reckoned genteel in genteel circles, but she was very well, deeply read in novels, and had beauty, which greatly contributes to a woman's presentability. I complimented her on her amended looks; she thanked me, in return, for my complai sance, in indulging her in the species of reading in which she so much delighted, and added How much I envy you, Mr. Birkit, for getting all the charming new things as they come out!"'

"I assured her, laughing, that I did not think myself so much an object of envy; and that as for the novelties, she was welcome to read as many as she liked, if, in return, she would undertake to save the labour of my brains, by giving me her opinion of them.

"Mrs. Drinkwater, like all truly-pretty women, was more flattered by a compliment to her understanding than to her beauty; and, satisfied with her own powers of criticism, the very next day sent me back a novel, with her opinion

in pencil, which I, being in haste, transcribed as mine.

"From that moment there might be said to be a kind of literary partnership between the shoemaker's daughter and myself a partnership in which I obliged her considerably, while I was spared the disgustful labour of wading through more than half the dullness to which I had formerly been chained. I gave the opinions of Mrs. Drinkwater sometimes as those of a lively female;' sometimes I transformed her into a reverend old gentlewoman, in a quilled cap and spectacles;' but more frequently I repeated them as emanating immediately from my own awful person.

"On those occasions I could not forbear imagining the trepidation of my author or authoress, as they tremblingly peeped at the decrees of my admirable Crispiana, believing them to be the oracles of a god; and our joint criticisms irresistibly brought

to

to my recollection a story I heard from lady Penmawr (for the accuracy of which I will not vouch) respecting certain Laureate Odes, produced on solemn occasions in a sister country, which odes, though they went by the name of the court poet, were well known to be written by an old woman at Drogheda.

"Sometimes, for variety, I tried my hand at panegyric, and was, one day, looking for an article of that kind, which I had inserted in a fashionable morning paper, when my attention was arrested by the following paragraph:

If the young gentleman who left B****, it is conjectured in a desponding state of mind, about the middle of March, will return to his afflicted family, or inform them by a line where he is to be found, he may depend upon the kindest treatment, and that the past shall never be mentioned to him.

'N. B.-If fear of a certain subject is

the

the cause of his reluctance to return home, the writer assures him that he shall be no further importuned about it.'

"This advertisement made me cut a caper as high again as myself. To whom could it relate but to me? I was young -I was a gentleman; in a desponding state of mind enough, God knows, when I first turned my back on Bear Hall, for which B**** might stand; and the subject on which I was no farther to be importuned was, no doubt, the learning to be an attorney.

"Since the deficiency in my finances had obliged me to exchange my genteel lodgings for shabby ones, my family had lost all traces of me. This was, doubtless, the last resource of my tender mother, or perhaps grandmother, to obtain some tidings of their truant. Home, and all its joys, rose before me; for, to say the truth, I was heartily tired of shifting for myself. My tender mother, my reverend grandame, my favourite sister Jessy, even my father,

father, with his gaiters and carnassière, appeared to advantage through the flattering mists of absence; and I wrote that very evening to my mother, that if the paragraph in the Morning Post came from the quarter I suspected, it had reached its aim, and was welcomed with tears by a grateful heart panting to embrace again the objects of its affection.

"Her answer cleared up all.

"I was so overjoyed that I forgot to make any terms for myself, or rather thought the concluding assurance in the advertisement all-sufficient.

"The following day saw me bowling merrily along the great northern road; and I was soon welcomed, by my honoured parent, to the hall of my fathers, with a hollow that you might have heard from this to Cheviot.

"A week's residence at home convinced me of the vanity of all expectations of perfect human happiness. Jessy, my favourite sister, welcomed me indeed with a

languid