to discover that this could not last for ever. Though I was still curious, there were no longer curiosities; for the world is limited, and new countries, and new people, like every thing else, wax stale on acquaintance; even ghosts and hurricanes become at last familiar; and books grow old like those who read them. In I was now at what sailors call a dead lift; being too old to build castles for the future, and too dissatisfied with the life I had led to look back on the past. this state of mind, I bought me a snuff-box; for as I could not honestly recommend my disjointed self to any decent woman, it seemed a kind of duty in me to contract such habits as would effectually prevent my taking in the lady I had once thought of. I set to snuffing away till I made my nose sore, and lost my appetite. I then threw my snuff-box into the fire, and took to cigars. This change appeared to revive me. For a short time I thought myself in Elysium, and wondered I had never tried them before. Thou fragrant weed! O that I were a Dutch poet, I exclaimed, that I might render due honour to thy unspeakable virtues! Ineffable tobacco! Every puff seemed like oil poured upon troubled waters, and I felt an inexpressible calmness stealing over my frame; in truth, it appeared like a benevolent spirit reconciling my soul to my body. But moderation, as I have before said, was never one of my virtues. I walked my room pouring out volumes like a moving glasshouse. My apartment was soon filled with smoke; I looked in the glass and hardly knew myself, my eyes peering at me through the curling atmosphere like those of a poodle: I then retired to the opposite end, and surveyed the furniture; nothing retained its original form or position; the tables and chairs seemed to loom from the floor, and my grandfather's picture to thrust forward its nose like a French-horn, while that of my grandmother, who was reckoned a beauty in her day, looked, in her hoop, like her husband's wig-block stuck on a tub. Whether this was a signal for the fiends within me to begin their operations I know not; but from that day I began to be what is called nervous. The uninterrupted health I had hitherto enjoyed now seemed the greatest curse that could have befallen me. I had never had the usual itinerant distempers; it was very unlikely that I should always escape them; and the dread of their coming upon me in my advanced age made me perfectly miserable. I scarcely dared to stir abroad; had sand-bags put to my doors to keep out the measles; forbade my neighbours' children playing in my court-yard to avoid the hooping-cough; and to prevent infection from the small-pox, I ordered all my male servants' heads to be shaved; made the coachman and footman wear two wigs, and had them both regularly smoked whenever they returned from the neighbouring town, before they were allowed to enter my presence. Nor were these all my miseries; in fact, they were but a sort of running bass to a thousand other strange and frightful fancies; the mere skeleton to a whole bodycorporate of horrors. I became dreamy, was haunted by what I had read, frequently finding a Hottentot, or a boa-constrictor, in my bed. Sometimes I fancied myself buried in one of the pyramids of Egypt, breaking my shins against the bones of a sacred cow. I thought myself a kangaroo, unable to move, because somebody had cut off my tail. Then In this miserable state I one evening rushed out of my house. I know not how far, or how long I had been from home, when, hearing a well-known voice, I suddenly stopped: it seemed to belong to a face that I knew; yet how I should know it somewhat puzzled me, being then fully persuaded that I was a Chinese Josh. My friend (as I afterwards learned he was) invited me to go to his club. This, thought I, is one of my worshippers, and they have a right to carry me whereever they please; accordingly I suffered myself to he led. I soon found myself in an American tavern, and in the midst of a dozen grave gentlemen who were emptying a large bowl of punch: they each saluted me, some calling me by name, others saying they were happy to make my acquaintance; but what appeared quite un accountable was my not only understanding their language, but knowing it to be English. A kind of reaction now began to take place in my brain. Perhaps, said I, I am not a Josh. I was urged to pledge my friend in a glass of punch; I did so. My friend's friend, and all the rest, in succession, begged to have the same honour I complied again—and again, till at last the punch having fairly turned my head topsy-turvy, righted my understanding; and I found myself myself. This happy change gave a pleasant fillip to my spirits. I returned home, found no monster in my bed, and slept quietly till near noon the next day. I arose with a slight head-ache and a great admiration of punch; resolving, if I did not catch the measles from my late adventure, to make a second visit to the club. No symptoms appearing, I went again, and my reception was such as led to a third, and a fourth, and fifth visit, when I became a regular member. I believe my inducement to this was a certain unintelligible something in three or four of my new associates, which at once gratified and kept alive my curiosity, in their letting out just enough of themselves while I was with them to excite me when alone to speculate on what was kept back. I wondered I had never met with such characters in books; and the kind of interest they awakened began gradually to widen to others. Henceforth I will live in the world, said I; 'tis my only remedy: a man's own affairs are soon conned; he gets them by heart till they haunt him when he would be rid of them; but those of another can be known only in part, while that which remains unrevealed is a never-ending stimulus to curiosity. The only natural mode therefore of preventing the mind preying on itself the only rational, because the only interminable employment, is to be busy about other people's business. The variety of objects which this new course of life each day presented, brought me at length to a state of sanity; at least, I was no longer disposed to conjure up remote dangers to my door, or chew the cud on my indigested past reading; though sometimes, I confess, when I have been tempted to meddle with a very bad character, I have invariably been threatened with a relapse; which leads me to think the existence of some secret affinity between rogues and boa-constrictors is not unlikely. In a short time, however, I had every reason to believe myself completely cured; for the days began to appear of their natural length, and I no longer saw every thing through a pair of blue spectacles, but found nature diversified by a thousand beautiful colours, and the people about me a thousand times more interesting than hyænas or Hottentots. The world is now my only study, and I trust I shall stick to it for the sake of my health. SONG. FROM THE SPANISH. O BROAD and limpid river! My love should hap to be, O clear and crystal dews My love should hap to be, O elms that to the breeze O if in field or plain My love should chance to be, O warbling birds that still My love should hap to be, ANONYMOUS. A RAINY DAY. WHEN the duke of Nivernois was ambassador in England, he was going down to lord Townshend's seat in Norfolk, on a private visit, quite in deshabille, and with only one servant, when he was obliged, from a very heavy shower of rain, to stop at a farm-house in the way. The master of this house was a clergyman, who to a poor curacy added the care of a few scholars in the neighbourhood, which, in all, might make his living about eighty pounds a year, and which was all he had to maintain a wife and six children. When the duke alighted, the clergyman, not knowing his rank, begged him to come in and dry himself, which the other accepted, by borrowing a pair of old worsted stockings and slippers of him, and otherwise warming himself by a good fire. After some conversation, the duke observed an old chess-board hanging up, and as he was passionately fond of that game, he asked the clergyman whether he could play? The other told him he could pretty tolerably, but found it very difficult in that part of the country to get an antagonist. "I am your man,' says the duke.." With all my heart," says the parson : |