seized the rope-opened the noose; put his head through it; closed his eyes, clasped his hands; kicked away the chair —and that was a Practical Joke.

REVIEW.

THE POST-OFFICE LONDON DIRECTORY FOR 1844.-W. Kelly & Co.

"WHEN Adam delved and Eve span," among all the things whereof they little thought, the least was a Post Office London Directory, comprising no end of names, instructing folk in all manner of ways, and putting people (as they do in schools and on railways) into all sorts of classes. In this huge volume, numerous as are the names, every one of them is a marked man or woman; and even the most courtly are here, like Charity children and policemen, each separately and particularly lettered and numbered. Lords and leathersellers, physicians and pork-butchers, milliners and millwrights, are all regularly ticketed here, cheek by jowl, like fellowship-porters. In vain can the most dainty exclusive hope to escape from the enormous circle of society into which her Majesty's Postmaster-general has here introduced him. No master of the ceremonies could be so careful to exclude the nobodies as the Postmaster-general to include all the bodies, including "Mr. Martin Body, timber merchant, Lower Salisbury Place, Lock's Fields;" and to show that his lively volume is not a "corporation without a soul," he has animated page 924 with a couple of "Souls" from Finsbury, and page 923 with two from Aldermanbury. But since he has thus hospitably "brought them together," at Christmas

time, it must be admitted that due care has been taken in telling them off again conveniently into the different parts of this biblical mansion. It may, however, be as well to give the compilers of such a useful tome a hint of an improvement which may serve to facilitate the reference to each particular class. It is this. Let each have a distinct colour stained on the edge, as is done with French works of a similar character. Thus, the Law Directory might have a black edge, the Court Directory red, the Physic Directory blue, &c. Any one then wanting to refer, could, guided by the colour, instantly open the volume at the particular part he required.

We cannot close this notice without referring to an omission which we regard as personal and quite unaccountable in a literary man like the Postmaster-general. Under the letter A we found "artists" and "awl-blade-makers," but we looked in vain for "authors." Oh Col. Maberley, Col. Maberley, could you not find a local habitation for Selves and Co. in your bills of mortality? Are we indeed become a "dead letter" in your office? Do you really regard us as defunct; or, because Grub Street is grubbed up, that we are removed to some terra incognita, some bourn, not mentioned in Bourne's Gazetteer, whence no traveller returns? What! since the Penny postage reform, has an increase of letters really produced a decrease of authors? There must be something wrong in your book, Col. Maberley, which you must reform altogether before 1st January, 1845.

129

REAL RANDOM READINGS.

TO THE EDITOR OF "HOOD'S MAGAZINE.”

SIR,-I do not know whether it has ever occurred to you, but it has struck me very forcibly, that the reminiscences of a bad memory might be quite as amusing, if not so instructive, as those of a good one. Certainly, some of the things published under the titles of Recollections, Records, Reminiscences, Retrospectives, &c., &c., have been extremely dull and tame; so much so as to make one wish that the authors, like Peter Pindar's George the Third, had remembered to forget them. For my part, I confess I set very little value on the historical embalming of mere names and dates; regarding them like preserved mummies, as rather dry matters of fact. At any rate, I have Mrs. Malaprop on my side, who did not approve of violent memories any more than myself. The level railway progress of such a powerful faculty must surely be less interesting and romantic than the rambles of a weak one, straying unconsciously from the path of reality into the great forest of fiction, and losing itself like a Babe in the Wood!

Now, my own memory was never a good one. Mnemosyne when I was born must have forgotten her invitation to the gossipping, or to bring me those organs with which she endows mankind in general, and the Poet of her Pleasures in particular, Mr. Thomas Campbell. Like him.

"Wafted by her gentle flow,

Oft up the stream of time I try to row,"

but without his rudder and compass. My memory, as I think I said before, was never a good one, and from age and

VOL. IX.

9

natural decay is not even what it was. It especially fails me as to names, dates, places, and persons; but as Pope says to Eloise, or to the New Heloise,

"Give all you can, and we will give the rest.”

I don't profess to be a regular Retrospective Reviewer like what's-his-name who used to edit it; but shall be guilty, I know, in my recallings of the past of a great many errors and anacreonisms, or anachronisms-which is it? It is easy, as Curran said to Dean Swift, if it wasn't Swift to Curran, it is easy for futurity to predict for posterity-I forget the exact words, but remember the sense; and on the same principle, when an octogenarian like myself is in the case-where was I? O! about Rogers's "Pleasures of Imagination." I remember Rogers well, though I forget where I met him, or on what occasion. But it was either at Lord Nelson's funeral in Westminster Abbey, or at George the Third's attempt, when he was out of his mind, on the life of Peg Nicholson. But I am sure it was Rogers; for he had just brought out either his "World before the Flood," or the World before that. There was to be a great party at Hannah Porter's, the authoress of "Evelina"-yes, "Evelina "-I believe I ought to have said Sir Charles Grandison; but at any rate the Bristol Milkwoman that Cowper patronised, was of the party. I recollect asking her what she thought of "Lalla Rookh." All the Johnsons were present. The great Doctor, Mrs. J., and all the little ones-they had just come up from Ludlow, or Lincoln, or Leicester, or Liverpool, or some place with an L, and had the provincial accent very strong. His patron was with him, Bubb Doddington, since Lord Melbourne Regis-of whom it was said he was a Lord amongst Lords, and a Wit amongst Wits. I quite forget what public service procured him his title. Horace Walpole

I am not

was to have been there too, but could not come. sure that he was not dead. But it was either Horace Walpole, or Horace Mann, or Horace Smith, or Horace Twiss-I'm sure as to the Horace. We played at whist, and I remember having Pam five times running-but the amount of my winnings has escaped me. What else passed is, alas! as obliterated from my mind as if I had been dipped in the Styx-no, the Lethe. Yet slight as they are, these memorials of such celebrated Personages may do for a contribution to their Memories poor servir-perhaps the last word but one ought to be spelt pour, or perhaps pore. But I forget my French. As such, if you think, Sir, that a few Retrospective Sketches in the same style would suit your Metropolitan Magazine-I beg pardon, Blackwood's Miscellany-they are most heartily at your service; and, hoping for the favour of an early reply,

I am, Sir, your very obedient servant,

E. TYRRELL.

[The writer of the foregoing letter, a namesake, but no relation surely, of the City Remembrancer, is requested to forward his address.-ED. HOOD'S MAG.]

A DREAM BY THE FIRE.

It is impossible, as every one knows, to sit by the fire in winter-time without gazing at it very earnestly; and the more you gaze, the more you see in it,-strange faces, and one of your love, perhaps, like a very "red, red rose”—a flamingo, or a whole flock of them,-Mount Vesuvius, with the neighbourhood overrun by the molten lava; a distant view of the Potteries, or the Carron Iron Works, by night,