trislis severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence-thin jests, which at their first broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Wo to the school, when he made his morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child, (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips,) with a "Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me?" Nothing was more common than to see him make a headlong entry into the schoolroom, from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, "Od's my life, Sirrah," (his favourite adjuration,) “I have a great mind to whip you,"-then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his lair-and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes, (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context,) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell—" and I WILL, too." In his gentler moods, when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same time; a paragraph, and a lash between; which in those times, when parliamentary oratory was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall ineffectual from his hand-when droll squinting W—, having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great simplicity averred, that he did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was unavoidable. | "Poor J. B.! may all his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. Te. What an edifying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who remembered the anti-socialities of their predecessors! You never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the almost immediate sub-appearance of the other. Generally arm in arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, the other was not long in discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero de Amicitia, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate! Co-Grecian with S. was Th—, who has since executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Thwas a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him, (now Bishop of Calcutta,) a scholar and a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the church which those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild, and unassuming. Next to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems; a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed poor S- ill-fated Mof these the Muse is silent. Finding some of Edward's race Unhappy, pass their annals by. L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructer. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced a more intelligible and ample encomium on them. The author of the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than with the pious ejaculation of C-, when he heard that his old master was on his death-bed-turned-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Logician, Me Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee-the dark pillar not yet 1 taphysician, Bard!-How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus, (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts,) or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar-while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy! Many were the "witcombats," (to dally awhile with the words of Old Fuller,) between him and C. V. Le G———, “which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an English man-of-war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, with a cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs; or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with which, (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the school,) in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the halfformed terrible "bl," for a gentler greeting "bless thy handsome face!" graded. "He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manner of the other. Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages-Alcibiades, Falstaff, Sir Richard Steele, our late incomparable Brinsley-what a familylikeness in all four! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills! what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest,-taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money,— accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or rather what a noble simplification of language, (beyond Tooke,) resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective! What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community!-to the extent of one half of the principle at least! He is the true taxer who "calleth all the world up to be taxed;" and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid tribute-pittance at Jerusalem! His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! so far removed from your sour parochial or state gatherers,-those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces! He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no re ceipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your purse,-which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth!-The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, Oh man still-ordained to lend-that thou lose not in the end, Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends of Elia-the junior Le G- and F; who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect -ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning -exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp; perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca :-Le G- sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F-dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old Roman height about him. Fine, frank-hearted Fr, the present master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T-, mildest of Missionaries and both my good friends close the catalogue of Grecians in my time. THE TWO RACES OF MEN. THE human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of the Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither and do naturally fall in with one or the other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born de with thy wordly penny, the reversion promised, Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives!--but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were halfway. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues; which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing; for there is something revolting in the idea of a king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) "To slacken virtue and abate her edge, Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise," he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, "borrowing and to borrow!" In his penegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated:but having had the honour of accompanying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends, (as he was pleased to express himself,) to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in numbering them; and with Comus, seemed pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd." With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money kept longer than three days, stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drunk away, (for he was an excellent toss-pot,) some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him--as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious,-into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes,-inscrutable cavities of the earth; or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest --but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful open exterior, a quiet jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with gray (cana fides.) He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for awhile my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindness of his nature to refuse such an one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue, (your bastard borrower,) who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal. When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of lenders and little men. To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your borrowers of books-those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations! That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out-(you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!)-with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side, (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing,) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventura, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas,) showed but as dwarfs,-itself an Ascapart!-that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title to property in a book, (my Bonaventure, for instance,) is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? The slight vacuum in the left-hand case-two shelves from the ceiling-scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser-was whilom the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties-but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. Just below, Dodsley's Dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. -There loitered the Complete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side.-In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes closed,” mourns his ravished mate. One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small undercollection of this nature, (my friend's gatherings in his various calls,) picked up, he has forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalized. The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am.—I charge no ware-houseroom for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses. To lose a volume to C., carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio:-what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend ?-Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land "Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!" -hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales ?-Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part French, better part Englishwoman!-that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook-of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude? Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand any thing in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam. Of all sound of all bells-(bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven)—most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected-in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal colour; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed, "I saw the skirts of the departing year." It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But 1 am none of those who "Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties, new books, new faces, new years,-from some mental twist which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope; and am sanguine only in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let disappointments. I am armour-proof against old it be to such an one as S. T. C.-he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his-(in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals)-in no very clerkly handlegible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands. I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C. NEW-YEARS EVE. EVERY man hath two birth-days: two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would no more alter them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. Methinks, it is better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice Wn, than that so passionate a love adventure should be lost. It was better that our family should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue. In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love? If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is introspective, and mine is painfully so, can have a less respect for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and humoursome; a notorious addicted to; averse from counsel, neither taking it nor offering it; - besides; a stammering buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare not; I subscribe to it all, and much more than thou canst be willing to lay at his doorbut for the child Elia-that "other me," there, in the back-ground-I must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master, with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five-and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least colour of falsehood. God help thee, Elia, how art thou changed! Thou art sophisticated. I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was; how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful! From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, and not some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being! That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader, (a busy man perchance,) if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia. The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution, and the ringing out of the old year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, nover feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I confess a truth? I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers' farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends: to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer-holydays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself-do these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him? And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading? Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indications which point me to them here, the recognizable face; "the sweet assurance of a look ?" In winter, this intolerable disinclination to dying, to give it its mildest name, does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced in the Can |