nicely on each side beneath his hat, which he then placed upon his head with an elegant inclination towards the left side. He was really not bad-looking, in spite of his sandy-coloured hair. His forehead, to be sure, was contracted, and his eyes were of a very light colour, and a trifle too protuberant; but his mouth was rather well-formed, and being seldom closed, exhibited very beautiful teeth; and his nose was of that description which generally passes for a Roman nose. His countenance wore generally a smile, and was expressive of self-satisfaction: and surely any expression is better than none at all. As for there being the slightest trace of intellect in it, I should be misleading the reader if I were to say anything of the sort. In height, he was about five feet and a quarter of an inch in his boots, and he was rather strongly set, with a little tendency to round shoulders :—but his limbs were pliant and his motions nimble.

Here you have, then, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse to the life-certainly no more than an average sample of his kind; but as he is to go through a considerable variety of situation and circumstance, I thought you would like to have him as distinctly before your mind's eye as it was in my power to present him.-Well-he put his hat on, as I have said; buttoned the lowest two buttons of his surtout, and stuck his white pocket handkerchief into the outside pocket in front, as already mentioned, anxiously disposing it so as to let a little of it appear above the edge of the pocket, with a sort of careful carelessness-a graceful contrast to the blue; drew on his gloves; took his cane in his hand; drained the last sad remnant of infusion of chicory in his coffee-cup; and the sun shining in the full splendour of a July noon, and promising a glorious day, forth sallied this poor fellow, an Oxford Street Adonis, going forth conquering and to conquer! Petty finery without, a pinched and stinted stomach within: a case of Back versus Belly (as the lawyers would_say), the plaintiff winning in a canter! Forth sallied, I say, Mr. Titmouse, as also sallied forth that day some five or six thousand similar personages, down the narrow, creaking close staircase, which he had not quitted before he heard exclaimed from an opposite window, "My eyes, ain't that a swell!" He felt how true the observation was, and that at that moment he was somewhat out of his element; so he hurried on, and soon reached the great broad street, apostrophized by the celebrated OpiumEater, with bitter feeling, as-" Oxford Street!-stony-hearted step-mother! Thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children!" Here, though his spirits were not just then very buoyant, our poor little dandy breathed more freely than when he was passing through the nasty crowded court (Closet Court) which he had just quitted.

(From "Ten Thousand a Year.")

SORROW FOR THE DEAD.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

[See p. 79.]

THE sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal-every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open-this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved; when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal; would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness-who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it, even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every error-covers every defect-extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!

But the grave of those we love what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy-then it is we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the parting scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled griefsits noiseless attendants-its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrillingoh! how thrilling-pressure of the hand! The faint, faltering accents, struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection! The last fond look of the glazing eye, turning upon us even from the threshold of existence !

If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent-if thou art a husband, and hast ever caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment of thy kindness or thy truth-if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged, in thought, or word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee if thou art a lover, and hast ever given an unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold and still beneath thy feet;then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul-then be sure that thou wilt lie down, sorrowing and repentant, on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear; more deep, more bitter. because unheard and unavailing.

CHARACTER OF DR. JOHNSON.

LORD MACAULAY.

[Thomas Babington Macaulay was born October 25th, 1800. In 1811 was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, took his degree of B.A. in 1822; became a Fellow in 1824, and M.A. 1825. Meanwhile he had become a contributor to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. In 1826 he was called to the bar, and in 1830 entered Parliament as member for Calne,

After returning from India, where he had proceeded as legal adviser to the Supreme Council of Calcutta, he joined the administration of Lord Melbourne as Secretary at War, and in that of Lord John Russell was Paymaster of the Forces. He was returned to Parliament for Edinburgh in 1839; but at the election of 1847 he was unseated-only, however, to be returned without canvass or solicitation in 1852. Hard work under high pressure told on the health of the Hon. T. B. Macaulay, as it has done on many: he was compelled to withdraw from Parliament in 1856, when (1857) he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Macaulay. He died 1859.

Macaulay's fame as a poet was first established in 1842, when he published his "Lays of Ancient Rome." They are Homeric in their minuteness, while for narrative power they carry us along with them by the sheer force and rapidity of their incidents. Though homely in style, they are vigorous and full of energy, like Scott's best ballads; above all, they are highly dramatic, and among the best in the language for oral delivery. A number of brilliant Essays in the "Quarterly Review" contributed to Lord Macaulay's reputation. Of his great work, his "History of England," Macaulay only lived to publish four volumes-a fragment of the fifth being published after his death.]

Ar the time when Johnson commenced his literary career, a writer had little to hope from the patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage of the public did not yet furnish the means of comfortable subsistence. The prices paid by booksellers to authors were so low that a man of considerable talents and unremitting industry could do little more than provide for the day which was passing over him. The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. The thin and withered ears had devoured the good ears. The season of rich harvests was over, and the period of famine had begun. All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the word Poet! That ord

denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow, familiar with compters and spunging-houses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench Prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him,— and they well might pity him; for if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, from Grub Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's Church, to sleep on a bulk in June, and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in December, to die in an hospital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of more than one writer, who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kitcat or the Scriblerus Club-would have sat in parliament, and would have been entrusted with embassies to the high Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row.

As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life has its peculiar temptations. The literary character, assuredly, has always had its share of faults-vanity, jealousy, morbid sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of starvation and despair, a full third-night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was sleeping amidst the cinders, and eating potatoes at the Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of nightcellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge Island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste. They knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilized communities. They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could no more be broken

in to the offices of social man than the unicorn could be trained to serve and abide by the crib. It was well if they did not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the hands which ministered to their necessities. To assist them was impossible; and the most benevolent of mankind at length became weary of giving relief which was dissipated with the wildest profusion as soon as it had been received. If a sum was bestowed on the wretched adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, might have supplied him for six months, it was instantly spent in strange freaks of sensuality; and, before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the poet was again pestering all his acquaintances for twopence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cookshop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses were forthwith turned into taverns. All order was destroyed; all business was suspended. The most good-natured host began to repent of his eagerness to serve a man of genius in distress when he heard his guest roaring for fresh punch at five o'clock in the morning.

A few eminent writers were more fortunate. Pope had been raised above poverty by the active patronage which, in his youth, both the great political parties had extended to his Homer. Young had received the only pension ever bestowed, to the best of our recollection, by Sir Robert Walpole, as the reward of mere literary merit. One or two of the many poets who attached themselves to the opposition-Thomson in particular, and Mallet-obtained, after much severe suffering, the means of subsistence from their political friends. Richardson, like a man of sense, kept his shop; and his shop kept him, which his novels, admirable as they are, would scarcely have done. But nothing could be more deplorable than the state even of the ablest men who at that time depended for subsistence on their writings. Johnson, Collins, Fielding, and Thomson were certainly four of the most distinguished persons that England produced during the eighteenth century. It is well known that they were all four arrested for debt.

Into calamities and difficulties such as these Johnson plunged in his twenty-eighth year. From that time, till he was three or four and fifty, we have little information respecting him; little, we mean, compared with the full and accurate information which we possess respecting his proceedings and habits towards the close of his life. He emerged at length from cocklofts and sixpenny ordinaries into the society of the polished and the opulent. His fame was established. A pension sufficient for his wants had been conferred on him; and he came forth to astonish a generation with which he had almost as little in common as with Frenchmen or Spaniards.

In his early years he had occasionally seen the great; but he had seen them as a beggar. He now came among them as a companion. The demand for amusement and instruction had, during the course of twenty years, been gradually increasing. The price of literary labour had risen; and those rising men of letters with whom Johnson was henceforth to associate, were for the most part persons widely different from those who had walked about with him all