in the beam come about you, hovering and teazing, like so many coquettes, that will have you all to their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations. By the same light, we must approach to their perusal, if we would catch the flame, the odour. It is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are abstracted works

"Things that were born, when none but the still night,
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes."

Marry, daylight-daylight might furnish the images, the crude material; but for the fine shapings, the true turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must be content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sun-shine. Night and silence call out the starry fancies. Milton's Morning Hymn in Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and Taylor's rich description of a sun-rise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best measured cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild

sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted, courts our We would indite something about

endeavours.

the Solar System.—Betty bring the candles.

XVI.

THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE.

Was

WE grant that it is, and a very serious one-to a man's friends, and to all that have to do with him; but whether the condition of the man himself is so much to be deplored may admit of a question. We can speak a little to it, being ourself but lately recovered-we whisper it in confidence, reader out of a long and desperate fit of the sullens. the cure a blessing? The conviction which wrought it, came too clearly to leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries-for they were mere fancies-which had provoked the humour. But the humour itself was too self-pleasing, while it lasted-we know how bare we lay ourself in the confession-to be abandoned all at once with the grounds of it. We still brood over wrongs which we know to have been imaginary; and for our old acquaintance, N-, whom we find to have been a truer friend than we took him for, we substitute some phantom a Caius or a Titius-as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak our yet unsatisfied resentments It is mortifying to fall at once from the pin

on.

nacle of neglect; to forego the idea of having been ill-used and contumaciously treated, by an old friend. The first thing to aggrandise a man in his own conceit, is to conceive of himself as neglected. There let him fix if he can. To undeceive him is to deprive him of the most tickling morsel within the range of self-complacency. No flattery can come near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of an injustice; but supremely blest, who thinks all his friends in a conspiracy to depress and undervalue him. There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane) far beyond the reach of all that the world counts joy-a deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the superficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to recite one half of this mystery,which we were let into by our late dissatisfaction, all the world would be in love with disrespect; we should wear a slight for a bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be the only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious book in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is unpalatable only in the commencement. The first sting of a suspicion is grievous; but wait-out of that wound, which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult, there is balm and honey to be extracted. Your friend passed you on such or such a day,-having in his company

one that you conceived worse than ambiguously disposed towards you,-passed you in the street without notice. To be sure he is something shortsighted; and it was in your power to have accosted him. But facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in the science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you; and S who was with him, must have been the cause of the contempt. It galls you, and well it may. But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of it, and you are a made man from this time. Shut yourself up, and -rejecting, as an enemy to your peace, every whispering suggestion that but insinuates there may be a mistake-reflect seriously upon the many lesser instances which you had begun to perceive, in proof of your friend's disaffection towards you. None of them singly was much to the purpose, but the aggregate weight is positive; and you have this last affront to clench them. Thus far the process is any thing but agreeable. But now to your relief comes in the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind feelings you have had for your friend; what you have been to him, and what you would have been to him, if he would have suffered you; how you defended him in this or that place; and his good name-his literary repu