Byron. Oh! yes-we were saying something about eating and drinking -and praising our own temperance. We were comparing ourselves, we believe, to a hermit in a cave, living upon roots and river-water. Yet the world will not give us credit for the virtues of a hermit-merely because our habits are irregular. Let us say a few words then to the world on this very subject-matter-regularity.

There are people who prefer to all other virtues-what they call regularity. Let a man go to bed-risetake his meals-always at a stated hour and he is then considered by many fathers and mothers as a very eligible match for any one of their numerous daughters. Nevertheless, 'tis ten to one that he is a numbskull five to one that he is a profligate. Your stupid, sotting, soaking sensualists are all regular at board, bed, and bowels. They divide the day into its different departments, set aside for avarice-greed-gluttony-and grovelling gratifications. They break no engagement for they make none that is not selfish. You see the wretches going out and coming in, to a minute -smug, smooth, and as if butter would not melt in their mouth-although their appetencies are oily to the most animal degree-and their diary, if they keep one, full of luscious chapters and overflowing with rancid matter. They are generally well to do in the world-hold stock both of the Royal Bank and the Bank of Scotland-buy no books-get Maga from a circulating library, when she is a month oldand were never known, in all their lives, to make a party to Newhaven or Leith for a fish dinner.

In all these respects, we and ours are the antipodes to the Regulars. We go to bed at any time, from ten at night to ten in the morning-scorn to tie ourselves down to any hour for any meal, and obey only the finer impulses and movements of our own spirits. When we feel our Fancy free, we fly away over flowery fields, and disappear from before the ken of our contributors in a shower of sunshine;when we know that our Intellect is strong, we tackle to philosophical criticism and politics. When we suspect that we are in a state of Civilation, we lie back in our easy-chair-laugh, or go to sleep. Of our soul, in short, it may be said, as Wordsworth said of

the Thames at Westminster, before London was awake, "The river gli

deth at its own sweet will."

Do not accuse us of being capricious. We are the most consistent of characters. We give all the parts of our nature fair play. At times, you never saw such a pedant--and our talk is of longs and shorts-quantity is everything with us-quality nothing; Priscian, and Porson, and Parr -or the three P's, as we then call them-the prime men of the earth. Then we love to babble of green fields, and get so pastoral and so pathetic, that we begin to weep. In the twinkling of an eye, our tongue deals in drums, guns, blunderbuss, and thunder," we fight all Napoleon's battles o'er again, and thrice we slay all Wellington's slain, showing Borodino to have been but a skirmish, and Waterloo an affair of posts. Forthwith we are on our legs," and bully Brougham about the Holy Alliance, till he has not a word to throw to a dog. Then off upon fox-hunting, like Nimrod of the Sporting Magazine; and with the brush round our caps (an old fashion), into a Cathedral we go, and preach away like the best bishop or archdeacon of them allBloomfield or Wrangham-with the left hand smiting the Dissenters, and with the right lending the Catholics such a facer, that they are unable to come to time, and give up the Veto.

We love to do our work by fits and starts. We hate to keep fiddling away, an hour or two at a time, at one article for weeks. So, off with our coat, and at it, like a blacksmith. When we once get the way of it, hand over hip, we laugh at Vulcan and all his Cyclops. From nine of the morning till nine at night, we keep hammering away at the metal, iron or gold, till we produce a most beautiful article. A biscuit and a glass of Madeira, twice or thrice at the most,--and then to a well-won dinner. In three days, gentle reader, have We, Christopher North, often produced a whole Magazine-a most splendid Number. For the next three weeks, we were as idle as a desert, and as vast as an antreand thus on we go, alternately labour. ing like an ant, and relaxing, in the sunny air, like a dragon-fly, enamoured of extremes-impatient only of mediocrity, leading the life of a comet one day, of a planet the next, and of

a fixed star, perhaps, the third, never wearied of shining, yet avoiding all sameness even in our lustre-our motions often eccentric, no doubt, and irregular; but anything, as you know, better than standing still, the only fault we ever had to find with the Sun, but which we are happy now to understand, cannot fairly be laid to his charge, as our whole solar systemnay, fixed stars and all, do, we are credibly informed, keep "moving altogether, if they move at all;" and, although they journey fast, and have been journeying long, have a far way before them yet stretching untravelled through the Universe.

The Old Lady is clear for a great deal of exercise, and, of course, fresh air. Fresh air has been exhausted by so many writers, that we shall confine our few concluding remarks to exercise alone. "Leaping," she informs us, "among the ancients was confined to distance but in modern times extended also to height.”—Strange that the ancients did not discover high leaping!" One Ireland, a native of Yorkshire, in the eighteenth year of his age, by a fair spring, without any assistance, trick, or deception, leaped over nine horses, standing side by side

and a man seated on the middle horse." He also, according to this old woman, "jumped over a garter held fourteen feet high!!" Now, neither Ireland, nor any other man on record, ever leapt seven feet in height without a spring-board, and none but a fool would talk of fourteen. The nine horses were thin narrow animals-not fairly placed-and Ireland leapt from a spring-board-two feet above the level on which they stood. It was a great leap for Ireland was the prince of leapers, but not more than twentythree feet on level ground-which we ourselves have done-on level ground or nearly so-in presence of a thousand spectators. That by the waybut far leaping is to people in general an unsafe exertion-as all intense exertions must be--and ought to be taken in moderation. Nor should any man leap at all after five-andtwenty. It is only for light elastic lads to leap more than twice their own length. Elderly gentlemen, from twenty-five to thirty, should become archers and old men of forty and upwards, golfers. Indeed, various Golf-clubs here and at St Andrews

-are most amiable associations of old men. Such spindle-shanks you may

nowhere else see as on those linksand even Galen and Cornaro themselves, and old Admiral Henry, would look juvenile among the shadows slowly moving from Tee to Tee.

The Old Lady likewise approves of walking, which she tells us is of two kinds, "either on plain ground, or where there are ascents." But "walking against a high wind is very severe exercise, and not to be recommended." Persons who are kept much within doors, "ought as much as possible to accustom themselves to be walking about, even in their own houses." No doubt they have a right to do so if they choose, and do not occupy an upper flat. But stair walkers with creaking shoes must be disagreeable husbands and fathers. She advises also to change the place where we walk "for the same place constantly gone over, may excite as many disagreeable and painful sensations as the closet or the study." An agreeable companion, too, she has discovered, contributes much to serenity of mind; "but unless the mode of walk is similar, as well as the taste and character congenial, it is better to walk alone-as either the one or the other of the two companions might be subjected to some constraint;" and, finally, she says, that "to read during a walk is an improper action, highly detrimental to the eyes, and destroys almost all the good effects that can be derived from the exercise."

Riding, or, as the old lady has it, riding on horseback, is next strenuously recommended to those who earnestly desire to "live long and comfortably;" but there is not a word dropt about Fox-hunting, almost the only kind of riding, besides Racing, that in our opinion deserves the name. O Lord preserve us! of all amusements, riding on horseback along the highroad by oneself, especially in miry weather, is the most deplorable! We seriously pity every man who keeps a horse-standing at livery. The animal must be ridden-regularly too-if you do not wish him to break your neck. You come at last to be afraid to look out of the window, in case he should be there pacing up and down the street-with the saddle all wet probably-and the long dangling stirrups, with their vacant irons, summoning

you to come down, and take a gallop through the glaur. The brute often falls unaccountably lame-first in one foot, and then in another-giving you the air of a cadger-caves with his head, though the frost has killed all the flies long ago-keeps starting, boggling, and stumbling, every ten yards and, once a-month at the least, comes down on his nose, without ever so much as once touching the ground with his knees, which nevertheless have been broken long ago, while the hair, having grown on white, gives them the appearance of being padded. We could not have heart to wish our worst enemy to keep a horse through the winter in a town. Then, what riders are our Edinburgh youth! It is the fashion now to take lessons-and every prig of an apprentice you see on horseback seems to have two cork legs. Out they jut in one immovable position-just as if the ostler had hoisted the young adventurer on, and then skrewed his cork legs to the sticking place with a positive injunction not to attempt shifting them till they come home and have themselves dismounted. They seem to have no joints either at hip, knee, or ankle

and then look at the way they hold the bridle! That is riding à la militaire! The quill-driver thinks himself a cavalry officer-and has the audacity to ride past Jock's Lodge. This Pain is expensive and purchased Pain is by idiots for a while thought Pleasure. But we have an article on "Riding" lying by us-which shall be forthcoming in an early Number-by a gentleman lineally descended from John Gilpin.

Grannum next addresses herself, on the subject of Exercise, exclusively to men of letters-and we cannot help thinking has ourselves more particularly in her eye, which she cocks leeringly at Old Christopher. She recommends us to have "dumb-bells and a couple of flesh-brushes always at hand, that we may steal a few moments from our studies to exercise the superior extremities with the former, and the inferior limbs and the head and neck with the latter." Dumb-bells we have never used since Jack Thurtell attempted to murder his friend Wood with a pair-and as for flesh-brushes, why, our skin is as clear as amber, and our flesh as firm as marble. She tells

us, farther, "to use the flesh-brush for fifteen or twenty minutes regularly every morning on first getting out of bed-and to pursue the same practice also at night." At this rate, the flesh-brush would never be out of our hands-and we should be afraid of "establishing a Raw." Let mangy and scurvy people scrub their superior and inferior extremities with the fleshbrush, to their own and the Old Lady's heart's content. But commend us to a good stiff, hard, rough, yarn towel that makes our body blush like a Peony, and glow like a Furnace.

Literary men are also told "for a change to run briskly up and down stairs several times, or to use the shuttlecock"-"or fight with their own shadow," an exercise described, it seems, by Addison in one of his Spectators. When the worst has come to the worst, we shall fight with our own shadow;

but that will not be till not a blockhead is left on the face of the whole earth for us to bastinado-not till we observe that we are positively the Last Man, shall we have recourse to that recreation.

We are finally told to read aloud and loudly, "out of any work before us" -"to promote pulmonary circulation, and strengthen the digestive organs." We know a much better exercise of the lungs than that, and one we fre quently practise. It is to thrust our head and shoulders out of the window, and imagining that we see a scoundrel stealing apples in the orchard, or carrying off a howtowdie, to roar out upon him as if it were Stentor blowing a great brazen trumpet, "Who are you-you rascal-stand still or I will blow you to atoms with this blunderbuss!" The thief takes to his heels, and having got a hundred yards farther off, you must intensify your roar into a Briareus-even unto the third remove-and then the chance is, that some decent citizen heaves in sight, who, terrified out of his seven senses, falls head over heels into the kennel

when you, still anxious "to promoto pulmonary circulation and strengthen your digestive organs," burst out into a guffaw that startles the Castle rockand then, letting down the lattice, return to your article, which, like the haggis of the Director-General, is indeed a Roarer.

Cetera desunt.