crown, broken in the rims, and greasy all over. Look at his doublet; it was in fashion about the end of last century, and, in spite of all his care, is now thread-bare at the hands and broken at the elbows; his hose are darned with worsted threads of different colours; and his shoes were purchased second-hand, some years ago, in a lane between the Cowgate and St. Giles's Church. Rozinante would appear a sleek gelding, fat and full of flesh, beside his steed, whose back is like an arch reversed, and sadly fretted with the pannels of an old worn-out saddle: exclusive of being spavined and broken-winded, the poor animal has a catalogue of ailments as numerous as those of which "the poor man's mare died a mile aboon Dundee." He would not find a purchaser, even in the purveyor of a dog-kennel, as his skin is the only envelope which keeps his bones together, and they have obtruded themselves beyond it in so many places, that even a Forfar tanner, where there is the greatest demand for horse-leather, would think it too dear of stripping from the carcase. This hobby is ridden, not by fits and starts, but from morning to night; and though necessarily at a slow, yet a constant pace; the saddle is never ungirthed from his back, nor the bridle removed from his jaws: like his master, he feeds sparingly, and creeps painfully along on his never-ending journey; for the rider, although he often fixes on a point at which he purposes to rest, no sooner arrives there than he wishes to proceed for another stage, and so on, ad infinitum, till both the hobby and his rider sink, overcome by fatigue, and exhausted by inanition; their wanderings ended, although the object is unaccomplished.

Here comes one like the son of Nimshi, driving furiously, as if the enemy were close at his heels. Our Scots proverb says, "they gallop fast whom the de'il and the lasses drive." This is the gallant, gay Lothario; one whom the world terms a fine jolly fellow, nobody's enemy but his own. His motto is," a short life and a merry ;" and by this maxim he regulates his conduct, in so far as it is susceptible of regulation; but he is generally the child of circum

stances, and adheres to no system, except that of pursuing Pleasure; but he gallops so fast that he often passes her on the road. He has many and violent antipathies, pronouncing every modest girl a prude, and every old woman a witch; men of regular, sober lives, are, with him, canting Methodists, or consummate hypocrites; he pronounces matrimony to be the death of love, and is under the influence of a perpetual hydrophobia, at least as far as water is concerned. His partialities are not less remarkable, for he considers pleasure as the sole purpose of life, and love its chief ingredient; he therefore declares, that, were he ever to profess any religion, he would become a Mussulman, that he might enjoy the society of the houris in Mahommed's paradise; but as he entertains considerable doubts about his future existence, and recollects that the prophet has forbidden his followers the use of wine, which Lothario esteems as the true elixir vitae, he determines not to relinquish present enjoyment for future contingency; accordingly, women are to him angels, and wine nectar here below: but although he generally lies down in paradise at night, it is nothing uncommon for him to waken in purgatory in the morning. His horse is swift, but not sure-footed, and often, when at his greatest speed, comes down unexpectedly, laying his rider in the mire; perhaps injuring his nose, dislocating a joint, or fracturing the clavicle; floundering in this forlorn state, he forms many wise resolutions, such as, to ride slower, and keep a better bridle hand; but such is the force of habit, that no sooner is he able to mount his hobby than he again sets off at a canter, which soon becomes a full gallop, the horse being pushed to his utmost speed; and as he always rides with a snaffle, and despises to use a martingale, another tumble often interrupts his career.

As great part of his journey is performed in the dark, his danger is thereby increased; for, seduced by an ignis-fatuus, he follows a phantom, which

"Leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind;" till at last he closes his career, by

being swallowed up in a bog, or breaking his neck over a precipice.

Who comes next, on that steed, caprioling and curvetting? Ladies, take care of your caps,-gentlemen, watch over the safety of your shins! It is Mordax, who has the eloquence of Juvenal, the filthiness of Swift, the scurrility of Wolcot, and the illnature of Diogenes. His horse is as mischievous as himself; and he, too, mounts his hobby in pursuit of pleasure; but, unlike him whom we have just dismissed, his hand is against every man, ay, and every wo man too, for his chief delight is in tormenting his neighbours; it is solely for this purpose that he comes abroad: if there is a crowd, he comes peaceably forward, till he get fairly into the centre, and then it is his maxim, "the more mischief the better sport." He affects the character of a hero, and appears to be covered with laurels; but they are branches torn from the upas tree of Java, diffusing venom and poison around them. By dexterous management, he makes his hobby prance and caper in the crowd, till the circle widens a little, and then quickens its motions till it splashes the mud in the faces of all around. As the circle begins to expand, his hobby, like Billy Button's horse, capers around, tearing off a lady's cap, or a gentleman's wig, with his teeth; while his rider, affecting to apologise, contrives to fasten his spurs in some blushing maiden's muslin gown, or velvet pelisse, then jerking hastily round, inflicts a wound that art nor time can never heal. He then begins to lash his hobby as the cause, and smack comes his whip across a gentleman's shins till the blood follow; then pushing his steed, he starts back among the crowd, till they overturn each other like nine-pins. He is seldom without a squirt in his pocket, which is always full of some noxious liquid, and is so curiously contrived, that, like an air-gun, it contains several charges. When he is in a sportive humour, this syringe is filled with some fetid liquor, such as stale bilge-water, extract of assafœtida, or something equally offensive to the olfactory organs, which he squirts into the faces and mouths of the unthinking spectators; but he

often delights in more wanton and malignant cruelty, by sprinkling aquafortis, or vitriolic acid, among the crowd: and as the gall of envy is still boiling in his bosom, especially against rising or established merit, if he see a pair of eyes brighter than his own, or a face more admired than his detested phiz, it is against such that he ejects his blistering and burning liquid, till he has dimmed the visual ray, and marred the beauty of the human face divine. Should any one be fool-hardy enough to oppose him, he retreats fighting, till he place himself close to a jakes, from which he fills his hands with ordure, and so foully bedaubs his reckless antagonist, that they who hate the one and pity the other, cannot forbear laughing at the ridiculous figure of his victim, besmeared with filth, and sculking ashamed from the contest; should the crowd close around him, his hobby is taught to kick with his hind-heels, paw with his fore feet, and bite with his teeth, till none is safe with whom he comes in contact; then the rider will trot along the streets quite indifferent and unconcerned, tossing a squib in at an open window, and a cracker at the bosom of some modest beauty; the people in the house only discovering the danger after the bedcurtains are burnt, and the young girl finds her tucker in a blaze. In a word, Mordax is a madman, scattering fire-brands, arrows, and death, and still saying, "Am not I in sport?" For the honour of having it said that he managed his hobby more dexterously than any one of his species, he would ride down his best friend, and trample the cardinal virtues beneath his horse's feet. But as he comes abroad only to be seen, and displays his feats only to be admired, when the crowd ceases to gaze, and the hurra of the mob no longer titillates his ear, he writhes under the blackest bile, which engenders a melancholy madness, and coiling himself up, he, like the viper, stings himself, and dies of his own poison.

Here comes one, who seems so well pleased with himself, it is hardly to be expected he should be out of humour with any body else. The public call him Buffo, but he

writes his name Haffiz; he looks around with an inquiring eye, to see whether he is an object of public attention, and then turning his eyes on himself, with great complacency he seems to be repeating,

"Know thine own worth, and reverence the lyre !"

When he first mounted his hobby, it was agentle, ambling nag, on which he took an airing in the summer evenings, generally by the side of a murmuring stream, or over the meadow enamelled with cowslips and mountain-daisies. Having been told that he rode his hobby with a peculiar grace, he soon longed to try a bolder exercise, and on a horse of better blood and more mettle. He would then ride out with the foxhunters, leaping fences and fivebarred gates; after which, he made long and frequent excursions into terra incognita; although he himself said they were to Parnassus, affirming that, had it not been for tiring his hobby, he would easily have reached the summit, and that his horse was now watered at least once every day, at the Heliconian fountain. By the advice of injudicious friends, or designing flatterers, he now made his business what had before been only his recreation; so fond was he of riding, that he often practised it by torch-light; and it has even been affirmed, that he sometimes rode in his sleep; which is far from unlikely, for it is certain that he now began to dream waking. Still dissatisfied with his hobby, and wishing to be fairly astride upon one of greater speed, he, in an evil hour, invoked Apollo for permission to mount Pegasus. One of the Muses, who indulged a kind of penchant for him, advised him against the rash attempt; but his brain was already heated, and he was deaf to good advice, especially as one of her sisters, who was much fonder of fun, flattered him by a most fulsome eulogy on his equestrian prowess. He therefore, like Phaeton, is determined on the feat, and we shall just now see him astride the winged courser. There comes the fiery-footed animal, scarcely seeming to touch the ground, and his wings extended ready for flight. Buffo vaults lightly into the

saddle, and takes a turn across the plain. On his right hand, at an immense distance, rises Parnassus, the Temple of Fame, bright in burnished gold, glittering in the landscape, "Eternal sunshine settling on its head." On his left, dim and obscurely seen, is the mountain of Bombast; its base is surrounded with perpetual fogs, occasionally illuminated by meteors and exhalations, which shed a momentary and cold phosphoric light across the gloom. Hark! Buffo speaks; "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most delightful hobby Í ever mounted; the saddle is easier than any elbow-chair; I feel that I sit securely, and I may, without vanity, add gracefully; I am just now to make an excursion to Parnassus, from which I shall return with the chaplet of bays which awaits me in the Temple of Fame." He turns his hobby's head to the right, the animal vaults from the ground, mounts aloft, whirls round and round, like crows before a storm, or a weathercock in a whirlwind. See, he has turned his head to the left-swift as an arrow, he soars and shoots alongand now, both he and his hapless rider are enveloped in the dense and murky gloom which surrounds the mountain of Bombast. Would you hear the fate of Buffo, listen to the laughter-loving Muse who decoyed him to his ruin. "Buffo was giddy long before he lost sight of earth; he shut his eyes, shook in his saddle, and lost all command of his hobby; his volatile brains are now sublimed to gas, and, like a balloon, he is still rising, although far above the foggy region which obscured him from our view; he is now blind with excess of light,' and will knock his head against the dark corner of the moon before he is aware, after which, he will fall to the earth like a lunar stone projected from that planet, with his senses so jumbled, that he will be incapable of acting rationally, or talking, except in the most incoherent manner, and will be placed in the hospital for incurables."

Here comes a well-matched pair, the hobby and his rider being suited to each other; both are hybrids, for this is a dandy, and that a mule.

He sits stiff as a stake, perpendicular as Nelson's monument on the Caltonhill, with his head as erect, and looking as proudly as a peacock when he spreads his tail to the meridian sun; his corsets creak at every motion; he has six gold seals to his watch, and five copper farthings in his pocket; a quizzing-glass is suspended from his neck; and, in lieu of a snuff-box, he smells at a vinegarette, while the Bristol stones in the rings which decorate his fingers sparkle in the sun; his gloves are essenced with ottar of roses; and should his flowered shirt-collar rise an eighth of an inch higher, it will rub off his artificial whiskers. He ought to have a premium from War ren, for the superior gloss with which the inimitable blacking shines on his top-boots; and his surtout, decorated with frogs, seems pasted to his body. His spurs are large, and elegantly plated; but he takes special care that they shall not touch his hobby, for, should the skittish beast get into a trot, he would fall, and once down, he could never mount again; he looks neither to the right nor left, but straight forward, with his lips in the position of the bride's who had repeated the word prim for six successive hours when he speaks, it is in such a lisping, languishing tone, that if the figure were admissible, it might be termed the shadow of a voice. His mule is managed with a double curb bridle, ornamented with silver bells, which keep up a softly tinkling sound; the animal's head is also kept down by a martingale of fine Turkey leather, and its mane fancifully plaited with knots of ribbons. Being timid as a child, and more effeminate than a young lady, he rides slowly, from fear of danger,

and also for the purpose of attracting attention, for the chief joy of his life is to be admired; and not to perceive him, is a mortification and an insult, neither to be forgotten nor forgiven. But as he is

“A puny insect, shivering at a breeze,” he comes abroad, like the butterfly, only in sunshine; he would dissolve in a shower; a gale would annihilate him, and he would expire in terror at hearing a peal of thunder. We have hitherto spoken of him as belonging to the masculine gender, although some have affirmed that his place is the neuter; for it is certain, that he is despised by the ladies, and disowned by the gentlemen. His character may be summed up in the words of Frederick the Great, when speaking of Voltaire; " In a word, he would fain be thought an extraordinary man, and a most extraordinary man he certainly is."

After a pause, and a pinch of rappee, I audibly exclaimed, at the beginning of a new paragraph, "Who comes next?" My Louisa had heard it as she tripped lightly over the lobby carpet, and replied in her gentlest accents, "Whom did you expect, my dear?" "Why, not you, although you are infinitely more welcome." She glanced at the paper, and cried, "Ah! you have been on your hobby." "Hobby, indeed," replied I. She read over the whole, and said, "Come, go on-finish it— and include your own character and mine." "Not to-night, my love; I shall now find better employment." She has just been ordering supper; I hear her returning, and am,

Sir,
Your's respectfully,
FELIX MARITUS.

AT that happy period in which a difficult line in Virgil, a long_SeRtence in Livy, or an elliptical expression in Tacitus, constitute the only miseries of life, we attach a very different meaning to the words "joy" and "grief," from that which an intercourse with the world is soon destined to give us. In those days of rarely-obscured sunshine, we know of only one spot where any thing like

sorrow is to be found,-where the thoughtless but delightful gaiety of childhood is frowned, or scolded, or whipt out of us,-where some little foretaste of the miseries of mortality is forced upon our reluctant palates,and where we are taught, that, even in this fair world, there may be such things as "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." Where is the boy, who, as he looked on his

unintelligible grammar, or greasy Ovid, has not, with all the sincerity of his nature, wished, a thousand and a thousand times, that every one of those ancient philosophers, cramp ed historians, and most unprofitable poets, had been at the very bottom of the Red Sea, when they sat down to write, with so much nonchalance, books which were to cost all the future generations of children so many tears and groans? What does he know, and, if he did, what would his opinion be, of that most melancholy Johnsonian maxim, " of allowing the future to predominate over the present?" Does he not look up into the blue sky, and hear the invisible birds singing in multitudes above him? Does he not look round upon the green fields, and the dark woods, and the majestic mountains, and the glittering streams, and does he not almost instinctively become a juvenile epicurean, anxious to seize the passing hour, and spend it merrily, content to let the next provide

for itself?

But, leaving these more general reflections, let me say a few words of myself.

There is nothing I recollect better, than the loitering, reluctant pace, in which I used to move to school. How gladly did I avail myself of every excuse for lengthening the way, and delaying the inevitable hour of confinement! There was not a dog -black, white, or brown-smooth, rough, or shaggy-cowardly, tame, or fierce to whom I did not speak ; there was not a sign above a butcher's, baker's, grocer's, or haber dasher's door, that I did not stop to read; there was not a blind ballad singer, or wooden-legged fiddler, or one-armed flute-player, to whose melody I did not lend most willing ears. But there was one amusement, which, in my morning pilgrimage to school, afforded me more delight than all the rest put together; this was the examination and internal criticism of half-a-dozen paintings, which, apparently ignorant of change or even of locomotion, occupied, without alteration, for at least two years, the window of what to me appeared a magnificent print-shop. This win dow, in my commonly uninteresting walk through several long streets,

VOL. XIV.

was the very cynosure of attraction, the fountain of the desert, or the oasis of the wilderness. Morning after morning I gazed upon the enchanting pictures; and not a day elapsed in which I did not discover in them new beauties unremarked before. Had any of them been taken away, I should have felt as if I had lost an humble but faithful friend.

There was one among them, however, that rose in my opinion far above all the rest. I entertained for it a sort of romantic attachment; and this attachment was founded, I believe, upon good grounds. There is something in the work of a mas ter that comes home to the heart even of a child; and though unable, perhaps, to tell what it is that pleases him, he nevertheless feels that he is looking upon the production of no common genius. I remember, per❤ fectly, that I did not prefer it be cause it was set in a more splendid frame, or painted in more gaudy colours; but because the expression of the scenery and figures it contain. ed had something heavenly. It re presented a simple burying-ground in Wales, where a group of village girls were scattering flowers upon a new-made grave. Among them was one whose face I shall never forget. The sun had set behind some distant hills, but the purple clouds, still in the sky, threw upon her figure a rich and mellowed light, that accorded finely with the settled melancholy stamped upon her features;-but it was not melancholy alone; there was a holy resignation and an innocent purity in her looks, perfectly irresis tible. She had lost, perhaps, her mother, the dear guardian of her childhood, or her whom she had loved as the friend of her youth, or him on whom her dark eye delighted to gaze-the worshipped star of her heart. She was a being on whom I could have looked for ever. I was only a child, but the light of that celestial countenance kindled in my bosom somewhat of the feelings of maturer years. Many an indistinct and dream-like vision of future days floated across my fancy; and, in them all, my fate, my happiness, were intertwined with a creature of similar loveliness. But there are none such in existence. She was the 4 Q