Old

ford. A supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed upon some public works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the countenance of the young man, the determination which at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our universities, the distance between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called the trading part of the latter especially-is carried to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W's father was diametrically the reverse of his own. W was a little, busy, cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to any thing that wore the semblance of a gown-insensible to the winks, and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W- must change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with Wthe last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High-street to the back of ***** college, where W- kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful, and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him -finding him in a better mood-upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. W looked up at the Luke, and like Satan, "knew his mounted sign-and fled." A letter on his father's table the next morning announced, that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian.

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this matter, are certainly not attended with any thing painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclination to have done so for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him

a prodigiously rich man. he and my father had been schoolfellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined—and I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning. A captive—a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect, which we all in common manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school), and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own faction), over the Below Boys (so were they called), of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic-the only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out—and bad blood bred: even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the thought that came over me: Perhaps he will never come here again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had refused, with a resistance amounting to rigour-when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season-uttered the following memorable application-" Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time-but he took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I write it-"Woman, you are superannuated." John Billet did not survive long, after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored; and, if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly

All I could make out of him was, that

66

substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint (Anno 1781), where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was-a Poor Relation. ELIA.

STANZAS TO A YOUNG FRIEND.
No mortal hand can scatter flowers,

To soothe or bless the mourner's way,
But such as, cull'd from earthly bowers,
Are found as briefly bright as they;
For every blossom born of earth
Is doom'd to wither from its birth.

Yet even these-if fed by dew,

Which silently descends from heaven,-
Indebted, for each brighter hue,

To light its glorious sun has given,-
And freshen'd by its gentlest breeze;
Thus rear'd—e'en earthly flowers may please.

I will not say, my youthful friend,

That such may fitting emblems be
Of aught that I have ever penn❜d,
Or now presume to offer thee:
But, as a Bard, my highest bliss
Were to approximate to this.

To touch, to please, to win the heart
To calm and virtuous feelings prone,
Not by mere rules of minstrel art,

Or fancied genius of mine own,

But by those holier charms,-whose birth
Is not of man, nor caught from earth.
And, were I gifted thus,-O how

Could I thy path with flowers adorn?
When grief too often clouds my brow,

To find mine own has many a thorn,
Whose rankling wounds a pledge might be
How little I could succour thee.

But there is Balm in Gilead!-There
The Great Physician may be found,
Whose love and mercy can prepare
An antidote for every wound;

His hand can scatter flowers divine,
And faith in Him may make them THINE!

{Lond. Mag.

THE RULING PASSION OR HABIT.

HALLER, the great physician, seems to have been making his very latest sensations and the final struggles of his body, subjects of professional experiment and curiosity. "My friend," said he, to his medical attendant, "the artery no longer beats"-and expired. Few people, perhaps, have lived to announce such a fact of their own system.

ON GIVING ADVICE.

Et c'est une folie, à nulle autre seconde,
De vouloir se mêler de corriger le monde.

Ir was a remark of Horne Tooke's, that in the matter of advice, there are two sorts of fools; those who will give, and those who will not take it. Now, as these embrace between them almost every man that breathes, there cannot be a subject quod magis ad nos pertinet. Yet, as every man's business is nobody's business, the theme is fairly going a begging. Like the "roasted pigs which run through the streets with knives and forks in their backs, methinks, it apostrophizes the periodical writer, as he passes along in his literary jog-trot, i. e. currente calamo, and crying "Come touch on me," puts in its claim to be served up pro bono publico. Not that we would insinuate the matter to be untouched; quite the reverse: but it has uniformly been handled in such a dull, tiresome, common-place, lack-a-daisical, sermonizing style, that "poppy and mandragoras, and all the drowsy syrups of" all the congregated universities of Europe could not render it more narcotic. Whoever will take the pains-having nothing better to do-to inquire into this matter, and to turn over all that philosophy has produced for its illustration, will rise from his task with much the same sort of knowledge as the Bath mail-coachman has of the West of England, who, by dint of living on the road, is acquainted with the mile-stones, alehouse-signs, and country-seats within sight of his coach-box-but no more. All "this sort of thing" is very well for your authors in folio, who, virtute officii, are bound to tell the reader, in return for his "good and lawful money of Great Britain," whatever is not, in order to make a decent bulk for their book, before they come (in an appendix) to the few pages of what is; and who would ill discharge their functions, if they omitted to recount any one of the errors the world has committed respecting the matter in hand; telling the public, as if the public had never heard it before, how Cicero said this, how Plato talked like a madman concerning that, how Herodotus tells a story no one believes concerning the other; interlarding the whole with a due quantity of twice-two-are-four aphorisms, and with perpetual beggings of questions, after the most approved old fashion.

But we, who are "pent up" in the Utica of a single half-sheet (writers in fructu), and who are obliged to aim at being readablepray Heaven we succeed!-we, indeed, are compelled to go a little into the interior of the country, to leave the high-roads of literature,

and pry

pry into every hole and corner in search of novelty, leaving no stone unturned in order to "elevate and surprise.' "" A tavernkeeper might as well hope to trade in musty victuals and sour wine, as a periodical hope for success in the common path. Nature and sense are nothing; we must be fantastical, and finical, and outlandish: and (novelty not being always attainable) if we take up with