ladies of quality, Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys, peeping into a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with all the same timidity and curiosity as if it were some preternatural being-I am sure more than if it had been the queen. He then made some observations on the respect paid to rank, and said, "However ridiculous it might seem, it was no more than the natural expression of the highest respect in other cases. For instance, as to that of bowing out of the king's presence backwards, would you not do the same if you were introduced to Dr. Johnson for the first time? You would contrive not to turn your back upon him, till you were out of the room." He said, "You violent politicians make more rout about royalty than it is worth: it is only the highest place, and somebody must fill it, no matter who: neither do the persons themselves think so much of it as you do. They are glad to get into privacy as much as they can. Nor is it a sinecure. The late King (I have been told) used often to have to sign his name to papers, and do nothing else for three hours together, till his fingers fairly ached, and then he would take a walk in the garden, and come in to repeat the same drudgery for three hours more. So, when they told Louis XV. that if he went on with his extravagance he would bring about a Revolution, and be sent over to England with a pension, he merely asked, 'Do you think the pension would be a pretty good one?" He noticed the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, and praised them for their extreme vivacity and great insight into human nature. Once when the mob had besieged the palace, and the Cardinal was obliged to go and appease them, a brick-bat was flung at him and knocked him down, and one of the assailants presenting a bayonet at his throat, he suddenly called out, "Oh, you wretch! if your father could have seen you in this barbarous action, what would he have said?" The man immediately withdrew, though, says the Cardinal, "I knew no more of his father than the babe unborn." N then adverted to the talent of players for drollery and sudden shifts and expedients, and said that by living in an element of comic invention, they imbibed a portion of it. He repeated that jest of Reynolds, who filled up the blanks in a militia paper that was sent him with the description, “Old, lame, and a coward;" and another story told of Matthews, the comedian, who being left in a room with an old gentleman and a little child, and the former putting the question to it, "Well, my dear, which do you like best, the dog or the cat?" by exercising his powers of ventriloquism, made the child seem to answer, "I don't care a damn for either,"-to the utter confusion of the old gentleman, who immediately took the father to task for bringing up his son in such profaneness and total want of common humanity.

He then returned to the question of the inconsistent and unreasonable expectations of mankind as to their success in different pursuits, and answered the common complaint, "What a shame it was that Milton only got thirteen pounds nine shillings and sixpence by Paradise Lost."" He said, "Not at all; he did not write it to get money, he had gained what he proposed by writing it, not thirteen pounds nine shillings and sixpence, but an immortal reputation. When Dr. Johnson was asked why he was not invited out to dine as Garrick was, he answered as if it was a triumph to him, 'Because great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths stopped!' But who does like to have their mouths

stopped? Did he, more than others? People like to be amused in general; but they did not give him the less credit for wisdom, and a capacity to instruct them by his writings. In like manner, it has been said, that the King only sought one interview with Dr. Johnson; whereas, if he had been a buffoon or a sycophant, he would have asked for more. No, there was nothing to complain of: it was a compliment paid by rank to letters, and once was enough. The King was more afraid of this interview than Dr. Johnson was; and went to it as a schoolboy to his task. But he did not want to have this trial repeated every day, nor was it necessary. The very jealousy of his self-love marked his respect: and if he had thought less of Dr. Johnson, he would have been more willing to risk the encounter. They had each their place to fill, and would best preserve their self-respect, and perhaps their respect for each other, by remaining in their proper sphere. So they make an outcry about the Prince leaving Sheridan to die in absolute want. He had left him long before: was he to send every day to know if he was dying? These things cannot be helped, without exacting too much of human nature." I agreed to this view of the subject, and said,-"I did not see why literary people should repine if they met with their deserts in their own way, without expecting to get rich; but that they often got nothing for their pains but unmerited abuse and party obloquy."-"Oh, it is not party spite," said he, "but the envy of human nature. Do you think to distinguish yourself with impunity? Do you imagine that your superiority will be delightful to others? Or that they will not strive all they can, and to the last moment, to pull you down? I remember myself once saying to Opie, how hard it was upon a poor author or player to be hunted down for not succeeding in an innocent and laudable attempt, just as if they had committed some heinous crime! And he said,They have committed the greatest crime in the eyes of mankind, that of pretending to a superiority over them! Do you think that party abuse, and the running down particular authors, is any thing new? Look at the manner in which Pope and Dryden were assailed by a set of reptiles. Do you believe the John Bull and Blackwood had not their prototypes in the party-publications of that day? Depend upon it, what you take for political cabal and hostility is (nine parts in ten) private pique and malice oozing through those authorized channels."

We now got into a dispute about nicknames; and H-me coming in and sitting down at my elbow, my old pugnacious habit seemed to return upon me. N- contended, that they had always an appropriate meaning: and I said," Their whole force consisted in their having absolutely none but the most vague and general."-" Why," said N- "did my father give me the name of Fat Jack,' but because I was lean ?" He gave an instance which I thought made against himself, of a man at Plymouth, a baker by profession, who had got the name of Tiddydoll-he could not tell how. "Then," said I, "it was a name without any sense or meaning."-"Be that as it may," said N- "it almost drove him mad. The boys called after him in the street, besieged his shop-windows; even the soldiers took it up, and marched to parade, beating time with their feet, and repeating, Tiddydoll, Tiddydoll, as they passed by his door. He flew out upon them at the sound, with inextinguishable fury, and was knocked down

and rolled in the kennel, and got up in an agony of rage and shame, his white clothes covered all over with mud. A gentleman, a physician in the neighbourhood, one day called him in and remonstrated with him on the subject. He advised him to take no notice of his persecutors. What,' he said, 'does it signify? Suppose they were to call me Tiddydoll ?'-' There,' said the man, 'you called me so yourself; you only sent for me in to insult me!' and, after heaping every epithet of abuse upon him, flew out of the house in the most ungovernable passion." I told N- this was just the thing I meant. Even if a name had confessedly no meaning, by applying it constantly, and by way of excellence to another, it seemed as if he must be an abstraction of insignificance: whereas, if it pointed to any positive defect, or specific charge, it was at least limited to the one, and you stood a chance of repelling the other. The virtue of a nickname consisted in its being indefinable and baffling all proof or reply. When H--me was gone, Nextolled his proficiency in Hebrew, which astonished me not a little, as I had never heard of it. I said, he was a very excellent man, and a good specimen of the old Presbyterian character, who had more of the idea of an attachment to principle, and less of an obedience to fashion or convenience, from their education and tenets, than any other class of people. N- - assented to this statement, and concluded by saying, that H-me was certainly a very good man, and had no fault but that of not being fat.

DEVOTION.

How poor Religion's pride,

In all the pomp of method, and of art,

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion's every grave, except the heart !"-BURNS.

ON the breath of evening comes the hymn,
The hymn of the vesper hour,

Floating tranquilly through the twilight dim,

With the fragrance of the flower;

And many thoughts with the wild notes fleet
Of many a parted year;

And recollections sad and sweet

Arise and disappear.

There is magic great in that high-arch'd pile-
In the long aisles dark and chill,

When the full tones hang on the vaults awhile,

Like light on a sunny hill,

And the organ's swell with a thrilling sound

Makes the cluster'd columns shake,

And the pavement graven with names renown'd,

And the buried seem to wake.

Then the deep bell tolling overhead

A note from a loftier clime,

Seems to come as a voice from the mighty dead

That would mingle with present time;

And the full soul borne from the earth away
Hath forgotten its crimes and ill,

And expatiates as though no house of clay
Prison'd its boundless will.

And the full-robed choir in their garb of white,
The fancy may wildly dream,

Are spirits that bask in immortal light
From Heaven's own quenchless beam,
While their lips in their adoration's tone
Chant the holy song and prayer➡
Oh who would think that the lip alone
Tenders Heaven its worship there!

Religion's pomp is the grace of art,
She dwells not in walls of stone,
But flies afar from the hollow heart
That worships in form alone:

Let the notes be grand, and the forms profound,
Even kings may consecrate,

She scorns the purple pomp and the ground
Where no heart-offerings wait.

Then give me the temple of air and sky,
With man's purple pomp forgot,
Where the soul springs upward exultingly,
And the trick of art is not;

By the craggy rock on the sea-beat shore,
To the music of the wave,

Or nigh by the rapid torrent's roar
Where tall pines darkly wave.

Where Niagara pours his watery world

In his black unplumb'd abyss,

More loud than a thousand thunders hurl'dWhere God's great image is;

Or where the untrodden Andes rise,

Where raging Hecla burns,

Or the Obi under Siberian skies
'Thaws from his frozen urns.

Or at home by the smiling green-wood side,
My music the dashing stream,

The wild winds that hollow by me ride,
Whispering the holy name;

And creation all worshipping around

In harmony of praise,

With cheerful heart and with sight and sound,

Him of eternal days.

THE COLLECTOR OF CAWNPORE.*

A Tale.

THE course of expense pursued by the Collector, which has been already mentioned, could not be systematically pursued without embarrassing the party concerned, whose income, although handsome, was by no means sufficient to meet the constant demands made upon it. Thus George soon found himself becoming involved: but, so far from being induced thereby to retract his expenditure, he daily grew more and more enamoured of dress, company, and splendour. He proceeded with borrowed money; and when the lender grew clamorous for repayment, there is too little doubt that he hesitated not at using any means to procure a longer respite from exposure.

While matters were going on in this feverish way, George's guilty partner, after threading almost all the intricate and thorny paths of vice, paid the debt of Nature, dying prematurely and unblest; and on the circumstance reaching the Collector's ear, it struck him that it would be an advisable step to marry again. He had been awakened, and rudely awakened, from his long dream of folly:-but alas, too late! His mind and taste had become corruptedhis good principles subdued-his bad habits fixed. He saw the dark gulf, towards the brink of which his evil genius seemed to be hurrying him, and shuddered at its depth and dreary aspect. But how to avoid the precipice? Scandalous surmises were already afloat; and were he to shut the doors of his hospitable mansion, their truth would be immediately inferred.

At the house of a neighbour, my friend first beheld Charlotte. Though neither beautiful nor highly accomplished, she profited much by comparison with others immediately about her; and possessing the charms of youth and amiability, soon made a conquest of George's heart. In ruminating on means to keep up the false appearances which he had instituted, it occurred to him, as we have already hinted, that it would be eligible to marry this young lady, as his creditors, as well as others, might be led, by stories artfully circulated, to believe that the union would have a beneficial influence on his circumstances.

Such was the scheme by which he hoped, for the present at all events— and guilt seldom looks to the future-to rise above his difficulties; and to the fulfilment of this scheme he did not scruple to sacrifice an innocent female, whom he affected to love. They were married, and for awhile all was glitter and sunshine, The Collector's entertainments were as splendid as ever; and it was not until it became pretty clear that no money resulted from the marriage, that affairs approached their crisis. The refusal of credit soon exhausted all the cash which could be commanded; and then it was that George at length found it requisite to open his circumstances to his wife, and impress on her the necessity of retrenchment. His utter ruin was, however, by this time effected. Certain grounds of suspicion had been reported to the proper authorities. The knowledge of his fall was soon spread; and, from being whispered in confidence amongst a few, became the open subject of conversation throughout the surrounding stations. The conduct of Charlotte under these trying circumstances was most exemplary. She uttered no reproach, spoke no impatient word, and wore no cloudy brow. This behaviour could not but cut her husband to the quick. It "heaped coals of fire upon his head." He saw at once the necessity of flight; and his first idea was to travel overland to Madras, and thence go to America. He resolved to confide to his wife his guilt and danger in all their full extent; to entrust to her the secret of his destination; and to quit her, in reality, for ever. "Charlotte," said he, "I must go-God knows whether we shall meet again; but when I arrive at my destination, rely on my sending for you. Do not take leave of me-I cannot bear it !"

* Concluded from page 245.