tleman with the umbrella !—the whole is about his head!-down he goes! he is killed!-Murder !-no, up he gets again!-away goes his umbrella!—and now his hat!—a steeple-chase is sedentary to his pursuit! they have turned the corner, hat, umbrella, and gentleman!-two to one on the hat!-no takers?—Oh lachrymose laughter! melancholy mirth! . . .

Mrs. Fondleman, if anything should happen to me in my absence-Why do you smile, Madam?-my affairs are arrangedyou will find my will in the writing-desk; and the cash in the drawer will disburse your account for the last quarter.'

66

La, Sir! are you out of your senses?"

Suppose I am, Madam, have not I, as an Englishman, the birth-right to be so, if I choose?-Not a word more, but give me my paraboues, cloak, and umbrella, and let me go, for go I will.... It is a sullen and savage satisfaction, in a day like this, when Nature plays the churl, and makes one dark and damp at the heart as herself, to look abroad at her in her own wretched woods and swampy fields, and to see that she is as melancholy and miserable as she has rendered us...... ... Pish! pah! pho! rain, sleet, and snow. Merry England!—but no matter-out I will go. No, I will not have a coach-a hearse would be more german to the weather. It is of no use your dissuading me, Madam, I am determined.

#

· Well, here I am, I care not how many miles from town, that charnel-house of cheerfulness !-What a walk I have had! Walk? wade, I should have said. And what a frightful series of faces I have met all along the road!-and all, I am happy to say, to all appearance, as miserable and unhappy as myself-all climate-struck, winter-wretched, English-happy!..... But I am wet, weary, and hungry—where shall I dry myself?-where dine myself? Psha! what is the use of drying or dining, either? Tædet me vitæ !..... " What have we here? "The Marlborough Head." Another glorious cut-throat's fighting face, making five in ten miles; two land, and three amphibious!-I wonder when the men of peace may hope to have their heads hung out for signs? Well, the men of war are welcome to the preference, and may divide their out-of-door honors with the Blue Boars and Red Lions of less naval and military publicans. "Horses taken in to bait"-aye, and asses too-I'll enter..... Curse the bell-rope !-woven of cobweb, I suppose, that it may be added as another item to the bill. Waiter!

What a brute! in a smock-frock tucked up one hand in his pocket fumbling his halfpence a head like a hedgehog-a mere mandrake in top-boots and corduroys-with a Salisbury-plain of cheek; the entire being a personification of that elegant compound word chaw-bacon. What is man, if this Cyclops is one!-Have you any thing to eat?'

"Zur?"

Why do you stand there rubbing your hair down? It's flat enough, you sleek roughness! Send your master.'

"Ize noa measter, Zur."

What have you then? who is your keeper?'

Missuz."

Well, send in the Sycorax. What a horrible dungeon of a room they have put me into!-fit only for treasons, stratagems, and spoils !—dark, dismal, black-wainscoted, and ringing to the tread like a vaulted tomb! But what matter!-can it be more dreary than my mind? No. Then here will I take "mine ease in mine inn.” Curses on that peg in the wall! It was put up to hang a hat upon; but it seems by its look to hint that it could sustain the weight of the wearer. And that imp there, perched on the point of it; how busy it is adjusting an unsubstantial rope with a supernatural Jack Ketch-like sort of solemnity!-Shadows seem to flicker along the wall, and hideous faces mop and mow at me! That knot in the

oaken wainscot glares at me like the eye of an Ogre! The wormeaten floor cracks and squeaks under my tread; and the cricket shrills under the hearth-stone !—And that hideous half-length of a publican of Queen Anne's Augustan age!-how the plush-coated monster stares at me, like an owl from an ivy-bush metamorphosed into a wig! I cannot bear this!-Waiter! waiter!- [Enter the Landlady.]-What, in the name of all that is monumental, have we here? The Whole Duty of Man, in one volume, tall copy-neat.I never beheld such a woman till now!-six feet two, I should think, in her slippers!-Respected be the memory of the late landlord of the Marlborough Head! If he subdued such an Eve as this, he was a greater conqueror than him whose sign he once lived under.'

"What is your pleasure, Sir?" curtseying respectfully.

(I stand up-and my eyes are on a line with the keys at her waist.) 'Mrs. Mrs. -'

Furlong, Sir, at your command."

'Furlong!-mile, exactly-not a foot less. Be good enough, Mrs. Furlong, to let me have a couple of chops, cooked in your most capable manner; and, pray, do show me into a more cheerful room!' Certainly, Sir." (I follow like a minnow in the wake of a leviathan !)

'Aye, this will do better. Here I can see what is going on in the world, though it is not worth looking at. [Exit Landlady.] I have an antipathy to tall women, but really there is something sublime in this Mrs. Furlong; and as a lover of the picturesque, 1 shall patronise her. Now, if I was not sick of this working-day world, and all the parts and parcels of it, I should be tempted to propose for about one-half of Mrs. Furlong, twenty poles or so. She has blue eyes— fair hair a complexion like a May morning, and really looks handsome, and somewhat of the lady in her widow's weeds: 'Fore heaven! I've seen worse women!-Then her voice is soft and low-“ an excellent thing in woman." And this is a snug inn too;-a comfortable room this carpeted, clean, and cosey-a view of watery Venice, in oil, over the fire-place, and Before Marriage and After Marriage, in Bowles and Carver's best manner, on opposite sides, as they should be ...... Ha! the chops already!-and very nice they look!— a shalot too!-Really, Mrs. Furlong, the outworks of my heart-no very impregnable fortress-are taken already. Now let me have just a pint of your particular sherry...... Ha! this looks well

pale and sparkling too, like a sickly wit. I insist upon your taking a glass with me, Madam.'

Sir, you are very good."

Quite the contrary. A good-sized husband to you!' (Mrs. Furlong smiles, shows a very good set of teeth, and curtseys.)

Ah, Sir, you gentlemen will have your joke. Your better health, Sir-for you do not look very well."

'She has spoken this with such a pitying tenderness of tone that it has gone through my heart, and would, had it been iron!-What makes my lips quiver, my tongue falter, my voice thicken, and an unusual moisture come into my eyes? One touching word of sympathy? Am I then again accessible to those blessed influences upon the heart and affections - pity and human kindness? Yes- then I live again !-Oh! honey in the mouth, music to the ear, a cordial to the heart, is the voice of woman in the melancholy hours of man! Mrs. Furlong is called away, and I am spared from making a fool of myself in her presence. Ah, Mary, I will not accuse thee with all the changes which time and disappointment have made in my heart and feelings; but for some of these thou must answer! Thou wert my first hope and earliest disappointment! What I am thy little faith has made me;-what I should have been-but no matter-I feel how desolate a wretch I am, how changed from all I was and ought to be-it is thy work, it is thy deed, and I forgive thee! Behold me here, a broken-spirited man with furrowing cheeks and whitening hair, tears in my eyes, and agony at my heart! Behold me an unsocial man, suspected by the world and suspecting the world--I, who trusted in it, loved it; and would have benefited it! But I have done with it now-I loathe it and avoid it! And why? Why am I now harsh of nature uncharitable in thought, if not in speech-unforgetful of slight offences-revengeful of deep ones - jealous of looks -watchful of words?—I that was gentle, tender of others, to myself severe; forgiving, incapable of anger, open-minded, suspicionless! But why should I anatomise myself? I give my heart to the vultures among men let them glut on it; and good digestion wait upon their appetite!'

"Did you call, Sir?"

No, Madam; but I am glad you are here, for your coming in has interrupted a melancholy thought.'

-

"A melancholy thought!-Lud, Sir, do you surrender yourself to such a weakness as melancholy! Life, to be sure, is a serious thing to the most cheerful of us; but to the over-anxious, and those who groan under its cares, death were happier than such life !—The really heavy obligations of existence are worthy of our gravest thoughts; but the lighter evils, the cares and anxieties of the day,— Sir, I never allow them to make a deeper impression on my mind than my pencil does on my slate: when I have satisfied myself as to the amount, I rub the lines off, and begin again."

And am I to be taught philosophy by a Plato in petticoats, and the economy of life by a Dodsley in dimity? Nunc dimittis, then, be my ditty! Pardon my expressions, Madam - the insolence of humbled pride. I sit rebuked. You are a sensible woman, Mrs. Furlong have, apparently, right views of life; now tell me,-what is the end of it?'

"Death, I should think, Sir."

A pertinent answer, Madam; but you are on the wrong premises.'

"I am on my own."

• Indeed—I am happy to hear it; and if I was a widow-watcher, I should make a note of that fact. I meant, Madam,-what is the design, the intention, the moving motive of life?'

66

it is

Happiness here and in another and a better world."

Yes, Madam; but our happiness here what an uncertain good a hope never in our own hands, but always in those of others! And what do they merit, who, entrusted with so precious a trust for our benefit, deny it to us, and withhold it from us?'

"The same unhappiness at the hands of others."

What if you would not, if you might, whiten one hair of their heads with sorrow who have silvered the whole of yours-what do they merit?'

"They do not merit so much mercy."-(She leaves the room.)

"A negro has a soul, your honor!" said Corporal Trim, putting the right foot of his postulate forward, but in an undecided attitude, as if he doubted whether his position were tenable. "My uncle Toby ran through in his memory all the regimental orders from the siege of Troy to that of Namur, and remembering nothing therein to the contrary, came to the Christian conclusion, that a negro had a soul. And why not an innkeeper-especially if a woman My prejudice

is to let against that abused class of hosts and hostesses: to be sure, it was formed on an acquaintance with those only of the Bath road: they may not require souls, as their guests are chiefly fashionable people. Here is a woman" with a tall man's height," humbly stationed beside one of the highways of life — and stunned and distracted with the stir and bustle of the goers to and comers from the shrine of the great Baal, who has yet contrived to keep her heart from hardening, and her soul in whiter simplicity, in a common inn, than the shrinking and secluded nun shut up from the world in a convent! There is indeed a soul of goodness in things evil!-an inborn grace, which the world cannot give, and cannot take away! Else how should this poor woman have that which so many minds, so much safer placed to preserve their freshness and native worth, have altogether lost and live without?-One half the vices of the world are only acts of conformity with the prejudices of the world. Give a man an ill name, and he wears it as if it were a virtue and proper to him, and keeps up the tone of his depravity with a due sense of its decorum - its keeping, and color, and costume. When will the world learn better? Oh thou worst and vilest weed in the beautiful fields of human thought— Prejudice,-grow not in any path of mine, for I will trample thee down to the earth which thou disgracest and must defile! — But "Thinking is an idle waste of thought.” • Waiter.'

"Zur."

--

• What Cyclops again! But that's a prejudice too. Have you an entertaining book in the house ?'

"Missuz have, I daur to zay, Zur."

Bring it then, my good fellow.

A change of thought to the

mind, like a change of air to the body, refreshes, invigorates, and cheers.'

"Here be one, Zur."

Aye, this will do nothing so well. Joseph Andrews! Good, good! Blessings be on thee, inimitable Fielding !-for many a lingering hour hast thou shortened, and many a heavy heart hast thou lightened. See the book opens of itself at a page which a man must be fathoms five in the Slough of Despond if he read it with a grave face and a lack-lustre eye!-World, I bid you good den! — for here will I forget you as you are, and re-peruse you as you were... Ah! I remember well my first acquaintance with Joseph Andrews. I was then a very serious yet very happy boy, any book was a treasure, but a stolen perusal of one like this was a pleasure beyond all price and worth all risks; for works like this were among the profanities from which I was carefully debarred :—mistaken zeal! If discovered in my hands, it was snatched away; and if it escaped the fiery ordeal, it was well. But who shall control the strong desires of youth! — I remember, too, the candle secretly purchased out of my limited penny of pocket-money; the early stealing to bed; the stealthy lighting of the " flaming minister to my midnight vigil; the unseen and undis

turbed reading of this very book deep into the hours of night; and the late waking, and pallid look, the effects of my untimely watching. I remember, too, how nearly my secret was discovered; for laughing too loudly over the merry miseries of poor Parson Adams, the thin wainscot betrayed me: I remember, ere I had breathed thrice, the sound of a stealing foot heard approaching my bedroom-door - the light out in an instant--the book thrust deep down under the bedclothes, and how I was heard snoring so somnolently, that I should have deceived Somnus himself.'

"Ecod, you did'um capital !"

Eh? what! what have you been eaves-dropping at my elbow all this time, you Titus Oates of a traitor?'

"Yeez, Zur-you didn't tell I to go."

Go, bring in candles and a pint of sherry-let down the blinds. -heap the fire-and don't disturb me till I disturb you.'

"Yeez,

Zur.

Vanish, then, good bottle imp!-And now for Joseph Andrews. Capital! excellent! inimitable and immortal Fielding! And thy bones lie unhonored in an alien's grave, and not a stone in thy native land records the name of the instructor and delighter of mankind !Well, there is no accounting for the negligence of nations.

Who knocks? Come in.'

"Do you mean to sleep here to night, Sir?"

'Sleep here, Mrs. Furlong! No-quite the reverse.'

"I thought you did, as it is so late."

་

So late! how late?'

Eleven, Sir."

Impossible! Have I been reading so long?'

"It is very true, Sir."

And what kind of night is it ??

"Starry and frosty, and the moon is rising."

'What in England? Then let me have my bill, for I shall be glad to witness such a phenomenon.'

* La, Sir, it is ten miles to town, and a gentleman was stopped on this road only last week!"