unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and, as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I) I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance,-and where those carry me not deep enough,-in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think,—as well as a man upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this; for parrots, jackdaws, etc., I never exchange a word with them,nor with apes, etc., for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay, my dog and my cat, though I value them both (and, for my dog, he would speak if he could) yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation; I can make nothing of a discourse with them beyond the proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father's and my mother's conversations in his beds of justice ;—and those uttered, there's an end of the dialogue.

But with an ass, I can commune for ever.

Come, honesty! said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, art thou for coming in, or going out? The ass twisted his head round to look up the street. Well, replied I, we'll wait a minute for thy driver.

He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way.

I understand thee perfectly, answered I; if thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent.

He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and picked it up again. God help thee, Jack! said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter day's labour, and many a bitter blow, I fear for its wages! 'tis all-all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others! And now thy mouth, if one

knew the truth of it, is as bitter I dare say as soot-(for he had cast aside the stem), and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world, that will give thee a macaroon. In saying this, I pulled out a paper of them, which I had just purchased, and gave him one, and at this moment that I am telling it, my heart smites me, that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon, than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act.

When the ass had eaten his macaroon, I pressed him to come in; the poor beast was heavily loaded, his legs seemed to tremble under him, he hung rather backwards; and as I pulled at his halter it broke short in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face-"Don't thrash me with it; but, if you will you may." If I do, said I, I'll be d-d.

The word was but one half of it pronounced, like the Abbess of Andonillet's- —so there was no sin in it—when a person coming in, let fall a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil's crupper, which put an end to the ceremony.

(From the Same.)

A FRANCISCAN MONK

THE monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy; but, from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty. Truth might lie between, -he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account.

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted— mild, pale, penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth-it looked forwards; but looked as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven above who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders best knows: but it would have suited a Brahmin, and had I met it upon the plains of Hindoostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither

elegant or otherwise, but as character and expression made it so : it was a thin spare form, something above the common size, if it lost not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure,—but it was the attitude of entreaty; and as it now stands presented to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.

When he had entered the room three paces he stood still, and laying his left hand upon his breast (a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his right)—when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order; and did it with so simple a grace and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, I was bewitched not to have been struck with it.

A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sou. (From A Sentimental Journey.)

THOMAS GRAY

[Gray was born in Cornhill, London, 20th December 1716, the son of a money scrivener (a kind of solicitor). Thanks to his mother and her brothers— his father was not a very satisfactory person-he was educated at Eton and then at Cambridge. He left the University, with whose then prevailing study of mathematics he had little or no sympathy, without taking a degree, in September 1738. In the following year he accepted his friend Horace Walpole's invitation to travel abroad with him; and for over two years cultivated and matured himself by visiting places and people of interest in France and in Italy. In the winter of 1742 he drifted back to Cambridge, the study of the law, which had been proposed for his profession, not attracting him, and nothing else recommending itself. His private means seem to have been sufficient for his wants; and Cambridge, though he was but little in harmony with the society and tone there, was his home for all his remaining years, though he enjoyed frequent and long absences, spent in visiting his mother so long as she lived (she died 1753), and in tours about the more picturesque parts of England and Scotland, which indeed were the great events and delights of his singularly quiet life. His removal from Peterhouse to Pembroke in 1765 "may be looked upon as a sort of era in a life so barren of events as mine." He studied much and very various subjects,—the classics, notably those of Greece, Italian literature, old English poetry, architecture, zoology, botany, history, music,-and became a highly accomplished man. But for various reasons he wrote very little poetry, and not much formal prose except his Letters, though he left behind large collections of notes. To use his own phrase, he was "but a shrimp of an author." In 1768 he was appointed professor of modern history; but, though he drew up a plan for an inaugural address, and also some rules concerning a course in modern history, he never in fact lectured. He was taken ill in his College Hall on the 24th of July, and died on the 30th, 1771.]

"IN Gray's Commonplace Books at Pembroke College there is much interesting matter," says Dr. Bradshaw (Aldine Edition of Gray's Poetical Works, ed. 1891), "and many notes and essays that have never been printed," though Mr. Gosse has drawn from them in his Works of Gray in Prose and Verse. But the prose writings by which Gray is best known, and deserves to be best

known, the contents of his MSS. being for the most part of the nature of notes and fragments, are certainly his Letters.

Letter-writing was an art carefully and assiduously cultivated in the last century, as never before, and never comparably since. In many instances beyond doubt a correspondent fully entertained the idea of future publication. He wrote consciously for the press, and not only for the private perusal of his friend. In any case he would be assured that generally what he wrote would be read, not only by his friend, but by his friend's circle. Hence special pains were taken with this kind of composition, and it became a branch of literature. Thus a habit of epistolary care and finish was formed; and a certain ease and charm marks even the most ordinary communications. Now, if such attention to style was common, as it was, we may be sure it is to be found in a high degree in Gray's correspondence. A man so critical and fastidious as Gray could indeed do nothing carelessly and like a sloven. The idea of perfection was ever before his eyes. Even his handwriting was significant in this respect. "I have seen and transcribed many and many a page of it," says Mr. Torry, in his interesting volume entitled Gray and his Friends; "but I do not recollect to have noticed a single carelessly written word, or even a letter. The mere sight of it suggests refinement, order, and infinite pains." Lady Jane Grey, in a well-known anecdote of her given by Ascham, complains that whatever she had to do before her father or mother-whether to "speak or keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else"-she was expected to do it "as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world," or else she had a very bad time, being "sharply taunted" and "cruelly threatened" and pinched and nipped and otherwise tortured. Gray was scarcely less exacting and stern towards himself than those austere parents in the old house in Bradgate Park towards their child. He was one of the severest of self-critics. Was ever any other poet so remorseless with himself? Those stanzas omitted from the Elegy written in a Country Churchyard we believe Gray's taste was sound and true in excising; still they are in themselves such as perhaps no other author would have had the heart to excise. And yet both in his poetry and, what now more closely concerns us, in his prose, he exhibits the art of concealing his art. We feel ourselves in the presence of a most finished artist, but we do not see him mixing his colours, or