terinck, saith, maketh all things easy, and so he made my breeches. Henceforth I shall be of the opinion of the currier in the fable, "There's nothing like leather." Kings that have been made kings from low degree, have kept their poor breeches in remembrance of their humble state. I might have kept mine in remembrance of my humbled state, and as monuments of my after knowledge. A heathen would have made them the subject of an apotheosis. If some have been celebrated as having seen the "Siege of Bulleyn," mine had witnessed the siege of Troy. They had sat down many a day with "the seven against Thebes." Taking into account, my dear Eusebius, the seas of ink that have been spilt upon them—the Greek with which they have been bespattered—the versification that has been made upon them, and those engraftings of buds from the tree of knowledge, of which I have spoken —I may, without fear of contradiction, say of them, that, wherever they may be, there must be the seat of learning. So that, "take them for all in all, I ne'er shall look upon their like again.”

My dear Eusebius, yours as ever.

HINTS FOR THE HOLIDAY S.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1826.)

GENTLE reader! hast thou been a loving observer of the beautiful uncertain weather of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we live, to a tube partly filled with quicksilver, is indeed most preposterous; and we have long noticed that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in nankeens, without greatcoat or umbrella, when such a thunderplump falls down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take to bed, and on the ninth day, fever hurries them off, victims to their zeal in the cause of natural philosophy. But we mean to ask, have you an eye, and an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all the prognosticating sights, and sounds, and motions, and shapes, of nature? Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, and spirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, come and go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded desert? Have you listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them prophesying change in heaven? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as that you can foretell each proud

or fair emergency, and the hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen almanac? When a league square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when one single, solitary raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly off with a croak, croak, croak! that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? The lonely lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? And the stately harebells, do they not let droop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the beautiful blue of a midsummer's meridian day?

Gentle reader! forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiser than ourselves; yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of the Mountains;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we know somewhat more than the vocabulary of the language both of calm and storm. Remember that we are now at Ambleside a village familiar with the sky-and one week's residence there may let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady cabinet of St. Cloud.

One advice we give you, and by following it you cannot fail to be happy at Ambleside, and every where else. Whatever the weather be, love, admire, and delight in it, and vow that you would not change it for the atmosphere of a dream. If it be close, hot, and oppressive, be thankful for the air, faint but steady, that comes down from cliff and chasm, or the breeze that gushes fitfully from stream and lake. If the heavens are filled with sunshine, and you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool the sylvan shade, for ever moistened by the murmurs of that fairy waterfall!

Should it blow great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements are warded even from the thunderbolt, by the dense umbrage of unviolated woods? Rain-rain-rain-an even-down pour of perpetual rain, that forces upon you visions of Noah and his ark, and the top of Mount Ararat—still, we beseech you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; the thing is impossible. Even this very afternoon will the rainbow span the blue entrance into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westering sun on his approach to the mountains--and a hundred hill-born torrents will be seen flashing out of the up-folding mists. What a delightful dazzle on the light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald; and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigality of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled Fairfield, that has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest.

We hope that we have said enough to show you the gross folly of ever being dissatisfied with Heaven's gracious weather, whatever character it assume. May we now say a very few words on another topic slightly touched in our Hints No. I.-Early Rising? It is manifestly impossible to "rise early in the morning, and lie down late at e'en;" therefore, whenever we hear a lady or a gentleman boasting of having seen the sun rise, we ask them when they went to bed, and bring from them a reluctant answer, "between nine and ten." Now only think of a single lady, or a gentleman, lying “between nine and ten," nightcapped and asnore within dimity curtains in a bed-room in an inn, up many stairs to the back of the house, and with one window commanding a pig-sty, a hen-house, a coal-shed, and a place for a gig, while the rest of the pleasure party, rightly so named, are floating and boating on the bosom of Windermere, while "the star of Jove so beautiful and large" does of his own lustrous self supply the place and power of the moon, when for a little while her effulgence chooseth to disappear within her shady tabernacle! What merit is there in disturbing the whole house by the long-disregarded ringing of drowsy bells, whose clappers wax angrier at

every effort, till the sulky chambermaid, with close-glued eyes, gropes her way along glimmering lanes, and alleys, and lobbies, to female No. 5, whom she wishes in the Red Sea or the bottomless pit? Then the creak of "my walking shoes" goes past every bedroom-door, wakening from sweet sleep-or inspiring dreams of unaccountable hideousness, haunted by the smell of Bamff leather, and tan-pits afloat with the red swollen bodies of cur-dogs, now cured of hydrophobia. Next, the Virgin of the Sun must have a cup of coffee to sip, and a hard-boiled egg to pocket, before she sets out on her orisons; and, finally, she bangs to the great nail-studded oak front-door of the caravansera with such a clap of thunder, that the tongs, poker, and shovel of twenty rooms, dislodged from their upright repose against the polished bar of the grates they adorn, fall down with one clash of ironmongery, and cry "Sleep no more" to all the house!

And this leads us to speak of manners in inns. A little more latitude, unquestionably is to be allowed there than in private houses; but still, readers, be ladies—be gentlemen. This is the land of freedom, and neither landlords nor landladies are slaves. Even waiters, chambermaids, and boots themselves enjoy the blessings of Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights. Swear not at all-it is a brutal habit. Do not, at dinner, ask for a knife, as if you meditated murder; or a spoon, with a face indicative of ipecacuanha. Bawl not for bread, like a famished Stentor, nor, lest you turn it sour, in a voice of thunder for small beer. If he do forget the cheese, be merciful to the waiter for the sake of his wife and a small family; and remember, that although he may upset the mustard-pot, or the vinegar-cruet, still he has a soul to be saved, and that forgiveness should not lag far in the rear of repentance. not like a Cerberus at the charge of threepence a-mile for him or her on the dickey, over and above the five inside; and fall not down in a fit of rage or apoplexy at the sum total of the whole of any bill under heaven.

Roar

Then, do not, we implore you, run to the window at every arrival, and stare, squint, goggle, giggle, and glower on each individual descending the steps of various vehicles. Such curiosity is vulgar, and the girdle of Venus would