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time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest-two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tête-a-tête pictures.-"The Royal Lover and Lady G-;" "the Melting Platonic and the old Beau,”—and such like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it-at that time, and in that place for a better book?

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading-the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him-but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye-a magazine, or a light pamphlet.

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and readingCandide!

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected-by a familiar damsel-reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill, (her Cythera,) reading-Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been--any other book.-We read on very sociably for a few pages; and not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and-went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush, (for there was one between us,) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret.

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill, (as yet Skinner's-street was not,) between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.

I was once amused-there is a pleasure in affecting affectation-at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in with me at the pit door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty-then at once in his dawn and his meridian-in Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening-the rush, as they term it -I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. The clamour became universal. "The affectation of the fellow," cried one. "Look at that gentleman reading, papa," squeaked a young lady, who, in her admiration

on.

of the novelty, almost forgot her fears. I read "He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand," exclaimed a pursy cit; whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on--and till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved, as Saint Antony at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits as undisturbed at the sight, as if he were sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble, (I recognized more than one of their ugly faces,) had damned a slight piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance.

There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection-the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy, or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls-the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B, in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him, (it was in his younger days,) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half

the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralized upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas.

THE TWO BOYS.

I saw a boy with eager eye
Open a book upon a stall,
And read, as he'd devour it all;
Which when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call,
"You, sir, you never buy a book,
Therefore in one you shall not look."

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh

He wish'd he never had been taught to read,

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need.

Of sufferings the poor have many,
Which never can the rich annoy:
I soon perceiv'd another boy,
Who look'd as if he'd not had any
Food, for that day at least-enjoy

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder,
Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny,
Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat:

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat.

17*

CAPTAIN JACKSON.

AMONG the deaths in our obituary for this month, I observe with concern "At his cottage on the Bath road, Captain Jackson." The name and attribution are common enough; but a feeling like reproach persuades me that this could have been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, which he was pleased to dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento as that which now lies before me!

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of gentlewomen, upon that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they were too.

And was I in danger of forgetting this man?-his cheerful suppers-the noble tone of hospitality, when first you set foot in the cottage-the anxious ministerings about you, where little or nothing, (God knows,) was to be ministered.Althea's horn in a poor platter-the power of self

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