"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.

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting House. I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely associated-being suddenly removed from them they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate 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.

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 Merchants; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one-half the year supplied the place of the sun's light; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my "works!" There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful! My mantle I bequeath among ye.

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 unTo dissipate this awkward feeling, I have accustomed light. I missed my old chains, been fain to go among them once or twice forsooth, as if they had been some necessary since; to visit my old desk-fellows-my co- part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthubrethren of the quill-that I had left below sian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly in the state militant. Not all the kindness by some revolution returned upon the world. 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-andthirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged

picture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish-street Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street? Stones of old Mincing-lane, which I have worn with my

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 I verily believe, is out of his element as long used to be individually felt by me in its refer- as he is operative. I am altogether for the ence to the foreign post days; in its distance life contemplative. Will no kindly earthfrom, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. quake come and swallow up those accursed I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a nights' sensations. The genius of each day desk there, and bowl it down 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.

retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned by the latter in his delightful retreat at Shene? They scent of Nimeguen and the Hague. Scarce an authority is quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, a "

It 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 should prefer saying-of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. Nothing can be more unlike, than the inflated finical rhapsodies of Shaftesbury and the plain natural chit-chat of Temple. The man of rank is discernible in both writers; but in the one it is only insinuated 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

Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it was frequent in his country for men, spent 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

length, sometimes of twenty or thirty years, tion of what we esteem the best, he can truly or more, by the force of that vigour they say, that the French, who have eaten his recovered with that remove. "Whether peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) year, have generally concluded that the last might grow from the air, or the fruits of are as good as any they have eaten in France that climate, or by approaching nearer the on this side Fontainebleau ; and the first as sun, which is the fountain of light and heat, good as any they have eat in Gascony. when their natural heat was so far decayed: Italians have agreed his white figs to be as or whether the piecing out of an old man's good as any of that sort in Italy, which is life were worth the pains; I cannot tell the earlier kind of white fig there; for in perhaps the play is not worth the candle." the later kind and the blue, we cannot come Monsieur Pompone, "French Ambassador near the warm climates, no more than in the in his (Sir William's) time at the Hague," Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orangecertifies him, that in his life he had never trees, too, are as large as any he saw when heard of any man in France that arrived at he was young in France, except those of a hundred years of age; a limitation of life Fontainebleau; or what he has seen since in which the old gentleman imputes to the ex- the Low Countries, except some very old cellence of their climate, giving them such a ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes liveliness of temper and humour, as disposes he had the honour of bringing over four them to more pleasures of all kinds than in sorts into England, which he enumerates, other countries; and moralises upon the and supposes that they are all by this time matter very sensibly. The "late Robert pretty common among some gardeners in Earl of Leicester" furnishes him with a his neighbourhood, as well as several perstory of a Countess of Desmond, married sons of quality; for he ever thought all out of England in Edward the Fourth's things of this kind "the commoner they are time, and who lived far in King James's made the better." The garden pedantry reign. The "same noble person" gives him with which he asserts that 'tis to little puran account, how such a year, in the same pose to plant any of the best fruits, as reign, there went about the country a set of peaches or grapes, hardly, he doubts, beyond morrice-dancers, composed of ten men who Northamptonshire at the furthest northdanced, a Maid Marian, and a tabor and wards; and praises the "Bishop of Munpipe; and how these twelve, one with ano- ster at Cosevelt," for attempting nothing ther, made up twelve hundred years. "It beyond cherries in that cold climate; is was not so much (says Temple) that so many equally pleasant and in character. "I may in one small county (Hertfordshire) should perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden live to that age, as that they should be in Essay with a passage worthy of Cowley) “be vigour and in humour to travel and to dance." allowed to know something of this trade, Monsieur Zulichem, one of his "colleagues since I have so long allowed myself to be at the Hague," informs him of a cure for good for nothing else, which few men will the gout; which is confirmed by another do, or enjoy their gardens, without often 'Envoy," Monsieur Serinchamps, in that looking abroad to see how other matters town, who had tried it.-Old Prince Mau- play, what motions in the state, and what rice of Nassau recommends to him the use invitations they may hope for into other of hammocks in that complaint; having scenes. For my own part, as the country been allured to sleep, while suffering under it life, and this part of it more particularly, himself, by the "constant motion or swing- were the inclination of my youth itself, so ing of those airy beds." Count Egmont, and they are the pleasure of my age; and I can the Rhinegrave who " was killed last sum- truly say that, among many great employmer before Maestricht," impart to him their ments that have fallen to my share, I have experiences. never asked or sought for any of them, but have often endeavoured to escape from them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths and circles

But the rank of the writer is never more innocently disclosed, than where he takes for granted the compliments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the taste and perfec

"Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives,
What does my friend believe I think or ask?
Let me yet less possess, so I may live,
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself.
May I have books enough; and one year's store,
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour:
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray,
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away."

And

of life. The measure of choosing well is him little leisure to look into modern prowhether a man likes what he has chosen, ductions, while his retirement gave him which, I thank God, has befallen me; and occasion to look back upon the classic studies though among the follies of my life, building of his youth-decided in favour of the latter. and planting have not been the least, and "Certain it is," he says, " that, whether the have cost me more than I have the confi- fierceness of the Gothic humours, or noise of dence to own; yet they have been fully re- their perpetual wars, frighted it away, or compensed by the sweetness and satisfaction that the unequal mixture of the modern of this retreat, where, since my resolution languages would not bear it the great taken of never entering again into any public heights and excellency both of poetry and employments, I have passed five years with- music fell with the Roman learning and out ever once going to town, though I am empire, and have never since recovered almost in sight of it, and have a house there the admiration and applauses that before always ready to receive me. Nor has this attended them. Yet, such as they are been any sort of affectation, as some have amongst us, they must be confessed to be the thought it, but a mere want of desire or softest and the sweetest, the most general and humour to make so small a remove; for most innocent amusements of common time when I am in this corner, I can truly say and life. They still find room in the courts with Horace, Me quoties reficit, &c. of princes, and the cottages of shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or divert the violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and the busiest men. both these effects are of equal use to human life; for the mind of man is like the sea, which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both when a little agitated by gentle gales; and so the mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or affections. I know very well that many who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms, would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the goodness of their natures, if not of their understandings, into question. While this world lasts, I doubt not but the pleasure and request of these two entertainments will do so too; and happy those that content themselves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent, and do not trouble the world or other men, because they cannot

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this easy copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which was mostly subordinate to nature and tenderness, has seduced him into a string of felicitous antitheses; which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model to Addison and succeeding essayists. "Who would not be covetous, and with reason," he says, "if health could be purchased with gold? who not ambitious, if it were at the command of power, or restored by honour? but, alas! a white staff will not help gouty feet to walk better than a common cane; nor a blue riband bind up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing them; and an aching head will be no more eased by wearing a crown than a common nightcap." In a far better style, and more accordant with his own humour of plainness, are the concluding sentences of be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts his "Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part in the controversy about the ancient and the modern learning; and, with that partiality so natural and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements had left

them." "When all is done (he concludes), human life is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."

BARBARA S

On the noon of the 14th of November, | all; and in the zenith of her after reputation 1743 or 4, I forget which it was, just as the it was a delightful sight to behold them clock had struck one, Barbara S, with bound up in costliest morocco, each single— her accustomed punctuality, ascended the each small part making a book-with fine long rambling staircase, with awkward inter-clasps, gilt-splashed, &c. She had conscienposed landing-places, which led to the office, tiously kept them as they had been delivered or rather a sort of box with a desk in it, to her; not a blot had been effaced or whereat sat the then Treasurer of (what few tampered with. They were precious to her of our readers may remember) the Old Bath for their affecting remembrancings. They Theatre. All over the island it was the were her principia, her rudiments; the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, elementary atoms; the little steps by which for the players to receive their weekly stipend she pressed forward to perfection. What," on the Saturday. It was not much that she would say, "could India-rubber, or a Barbara had to claim. pumice-stone, have done for these darlings?" I am in no hurry to begin my storyindeed I have little or none to tell-so I will just mention an observation of hers connected with that interesting time.

This little maid had just entered her eleventh year; but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her pious application of her small earnings, had given an air of womanhood to her steps and to her behaviour. You would have taken her to have been at least five years older.

Till latterly she had merely been employed in choruses, or where children were wanted to fill up the scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and adroitness in her above her age, had for some few months past intrusted to her the performance of whole parts. You may guess the self-consequence of the promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears in young Arthur; had rallied Richard with infantine petulance in the Duke of York; and in her turn had rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales. She would have done the elder child in Morton's pathetic afterpiece to the life; but as yet the "Children in the Wood" was not.

Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, I have seen some of these small parts, each making two or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy ladies of the establishment. But such as they were, blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them

Not long before she died I had been discoursing with her on the quantity of real present emotion which a great tragic performer experiences during acting. I ventured to think, that though in the first instance such players must have possessed the feelings which they so powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repetition those feelings must become deadened in great measure, and the performer trust to the memory of past emotion, rather than express a present one. She indignantly repelled the notion, that with a truly great tragedian the operation, by which such effects were produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself into what was purely mechanical. With much delicacy, avoiding to instance in her self-experience, she told me, that so long ago as when she used to play the part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, ( I think it was,) when that impressive actress has been bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which (to use her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded her back.

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter; but it was some great actress of that day. The name is indifferent; but