have no fears of death, for my life has afforded but little temptation to wickedness; and when I die, I hope to leave behind me more substantial proofs of virtue, than will be found in my epitaph, and more lasting memorials than churches built or hospitals endowed with wealth wrung from the hard hand of poverty, by an unfeeling landlord, or unprincipled knave;-but still when I pass such a day as this, and contemplate such a scene, I cannot help feeling a latent wish to linger yet a little longer in this peaceful asylum; to enjoy a little more sunshine in this world, and to have a few more fishing matches with my boy." As he ended he raised his hand a little from the fallen tree, and drooping it languidly by his side, turned himself towards home. The sentiment, the look, the action, all seemed to be prophetic.-And so they were, for when I shook him by the hand and bade him farewell the next morning-it was for the last time!

He died a bachelor at the age of sixty-three, though he had been all his life trying to get married; and always thought himself on the point of accomplishing his wishes. His disappointments were not owing either to the deformity of his mind or person; for in his youth he was reckoned handsome, and I myself can witness for him that he had as kind a heart as ever was fashioned by Heaven; neither were they owing to his poverty,which sometimes stands in an honest man's way; forthe was born to the inheritance of a small estate which was sufficient to establish his claim to the title of "one well to do in the world." The truth

66

is, my uncle had a prodigious antipathy to doing things in a hurry-" A man should consider," said he to me once- "that he can always get a wife, but cannot always get rid of her. For my part," continued he, "I am a young fellow with the world before me, (he was about forty!) and am resolved to look sharp, weigh matters well, and know what's what before I marry: in short, Launce, I don't intend to do the thing in a hurry, depend upon it." On this whim-wham he proceeded: he began with young girls, and ended with widows. The girls he courted until they grew old maids, or married out of pure apprehension of incurring certain penalties hereafter; and the widows not having quite as much patience, generally, at the end of a year, while the good man thought himself in the high road to success, married some harum-scarum young fellow, who had not such an antipathy to do things in a hurry.

My uncle would have inevitably sunk under these repeated disappointments-for he did not want sensibility-had he not hit upon a discovery which set all to rights at once. He consoled his vanity, for he was a little vain, and soothed his pride, which was his master passion-by telling his friends, very significantly, while his eye would flash triumph, "that he might have had her." These who know how much of the bitterness of disappointed affection arises from wounded vanity and exasperated pride will give my uncle credit for this discovery.

My uncle had been told by a prodigious number of married men, and had read in an innumer

able quantity of books, that a man could not possibly be happy except in the marriage state; so he determined at an early age to marry, that he might not lose his only chance for happiness. He accordingly forthwith paid his addresses to the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman farmer, who was reckoned the beauty of the whole world -a phrase by which the honest country people mean nothing more than the circle of their acquaintance, or that territory of land which is within sight of the smoke of their own hamlet.

This young lady, in addition to her beauty, was highly accomplished-for she had spent five or six months at a boarding-school in town, where she learned to work pictures in satin, and paint sheep that might be mistaken for wolves; to hold up her head, sit straight in her chair, and to think every species of useful acquirement beneath her attention. When she returned home, so completely had she forgotten everything she knew before, that on seeing one of the maids milking a cow, she asked her father with an air of most enchanting ignorance-" what that odd looking thing was doing with that queer animal?" The old man shook his head at this; but the mother was delighted at these symptoms of gentility, and so enamoured at her daughter's accomplishments, that she actually got framed a picture worked in satin by the young lady. It represented the tomb of Romeo and Juliet: Romeo was dressed in an orange-coloured cloak, fastened round his neck by a large golden clasp; a white satin tamboured waistcoat, leather breeches, blue silk

stockings, and white topped boots. The amiable Juliet shone in a flame-coloured gown, most gorgeously bespangled with silver stars, a highcrowned muslin cap that reached to the top of the tomb;-on her feet she wore a pair of shortquartered high-heeled shoes, and her waist was the exact facsimile of an inverted sugar loaf. The head of the "noble county Paris looked like a chimney sweep's brush that had lost its handle; and the cloak of the good Friar hung about him as gracefully as the armour of a rhinoceros. The good lady considered this picture as a splendid proof of her daughter's accomplishments, and hung it up in the best parlour, as an honest tradesman does his certificate of admission into that enlightened body yclept the Mechanic Society.

With this accomplished young lady, then, did my uncle John become deeply enamoured; and as it was his first love, he determined to bestir himself in an extraordinary manner. Once at [east in a fortnight, and generally on a Sunday evening, he would put on his leather breeches (for he was a great beau), mount his gray horse Pepper, and ride over to see Miss Pamela, though she lived upwards of a mile off, and he was obliged to pass close by a church-yard, which at least a hundred creditable persons would swear was haunted. Miss Pamela could not be insensible to such proofs of attachment, and accordingly received him with considerable kindness; her mother always left the room when he came-and my uncle had as good as made a declaration by

saying one evening, very significantly, "that he believed he should soon change his condition;" when, somehow or other, he began to think he was doing things in too great a hurry, and it was high time to consider; so he considered near a month about it, and there is no saying how much longer he might have spun the thread of his doubts, had he not been roused from this state of indecision, by the news that his mistress had married an attorney's apprentice, whom she had seen the Sunday before at church, where he had excited the applauses of the whole congregation, by the invincible gravity with which he listened to a Dutch sermon. The young people in the neighbourhood laughed a good deal at my uncle on the occasion; but he only shrugged his shoulders, looked mysterious, and replied, "Tut, boys! I might have had her."

SALMAGUNDI.

BOOK-MAKING.

THERE was one dapper little gentleman in bright coloured clothes, with a chirping, gossipping expression of countenance, who had all the appearance of an author on good terms with his bookseller. After considering him attentively, I recognised in him a diligent getter-up of miscellaneous works, which bustled off well with the trade. I was curious to see how he manufactured his wares. He made more stir and show of business than any of the others; dipping into various