ward, ostrich-fashion. In this kind of relieved marching I have traversed with her many scores of acres on those well-wooded and well-watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is in the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather is not too oppressive, she passeth much of her valuable time. There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather, situated between the frontiers of that and ******'s college-some litigation, latterly, about repairs, has vested the property of it finally in ****** 's-where at the hour of noon she is ordinarily to be found sitting-so she calls it by courtesy-but in fact, pressing and breaking of it down with her enormous settlement; as both those foundations, who, however, are good-natured enough to wink at it, have found, I believe, to their cost. Here she taketh the fresh air, principally at vacation times, when the walks are freest from interruption of the younger fry of students. Here she passeth her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied with a book-blest if she can but intercept some resident Fellow, (as usually there are some of that brood left behind at these periods;) or stray Master of Arts, (to most of whom she is better known than their dinner bell;) with whom she may confer upon any curious topic of literature. I have seen these shy gownsmen, who truly set but a very slight value upon female conversation, cast a hawk's eye upon her from the length of Maudlin grove, and warily glide off into another walk-true monks as they are, and ungently neglecting the delicacies of her polished converse, for their own perverse and un

communicating solitariness! Within doors her principal diversion is music, vocal and instrumental, in both which she is no mean professor. Her voice is wonderfully fine; but till I got used to it, I confess it staggered me. It is for all the world like that of a piping bulfinch; while from her size and stature you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth-running the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and surprising. The spacious apartment of her outward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her humours and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs-being six foot high. She languisheth-being two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin-her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily-her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelburg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of hers-whose

solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure. Softest, and largest of thy sex, adieu! by what parting attribute may I salute thee-last and best of the Titanesses-Ogress, fed with milk instead of blood-not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's stately structures-Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having thee to fill it.

A CHARACTER

OF

THE LATE ELIA,

BY A FRIEND.

THIS gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. He just lived long enough, (it was what he wished,) to see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of the LoNDON MAGAZINE will henceforth know him no more.

Exactly at twelve last night his queer spirit departed, and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. The mournful vibrations were caught in the dining room of his friends T. and H.; and the company, assembled there to welcome in another First of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth, and were silent. Janus wept. The gentle Pr, in a whisper, signified his intention of devoting an Elegy; and Allan C, nobly forgetful of his countrymen's wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes full and friendly as a Tale of Lyddalcross.

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a two year's and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom.

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you a sort of unlicked, incondite things --villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than such; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a selfpleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness, (so called,) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true, only, (historically,) of another; as in his Fourth Essay, (to save many instances,) -where under the first person, (his favourite figure,) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections-in direct opposition to his own early history.-If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and affections of another-making himself many, or reducing many unto himself-then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another,