sufferings, and even their little unconscious hankerings after something better, the policy of improving it's habits of thinking! How much better would it be to have a third of the toil, and a twentieth part of the anxiety! How much better to have air and exercise every day, instead of once a week! How much better to have cheap luxuries, easy digestions, cool slumbers, and quiet minds!

Nor is this mere talking, or a thing only to be found in books; as if there were no medium between the extreme of folly and that of injustice. Let them come out in the fields, and see. Let them read of the smaller country gentlemen, a class which has since vanished,— of archeries and other rural sports, of the old mixture of business and pleasure, which were in a more reasonable proportion than now; and let them add to these, the improvements which philosophy would now enable them to make in a thousand matters involving the common good; and they would soon see the folly of wasting their time by a mistaken sense of it.

Upon this subject we shall present our readers by and by with a story of a man who never went out of the metropolis for ten years, and what took him out of it at last.

ANACREON'S PORTRAIT OF HIS MISTRESS.
Αγε, ζωγράφων αρις.

Come, master of the rosy art,
Thou painter after my own heart,
Come, paint my absent love for me,
As I shall describe her thee.

Paint me first her fine dark hair,
Fawning into ringlets there;

And if brush has power to do it,
Paint the odour breathing through it.
Then from out her ripe young cheek,
Underneath those tresses sleek,
Paint her brow of ivory;
Taking care the eyebrows be
Not apart, nor mingled neither,
But as her's are, stol'n together;
Met by stealth, yet leaving too
O'er the eyes their darkest hue.
Then as those bright orbs require,

Fetch her eyesight out of fire;
Like Minerva's, sparkling blue;
Moist, like Cytherea's, too:
Give her nose and cheeks a tint
Like shallow milk with roses in't:
Let her lip Persuasion's be,
Asking our's provokingly:
And beneath her satin chin,
With a dimple broken in,

And all about those precious places,
Set a thousand hovering graces.
Now then, let the drapery spread,
With an under tint of red,
And a glimpse left scarcely drest,
So that what remains be guess'd.
'Tis enough: 'tis she! 'tis she!
O thou sweet face, speak to me.

Orders received by the Booksellers, by the Newsmen, and by the Publisher, Joseph Appleyard, 19, Catherine-street, Strand.-Price Twopence.

Printed by C. H. Reynell, No. 45, Broad-street, Golden-square, London.

THE INDICATOR.

There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem to belong to the interior of Fairy-land: but they have been well authenticated. It indicates to honey hunters where the nests of wild bees are to be found. It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer; and on finding itself recognized, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little distance, where he observes all that passes, and the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. This is the CUCULUS INDICATOR of Linnæus, otherwise called the Moroc, Bee Cuckoo, or Honey Bird.

There he arriving round about doth flie,

And takes survey with busie, curious eye:
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.-SPEnser.

No. II.-WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20th, 1819.

THE INDICATOR AND EXAMINER. AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRES.-MANTLE-PIECES.-APARTMENTS FOR STUDY. ONE or two persons, we understand, have supposed that the present periodical work will interfere with the literary part of another, in which the Editor has long been concerned. This is a great mistake. The Examiner will continue to be more literary, as well as painstaking in every other respect, than it has ever been. It will have more than the usual literature, for instance, connected with politics and criticism,-especially the latter. Indeed, should the new paper injure the old one, it would be dropped. The fact is, that as far as the Editor is concerned, the Examiner is to be regarded as the reflection of his public literature, and the Indicator of his private. In the one he has a sort of public meeting with his friends: in the other, a more retired one. The Examiner is his tavern-room for politics, for political pleasantry, for criticism upon the theatres and living writers. The Indicator is his private room, his study, his retreat from public care and criticism, with the reader who chuses to accompany him.

Here we are then, this chilly weather, with a warm fire. How pleasant it is to have fires again! We have not time to regret summer, when the cold fogs begin to force us upon the necessity of having a new kind of warmth;- —a warmth not so fine as sunshine, but as manners go, more sociable. The English get together over their fires, as the Italians do in their summer-shade. We do not enjoy our sunshine as we ought: our climate in general seems to render us almost unaware that the weather is fine, when it really becomes so: but for the same reason, we make as much of our winter as the antisocial habits that have grown upon us from other causes will allow. And for a similar reason, the southern European is unprepared for a cold day. The houses in Italy are almost all summer-houses, letting in the air on every side; so that when a fit of cold weather comes on, the dismayed inhabitant, walking and shivering about with a lit

3d Edit.

tle brazier in his hands, presents an awkward image of insufficiency and perplexity. A few of our fogs, shutting up the sight of every thing out of doors, and making the trees and the eaves of the houses drip like rain, would soon admonish him to get warm in good earnest. If "the web of our life" is always to be "of a mingled yarn," a good warm hearth-rug is not the worst part of the manufacture.

Here we are then again, with our fire before us, and our books on each side. What shall we do? Shall we take out a Life of somebody, or a Theocritus, or Dante, or Ariosto, or Montaigne, or Marcus Aurelius, or Horace, or Shakspeare who includes them all? Or shall we read an engraving from Poussin or Raphael? Or shall we sit with tilted chairs, planting our wrists upon our knees, and toasting the up-turned palms of our hands, while we discourse of manners and of man's heart and hopes, with at least a sincerity, a good intention, and good nature, that shall warrant what we say with the sincere, the good-intentioned, and the good-natured?

And

Ah-take care. You see what that old looking saucer is, with a handle to it? It is a venerable piece of earthenware, which may have been worth, to an Athenian, about two-pence; but to an author, is worth a great deal more than ever he could-deny for it. yet he would deny it too. It will fetch his imagination more than ever it fetched potter or penny-maker. It's little shallow circle overflows for him with the milk and honey of a thousand pleasant associations. This is one of the uses of having mantle-pieces. You may often see on no very rich mantle-piece a representative body of all the elements, physical and intellectual,-a shell for the sea, a stuffed bird or some feathers for the air, a curious piece of mineral for the earth, a glass of water with some flowers in it for the visible process of creation,- -a cast from sculpture for the mind of man ;— and underneath all, is the bright and ever-springing fire, running up through them heavenwards, like hope through materiality. We like to have any little curiosity of the mantle-piece kind within our reach and inspection. For the same reason, we like a small study, where we are almost in contact with our books. We like to feel them about us,-to be in the arms of our mistress Philosophy, rather than see her at a distance. To have a huge apartment for a study is like lying in the great bed at Ware, or being snug on a milestone upon Hounslow Heath. It is space and physical activity, not. repose and concentration. It is fit only for grandeur and ostentation,

for those who have secretaries, and are to be approached like gods in a temple. The Archbishop of Toledo, no doubt, wrote his homilies in a room ninety feet long. The Marquis Marialva must have been approached by Gil Blas through whole ranks of glittering authors, standing at due distance. But Ariosto, whose mind could fly out of it's nest over all nature, wrote over the house he built, "Parva, sed apta mihi"-Small, but suited to me. However, it is to be observed, that he could not afford a larger. He was a Duodenarian, in that respect, like ourselves. We do not know how our ideas of a study

might expand with our walls. Montaigne, who was Montaigne "of that ilk," and lord of a great chateau, had a study "sixteen paces in diameter, with three noble and free prospects." He congratulates himself, at the same time, on it's circular figure, evidently from a feeling allied to the one in favour of smallness. "The figure of my study," says he, "is round, and has no more flat (bare) wall, than what is taken up by my table and my chairs; so that the remaining parts of the circle present me with a view of all my books at once, set upon five degrees of shelves round about me." (Cotton's Montaigne, B. 3. ch. 3.) A great prospect we hold to be a very disputable advantage, upon the same reasoning as before; but we like to have some green boughs about our windows, and to fancy ourselves as much as possible in the country when we are not there. Milton expressed a wish with regard to his study, extremely suitable to our present purpose. He would have the lamp in it seen; thus letting others into a share of his enjoyments, by the imagination of them.

And let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes; or unsphere
The Spirit of Plato, to unfold
What world or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshy nook.

There is a fine passionate burst of enthusiasm on the subject of a study in Fletcher's play of the Elder Brother, Act 1. Scene 2.

Sordid and dunghill minds, composed of earth,
In that gross element fix all their happiness:
But purer spirits, purged and refined,

Shake off that clog of human frailty. Give me
Leave to enjoy myself. That place, that does
Contain my books, the best companions, is
To me a glorious court, where hourly I
Converse with the old sages and philosophers;

And sometimes for variety, I confer

With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,

Unto a strict account; and in my fancy,

Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then

Part with such Constant pleasuros, tu cubrace

Uncertain vanities? No: be it your care

To augment a heap of wealth: it shall be mine
To increase in knowledge. Lights there for my study!

ACONTIUS AND CYDIPPE.

A LOVE STORY IN THE ANTIENT WRITERS.

Acontius was a youth of the island of Cea (now Zia), who at the sacrifices in honour of Diana fell in love with this beautiful virgin, Cydippe; but she was unfortunately so much above him in rank, that he had no hope of obtaining her hand in the usual way.

The

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wit of a lover accordingly helped him to an expedient. There was a law in Cea, that any oath pronounced in the temple of Diana, was irrevocably binding. Acontius got an apple, and writing some words upon it, pitched it into Cydippe's bosom.

The words were these:

MA THN APTEMIN AKONTIN TAMOYMAI.
By Dian, I will marry Acontius.

Or as a poet has written them:

Juro tibi sanctæ per mystica sacra Dianæ,

Me tibi venturam comitem, sponsamque futuram.

I swear by holy Dian, I will be

Thy bride betrothed, and bear thee company.

Cydippe read, and married herself. It is said that she was repeatedly on the eve of being married to another person; but her imagination in the shape of the Goddess as often threw her into a fever; and the lover, whose ardour and ingenuity had made an impression upon her, was made happy. Aristænetus in his Epistles calls the apple nudavio unλov, a Cretan apple, which is supposed to mean a quince; or as others think, an orange, or a citron. But the apple was, is, and must be, a true, unsophisticated apple. Nothing else would have suited. "The apples, methought," says Sir Philip Sydney of his heroine in the Arcadia, "fell down from the trees to do homage to the apples of her breast." The idea seems to have originated with Theocritus, (Idyl. 27. v. 50. Edit. Valckenaer.) from whom it was copied by the Italian writers. It makes a lovely figure in one of the most famous passages of Ariosto, where he describes the beauty of Alcina (Orlando Furioso, Canto 7. st. 14.)—

Bianca neve è il bel collo, e'l petto latte:
Il collo è tondo, il petto colmo e largo:
Due pome acerbe, e pur d'avorio fatte,
Vengono e van come onda al primo margo,
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.

Her bosom is like milk, her neck like snow;
A rounded neck; a bosom, where you see
Two crisp young ivory apples come and go,
Like waves that on the coast beat tenderly,
When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro,

And after him, Tasso, in his fine ode on the Golden Age :

Allor tra fiori e linfe

Tracan dolci carole

Gli Amoretti senz' archi e senza faci:

Sedean pastori e ninfe

Meschiando a le parole

Vezzi e susurri, ed ai susurri i baci

Strettamente tenaci.

La verginella ignude

Scopria sue fresche rose

Ch'or tien nel velo ascose,

E le pome del seno acerbe e crude.

E sperso o in fiume o in lago

Scherzar si vide con l'amata il vago.