Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not ;-ranged round; of whose countenances, but its fading rags, and colours cobwebstained, told that its subject was of two centuries back.

POOR RELATIONS.

A POOR Relation-is the most irrelevant | drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun thing in nature, a piece of impertinent upon your pride,—a drawback upon success, correspondency,-an odious approximation, a rebuke to your rising, a stain in your -a haunting conscience, a preposterous blood,—a blot on your 'scutcheon,—a rent in shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our your garment,- —a death's-head at your banprosperity,—an unwelcome remembrancer,- quet,-Agathocles' pot,-a Mordecai in your a perpetually recurring mortification,-a gate, a Lazarus at your door,-a lion in your

path, a frog in your chamber,-a fly in mean and quite unimportant anecdote-of your ointment,— -a mote in your eye,-a the family. He knew it when it was not triumph to your enemy, an apology to your quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing friends, the one thing not needful,-the it now." He reviveth past situations, to hail in harvest,-the ounce of sour in a institute what he calleth-favourable compound of sweet. parisons. With a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture; and insults you with a special commendation of your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was something more comfortable about the old teakettle-which you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know, till lately, that such-and-such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable; his compliments perverse; his talk a trouble; his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances.

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr. " A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and-draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time-when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have company -but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says, with some complacency, "My dear, perhaps Mr.

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is—a female Poor Relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off tolerably well; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. "He is an old humourist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is one." But in the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. “She is plainly related to the Ls; or what does she at their house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case.-Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently

- will drop in to-day." He remembereth birth-days-and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small-yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port-yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think "they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take him to be-a tidewaiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependant; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend; yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country predominates. She is most provokingly tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her -yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, inferiority. He may require to be repressed that your guests take him for one. He is sometimes—aliquando sufflaminandus erat— asked to make one at the whist table; but there is no raising her. You send her refuseth on the score of poverty, and soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped— resents being left out. When the company after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the break up, he proffereth to go for a coach-honour of taking wine with her; she and lets the servant go. He recollects hesitates between Port and Madeira, and your grandfather; and will thrust in some chooses the former-because he does. She

calls the servant Sir; and insists on not in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly troubling him to hold her plate. The house- flaunted in a vein of no discommendable keeper patronises her. The children's vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for harpsichord.

had

his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, which insult not; and studies, that Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a ask no questions of a youth's finances. He notable instance of the disadvantages to was lord of his library, and seldom cared for which this chimerical notion of affinity looking out beyond his domains. The healing constituting a claim to acquaintance, may influence of studious pursuits was upon him, subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a healthy man ; when the waywardness of his lady with a great estate. His stars are fate broke out against him with a second and perpetually crossed by the malignant worse malignity. The father of W maternity of an old woman, who persists in hitherto exercised the humble profession of calling him "her son Dick." But she has house-painter at N, near Oxford. A wherewithal in the end to recompense his supposed interest with some of the heads of indignities, and float him again upon the colleges had now induced him to take up his brilliant surface, under which it had been abode in that city, with the hope of being her seeming business and pleasure all along employed upon some public works which to sink him. All men, besides, are not of were talked of. From that moment I read Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in in the countenance of the young man the real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank determination which at length tore him from indeed. Poor W- was of my own academical pursuits for ever. To a person standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a unacquainted with our universities, the youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it distance between the gownsmen and the was too much pride; but its quality was townsmen, as they are called-the trading inoffensive; it was not of that sort which part of the latter especially-is carried to an hardens the heart, and serves to keep excess that would appear harsh and increinferiors at a distance; it only sought to dible. The temperament of W-'s father ward off derogation from itself. It was the was diametrically the reverse of his own. principle of self-respect carried as far as it Old W was a little, busy, cringing could go, without infringing upon that tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, respect, which he would have every one else would stand bowing and scraping, cap in equally maintain for himself. He would hand, to any thing that wore the semblance have you to think alike with him on this of a gown-insensible to the winks and topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, opener remonstrances of the young man, to when we were rather older boys, and our whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, tallness made us more obnoxious to obser- perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and vation in the blue clothes, because I would gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things not thread the alleys and blind ways of the could not last. W must change the air town with him to elude notice, when we have of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose the been out together on a holiday in the streets former; and let the sturdy moralist, who of this sneering and prying metropolis. strains the point of the filial duties as high Wwent, sore with these notions, to as they can bear, censure the dereliction; he Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a W-, the last afternoon I ever saw him, humble introduction, wrought in him a under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. passionate devotion to the place, with a It was in the fine lane leading from the profound aversion from the society. The High-street to the back of college, servitor's gown (worse than his school array) where W kept his rooms. He seemed clung to him with Nessian venom. He thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under to rally him—finding him in a better moodwhich Latimer must have walked erect, and upon a representation of the Artist Evan

E E

gelist, which the old man, whose affairs were
beginning to flourish, had caused to be set
up in a splendid sort of frame over his really
handsome shop, either as a token of pros-
perity or badge of gratitude to his saint.
W-
looked up at the Luke, and, like
Satan, "knew his mounted sign-and fled."
A letter on his father's table, the next
morning, announced that he had accepted a
commission in a regiment about to embark
for Portugal. He was among the first who
perished before the walls of St. Sebastian.

against him in some argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading Mountaineer; and would still mainI do not know how, upon a subject which tain the general superiority, in skill and I began with treating half seriously, I should hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own have fallen upon a recital so eminently pain-faction) over the Below Boys (so were they ful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclination to have done so for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined and I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a captive—a stately being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in common manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up

66

called), of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic-the only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out-and bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plainborn, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with anguish the thought that came over me: Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting to rigour, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season uttered the following memorable application—“ Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time—but he took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I write it "Woman, you are superannuated!" John Billet did not survive long after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was

actually restored! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five

pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was-a Poor Relation.

DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own.

AN ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.

Lord Foppington, in the Relapse. come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele or a Farquhar, and find-Adam Smith. To view a wellarranged assortment of block-headed Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios-would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books In this catalogue of books which are no indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of books-biblia a-biblia—I reckon Court Calen-Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large: the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without :" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

ever) is our costume. A Shakspeare or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and I confess that it moves my spleen to see worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour these things in books' clothing perched upon (beyond russia), if we would not forget kind shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true feelings in fastidiousness, of an old “Circushrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrust-lating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of ing out the legitimate occupants. To reach Wakefield! How they speak of the thoudown a well-bound semblance of a volume, sand thumbs that have turned over their and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, pages with delight!—of the lone sempstress, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to whom they may have cheered (milliner, or