they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma saving we could hit upon, that should be an still for so we must in courtesy interpret equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, that speck of deeper blue,-which the decorous when we felt the money that we paid for it. artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver-two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another for likeness is identity on tea-cupsis stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead. a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream! Farther on if far or near can be predicated of their world see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. Here a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. "Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare- and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Coventgarden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too lateand when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you presented it to me and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it) and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak-was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson, (which we are oldfashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon) some of these speciosa miracula | careful to keep brushed, since we have upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking, how favorable circumstances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. "I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state". so she was pleased to ramble on," in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!)-we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit your old corbeau-for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen- - or sixteen shillings was it? - a great affair we thought it then-which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. "When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the 'Lady Blanche ;' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money. - and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do, but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you? "Then, do you remember our pleasant I appeal to you, whether as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, — recognised to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages-and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play, afterwards! Now we can only pay our money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. | I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and impossible for them to fill up. With such Waltham, when we had a holyday—holydays, reflections we consoled our pride then- and and all other fun, are gone now we are rich -and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad — and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in and produce our store-only paying for the ale that you must call for but there was still a law of civility to woman and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us— but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, "There was pleasure in eating strawscarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? berries, before they became quite commonNow when we go out a day's pleasuring, in the first dish of peas, while they were yet which is seldom moreover, we ride part of dear to have them for a nice supper, a treat. the way and go into a fine inn, and order | What treat can we have now? If we were to the best of dinners, never debating the treat ourselves now-that is, to have dainties which after all, never has half the a little above our means, it would be selfish relish of those chance country snaps, when and wicked. It is the very little more that we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and we allow ourselves beyond what the actual a precarious welcome. poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat-when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologises and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now, what I mean by the word -we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. expense me "You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood-when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery - where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me - and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought and the pleasure was the better for a little shame and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria. You used to say, that the Gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of goingthat the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage - because a word lost would have been a chasm, which it was "I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to account for our exceedings- many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much-or that we had not spent so much-or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year—and still we found our slender capital decreasingbut then, - betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and T talk of curtailing this charge, and doing with- supplementary youth, a sorry supplement in- Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up wiih the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew I know not the fathom line that ever touched up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power-those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten—with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty, insipid, half Madonaish chit of a lady in that very blue summerhouse." THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fan- | heaven- but a kind of fairy-land heaven, tastical thing of a dream the other night, that about which a poor human fancy may have you shall hear of. I had been reading the leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, "Loves of the Angels," and went to bed with without presumption. my head full of speculations, suggested by Methought-what wild things dreams are! that extraordinary legend. It had given birth—I was present-at what would you imato innumerable conjectures; and, I remember gine? - at an angel's gossiping. the last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder, "what could come of it." I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make out- but to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens neither-not the downright Bible Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know-but there lay, sure enough, wrapt in its little cloudy swaddling-bands- a Child Angel. Sun-threads - filmy beams- ran through the celestial napery of what seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered round, watching when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes; which, when it did, first one, and then the other with a solicitude and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dim the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces – what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not celestial visages! Nor wanted there to my seemingO, the inexplicable simpleness of dreams!-bowls of that cheering nectar, -which mortals caudle call below. Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, stricken in years, as it might seem, - so dexterous were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet with terrestrial child-rites the young present which earth had made to heaven. Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony, as those by which the spheres are tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, muffled; so to accommodate their sound the better to the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of those full-winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years went round in heaven a year in dreams is as a day-continually its white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but wanting the perfect angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering-still caught by angel hands, for ever to put forth shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed vigour of heaven. And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and heaven. And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into immortal palaces: but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of humen imbecility; and it went with a lame gait; but in its goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human) touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one. And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain and strife to their natures (not grief), put back their bright intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born; and what intuitive notices they could not repel (by reason that their nature is, to know all things at once) the half-heavenly novice, by the better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding; so that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction of the glorious Amphibium. But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a child for ever. And because the human part of it might not press into the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full-natured angels tended it by turns in the purlieus of the palace, where were shady groves and rivulets, like this green earth from which it came; so Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the entertainment of the new-adopted. And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is nothing), and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely. By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a Child; but not the same which I saw in heaven. A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments; nevertheless, a correspondency is between the child by the grave, and that celestial orphan, whom I saw above: and the dimness of the grief upon the heavenly is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondency is not to be understood but by dreams. And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal passion, upspringiag on the wings of parental love (such power had parental love for a moment to suspend the else-irrevocable law) appeared for a brief instant in his station, and, depositing a wondrous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And this charge was the self-same Babe, who goeth lame and lovely—but Adah sleepeth by the river Pison. CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. DEHORTATIONS from the use of strong I have known one in that state, when he liquors have been the favourite topic of sober has tried to abstain but for one evening, declaimers in all ages, and have been received though the poisonous potion had long ceased with abundance of applause by water-drink- to bring back its first enchantments, though ing critics. But with the patient himself, he was sure it would rather deepen his the man that is to be cured, unfortunately gloom than brighten it, in the violence of their sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the the struggle, and the necessity he has felt of evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple. getting rid of the present sensation at any Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise rate, I have known him to scream out, to the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies. strife within him. Alas! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear false witness, have no constitutional tendency. These are actions indifferent to them. At the first instance of the reformed will, they can be brought off without a murmur. The itching finger is but a figure in speech, and the tongue of the liar can with the same natural delight give forth useful truths with which it has been accustomed to scatter their pernicious contraries. But when a man has commenced sot O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which I have written, first learn what the thing is; how much of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou mayest virtuously mingle with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not, under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death almost as real as that from which Lazarus rose not but by a miracle. Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. But what if the beginning be dreadful, the first steps not like climbing a mountain but going through fire? what if the whole system must undergo a change violent as that which we conceive of the mutation of form in some insects? what if a process comparable to flaying alive be to be gone through? is the weakness that sinks under such struggles to be confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement of the whole victim, body and soul? Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of whom I speak is myself? I have no puling apology to make to mankind. I see them all in one way or another deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have brought upon it. I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt; whom brandy (I have seen them drink it like wine), at all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a measure, can do no worse injury to than just to muddle their faculties, perhaps never very pellucid. On them this discourse is wasted. They would but laugh at a weak brother, who, trying his strength with them, and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain persuade them that such agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is to a very different description of persons I speak. It is to the weak, the nervous; to those who feel the want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in society to what is no more than the ordinary pitch of all around them without it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such must fly the convivial board in the first instance, if they do not mean to sell themselves for term of life. Twelve years ago I had completed my sixand-twentieth year. I had lived from the period of leaving school to that time pretty much in solitude. My companions were chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to bed betimes, and the |