important items of an account under the head of sundries, may be found to be the most lucid and explanatory method of book-keeping, we cannot yet say; but we hear that when the Rev. Barnabas Shaw, missionary to southern Africa, first commenced ploughing, in the presence of a number of chiefs, one of them pithily remarked that " one plough was equal to seven wives!”

Now only think of one silent, senseless, figure-manufacturing, unintellectual, unhandsome calculating machine, merely because it might be exact in its accounts, being for a single instant considered equal to seven charming, delightful, inexact, half-reckoning, arithmetical non-economists, like Mrs. Dipple!

WANTED A NEIGHBOUR.

I NEVER catch a glimpse of the Monument from that distant part of the metropolis where I reside, without sympathising most deeply with the man who, from early dawn to set of sun, is stationed at the top to prevent people of a lively turn of mind from jumping off. He must be so sadly in want of neighbours.

There are glorious views among the Alps, and magnificent sites for villas on the Himalayan Mountains; but I should not like to take a house there for any lengthened term of years; the neighbourhood, or rather the want of a neighbourhood, would be highly objectionable. There may be snug living enough upon Salisbury Plain; but I always prefer having somebody residing within gun-shot. And there is very snug living no doubt (if without presumption the allusion may be hazarded) in Buckingham Palace; yet is there in the position of its Illustrious Inhabitant, one pecu

liarity from which most of her subjects are happiest when they are exempt. It may be thus described : Thousands of people live around and about the Palace, but the Queen has no neighbours.

Man's duty towards his neighbour has many branches, but mine has one branch extra. In fact, the leading point of my duty towards my neighbour, is to find him. When a boy, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe exercised over my mind an irresistible fascination; and for three years I dreamed of nothing, day or night, but the charms of shipwreck and the seductiveness of a desert island; but I could not help thinking that a pleasant neighbour or two would have materially improved the solitary condition. To be sure, there were the cannibals; but they could hardly be said, in the strict sense of the word, to be animated by a neighbourly feeling. If Alexander Selkirk could have heard his sound of the "church-going bell," for which his ear thirsted, he would still have wanted a neighbour on the next rock, or the valley ten miles off, to call for on his way, and to return home with. But after all, their situation was only just as neighbourless as mine. True, this little suburban district is not a desert island; on the contrary, there is scarcely an acre of ground within a mile of my fireside, that is not thickly planted with brick and mortar, and houses come up faster than small salad; there is scarcely an edifice among the congregated specimens of eligible mansions and commodious residences that is not tenanted; and not a few of the vast number can boast of more than one set of inmates. But it is true, nevertheless, that I haven't a neighbour. There are seasons, says Wordsworth, when the heart luxuriates with indifferent things, "wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones." I have often wasted mine on the statue of the Duke of York on Carlton-terrace,

and now watch the progress of the new column in Trafalgar-square with proportionate interest. Nelson will certainly prove a most desirable neighbour.

I have remarked that we are surrounded with houses, and that every one is tenanted; this is scarcely saying enough. A friend of mine (alas! he is no neighbour), whose family increases rapidly, is said to have such a "house full of children," that he cannot shut the streetdoor for them. If he did, they would be oozing out at the key-hole; and legs and arms, in inevitable submission to the law of physics, would be insinuating themselves out of the window, or escaping as by a safetyvalve through the chimney. This appears to be equally the case with numerous residents in my vicinity. Lodger upon lodger, visitor upon visitor, each staying a twelvemonth, fill most of the buildings even to an overflow; but in all this multitude, is there no neighbour for me, not one.

The people next door are a charming family. They have resided there fifteen years, while my term of tenancy has been seventeen; but to speak of them as my neighbours, would be like speaking of the elasticity of castiron, or the saccharine attraction of a cranberry-tart. The family over the way, the Higgses (we know the name to be Higgs by the brass-plate on the door), well, they have lived almost opposite to us upwards of twelve years; and yet to expect a call from any one of the two dozen in family, to expect a "good morning," or any slight sign of neighbourly recognition, why, it would be as startling as the knock of a penny-postman at the door of Robinson Crusoe's cave.

The French have many generous and brilliant qualities; but I believe the chief reason why I am so partial to them is, not that they have sent us Rachel, but that they are always called "our lively neighbours."

Let it not be rashly imagined that I am utterly deserted and desolate. We have relations innumerable; some of them yet living can prove that they were in the Ark, and they have gone on increasing and multiplying ever since. But relations in Yorkshire, the Isle of France, Australia, Upper Canada, and New Zealand, are not exactly neighbours. As for the friends that we have the happiness to possess, they are like the tricks of conjurors, "too tedious to mention." We have them, as the hungry gentleman wanted to have the sandwiches at an evening party, "in swarms." But then, is it not as clear as a ball-room two minutes after supper is announced, that the best of friends are anything but neighbours, especially when they reside within a convenient distance!

If I hap

We have numerous visitations from afar. pened to have a cousin in Kentucky, I'd bet the speculating reader a copy of the New Monthly, that he (the Kentuckian) would be smoking me out of house and home within a twelvemonth. Every man or boy, every maid, wife, or widow, connected with us by the remotest and most imaginary degree of consanguinity, can find the way in turn to our gate, and knows experimentally the precise degree of vigour which the bell-pull exacts to insure a prompt attendance upon the summons. They know whether our knocker's note is C in base, or C in treble. We have plenty of other people's neighbours; throughout the year we may rejoice, at intervals, in the flattering inquiries and voluntary domiciliations of friends and kindred from a distance, the neighbours probably of my own antipodes. But this occurs to everybody in turn. It is regulated by the principle on which every Londoner's country visitors clamber up St. Paul's, and thread the mazes of the Tower, while the Londoner himself does not. I have neither scaled

the Monument, nor dived into the Tunnel; never in my life, because I could perform the feat every day of my existence; and what I principally know concerning them is derived from the voluminous communications of statistical guests from distant countries or foreign lands.

They can give you the exact measurement of the architectural or antiquarian wonder; the width, the height, the proportion of the parts, in feet and inches ; and add besides the date of the year when it was all done; all which told, without the abatement of a single figure of the account, they leave you to enjoy your head-ache, and travel back to the country, sensible perhaps of your hospitality, but shocked at your disgraceful want of ordinary information.

Ah! how vast is the difference between all such guests, and the social conveniences alluded to before, the neighbours! Relations are well enough, so long as they are not poor ones; and friends are of inestimable value, except perhaps when you want them to be of use to you; but if they are beyond immediate reach, it is too plain that they are not neighbours, and one good thing is not always a substitute for another. As an epic poem would prove but of slight utility in the place of a haunch of venison, so the exalted and exquisite sentiment of friendship is, in practical operation, but an ill substitute for the hourly-wanted accommodation of a neighbourly feeling.

What adds most acutely to the poignant sense which I entertain of this social grievance, my want of neighbours, is, that the people all round about appear to be such peculiarly nice people. The charming family opposite, and that next door, are but specimens of the general superiority. On our terrace there are almost twenty houses, and in the row over the way there are twenty