An Inaugural Discourse on a certain System of Practical Philosophy. COURTEOUS READER ! Presuming that you have known something of the Comic Annual from its Child-Hood, when it was first put into half binding and began to run alone, I make bold to consider you as an old friend of the family, and shall accordingly treat you with all the freedom and confidence that pertain to such ripe connexions. How many years is it, think you, acquent?" "since we were first By the deep nine!" sings out the old bald Count Fathom with the lead-line: no great lapse in the world's chronology, but a space of infinite importance in individual history. For in B stance, it has wrought a serious change on the body, if not on the mind, of your very humble servant ;-it is not, however, to bespeak your sympathy, or to indulge in what Lord Byron calls "the gloomy vanity of drawing from self," that I allude to my personal experience. The Scot and lot character of the dispensation, forbids me to think that the world in general can be particularly interested in the state of my Household Sufferage, or that the public ear will be as open to my Maladies as to my Melodies. The simple truth is, that, being a wiser but not sadder man, I propose to admit you to my Private View of a system of Practical Cheerful Philosophy, thanks to which, perchance, the cranium of your Humourist is still secure from such a lecture as was delivered over the skull of Poor Yorick. In the absence of a certain thin "blue-and-yellow" visage, and attenuated figure,—whose effigies may one day be affixed to the present work, you will not be prepared to learn that some of the merriest effusions in the forthcoming numbers have been the relaxations of a gentleman literally enjoying bad health-the carnival, so to speak, of a personified Jour Maigre. The very fingers so aristocratically slender, that now hold the pen, hint plainly of the "ills that flesh is heir to :"-my coats have become great coats, my pantaloons are turned into trowsers, and, by a worse bargain than Peter Schlemihl's, I seem to have retained my shadow and sold my substance. In short, as happens to prematurely old port wine, I am of a bad colour with very little body. But what then? That emaciated hand still lends a hand to embody in words and sketches the creations or recreations of a Merry Fancy: those gaunt sides yet shake heartily as ever at the Grotesques and Arabesques and droll Picturesques that my Good Genius (a Pantagruelian Familiar) charitably conjures up to divert me from more sombre realities. It was the whim of a late pleasant Comedian, to suppose a set of spiteful imps sitting up aloft, to aggravate all his petty mundane annoyances; whereas I prefer to believe in the ministry of kindlier Elves that "nod to me and do me courtesies." Instead of scaring away these motes in the sunbeam, I earnestly invoke them, and bid them welcome; for the tricksy spirits make friends with the animal spirits, and do not I, like a father romping with his own urchins, -do not I forget half my cares whilst partaking in their airy gambols? Such sports are as wholesome for the mind as the other frolics for the body. For on our own treatment of that excellent Friend or terrible Enemy the Imagination, it depends whether we are to be scared and haunted by a Scratching Fanny, or tended by an affectionate Invisible Girl-like an unknown Love, blessing us with "favours secret, sweet, and precious," and fondly stealing us from this worky-day world to a sunny sphere of her own. This is a novel version, Reader, of " Paradise and the Peri," but it is as true as it is new. How else could I have converted a serious illness into a comic wellness-by what other agency could I have transported myself, as a Cockney would say, from Dullage to Grinnage? It was far from a practical joke to be laid up in ordinary in a foreign land, under the care of Physicians quite as much abroad as myself with the case; indeed the shades of the gloaming were stealing over my prospect; but I resolved, that, like the sun, so long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything. The raven croaked, but I persuaded myself that it was the nightingale: there was the smell of the mould, but I remembered that it nourished the violets. However my body might cry craven, my mind luckily had no mind to give in. So, instead of mounting on the black long-tailed coach horse, she vaulted on her old Hobby that had capered in the Morris-Dance, and began to exhort from its back. To be sure, said she, matters look darkly enough; but the more need for the lights. Allons! Courage! Things may take a turn, as the pig said on the spit. Never throw down your cards, but play out the game. The more certain to lose, the wiser to get all the play you can for your money. Come-give us a song! chirp away like that best of cricket-players, the cricket himself. Be bowled out or caught out, but never throw down the bat. As to Health, it's the weather of the body-it hails, it rains, it blows, it snows, at present, but it may clear up by-and-by. You cannot eat, you say, and you must not drink; but laugh and make believe, like the Barber's wise brother at the Barmecide's feast. Then, as to thinness, not to flatter, you look like a lath that has had a split |