find a cold drawing-room, with the fire just lighted, and smoking, of course. After some half-quarter's preparation, enter the lady of the house, cold as her room, and formal as the regiment of chairs marshalled, with the drum-major of a sofa at their head, along its walls. The conversation, a repetition of all you have already heard in the morning, with some episodes to give time for the entrance of the luncheon— (mem. your second luncheon)—which is never ready. At last the moment of parting arrives:-you curt'sy, bob, and return to your carriage, to skelter back your seven miles home, with the additional agrement of a snow-storm and darkness.

These are pleasant preliminaries for encountering at dinner the same faces you have been seeing every day till your eyes ache. All the good stories are moreover exhausted, the got-up wit expended, and the prescribed topics of the day discussed and worn out. Unless some one of the company has been kind enough to go out skaiting on horseback, and has broken his own or his horse's bones, for the amusement of the party, nothing remains but the claret for getting through the long, long evening.

It is under these circumstances that we become acquainted with the full value of agreeability; and know the worth of the man who “in the worst of times" has within himself the sources of amusement. To describe what agreeability is-in what it consists, is next to an impossibility. It is a quality rather to be felt than understood, and far more susceptible of being enjoyed than analyzed. It is an aggregate of many particulars, differs in different subjects, and depends in some measure on the company as well as on the person himself in whom it is found. Generally speaking, an agreeable person should not be a man of strong passions, or of deep views or feelings; he should have vanity enough to wish to please, and not sufficient to be wholly engaged with himself. There are men of the most lively and brilliant wit, with minds stored with anecdote, who are extremely wearisome in society, simply because they are not good listeners, and take no pains to make the company satisfied with themselves, to draw out each man in his turn, to return him his own thoughts in a new or a better dress, and flatter him with the fancy that the novelty is his own. Without the aid of some one possessed of this talent, society is apt to fall into the hands of some egregious coxcomb, who has no other qualification for possessing "the general ear," than impudence and self-sufficience.

Agreeability is a much rarer and more difficultly attainable excellence among women, than with men; owing to their more circumscribed intercourse with the world, and their more defective education. We are indeed most frequently indebted to a slight dash of coquetry in females, when we pass our time agreeably in their society. Clever women are too often tranchantes, or too pedantic, to please; while a fool is the whole antipodes away from agreeability. But when one finds a female truly agreeable, there is nothing in the round of life so fascinating, so enjoyable! Beauty cloys; wit dazzles and fatigues; but genuine agreeability is as durable as it is exquisite. The male sex has nothing like it; nothing so winning, nothing so delightful, nothing so intoxicating. Hours, days, years, under its influence, "roll unperceived away;" and a long life will not suffice to exhaust its powers.

To be agreeable, the desire to please is not sufficient. Often, indeed,

the very effort mars the design. Quoters, strainers after points and antitheses, are any thing on the face of the earth but agreeable: and it often occurs, that when even men of wit and celebrity are brought together for the express purpose of " making a charming day of it," mutual apprehension and mutual effort render the society as dull as a Methodist meeting.

To be simple and natural, on the other hand, goes far; and it is not unusual to find even aged females (those synonymes for bore, among the half-witted,) extremely agreeable, upon no other fund than this simplicity and a little good sense.

One source of the agreeable is sympathy. A noisy, obstreperous, story-telling, song-singing invader of ears, is deemed agreeable in the club, of which he is the centre; and a prosing, long-winded follower of the doublings of a hare, the patient historiographer of the day's labour of a pointer-are good company in the society of country-squires. To this cause we must attribute the rarity of agreeability among the cultivators of abstruse science, and among men of high-toned character, who have little in common with the mass of mankind, and whose thoughts, habitually turned inward, are incapable of external demonstration, except on great occasions.

For a somewhat similar reason, mothers of large families are uniformly deficient in the agreeable, being wholly pre-occupied with the cares and delights of maternity, and absorbed in contemplation of the great qualities of Tommy, or the budding beauties of the infant Jane. The scarcity of agreeability exalts it in our estimation above far more important attributes. For, to be agreeable, implies, of necessity, no virtue, if it be not that of good-nature; and a very agreeable creature may be a downright villain. Whatever value we may set upon the higher qualities of head or heart, we are still more intolerant of dulness than of vice, and prefer too often an agreeable companion to a true friend

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico,"

says Horace; and in so saying bears involuntary testimony to the triumph of the agreeable over the estimable.

Agreeability is a quality eminently dependent upon civilization. Our ancestors knew not the thing; and were obliged to employ professional jesters, mummers, and morrice-dancers, to help them through their long winter's evenings, and to pass their Christmas for them in cheerfulness. The youth of both sexes find agreeability in their own animal spirits, in their young hopes and desires: a ball, or a small game, finds them in full employment. Infancy, therefore, (both in society and in individuals) is not fastidious:-but as life and society advance, men become intolerant, demand more intellectual excitement, and are more prone to retire from the world to the bosom of the select few, who happen to be congenial with their own habits and propensities *. in France alone that old men retain their faculty of pleasing and being pleased to the last. This is an endowment which results much from temperament; but something likewise must be attributed to the smaller pressure of the cares of life, and to the diminished necessity for great

* Those who live most in the world, complain the most of its stupidity, insomuch that ennui has become the tone of good society.

exertions in the mere attainment of subsistence. An Englishman's mind and temper are early worn out by his excessive effort to maintain his place in society; and the intellectual machine is destroyed, long before the failure of the digestive and circulating organs fits the body for the grave. "They manage these things better in France;" and the French are accordingly a more social and entertaining people.

But it is high time to have done. This paper was intended to be "agreeable," but the influence of a country Christmas has prevailed. Beginning in fun and ridicule, the subject has conducted itself, like all other human subjects,-" to the grave." If, however, the reader should be tired of this our 66 country Christmas," he will afford an additional instance of the truth it has been attempted to illustrate: and he has this advantage over the invited guest-that he can cut whenever he pleases, without the trouble of a formal apology, or the necessity for a lying excuse, to his humble servant,

M.

THE WHITE ROSE.

Or the Lument of the Year 1745.

OH, thou pale, snowy rosebud, though rent and laid low
By the rude hand of Power in the day of despair,
Yet thou still in the breasts of the loyal shalt blow,
Full as lovely, as fragrant, as fresh, and as fair.
Though our bosoms no longer may glow with the dream
Of royalty righted, and exiles restored,

Yet still they may swell with the rapturous theme

Of the faith they long cherished, the prince they adored;
And still they in silence may weep o'er the woes
Endured by the chieftains who bore the white rose.
With that deep thrilling interest, where pleasure and pain
Contend in the bosom and struggle for sway,

We muse on the emblem of Loyalty vain,

And sigh o'er its fall on Culloden's dark day:
Yet the cloud that o'ershadowed the dawning so bright,
And obscured wtih its darkness the valley and heath,
With the beam of the meteor flashed radiance and light,
And illumed with its splendour the pale field of death,
And bright o'er the fallen its lustre arose,
And hallowed their sufferings, their valour and woes.
Oh, still whilst our bosoms shall glow with the flame,
Which Heaven itself in its mercy inspired,

Shall awaken each thrill as it dwells on the fame
Of the heroes so loyal, devoted, admired.
And still the loved emblems of loyalty true

Shall honoured and blest in our bosoms remain,
And whilst its white blossoms we pensively view,
We behold no dishonour, or sully, or stain;
And ages to come shall admiring disclose,

The virtues and fame of the pure, snowy rose.

The Editor gives Jacobite poetry as a curiosity. He needs scarcely say that the name of his clan entitles him to abjure all attachment to the doctrine of "Monarchs restored."

HARRY HALTER THE HIGHWAYMAN.

I've cast your Horoscope-your natal star

Is Ursa Major-a most hanging sign. OLD PLAY.

THE indefatigable author of the Scottish novels, and his innumerable imitators, have not only commemorated all the reevers, robbers, borderers, blackmailmen, brigands, rebels, outlaws, cut-throats, and other heroes of Scotland, but have begun to make incursions into England; while another set have landed upon the shores of Ireland, where they bid fair to reap an abundant harvest of riot and robbery. It is really scandalous, that the citizens of London should not have availed themselves of their rich records of rascality to immortalize some of their more celebrated felons; but, with the exception of the Newgate Calendar, an imperfect and obscure publication, I am not aware of any attempt to do proper justice to these characters, beyond the very simple process of hanging them. This desideratum in literature I purpose to supply, by a series of traditional or recorded tales, wherein, according to established usage, I shall introduce frequent dialogues, imitations of the old ballads, songs, and other poems, and have made such arrangements, that every one shall contain a crazy, doting semi-prophetic old crone, upon whose fatuous auguries the whole plot shall be forced to depend. I need not more fully develope my mode of treatment, since I enclose you, as a specimen, the tale of

HENRY HALTER THE HIGHWAYMAN.

In the whole populous range of Dyot-street, St. Giles's, and Seven Dials, it would have been impossible to find a more dashing youth, or one who at once illustrated and defied the dangers of his profession with a look of more resolute slang, than Harry Halter the Highwayman. Sixteen-string Jack, with the bunches of ribbons at his knees, and the ends of his neckcloth fluttering in the air of St. George's Fields, had a more swelling swagger, and Abershaw might carry in his face a more stubborn and insolent assurance of the gallows; but Harry, with his hat on one side, his quid in his left cheek, and his bludgeon in his right hand, contrived to associate such a real air of high birth and fashion, that it was impossible to distinguish him from the nobility and gentry with whom he was constantly intermingled at boxing-matches and cockpits. Even the Bow-street officers were sometimes deceived; and many a lord and member of parliament going to receive his dividends at the Bank, has been tapped on the shoulder, with a-" Come, come, Mr. Harry, this is no place for you-you're nosed, so bundle off." Wig and Water-Spaniel in Monmouth-street was his favourite haunt in London; none but " Booth's best" was ever dispensed from that savoury bar, which, not being above six feet square, was exactly big enough to admit Mrs. Juniper the fat landlady, a dozen or two of dram glasses, and a small net of lemons, which, with a delicacy of feeling that did her honour, she declined hanging from the roof, as customary, lest it should awaken any dangling presentiments in the minds of her guests. Here with his two friends Ned Noose and old Charley Crape, one of whom ultimately emigrated to Australasia, and the other, after being kept some time in suspense as to his final fate, was admitted of Surgeons' Hall,-Harry has sate behind many a pint of purl, arranging the plans

The

of innumerable burglaries which figure in the annals of those days, or singing the ballad of

Sweeping along the road.

He bade the coachman stop, but he,
Suspecting of the job,

His horses lash'd-but soon roll'd off,
With a brace of slugs in his nob.
Galloping to the carriage-door,
He thrust his face within,
When the Chaplain cried-sure as
eggs is eggs,

That is the bold Turpin.
Quoth Turpin, You shall eat your
words

With sauce of leaden bullet,
So clapp'd his pistol in his mouth,
And fired it down his gullet.
The Bishop fell upon his knees,

When Turpin bade him stand,
And gave him his watch, a bag of gold,
And six bright rings from his hand.
Rolling with laughter, Turpin pluck'd
The Bishop's wig from his head,
And popp'd it on the Chaplain's poll,
As he sate in the corner dead.

Upon the box he tied him then,

With the reins behind his back, Put a pipe in his mouth, the whip in his hand,

And set off the horses smack! Then whisper'd in his black mare's

ear,

Who luckily wasn't fagg'd,
You must gallop fast and far, my dear,
Or I shall be surely scragg'd."
He never drew bit nor stopp'd to bait,
Nor walk'd up hill or down,
Until he came to Gloucester gate,
Which is the Assizes town.
Full eighty miles in one dark night,
He made his black mare fly,
And walk'd into court at nine o'clock
To swear to an Alibi.

A hue and cry the Bishop raised,
And so did Sheriff Foster,
But stared to hear that Turpin was

By nine o'clock at Gloucester.
So all agreed it couldn't be him,

Neither by hook nor crook;
And said that the Bishop and Chaplain

was

Most certainly mistook,

Here it was, that on a dark and tempestuous night of November, when the wind struggling amid the thick-cluster'd chimneys of St. Giles's responded to the signal whistle of the thieves below, and the rain dashed with fitful violence against the windows of the private room in which they were stationed, that our hero and his companions arranged the plan of their attack upon Farmer Bruin's house, of Finchley Common. "I tell you," cried Harry, anxious to silence the objections of his com→ rades, "It's as lone and snug a dwelling as a man need wish to break into. I vas all over it vonce, and knows the rigs on't. No alarmsno vatch--and as for the dog in the yard, we must physick him, that's all."

"And are you sure he keeps five hundred guineas in the bed-room?" enquired Noose.

"Psha, man! d'ye think I doesn't know vot's vot? Didn't he brag on it to his club at Barnet? Vill the vaiter told me so himself. Besides there's a silver tankard vorth twenty flimsies, and a gold sneezer." "Vot men sleeps in the house?" said old Charley, with a thoughtful look.

"Only one spooney chap of a rustic,-and old Bruin."

"Who isn't no flincher," resumed Charley.

"But we've our bulldogs and barkers, and arn't we three to two? --you're 'nation squeamish, Charley."

"I fears no man but the hangman," said Noose, scratching his neck; "but there's no call for us to be nabb'd and pull'd up."