at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity.

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb-that hung next the great bay window-with the bright yellow H-shire hair, and eye of watchet hue-so like my Alice! -I am persuaded, she was a true Elia-Mildred Elia, I take it.

From her, and from my passion for her-for I first learned love from a picture-Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast never seen them, Reader, in the Margin.* But my Mildred grew not old, like the imaginary Helen.

*

"High-born Helen, round your dwelling,

These twenty years I've paced in vain:
Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty

Hath been to glory in his pain.

High-born Helen, proudly telling
Stories of thy cold disdain;
I starve, I die, now you comply,
And I no longer can complain.

These twenty years I've lived on tears,
Dwelling for ever on a frown;

On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread;
I perish now you kind are grown.

Can I, who loved my beloved

But for the scorn was in her eye,'
Can I be moved for my beloved,
When she returns me sigh for sigh

In stately pride, by my bed-side,
High-born Helen's portrait hung;
Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays
Are nightly to the portrait sung.

Mine too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Cæsars-stately busts in marble-ranged round: of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder, but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality.

Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed, and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or selfforgetful maiden-so common since that bats have roosted in it.

Mine too-whose else?-thy costly fruit garden, with its sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure garden, rising backwards from the house, in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of squirrel, and the day-long murmuring wood pigeon-with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery.

To that I weep, nor ever sleep,
Complaining all night long to her."-
Helen, grown old, no longer cold,
Said "you to all men I prefer."

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope-a germ to be revivified.

DETACHED THOUGHTS

ON

BOOKS AND READING.

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own.

Lord Foppington in the Relapse.

!AN ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.

I have no repugnances. Shaftsbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I

can read any thing which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.

In this catalogue of books which are no books -biblia a-biblia-I reckon court calendars, directories, pocket books, (the literary excepted,) draught boards bound and lettered at the back, scientific treatises, almanacks, statutes at large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without;" the Histories of Flavius Josephus, (that learned Jew,) and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost any thing. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kindhearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find-Adam Smith. To view a well arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopædias, (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas,) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tythe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymond Lully-I have them both reader to look like himself again in the