to make him comprehend who I was. "I am glad to see him,” was the only answer which could be got from him. He made it mechanically-evidently totally unconscious of all which passed before him: his eye unmeaning-his words dreamily spoken-and his whole aspect that of the last flickerings of the flame of life before it sank out for ever!

My father was shortly removed to his own room, and my sister and I were left to talk over old times together. The room in which we sat was the library, and had undergone scarcely any change since I had last seen it. My eye could recognise the books in the very places in which I had left them :-the heavily-bound, red-edged folios were ranged along the ground-row, untouched, most probably, since my early thirst for books had left me to explore them ;—and, in one corner of the highest shelf, I saw a white-backed copy of Gulliver's Travels, which I had nearly broken my neck in clambering to reach. Most of the furniture was new; but there was still an old blue and white china jar, which I had got into disgrace for cracking-and on which was still to be seen the rivet which the housekeeper had placed on it at my entreaty. A large old-fashioned back-gammon table, also, stood in one corner, which I well recollected as having been one of the delights of my boyhood, and the picture which hung over the chimneythe only one in the room-was, as it had always been, the portrait of an ancient worthy of our race, arrayed in the angular stiffness-the large ruff-clocked stockings-and be-rosed shoes, of the court-dress of James the First's time. These circumstances may appear triflingbut I recollect they made strong impression on me at the time; and the task I have undertaken of writing

the narrative of my life is naturally more a record of feelings than of events.

The long conversation which I had with my sister, tended in no degree to remove the sadness which all these circumstances had caused. Her subdued and melancholy manner shewed, that the hand of sorrow had been upon her also-that all her feelings were changed and saddened-except only her affection for me. I made inquiry for all those who were connected, in my recollection, with the dear home to which I had returned. One answer served for nearly all-" He is dead."-Of all the servants of the family-all the retainers, who are always so numerous about a large country-house-who had been my allies in my boyish sports, and who had so fervently bidden God to bless my parting step-not one remained to welcome my return. All the villagers, too, who had been most connected with "the great house❞— who had paid their court by making their landlord's children share in the merriment of their harvest-home, and the joyousness of their Christmas carol,—those, too, who had been my mother's pensioners, and to whom she had made us the dispensers of her bounty, that she might train our young hearts to the exalted pleasure of doing good;-all these, as I made inquiry for them one by one, I was told had disappeared from the scene; and, of course, those who had risen up to fill their places could feel no interest for me. My recollections of home had not been confined to the physical scene alone-they had naturally included the images of those who dwelt there-and it now seemed almost a mockery to be restored to the spot itself, and to find that all those who had peopled it in my heart, were gone for ever. How bitter were my feelings, as the well-known quotation rose in my

memory-" I came to the place of my birth, and I said, the friends of my youth where are they?'-and an echo answered- Where are they?"-I recollected having admired this as beautiful, when I first read it-alas! no one knows half its force who has not had occasion to repeat it as I did.

When I was shewn to my bed-room, a new scene of painful recollection presented itself. My sister had had the same room prepared for me, which I had always slept in when I was a boy; to which my brother and I had been removed, when our going to school made us considered too old for the nursery. The room now contained only one bed, but every thing else was strikingly the same as when I left it. The prints with which my

walls, just before our first

mother had decorated the return from school-the shelves which had held our little library—even one or two of the mouldering schoolbooks themselves-all combined to call into the most vivid and painful contrast my present and my former self. On the wainscot of dark oak, I found in a wellremembered corner, the misshapen initials of my name, which I had cut with great labour, and had looked on as a work of infinite skill. On each side the chimney hung the portraits of my brother and myself, painted with the round cheeks, open neck, and flowing hair of ten years old. Now one was in the grave-and the other, at that moment, almost wished to be there also. As I gazed on the rosy careless countenance which had once been my likeness, I scarcely could think that it presented the same being. I felt as the dead might be supposed to feel, if they could behold their earthly formso totally did, a gulf seem placed between my present nature and that of the blooming boy on whom I looked. It was, as I have said, the mouth of July, and the full

moon gave perfect light to the scene which lay beneath the window. I threw it open, and looked out on that well-known, long-loved spot. It was in itself one of great actual beauty-and I dearly loved, and had long regretted it, which made me now think it doubly so. The tall towering oak, which so often had been the goal of our race, and given its shadow to our gambols, was outlined on the bright moon-lighted sky behind, in all the majesty of age, and the luxuriant leafiness of summer. Farther on, the moon threw a line of glittering light on the noble sheet of water which had been to me the means of so much early enjoyment. There, I used to sit for hours fishing on its bank—and there, as my advancing years had caused me to take pleasure in the athletic exercises of youth, I had delighted

to cleave

With pliant arm its glassy wave."

In the distance I could see among the trees the blue slate of the cottage where the gamekeeper lived, who had been so great an ally of mine, and whose dwelling had been so favourite a haunt. He also was dead-but he had survived most of his contemporaries, and in his last illness, not long before the time of which I write, he had expressed, my sister told me, deep regret at not living to see Master George come home again. This, and numberless other circumstances connected with my boyish pursuits, rose in my heart as I gazed on the scene which had witnessed them; and, as I closed the window, I felt that there was one more drop of gall added to the cup of bitterness which my return home had proved.

Alas! said I to myself, and is this the hour of my return home-of my meeting with my friends ?—I find my mother and my brother dead-my father in a state which

makes it to be wished that he were dead also-and my sister with a chilled heart and a withered frame, which make my soul sink with the contrast between what she was once, and what she is now. All those whose images are indelibly connected in my mind with the abode of my youth are swept away-nothing but the spot itself is left. It is as a skeleton to the human body-the framework is still the same, but all which gave to it life and beauty is withered and vanished. This, I exclaimed with bitterness-this is the happiness of revisiting the scenes of childhood-these are the joys of meeting!

SPIRITS OF BOOKS.

If it be true, as some have supposed, that the spirits of the departed still inhabit in a ghostly shape their old planet, and take an interest in the objects which formed their cares upon earth, authors must have as troublesome a life of it on the other side of the grave, as they have had on this. We have no doubt a kind of indefinite belief in the supposition; the sacred respect so universally paid to the memory of the dead, must spring from a deep assurance that they are not insensible to the regards of the living. But to the shame of the polite and the learned, who contemn what they are unable to analyze, it is the vulgar almost alone who perceive, and blindly obey, those innate feelings of our nature. With the common people, tombs are temples, and cursed are the hands that would violate the sanctuary, which to them seems to contain all that is left of life" for the spirits of vulgar imaginations," says some author, "are after all