narrow and near-sighted principle of not taking into view the consequences entailed in an Et-cetera. My friend is not a wise man, but I love him nevertheless; forgetting the truth conveyed in Gay's couplet

Who knows a fool must know his brother;

One fop will recommend another.

My regard for a fool has attracted round me half the fools in town. My house has become a fools' paradise. My friend possesses an endless file of friends; and in the exuberance of his sympathetic bounty he makes them all mine. There is not a single acquaintance of his in all London, but he insists on sharing him with me. Every queer creature I catch in his company I am fain to regard instantaneously as my proximate Pylades. It might be almost supposed that he obtains introductions to foolish people by the dozen, only with the benevolent design of introducing me as his very particular friend. I verily believe that he would not hesitate, if he had the power, to palm off all the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands upon me. My private Temple of Friendship is thus thrown open to the public, admittance gratis from January to December.

Charles Lamb has consigned to lasting contempt the intrusive principle involved in "Love me, love my dog;" with that, however, I could be content, but my friend insists upon my loving every puppy that crosses his path. Who could possibly have suspected, when I was first shaking hands with a solitary Jones, that I was introducing myself to such an Et-cetera! Jones, it is true, is quite a comet among the heavenly bodies of friendship, but unfortunately I did not calculate in time the astonishing length of his tail.

If not on this rock, I have often contrived to wreck my comfort in friendship upon another. For want of

VOL. I.

that wise forethought, which always stops to look at Et-cetera wherever he appears, I have read some friendly bond drawn up for signature, to the close-excepting the Et-cetera!—and then freely put my hand to it. Why, I had left unread all the principal clauses, in overlooking the &c., that which I had innocently taken for an emblematic ornament, or a true-lover's knot to end with, by way of flourish. I had signed and sealed, as legibly written, to confidence, sympathy, attachment, honour, and other items; but Et-cetera at the end stood in place of words unwritten-as cash advances, bill at short date, surety, responsibility, and similar significant phrases; and not one of these sly snakes had I discerned under the grass of Et-cetera.

To take the latest example of the consequences of this oversight. It happened when my friend came to demand a clear moiety of my worldly property to support and carry into assured success his magnificent speculation. He had it, for on him personally I had every reliance; but according to habit I noticed only his own name as responsible in the concern, and totally omitted to fix one moment's attention upon the "and Co." that followed it. "And Co." made all the difference. Alas! my friend had an Et-cetera, and it played the foul fiend with my responsibility. Et-cetera is sometimes Latin for "And Co."

Even in forming an ordinary acquaintance, I was often the dupe of the fiend. I met a cheerful companion, a good-natured gossip, a lively reveller, and we of course struck up an intimacy. Everything went on pleasantly and promisingly; the most agreeable intercourse was sure to be the result; all jocund hospitalities would be interchanged; when it turned out that we were reckoning without reference to the familiar but invisible demon Et-cetera.

My new acquaintance was charming, but his wife was -Et-cetera. My evil genius was his better-half. Here was the patent lock upon hospitality, the extinguisher upon lighthearted ease, the thumbscrew upon the hand of intimacy; so our lively salutations would dwindle into mere good-mornings, our good-mornings into nods across the street, till they dropped by degrees into a distance yet more respectful. This is nearly the history of my social life. Every one of its enjoyments has been clogged with a fatal Et-cetera.

Talk of the postscript's superiority to the letter in real interest and importance! What is that to the superiority of Et-cetera in meanings of mighty import, over any terms of speech which may introduce it! When Mrs. Fitzbeetle, speaking in the united voices of the genteel family who have multitudinously married me, declares that I must positively make immediate arrangements for their taking a trip to Paris, Et-cetera, I distinctly hear in the phrase now, the whole tour of France and Italy. When she announces her intention of asking a few people in the evening-just the Johnsons, Et-cetera I justly calculate upon the presence of every live creature known to us by the sound of the voice. When the application is for a pair of ear-rings, Et-cetera, I well know that the little article asked for bears the same proportion to the desirables unmentioned that the protruding head of the tortoise bears to its concealed body in the shell.

Et-cetera is no longer to my ears a scrap of a dead language; it has undergone the process of translation in the liveliest manner. If my partial exposition (for this dissertation might be greatly extended) of its import and tendency, should chance to induce somebody to use it sparingly and conscientiously, to investigate it when used by others, to consider that it may mean a little too

much, and to inquire into the probable significations it comprises, that somebody may have reason to rejoice that I have introduced him here to the foul fiendEt-cetera!

APRIL FOOL'S DAY ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

I was breakfasting alone one drizzly, dismal morning --just about a twelvemonth ago out of humour, out of heart-worse still, out of appetite. The weather, which cast a cold, dusky, comfortless air over every thing, had a little to do with this dolefulness, for my blue devils themselves were insensibly darkening into a leadencoloured troop under its influence; but without this, there was enough in my reflections to depress me.

"I wish I had come away sooner last night," was one of these reflections; "it was infernally stupid of me to stop till the cards came, and with them my usual luck."

"What on earth, and a long way below it, could have possessed me to touch one poisonous drop of that fresh bottle, when all my sensations combined to warn me against it! I was a rank idiot."

"Perhaps I could have managed a little breakfast this morning-one cup of tea at least—if I had not tasted that atrocity at dinner, or those creams, and things; my old consistent and remorseless enemies. I knew they would destroy me utterly for four-and-twenty hours, and yet, with a perfect recollection of the fact, I would have them. What a fool I am!"

"You can't help it," said a small, clear voice somewhere close by. I looked up, but it was growing so dark that I could hardly see the eggs before me. The

voice might have come from one of them, as the starling cried to be let out. The sound seemed distinct; but it must have been the tea-kettle singing.

"What a headache! I'm always doing something at night that I repent of in the morning. I'm a fool!” "Not a doubt of it," said the voice that had spoken before; speaking now with greater distinctness, and certainly in the room.

A sunbeam had stolen through the gloom of the morning, and looking towards the opposite window, I saw sliding down the bright line of light, as Munchausen slid down the rainbow, the oddest little sprite imaginable. There was a shapelessness about him that cannot be figured; and a combination of all colours in one, with a continual changeableness superadded, that defies description. There was a wonderful mixture of expressions in his countenance, which was bright and pale in transitions rapid as thought; his eyes were extremely watery, large drops glittering on his lashes and running down his cheeks till they lost themselves in a dimple; but gay, youthful, wanton smiles played in profusion about his mouth like summer lightning. He had a pair of light fleecy wings, like a couple of clouds, and they were edged with sunshine. Sometimes the ragged, fluttering, formless drapery that floated about him was like a dark vapour, and in an instant it was of the azure of heaven.

As the mysterious visiter took this latter hue, a thought flashed across me. He was certainly an optical illusion-nothing more-engendered by my headache and low spirits. I rubbed my eyes, but there he was, restless and real too, looking at me with a most comical expression of mockery and compassion. There was a good-humoured and familiar waggishness over all, that won upon me mightily; and remembering that he was