You

fair number of such to be found in this world, and I have no doubt, in every educated Englishman's circle of society, whether he finds that circle in palaces in Belgravia and May Fair, in snug little suburban villas, in ancient comfortable old Bloomsbury, or in back parlors behind the shop. It has been my fortune to meet with excellent English ladies in every one of these places wives graceful and affectionate, matrons tender and good, daughters happy and pure-minded, and I urge the society of such on you, because I defy you to think evil in their company. Walk into the drawing-room of Lady Z., that great lady look at her charming face, and hear her voice. know that she can't but be good, with such a face and such a voice. She is one of those fortunate beings on whom it has pleased heaven to bestow all sorts of its most precious gifts and richest worldly favors. With what grace she receives you; with what a frank kindness and natural sweetness and dignity! Her looks, her motions, her words, her thoughts, all seem to be beautiful and harmonious quite. See her with her children, what woman can be more simple and loving? After you have talked to her for a while, you very likely find that she is ten times as well read as you are: she has a hundred accomplishments which she is not in the least anxious to show off, and makes no more account of them than of her diamonds, or of the splendor round about her to all of which she is born, and has a happy, admirable claim of nature and possession — admirable and happy for her and for us too; for is it not a happiness for us to admire her? Does anybody grudge her excellence to that paragon? Sir, we may be thankful to be admitted to contemplate such consummate goodness and beauty: and as in looking at a fine landscape or a fine work of art, every generous heart must be delighted and improved, and ought to feel grateful afterwards, so one may feel charmed and thankful for having the opportunity of knowing an almost perfect woman. Madam, if the gout and the custom of the world permitted, I would kneel down and kiss the hem of your ladyship's robe. To see your gracious face is a comfort to see you walk to your carriage is a holiday. Drive her faithfully, O thou silver-wigged coachman! drive to all sorts of splendors and honors and royal festivals. And for us, let us be glad that we should have the privilege to admire her.

Now, transport yourself in spirit, my good Bob, into another drawing-room. There sits an old lady of more than fourscore years, serene and kind, and as beautiful in her age now as in her youth, when History toasted her. What has she not seen,

and what is she not ready to tell? All the fame and wit, all the rank and beauty, of more than half a century, have passed through those rooms where you have the honor of making your best bow. She is as simple now as if she had never had any flattery to dazzle her: she is never tired of being pleased and being kind. Can that have been anything but a good life which, after more than eighty years of it are spent, is so calm? Could she look to the end of it so cheerfully, if its long course had not been pure? Respect her, I say, for being so happy, now that she is old. We do not know what goodness and charity, what affections, what trials, may have gone to make that charming sweetness of temper, and complete that perfect manner. But if we do not admire and reverence such an old age as that, and get good from contemplating it, what are we to respect and admire?

Or shall we walk through the shop (while N. is recommending a tall copy to an amateur, or folding up a twopennyworth of letter-paper, and bowing to a poor customer in a jacket and apron with just as much respectful gravity as he would show while waiting upon a Duke,) and see Mrs. N. playing with the child in the back parlor until N. shall come in to tea? They drink tea at five o'clock; and are actually as well bred as those gentlefolks who dine three hours later. Or will you please to step into Mrs. J.'s lodgings, who is waiting, and at work, until her husband comes home from Chambers? She blushes and puts the work away on hearing the knock, but when she sees who the visitor is, she takes it with a smile from behind the sofa cushion, and behold, it is one of J.'s waistcoats, on which she is sewing buttons. She might have been a Countess blazing in diamonds, had Fate so willed it, and the higher her station the more she would have adorned it. But she looks as charming while plying her needle as the great lady in the palace whose equal she is, in beauty, in goodness, in high-bred grace and simplicity at least, I can't fancy her better, or any Peeress being more than her peer.

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And it is with this sort of people, my dear Bob, that I recommend you to consort, if you can be so lucky as to meet with their society nor do I think you are very likely to find many such at the Casino; or in the dancing-booths of Greenwich Fair on this present Easter Monday.

ON FRIENDSHIP.

CHOICE of friends, my dear Robert, is a point upon which every man about town should be instructed, as he should be careful. And as example, they say, is sometimes better than precept, and at the risk even of appearing somewhat ludicrous in your eyes, I will narrate to you an adventure which happened to myself, which is at once ridiculous and melancholy (at least to me), and which will show you how a man, not imprudent or incautious of his own nature, may be made to suffer by the imprudent selection of a friend. Attend then, my dear Bob, to the History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia."

66

Sir, in the year 1810, I was a jolly young Bachelor, as you are now (indeed, it was three years before I married your poor dear Aunt); I had a place in the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office ; I had Chambers in Pump Court, au troisième, and led a not uncomfortable life there. I was a free and gay young fellow in those days, (however much, sir, you may doubt the assertion, and think that I am changed,) and not so particular in my choice of friends as subsequent experience has led me to be.

There lived in the set of Chambers opposite to mine, a Suffolk gentleman, of good family, whom I shall call Mr. Bludyer. Our boys or clerks first made acquaintance, and did each other mutual kind offices: borrowing for their respective masters' benefit, neither of whom was too richly provided with the world's goods, coals, blacking-brushes, crockery-ware, and the like; and our forks and spoons, if either of us had an entertainment in Chambers. As I learned presently that Mr. Bludyer had been educated at Oxford, and heard that his elder brother was a gentleman of good estate and reputation in his county, I could have no objection to make his acquaintance, and accepted finally his invitation to meet a large game-pie which he had brought with him from the country, and I recollect I lent my own silver teapot, which figured handsomely on the occasion. It is the same one which I presented to you, when you took possession of your present apartments.

Mr. Bludyer was a sporting man: it was the custom in those days with many gentlemen to dress as much like coachmen as possible in top-boots, huge white coats with capes, Belcher neckerchiefs, and the like adornments; and at the tables of bachelors of the very first fashion, you would meet with prize

fighters and jockeys, and hear a great deal about the prize-ring, the cock-pit, and the odds. I remember my Lord Tilbury was present at this breakfast, (who afterwards lamentably broke his neck in a steeple-chase, by which the noble family became extinet,) and for some time I confounded his lordship with Dutch Sam, who was also of the party, and, indeed, not unlike the noble Viscount in dress and manner.

My acquaintance with Mr. Bludyer ripened into a sort of friendship. He was perfectly good-natured, and not ill-bred; and his jovial spirits and roaring stories amused a man who, though always of a peaceful turn, had no dislike to cheerful companions. We used to dine together at coffee-houses, for Clubs were scarcely invented in those days, except for the aristocracy; and, in fine, were very intimate. Bludyer, a brave and athletic man, would often give a loose to his spirits of an evening, and mill a Charley or two, as the phrase then was. The young bloods of those days thought it was no harm to spend a night in the watch-house, and I assure you it has accommodated a deal of good company. Autres temps, autres mœurs. In our own days, my good Bob, a station-house bench is not the bed for a gentleman.

I was at this time (and deservedly so, for I had been very kind to her, and my elder brother, your father, neglected her considerably) the favorite nephew of your grand-aunt, my aunt, Mrs. General MacWhirter, who was left a very handsome fortune by the General, and to whom I do not scruple to confess I paid every attention to which her age, her sex, and her large income entitled her. I used to take sweetmeats to her poodle. I went and drank tea with her night after night. I accompanied her Sunday after Sunday to hear the Rev. Rowland Hill, at the Rotunda Chapel, over Blackfriars Bridge, and I used to read many of the tracts which she liberally supplied me in fact, do everything to comfort and console a lady of peculiar opinions and habits who had a large jointure. Your father used to say I was a sneak, but he was then a boisterous young squire; and, perhaps, we were not particularly good friends.

Well, sir, my dear aunt, Mrs. General MacWhirter, made me her chief confidant. I regulated her money matters for her, and acted with her bankers and lawyers; and as she always spoke of your father as a reprobate, I had every reason to suppose I should inherit the property, the main part of which passed to another branch of the Browns. I do not grudge it, Bob: I do not grudge it. Your family is large; and I have enough from my poor dear departed wife.

Now it so happened that, in June, 1811, I recollect the comet was blazing furiously at the time, and Mrs. MacWhirter was of opinion that the world was at an end Mr. Bludyer, who was having his chambers in Pump Court painted, asked permission to occupy mine, where he wished to give a lunch to some people whom he was desirous to entertain. Thinking no harm, of course I said yes; and I went to my desk at the Tape and Sealing-Wax Office at my usual hour, giving instructions to my boy to make Mr. Bludyer's friends comfortable.

As ill-luck would have it, on that accursed Friday, Mrs. MacWhirter, who had never been up my staircase before in her life (for your dear grand-aunt was large in person, and the apoplexy which carried her off soon after menaced her always), having some very particular business with her solicitors in Middle Temple Lane, and being anxious to consult me about a mortgage, actually mounted my stairs, and opened the door on which she saw written the name of Mr. Thomas Brown. She was a peculiar woman, I have said, attached to glaring colors in her dress, and from her long residence in India, seldom without a set of costly Birds of Paradise in her bonnet, and a splendid Cashmere shawl.

Fancy her astonishment then, on entering my apartments at three o'clock in the afternoon, to be assailed in the first place by a strong smell of tobacco-smoke which pervaded the passage, and by a wild and ferocious bull-dog which flew at her on entering my sitting-room.

This bull-dog, sir, doubtless attracted by the brilliant colors of her costume, seized upon her, and pinned her down, screaming so that her voice drowned that of Bludyer himself, who was sitting on the table bellowing, "A Southerly Wind and a Cloudy Sky proclaim a Hunting Morning"-or some such ribald trash and the brutal owner of the dog, (who was no other than the famous Mulatto boxer, Norroy, called the "Black Prince" in the odious language of the Fancy, and who was inebriated doubtless at the moment,) encouraged his dog in the assault upon this defenceless lady, and laughed at the agonies which she endured.

Mr. Bludyer, the black man, and one or two more, were arranging a fight on Moulsey Hurst, when my poor aunt made her appearance among these vulgar wretches. Although it was but three o'clock, they had sent to a neighboring tavern for ginand-water, and the glasses sparkled on the board,― to use a verse from a Bacchanalian song which I well remember Mr.