THE AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF A SPOILED CHILD.

THE tooth-ache is a plague-and a stupid neighbour who comes to spend long afternoons with one, is a plague ;-and so is a managing' wife,and a highly accomplished' sister; and a friend with too fine feelings';but without doubt the plague of a yet greater magnitude, is, a SPOILED CHILD! To have, however, this plague of plagues in perfection, a person must neither belong to, nor have any control over, the little Miss or Master; as then, there would at least be this consolatory reflection→→→ ⚫ I did the mischief-I spoiled the child ?' No; the unhappy wight must be governess, or nurse, or eldest sister; or hold some official situation, by virtue of which, she is required to manage, without being allowed to master. Then there is no putting tears into type; or sighs into letterpress; or the daily and hourly sorrows of one who thus lives with spoiled children, into words!

Yet I do dearly love children of all descriptions, whether spoiled or unspoiled; trowsered, or petticoated-in a poem, a picture, and a cradle ! So long as they remain in these, their silent spheres, no one can speak with more sincere delight than myself, of infantine simplicity''engaging prattle'-dawning intelligence' the morn of life'-' the spring time of existence'-etc.; but I am fain to confess, that too often when the buds of beauty come forth living realities-no longer the childhood of poetic fancy, but the childhood of cries, questions, and sugar-candy,my ardour abates, my admiration degenerates, and on the first opening I am prone to tear myself away from the sweet little cherubs! There are exceptions to this, as to every other rule, but as a general assertion, I like children as I do wind instruments, a good way off! In both cases, 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the sound!

I am not going to trouble the reader with any details of the various afflictions I have suffered through the agency of spoiled children, which have induced this otherwise unpardonable want of complacency towards the whole species. My present office is merely to transcribe the auto-biography of an unfortunate urchin as noted down by himself; and one melancholy moral at least, may be extracted from the record,-one, that over fond parents, and too kind friends would do well to consider; namely, that if a spoiled child is a plague to others, he is a misery to himself! The child is father to the man;'-character, habits, dispositions, and tastes, may be formed in maturer life by commerce with the world, but they are founded in the nursery and the first stages of education. It is time however, my infant hero spoke for himself.

M. J. J.

'I am very unhappy, and yet to-day I am eight years old, and I have a pony, and a dog, and a watch, and a hunting whip of my own, and I have no brothers and sisters to plague me, and I have no need to try to please any body but myself, and yet I am not happy, and I never have been-never. I do not know the reason why, but I shall write down all the disagreeable things that ever happened to me; and perhaps some one else may find out the reason for me.

The first disagreeable thing I remember, is, that when I was a very very little child, people shewed me pretty things they did not intend me to

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have; my mamma allowed me to rummage the contents of her desk and work-box, and to have the ornaments from the chimney-piece, and I thought other people should do so too, but they did not, and they always seemed glad when I was sent out of the room. When I cried in the nursery, or in the kitchen, the servants gave me sugared bread-and-butter; and when I cried again, because it made me sick, they slapped me for being cross. I was very sorry when I had finished cutting my teeth, for all the while they were coming I never did any thing wrong; I do remember squeezing the canary-bird to death, and kicking and scratching every body I came near, and knocking down every thing I could reach, and crying from morning till night, but my mamma said it was all owing to my teeth;' a great many people though said that a good deal was owing to my temper. By-and-by I grew tired of being a baby; quite tired of sugared bread-andbutter, my rattles, and my soft ball, and nurse's ring of keys, and every thing in the nursery; and I was very glad when I began to go into the dining-room after dinner, and into the drawing-room when there was company. It did not matter how naughty I had been all day, the ladies there always called me pretty and good; my neck was very white, and my hair hung down in curls, and my eyes felt very bright, and I was always very nicely dressed I suppose it was looking pretty made me good-nobody ever called me good at any other time. Those ladies were very fond of me, they laughed at every word I said, not one of them ever scolded me when I was rude, every one tried to praise me more than another; and when I was very noisy and rude indeed, the gentlemen said I had a noble spirit. After a time I grew older; then my neck got tanned with the sun, my hair gave over curling, I began to cast my teeth, and look very pale and thin, and not at all pretty. The doctor said it was because I had eaten too many sweet things; my mamma could not say it was owing to my teeth' now, so she laid the fault on my nurse's carelessness. I was put into proper boy's clothes, and for a little while I was glad, but I soon wished for my nankeen frock, and curling hair, and white neck again; for when I went into the drawing-room the ladies did not take so much notice of me as they used to do; no one called me pretty and good any more. I talked and jumped about more than ever, but instead of laughing at me, and saying I had a noble spirit,' I heard the ladies and gentlemen whisper to each other that I was a spoiled child. After this time I grew still more unhappy, I did not like the drawing room because no one took any notice of me, and I hated the nursery, because nurse was always bidding me be good, and because I had nothing to do. Everybody talked to me about being good, and nobody taught me how to be so. I did try one day to be good because they told me I should be happy; I did not cry to make my mamma's head-ache; nor tease my papa with questions at dinner; nor ravel nurse's cotton balls; nor get into any mischief; so having nothing to do, got sadly tired of being good before night, and I made up my mind to be naughty again the next morning. But I did not get any happier. I had every thing I cried for, and I was always crying for something; but the things never pleased me when I had them; because nobody seemed glad when I was glad, or sorry when I was vexed, I felt in myself that nobody loved me. My cousin Charles came to stop with me a month; he was no older than I was, but he could read and do many things that I could not; he was always happy though he had not half so many playthings, and he had many brothers and sisters, and he had not every thing he wanted. He did not

stay a month with me, for every body loved him so much that I cried to have him sent away; and I do not think he was sorry to go. Now by-and-by my papa and mamma talked to a great many people about me, and read over a great many books, and said it was time to break me of my tempers and make me a good boy. So my mamma bought a rod and a box of letters, and my papa forbade the servants to let me have my own way any more. But though I have learnt my letters, and been whipt very often, and am contradicted from morning till night, I have not grown good, and I am not happy, and I begin not to love even my papa and mamma. I wish I was a grown up man, and a king, that I might do what I pleased with all the world-I would cut off every body's head who made children naughty, and then punished them for not being good!'

STANZAS

WRITTEN AFTER HAVING PERUSED

THE DEATH OF THE FIRST-BORN.'

OH! think not that a Parent's joy,

Like other joys, can fade;

Though in the grave thy first-born boy,
So dearly-prized, is laid;

The next will surely claim thy love

As strongly as the last,

Though boding fears thy heart may move
When dwelling on the past.

Say, will it not be joy to thee,
Beyond what thou hast known,
To see thine infant climb thy knee,
And hear its lisping tone
Address thee by a Father's name?

To feel its fond embrace,

Enclasp thy worn, though youthful frame,
With bright, uplifted face?

Read, with a Parent's anxious eye,
Each embryo passion there;
The generous aim, the purpose high,

The soul to nobly dare.

For Nature early shadows forth

The character of man ;

The bias strong to vice or worth,

A watchful eye may scan.

And though that bias may be turned

To future good or ill,

The living light, that brightly burned
At first,-will burn there still.

Yes, for the all-creating voice,

Which brought from darkness light,
Inspires the taste, directs the choice,

And guides the mental sight:

THE FORSAKEN.

FARE thee well-we part in peace;
For I shall lay my aching breast
In that repose where sorrows cease,
And where the weary rest.

There, no cold heart shall mock the pain

Of the believing and betrayed;

No cruel eye view with disdain

The wronged and ruined maid.

Thou found'st me in the bloom of spring,

Gay as the morning song of May; Thou leav'st me a forsaken thing,

To sigh my hours away.

But secretly my woes I'll weep ;

Concealed-thy joys they shall not check

And if thy heart its silence keep,

In silence mine shall break.

Love, wealth, ambition, still to thee

Their varied pleasures will impart ;

And what through life remains for me

To hush my aching heart?

Till from the joys I cannot share,

From scenes whose every voice of mirth,

But mocks the bosom of despair

Hide me, my mother Earth.

;

J. F. T.

J. M.

DR. PARR ON THE IDENTITY OF JUNIUS.

We have been favoured with copies of several extracts from the correspondence of the late Dr. Parr; from which it would seem that he either had, or fancied he had, very strong grounds for ascribing the authorship of the letters of Junius to Charles Lloyd, private secretary to George Grenville, and his deputy Teller of the Exchequer. Lloyd was known, says the doctor, to have been the author of the letters signed Atticus and Lucius, and that the same person wrote Junius appears to have been pretty generally admitted. The editor of Woodfall's edition, in reviewing the claims of the various individuals to whom these powerful, but malignant libels have been ascribed, founds his refutation of Mr. Lloyd's pretensions upon the fact, that Junius wrote a note to Woodfall on the 19th of January, and Lloyd died on the 22d, supposing it to be impossible for a man to write a few lines, which required no mental exertion, so short a time before his decease. Were the claims of the party in question stronger than they really appear to be, such an objection would be entitled to little or no consideration. The eighteenth letter of Junius disclaims, it will be remembered, all knowledge of Mr. Grenville. Now as Lloyd was intimately connected with Mr. G. it consequently follows that, if he can be supposed to be Junius, he must have been guilty of gratuitous and useless falsehood. Junius has not shewn himself so remarkably scrupulous in his adherence to truth as to warrant a rejection of the hypothesis upon this circumstance alone. On the contrary, in his eighth letter to Woodfall, alluding to the one previously published, he says, 'I wish it could be recalled. Suppose you were to say, we have some reason for suspecting that the last letter of Junius in this paper was not written by the real Junius, though this observation escaped us at the time.' In his letter dated 16th October, 1771, signed Anti-Fox, we find: I know nothing of Junius, but I see that he has designedly spared Lord Holland and his family.' Dr. Parr mentioned to General Cockburne, in 1820, the names of several eminent men of the present day, who coincided with him upon the subject; and also stated his and their conviction that the late king.was aware that Lloyd was Junius. In a letter to the general in the course of the same year the doctor observes:

In regard to Junius, I broke the seal of secrecy two months ago, and having no restraints of delicacy about it, I communicated the opinion unreservedly to Mr. Denman. The impression produced by a well written pamphlet, and an elaborate critique on it in the Edinburgh Review, still direct the national faith towards Sir Philip Francis. He was too proud to tell a lie, and he disclaimed the work. He was too vain to refuse celebrity which he was conscious of deserving. He was too intrepid to shrink when danger had nearly passed by. He was too irascible to keep the secret, by the publication of which he at this time of day could injure no party with which he is connected, nor any individual for whom he cared. Beside, dear sir, we have many books of his writings upon many subjects, and all of them stamped with the same character of mind. Their general Lexis, as we say in Greek, has no resemblance to the Lexis of Junius; and the resemblance in particulars can have far less weight than the resemblance of which there is no vestige. Francis uniformly writes English. There is Gallicism in Junius. Francis is furious, but not malevolent. Francis is never cool, and Junius is seldom ardent. Do not suppose that I have forgotten the