out of our depth and lose ourselves with advantage. May this subject, then, be more frequently in your minds, and increasingly occupy the heart, the intellect, and affections of Old Humphrey !

ON PECULIARITIES AND

PREDILECTIONS.

WHAT a strange and unaccountable creature is man in his predilections and prejudices: now voluntarily pursuing real drudgery as a pastime; and now shrinking beneath a light visitation, as though the weight of the world were on his shoulders!

I am fond of noticing the different tastes that men manifest in their hours of leisure; for these are often, as much opposed as they well can be to the business and profession they follow. You have observed this, no doubt, as well as I have.

I have known a banker, well versed in the mystery of angling, making his own rods, platting his own lines, forming his own floats and artificial flies, and sitting, hour after hour, for the luxury of a "bite" or a "nibble" from the fish in his own brook or pond ; —a baker, manifesting a strong taste for architecture, rivalling and surpassing educated architects in the style and

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beauty of its pillars, pilasters, and pediments, his entablatures, cornices, and capitals;—a builder, fond of black-letter books, seeking with avidity for illuminated missals, and bidding almost any price for a real Caxton ;-a barrister, an industrious collector of insects, running after yellow moths, pursuing, helter-skelter, the green dragon-fly, and lying in wait by the hour, with flapper in hand, to surprise an emperor of Morocco;a mercer, leaving his silks and his satins to cultivate land, dressing himself in coarse clothes and thick-soled shoes, introducing patent drills and improved clod-crushers, and changing the "Times newspaper for the "Farmers' Journal;"- —a grocer, deeply skilled in horse flesh, colts, aged and three-years-old, bay mares and grey geldings, and knowing how to treat them for the grease and the glanders, the poll-evil, the spavin, and the staggers; -a cutler, profoundly versed in botany, quite at home among monandria, diandria, triandria and all other classes, and monogynia, digynia, trigynia and all other orders, discoursing freely on calyxes, corallas, stamens, pistils, pericarps and receptacles ;—and a brass founder, indulging in his love of paintings, always visiting picture galleries, attending public auctions, rummaging in brokers' shops, and ever on the eve of buying or selling a Van

dyke, a Poussin, a Cuyp, a Wilkie, a Landseer, or a Turner.

The same thing may be observed of men in conversation. Affected by some influential circumstance, they show what is uppermost in the mind: thus, one who has lately attended a lecture on mesmerism, indulges his friends very liberally with his notions of manipulations, somnolency, somnambulism, and clairvoyance. A second, a warm supporter of "singing for the million," has his mouth full of crotchets and quavers, Exeter Hall, harmony, Handel, and Hullah. While another, whose son has been a lieutenant in the Chinese expedition, can talk of nothing but the taking of Chin-kiang-foo, the twenty-one millions of dollars paid to the British, and the five free-trade ports of Canton, Amoy, Foo-chow-foo, Ningpo, and Shang-hae.

These remarks will, very likely, set you thinking of your own peculiarities; but however that may be, I have alluded to them, in some degree, as an introduction to my own. Many are my odd whims and fancies; but perhaps I have a stronger predilection, in my leisure hours, to walk abroad and observe persons and things than for any other pursuit. I notice the countenances of those I meet, ponder their actions, and pick up their passing remarks.

If I go near a seed shop, where flowers and plants are exhibited in the window, I am sure to step aside to admire them, repeating, perhaps, to myself, as I depart, "What gifts are these of the goodness of our heavenly Father? If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" Matt. vi. 30. If I see a sparrow, from the house-top, wing his way to the court-yard below, I marvel at the ease and lightness with which he does that which man cannot perform. "The sparrow is a common bird," I say to myself, "but what a gift has God given him in those fluttering wings that bear him through the yielding air;" and then comes the text, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows," Matt. x. 29-31. In this manner, trifles afford me pleasure, so that, oftentimes, in the course of a single day, my gratification is not only abundant, but also, of a very varied character.

As I walked out yesterday, a heavily laden porter went past me with a load on his head and shoulders, which seemed better suited for a camel