the north end of Cross-court there yet our going (the elder folks and myself) was, stands a portal, of some architectural preten- that the rain should cease. With what a sions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury-Garrick's Drury-all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Featherstonebuildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech and had pretensions

above his rank. He associated in those days I journeyed down to take possession, and