Lagfoot, was shot through the vacuum which he called his brain. Lagfoot would certainly have avenged his friend's fall, by calling out the adversary whom, but for the accidental delay of an hour or so, he had himself encountered; and this time he set about the affair with ominous alacrity; but the result turned out to be the same; he was too late; the gentleman had taken his departure for the continent; people are so very rapid in their movements on these occasions. His life was exposed to other perils than those of physic, duelling, and drowning; but though the danger was different, the mode of escape never varied. It was in his hot youth that he was persuaded to favour the cause of the Pretender, and pledged himself to join an expedition to the north, for the purpose of effecting a rising. Every man of the little party of adventurers to which he belonged was hanged for treason, and nothing could have saved him from sharing their fate, but the fortunate circumstance of his being too late for the Edinburgh mail on the night appointed for quitting the metropolis in furtherance of the enterprise. Situated as Lagfoot was, anybody but himself would most assuredly have been consigned to the family vault before his natural time arrived; for it was his fate upon one occasion to be deposited in a handsome coffin, and to lie in state for four-and-twenty hours, as dead to all appearance as a legacy-hunter could wish him. But on the day appointed for the interment the church-gates were closed against the deceased; and the clergyman refused to bury him, as the undertaker was after time. He was therefore taken back again unburied; and that very night a scratching at the inside of the coffin being faintly heard, and then a motion of two or three wineglasses and a plate of cake placed thereon, being distinctly discerned by the watchers; the lamented gentle man was released from the durance and danger to which his excellent imitation of a fit of apoplexy had consigned him. If he had not most luckily been too late to be buried, his death must have been the consequence. A codicil to his last will, bearing date the next day, set forth that a snug annuity was in store for the manager of his funeral whenever that mournful ceremony might again take place, on condition that when the day appointed for the solemn rites arrived, the procession should be so delayed by insurmountable obstacles, as to insure the bringing back of the body, and the postponement of the obsequies for at least four-and-twenty hours. In short, without planning his procrastinations and arrivals after date, he had the luck of seeing himself continually relieved by them from scrapes, accidents, dilemmas, and annoyances, that must otherwise have befallen him. Before his appointed visit to a friend was permitted to commence (a week after the day fixed), the troublesome troop of children by whom the house was rendered something not unlike a private receptacle for lunatics, were sure to have been sent to school. Late elsewhere, he found himself just in time to discover that Professor Stratum, the great bore, or Mr. Poodle, the great lion, had mercifully departed the day before. Nay, he never joined a stupid evening-party without finding that the worst part of the stupidity had been perpetrated early; that he had arrived too late for the crack musical performance of the night; that little Jemima, the precocious genius of the family, had gone to bed; and that Signor Somethingini, who had so kindly brought his guitar, had as cruelly retired, half an hour previous. Too late (owing to his preference for a pint or so of claret) to accompany a party to the theatre, he was certain, on entering the box at nine, to have the best seat resigned to him, in the humane consideration of his having missed two out of the five superfluous acts of the dreary play. Continual repetition converts a trifling advantage into a vast blessing; and such was his, in contriving to secure a quiet, comfortable, protracted breakfast by himself, every morning, simply by coming down too late for the family scramble, designated a meal. In these small affairs, as in greater ones, his good fortune furnished him with a perpetual motive for never being in time. He escaped everything, but good luck, by being too late for it. NOTHING CERTAIN IN LIFE. "Are you sure of that?"-OTHELLO. THERE are periods in the age of the world, or in the lives of individuals, when it is absolutely impossible to make sure of anything. Either the present time constitutes one of these epochs, or our own way of life in particular has taken that perplexed and devious turn which forbids reliance upon facts the most obvious, substitutes mystification and doubt for clear conviction, and renders it exceedingly inexpedient to trust implicitly to the evidence of such fallible witnesses as our own eyes or our own ears. As there are seasons when "nothing is stirring but stagnation," so in this, there is. nothing quite certain but uncertainty. The only things that we can make sure of are doubts. Mr. Puff's warning-voice should go forth, not pufflike, but trumpet-toned. His caution is a memorable one, and full of meaning. "Don't be too sure that he is a beefeater." It turned out, as the reader will remember, that he was not. "There was a time when all my youthful thought That was a time of solids, substances, stubborn truths, Nothing appeared more certain, the other day, than that a spade was a spade; nothing is so probable now as that it is something else. It may be a diamond, or a pitchfork. What makes the matter more bewildering is that it may be a spade after all; for it does not follow that an object, because it seems one thing, will necessarily be another. There is always the doubt in any case. It is all a puzzle. When we lately went to the theatre, it was to see a comedy, embracing a numerous set of characters. It turned out to be a farce with only one actor in it. Assured, by the opinions of several profound and impartial critics, that there was no such thing as high tragic genius in dramatic representation existing, and that Lear and Macbeth had no place upon the stage,—we repaired to another house, and found the loftiest conceptions of the greatest poet embodied with such masterly art, such fineness, originality, and truth, as might satisfy the taste and the desires of the most fastidious age. So improbable is it that you will see what you expect to see. Our friend Mr. Diddler, a grandson of the great Jeremy, repaid and returned to us, within these ten days, two half-crowns, and an umbrella that he had been prevailed upon to borrow of us one wet night. We shall yet live to see him send back the cloak that we lent him, when it was snowing so heavily last July. Such are the eccentricities of human character. There is no end to these contradictions, deceptions, and disappointments. It was not so formerly. We recollect the time when even a writ, served upon a gentleman of this stamp, would not have been returnable. But such is the state of incertitude and want of fixed principle in which we live, that there is no saying what obligation may not meet its return. It is contrary to all established rule, it is being taken by surprise, to have one's very mackintosh, lent perhaps at some inconvenience, returned upon one's hands, as the bootmakers say. To so strange and startling an extremity has this want of confidence in the consistency of our fellow-creatures advanced, that even when an intimate friend borrows our pet volume: the old quarto that can't be bought, or the book whose absence spoils a handsome set; even when he carries off such a treasure as this, we never feel sure now; we used, but times are altered so; never feel sure that he will keep it. It is probable, highly probable, that he will bring it back again; scored a good deal, perhaps, down the margin with a hard lead pencil; and with a fairy ring, about the size of the bottom of a tumbler, (the work of spirits), distinctly visible here and there, where the favourite passages occur; but still the volume is returned to us, baffling our speculations touching friendship, confounding our calculations relative to character, and teaching us, with a volume's force, that we should never make too sure of anything; in short, that we can trust nobody. Turn which way we will, examples of the folly of implicit confidence occur to memory. Were it consistent with delicacy, we could mention the name of a speculator who embarked a considerable capital in a goldmine affair, and has actually made money. Another adventurous-minded acquaintance of ours married, not |