MANY are the pictures that have been drawn or painted by poets and others, of a state of perfect joy and felicity. Some have placed the consummation of happiness in Arcadian scenes, and rural enjoyments-representing the ploughman, the gardener, or the shepherd under the hawthorn, as the "beau ideal" of a happy man; some have fixed the site of the terrestrial Eden in the porches of philosophy, and the pursuits of literature and science; some have planted their imaginary paradise in the genial climate and savoury atmosphere of the dinnertable; some have placed the "summum bonum" upon the glittering pinnacles of rank and power; some have maintained it to consist in wealth, and others, more rationally, in virtue; but from each and all of these views and opinions I dissent totally. Neither the husbandman, or the sage, or the gourmand, or the nabob, or the crowned monarch, or even the proprietor of a clear unincumbered conscience, appears to me to have gained the summit of sublunary gratification. There is a bliss above all the blisses that have ever yet been described or fancied a happiness as far above all other happinesses as the flight of the eagle above the fluttering of the butterfly. Were I required to name the only condition of mortality which I hold to be justly enviable-to lay my finger on the man whom I reckon the especial favourite of fortune, and the possessor of the best gift of heaven I should reply, without a moment's hesitation-the man without a Cousin! I had infinitely rather be "the great un-cousined," than the "great unknown" himself; for of a certainty the sorest plague that sprang out of Pandora's fatal casket, was the odious institution of cousinship. Cousins may be near relations, and blood relations; but they are undoubtedly neither dear relations, or "moral relations." At all

VIRGIL.

removes, (I would they were removed to the antipodes !)—in all degrees-under all denominations-he-cousins and she-cousins-town cousins and country cousins-young or old-handsome or hideous-rich or poor-vary the idea as you will-modify it, turn it, diversify it, twist it into any shape, form, or fashion-cousins are a generation of vipers; and, in my deliberate, sober, and settled judgment, it would be a reform almost as valuable as the reformation itself ; but I command myself you would say I was a Marat, were I to finish the sentence.

I really know of no plan which would go so near to the realization of the delightful dream of a paradise upon earth, as a project (if any such can be hit upon) for clearing this pretty little planet of ours of the race of cousins.

Let me appeal to any body, who, for the sins of his fathers, or his own, is cursed with a tribe of these detestable relatives, if a hundred thousand times a-day he does not devote them to "auld Hornie." For my part, if I knew any worse wish, it were heartily at their service, for they lead me such a life as a thief passes on the treadmill. I would be a reasonably happy man if my aunts had died maidens, and my uncles bachelors. But no! They were a marrying family; the state of single blessedness had no charms for them; independence no attractions. A rage for matrimony possessed them all; they first exposed themselves to the shafts of Cupid; then they suffered themselves to be led by the torch of Hymen. In a word, they married!-male and female after their kind-all married;-then came the office of Lucina, who was never once unpropitious; a miscarriage was never heard of in any branch of the family; as surely as the ninth moon filled her horns, forth came a cousincousin after cousin-a train of cousins, as long as the tail of a comet ; cousins

german every living soul of them. I would give every farthing I have in the world that they were all in Ger

many.

A grand division of the cousin species, is that of town cousins and country cousins. You suffer from the former more frequently; but from the latter more intensely. You have the town cousins about you always; but then the torture is mitigated by the continual infliction. You know when you get up in the morning that you have a certain quantity of cousining to go through before the day is over, and you make up your mind to it; read a page of Seneca, add a verse to your litany, and commit yourself to Providence, like a wise man and a Christian. The evil does not take you by surprise, and in unknown shapes, as in the case of cousins from the country, whom there is no foreseeing, and no deprecating. They dart upon you, when you least dream of such a visitation, and often from the very points of the compass whence you least expect such ill winds to blow. I have a pack of these relations in the county of Down, near the Mourne Mountains; and J am indebted to them for the motto tu this article, for they vividly remind me of the Harpies. They are of the same number, and gender; their descents are just as abrupt; their appetites as voracious; indeed, in almost every particular of their character, they resemble the winged spinsters of the Strophades:

"Subitæ horrifico lapsu de montibus adsunt, Diripiuntque dapes."

Every word in this description hits them. "Subito!"-they come uninvited, without giving the slightest warning of their direful intention. "Horrifico lapsu !"-with horrid stoop -the stop of a kite on a pigeon. "De montibus:"-from the mountains of Mourne. Diripiuntque dapes.”— I never saw young women eat so scandalously. The eldest I call Celano; and I fancy her, at this moment, perched upon a cliff of Sliebh-Donard, and meditating one of her almost monthly pounces upon my house in

street.

Country-cousins are the very plagues of Egypt. I hate the very thought of the country on account of my country

cousins. The tree is to be judged by the fruit it bears; and the advantages of the country may, in like manner, be estimated by the fact, that it produces the very worst variety of the cousin species. Country-cousins are as migratory as tinkers. Indeed I think they are called country-cousins, because they never stay in the country. And have they any business to town? None whatever. Their general motive for what they call their "trips" to Dublin, is the Zoological Gardens. A grand characteristic of the tribe is a passion for this establishment. Did you ever hear of a country-cousin who did not make it a point to visit the Zoological Gardens once, at the very least, every twelvemonth? I can answer for my own rural relatives there are the Jumbletons in particular, who come up from the county Sligo twice a-year, and quarter themselves upon me, sometimes for three weeks together, for no other object under heaven but to see those confounded macaws and monkeys. The only thing that comforts me is the little accidents which occasionally happen in exhibitions of wild-beasts. There is a chance of the keeper, some time or other, leaving a tiger's cage open-it is just possible that one of my dear little cousins may one day tumble into the pit with the bears. The newspapers, no doubt, would announce such an event as "a melancholy occurrence!"

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As you may very well suppose, I am tolerably well acquainted, myself, with the Zoological Gardens. No man knows the way to his stable half so well. Between the Jumbletons, the Honeycombs, and the Pumpkins, if I had but the slightest bent towards natural history, I should be a dangerous rival to Buffon and Cuvier; for a week very seldom passes without a weary walk or jaunt to this detestable institution. I must even cicerone Mrs. Jumbleton, who has been there every spring and summer since her marriage, with but one intermission; and then I had little reason to enjoy my vacation, for she employed the interval in giving me another second-cousin, who, I grieve to think of it, will very soon be commencing his "trips" to the capital, and developing his zoological talents. The reason why Mrs. Jumbleton al

ways insists upon my company is her fear that the pelican, who is always strolling about, will "put out her darling's eyes with his awkward bill." If he ever pays my cousin Tommy any little attention of this kind, I shall call him a duck instead of a pelican, and honour his bill to the day of my death. Tommy is perfect master of all the various howls, roars, yelps, barks, grunts, growls, screams, chatters, and screeches, in the gardens, and as soon as we return, the whole hubbub and uproar is performed over again. My neighbours are actually under the impression that I have a menagerie in my house.

And all this I must endure because the Jumbletons are my cousius!-for no other reason under the sun but because Mr. Jumbleton's mother and mine were sisters!

There is nothing so exigeant" as cousinship. Cousins expect to be noticed, talked to, visited, invited, recollected, and consulted. You must ncver omit to shake hands with them, and my-dear-Dick them. You must always be at home when they call upon you, whether you happen to be abroad or not. When they are sick, you must never send a servant to learn how they have passed the night, as you may do with the dearest friend you have in the world; as Pylades might do with Orestes; you must go in person, and you must institute your hypocritical inquiries twice, at least, every day, no matter what distance you have to travel, even though the thermometer should be down to zero. The most capricious woman that ever plagued a lover is not so hard to be dealt with as a cousin. A cousin is always standing on his consanguinity: he never forgets for one moment, that your father and his mother were brother and sister. Second-cousins are the greatest genealogists upon earth. Half the pains that one of these "ne'er-do-well's" will take to trace the stream of his blood up to a common fountain with yours, would discover the source of the Niger. It would be an unspeakable blessing if there were no such things as parish-books, and marriage-registers; it is those odious chronicles that enable people to hunt

out

their abominable relationships. There be first-cousins, second-cousins,

third-cousins, cater-cousins, and Kerrycousins; and I devoutly wish they had all snug births-(quere, deaths, quoth the devil,) in Sierra Leone. It is horrible to think of how many cousins a man may have without the slightest fault upon his part; and it is still more dreadful to reflect that the aggregate number of cousins in the world is continually on the increase. This I regard as far the worst consequence of the advance of population. There can scarcely be a doubt, but that there are six or seven millions of the species at this present moment in Ireland!— Imagine seven millions of cousins!— Think of any one cousin you are visited with, and then multiply the calamity by the enormous number of seven millions!

There never lived an individual so cousined and becousined as I am. Haud inexpertus loquor." I have from forty to fifty cousins-german; and second-cousins, in what mathematicians call an infinite series. Then such cousins! One of my cousins is a match for a dozen of any other person's cousins in Great Britain. You have heard of the Fizzlegigs, and now you shall hear of the Pumpkins.

I have no peace with the Pumpkins. There is Mr. Pumpkin and Mrs. Pumpkin, and Mr. Pumpkin's father, and Mrs. Pumpkin's aunt. Then there is Miss Pumpkin, and Misses Penelope and Theodosia Pumpkin, and Mr. Peter Pumpkin, and Mr. Anthony Pumpkin, and moreover a whole nursery full of little Pumpkins of both sexes, the family multiplying at the terrific rate of four Pumpkins every three years, which but very little arithmetic will shew you is the fastest rate of increase possible, excepting the birth of twins,-a method I am truly astonished that the fertile genius of Mrs. Pumpkin has not yet adopted for more expeditious cousinmaking.

The Pumpkins are so determined not to be bumpkins, that they pass three-fourths of the year in town, and I need scarcely tell you where they board and lodge. It is enough to say, they are country cousins. They come upin detachments of about half-a-dozen at a time; and use my house with as little ceremony as if it was Bilton's hotel. They colour their invasions with a hundred pretexts. Clementina

is to take lessons on the harp; Penelope to learn German; or Bobby and Mysie to have their teeth put in order by M'Clean. You would form a notion of the interest I take in this proceeding, were you to see the use the little imps incarnate make of their den tal machinery at dinner-time. Sometimes Mr. Pumpkin has business in Smithfield; sometimes Mrs. Pumpkin has affairs in Grafton Street; and sometimes old Mr. Pumpkin wants a new pair of spectacles. A country cousin never wants an excuse for coming to town; and the Pumpkins are particularly ingenious; so much so, indeed, that I often take a kind of miserable pleasure in endeavouring to conjecture upon what plea the next visit, or rather visitation, is to be justified. I once thought that every pretext, decent, and indecent, was exhausted, when the next morning's post brought me a letter from Pumpkin Hall, containing the intelligence that one of the girls had commenced the study of botany; that Mrs. Pumpkin was anxious that she should attend a course of lectures at the Dublin Society; thatbut I had better let the reader have the document itself, as a sample of the epistolary style of a country cousin :"Pumpkin Hall, May 17, 183

"MY DEAR FREDERICK,-You will have two or three of us, I believe, with you the day after to-morrow; perhaps to-morrow evening, if the day-coach from Limerick is not full passing Pumpkin Hall. Penelope has been studying botany, and I wish her to have the advantage of attending lectures in Dublin: Mr. Pumpkin says that I cannot do better than take her with me to town for a month or six weeks, or as long as Dr. Litton's course lasts; and if you can make room for us, it would be quite delightful, for you know how I abhor hotels. I know the Honeycombs have promised you a long visit; but Clementina had a letter yesterday from Mrs. Honeycomb, in which she says it will not be in her power to leave Bumblebee Park for some time, as she expects the Switchleys, and does not exactly know when they may arrive. The Switchleys, by the by, are cousins of ours.

Mr. Switchley's mother was old Mr Jumbleton's half-sister of course they will give you a few days while they remain

in Ireland, and I trust it will be while we are with you, for they are people I long to know, as they are so nearly related to us. I ought to tell you that my poor little Emily is suffering a great deal with sore eyes, and I shall take her with me to Dublin to get advice. She will not be troublesome, as her maid will attend her, and I have promised to allow her to take Clio, the little French poodle, up to town to amuse her. May I beg you to tell Mrs. Dickory to be very particular about airing our beds, and to have good fires kept in our rooms. Mr. Pumpkin and Tom will, I believe, come up with us and remain in town a day or two to see the cattle show; but you may put Tom any where you like. Aunt Margery begs me to say that she is excessively sorry her rheumatism disables her to be of our party to town: she hopes, however, to be well enough to spend some weeks with you when the weather is milder. Do not, I entreat you, forget my message to Mrs. Dickory; and believe me my dear Frederick,

"Ever your very affectionate cousin, "AURELIA PUMPKIN." Such are my cousins, the Pumpkins, or such rather is a faint sketch of their atrocities.

I am nobody in my own house; I am an intruder at my own table; I can call nothing my own; not a moment of time is at my disposal; my cousins cozen me out of every thing; they eject me from my prescriptive place by the fire-side; they usurp my arm-chair; they seize upon my favorite cut of the leg of mutton; they never leave me any part of the turkey but the drum-stick! Ay, sir, the drumstick, nothing but the drumstick! It is now five years since I have tasted -in my own house-at my own table-any part of goose or turkey but the drumstick!

I love a quiet life, and I might better live in a whirlpool, the hubbub kept up by my ruthless relations is so incessant. The knocker is in perpetual motion; and the hall-door bell rings for ever and ever. "Is this Mr. Jumbleton's?"-" A parcel for Miss Penelope Pumpkin.""A note for Mrs. Philip Honeycomb ;"-" Miss Catherine Jumbleton's mantua-maker ;”— "Mr. Snappington, the attorney, to

meet Mr. Honeycomb by appointment;"-" A parrot, and three pair of guinea-pigs to be kept for Lady Cecilia Switchley until sent for ;""A bull-dog for Mr. Thomas Pumpkin, with particular directions to feed him regularly, and not to muzzle him." Peace, order, regularity, and all the quiet decencies of life are unknown in my establishment. All is anarchy and chaos. My rooms are filled with lumber of all kinds: my own drawers and trunks are removed to the hay-lofts to make place for my cousins' baggage. My hall is like nothing upon earth but a stage-coach-office; an inextricable labyrinth of band-boxes, hat-cases, port-manteaus, travelling-bags, greatcoats, Indian-rubber cloaks, and umbrellas. If I go into my study, I find Mr. Pumpkin arranging his accounts with his agent. I apologize for the interruption, and betake myself to the dining-room; there I find Mrs. Honeycomb engaging a children's maid. Driven to the drawing-rooms, I discover two of the young Jumbletons taking lessons in fencing in one of them; while the horrid notes that issue from the other but too plainly intimate that young Pumpkin is practising a sonata upon the German flute, while one of his fair sisters is doing her best to improve the din by her efforts upon the harpsichord. Rushing down stairs in despair, I meet Dr. Cataract, who is come to see "my little cousin" with the sore eyes; and at the next step the servant informs me that a person waits in the hall to see me upon important business; and this turns out to be the celebrated Mr. M'Rory, professor of rhetoric, come to lecture one of the young Jumbletons, who is designed for the bar, in "the Stentorian system of elocution, admirably adapted to increase the power of the human voice to a tremendous pitch, and enable a speaker to fill the largest assembly in the world with tones very little inferior in loudness and distinctness to the most apalling thunder!"

But there is nothing enrages me so much as to hear the Pumpkins for

ever rhapsodizing upon the charms of a country life, and the misery they endure when "duty" or "indispensible business" obliges them to come to town. So passionately fond are they of rural existence that they pass three fourths of the calendar year in my house in Dublin. They never sit down to my best dinners without a sigh for the rustic fare they have left behind them at Pumpkin Hall; and my fair cousin Penelope, who has actually not seen a tree, or a blade of grass, for the last seven months, except in Merrion-square, or Stephen'sgreen, marvelled the other day with the utmost complacency, how I could bear to live immured in Dublin, cities were such shocking places, and it was such an unnatural thing to pass one's days in long, ugly rows of dingy brick houses, when there were such sweet places as groves, and green lanes, and meadows, and gardens.

Truly, if country-cousins love the country, their self-denying spirit cannot be too highly lauded. People who love town as I do, seldom or never exhibit our townward propensities by taking up our abodes a hundred and fifty miles from the Castle. To the country, however, I believe I must ultimately betake myself, for it seems to be the only likely way of getting rid of one's country cousins.

Let me conclude by imploring the legislature to take the cousin-question immediately into consideration with a view to the discovery of the means best adapted to reformn what every man of reflection and feeling must perceive to be the most crying grievance of the present day. There might be a law to make the claiming of cousinship a transportable offence: or better still to make cousin-killing justifiable homicide. A measure of such a nature would be a second edition of the Bill of Rights. If ever there was a subject where instinct, reason, and religion were unanimous, it is this. We are commanded to love our enemies; but we read nowhere-love your cousins.