long enough to allow them to strike root, they quickly withered away, in which emergency I was, perhaps, too apt to trade upon my youthful capital of anecdotes. This defect I endeavoured to remedy by a common-place book; for if I forced myself to remember one thing I not infrequently forgot another. It appeared as if the chamber of the brain were full, and could only accommodate new tenants by ejecting the old ones. When thus reminded of my repetition of the same story to the same party, I instantly recalled the fact, which proves that my offence was a want of recollection rather than of memory, a distinc tion not always attended to. One, however, is often the precursor of the other. Considering that novelty has generally been deemed a necessary ingredient in the production of laughter, I have been sometimes astonished at the punctual burst with which my old bon-mots were invariably followed up by myself, even when others have observed a provoking gravity; and have been at a loss to decide whether it were habit, or sympathy with my first enjoyment of the joke awakening a kind of posthumous echo. At all events I set a good example; if others would not follow it, more shame for them.

My communion with nature in the beauty of her external forms, far from diminishing at this period, became every year more intense and exquisite, heightening by reflection my relish for the works of art; but I observed that in the latter my eye derived its principal gratification from gracefulness of figure and outline, rather than from compo➡ sition, colouring, or scientific display. Thus I preferred statuary to painting, as it suffered my attention to feed without interruption uponthe harmonious proportions and symmetry of the great goddess andin the graphic art I found more delight in a single drawing of the divine Raphael, than in all the hues of Titian and the colourists, or all the patient elaboration of the Flemish and Dutch miniaturists. In my love of nature I felt jealous of the artist beyond mere fidelity of form (I speak principally of figures); and in engraving, where there is no colour to compensate for alienating the eye, I deemed that style the best which is confined to outline. Some of the commoner productions of this sort are generally lying on my table, and I find undiminished delight in the French Cupid and Psyche from the paintings of Raphael's pupils, Hope's costumes of the Ancients, etchings of the Elgin Marbles, Retch's Faustus, and other similar productions. Generally speak. ing, artists and professors appear to me to acquire a false artificial taste, which, overlooking the simple and natural, makes difficulty of execution the test of excellence; a mistake extending from painters and sculptors down to opera-dancers and musicians.

My mind is less excursive than it was; it required less excitement, and is satisfied with less nutriment, preserving, in its mystic union with the body, a consentaneous adaptation; for though I walk or ride out whenever the weather permits, I can no longer exercise my limbs as I was wont. A sunny seat in my garden begins to be preferred to my old grey mare. I sit there sometimes for a considerable time, and think that I am thinking, but I find that the hour has passed away in a dreamy indistinctness-a sort of half-consciousness, sufficient for enjoyment, though incapable of definition. These waking dreams may be a resource of nature for recruiting the mind, as I have always found mine more vigorous and active after such indulgence.

There is one calamity to which age seems inevitably exposed-the dropping off into the grave, of our early friends and associates, as we advance towards the final bourne, and seem to have most need of their social offices. But Nature, ever on the watch to provide substitutes for our deprivations, while she blunts our sympathies in this direction, quickens them in another, by raising up a new circle of friends in our children and grand-children, less subject to the invasion of death, and better qualified by attachment and gratitude to minister to the wants of the heart. These are the affections that garland it with the buds and blossoms of a second spring; these are the holy band whose miraculous touch can bid the thorn of mortality, like that of Glastonbury, break forth into flowers even in the Christmas of our days. This is the cup of joy that contains the sole aurum potabile, the genuine elixir vite that can renovate our youth, and endow us with a perpetuity of pleasure.

In my former solitary wanderings and contemplations of nature, I had delighted to let my imagination embody forth the dreams of Grecian mythology and fable; to metamorphose the landscape that surrounded me to the mountains and dells of Arcadia and Thessaly; to people the woods and waters with nymphs, fauns, Dryads, Oreads, and Nereids; losing myself in classical recollections, and bidding them occasionally minister to the inspirations of the muse. But the charms of rural scenery now kindled in my bosom a higher and a holier sentiment. I looked out upon the beautiful earth, clothed in verdure and festooned with flowers, upon the glorious all-vivifying sun, upon the great waters bounding in unerring obedience to the moon, and into the blue depths of heaven, until I stood, as it were, in the presence of the Omnipotent Unseen; my senses drank in the landscape till they became inebriated with delight; I seemed interfused with nature; a feeling of universal love fell upon my heart, and in the suffusion of its silent gratitude and adoration I experienced a living apotheosis, being in spirit rapt up into the third heaven, even as Elijah was in the flesh. Bold romantic scenery was not essential to the awakening of this enthusiasm; it has sprung up amid my own fields; and in the study of botany, to which I have always been attached, the dissection of a flower has been sufficient to call it forth, though in a minor degree. All nature, in fact, is imbued with this sentiment, for every thing is beautiful, and every thing attests the omnipresence of Divine love; but grand combinations will, of course, condense and exalt the feeling. Old as I am, I can still walk miles to enjoy a fine prospect; I often get up to see the sun rise, and I rarely suffer it to set, on a bright evening, without recreating my eyes with its parting glories. I can now feel the spirit in which the dying Rousseau desired to be wheeled to the window, that he might once more enjoy this sublime spectacle. How often, in my younger days, have I repeated the well-known lines of Dryden.

"Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure from what still remain,

And from the dregs of life think to receive

What the first sprightly running would not give :
I'm tired of toiling for this chymic gold,

Which fools us young, and beggars us when old."

I have lived to disprove them. I would live past years again, but it should be the latter, not the former portion, for the current of my life, as it approaches the great ocean of eternity, runs smoother and clearer than in its first out-gushing. Like Job's, my latter days have been the most fully blessed. I am now seventy years of age; and bating the loss of a few teeth, and some other inevitable effects of age upon my person, I still possess the mens suna in corpore sano, and "bate no jot of heart or hope." My journey from sixty to seventy has been as delightful as that from forty to sixty; nor do I anticipate any future disappointment should it be extended to eighty, for my confidence in nature's substitutions and benignant provisions is boundless. Had she fixed a century as the impassable boundary of life, we might feel some annoyance and apprehension as we approached it; but by leaving it undetermined, she has, to a certain extent, made us immortal in our own belief, for Hope is illimitable. I often catch myself anxiously inquiring of what disease my seniors have died, as if their disappearance at eighty or ninety were contrary to the usual course of things, and attributable to accident." The shortness of human life," says Dr. Johnson," has afforded as many arguments to the voluptuary as the moralist." How operative then must it be with me who am anxious to combine both tendencies, and be considered a moral voluptuary, or, in other words, a philosopher, not a follower of Aristippus, or disciple of the Cyrenaic school, devoted to worldly and sensual delights under which the soul "embodies and embrutes;" but as a pupil of the much misunderstood and calumniated Epicurus, cultivating intellectual enjoyments, and holding pleasure to be the chief good, and virtue the chief pleasure. These are the laudable delights to which I feel a new stimulant from considering the shortness of my remaining career; and whether its termination be near or distant, these enjoyments will, I verily believe, accompany me to the last, and enable me to fall, like Cæsar, in a becoming and decent attitude.

I have just laid down Wordsworth's Excursion, which I have been reading in the fields. How beautiful is the evening! The ground is strewed with dead leaves, which the wind has blown up into little heaps like graves; autumn has spread her vari-coloured mantle over those which still flutter on the trees, some of which, crisp and red, tinkle in the air; while from the chesnuts over my head a large russet leaf, flitting from time to time before my eyes, or falling at my feet, seems to pronounce a silent "memento mori." The sun is rapidly sinking down, leaving the valley before me in shade, while the woods that clothe the hill upon my left, suffused with rosy light, but tranquil and motionless, seem as if they reposed in the flush of sleep. Three horses, unyoked from the plough, are crossing the field towards their stable, and the crows that have been following the furrow, retire cawing to their nests, while a flock of sheep, attended by the shepherd and his dog, are slowly withdrawing to the fold. Every thing seems to breathe of death,-to remind me that my sun too is setting, and that I must shortly go to my long home, for the night is approaching. And here, methinks, if my appointed time were come, with the grass for my bed of death, the earth and sky sole witnesses of my exit, I could contentedly commit my last breath to the air, that it might be wafted to Him who gave it.

Life is at all times precarious;-there are but a few feet of earth between the stoutest of us and the grave, and at my age we should not be too sanguine in our calculations; yet, if I were to judge from my own unbroken health and inward feelings, as well as from the opinions of others more competent to pronounce, I have yet ten years at least, perhaps many more, of happiness in store for me. Should the former period be consummated, I pledge myself again to commune with the public. Should it be otherwise, I may, perhaps, be enabled to realize the wish of the celebrated Dr. Hunter, who half an hour before his death exclaimed, "Had I a pen, and were able to write, I would describe how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die." In either alternative, gentle reader, if my example shall have assisted in teaching thee how to live grateful and happy, and to look upon death with resignation, the object of this memoir will be attained, and thou wilt have no cause to regret perusing this sketch of

A SEPTUAGENARY.

MAY.

It Ver et Venus et Veneris prænuntius ante
Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus vestigia propter;
Flora quibus Mater præspergens, ante viaï

Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.-LUCRET.

How delightful is the opening of May, bringing with it the most delicious sensations, overflowing with sweets, and infusing through all nature a freshness and vitality perceived at no other period of the year! Summer may possess attractions of a more flaunting character, and autumn may proffer its matured fruits and wealthy harvests; but to those who have a keen perception of natural beauty, and a sympathy with the vivid impressions spring produces on the mind, what can be more grateful than the renovated appearance of nature, and the elasticity and exhilaration of feeling experienced at the beginning of this month of fruition, pregnant as it is with light, pleasure, and loveliness? The clouds, no longer black, and hurried across the face of heaven by storms, are like fleeces of snowy whiteness enamelled upon the eternal azure, setting off, and not sullying the purity of its serene hue. The soft breezes,

"Zephyr with Aurora playing,”

bear" buxom health" and joyousness on their wings. The birds sing their sweetest notes.

The insect youth are on the wing,

Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon.

The early flowers, "the yellow cowslip and the pale primrose," decorate the surface of the earth. The verdure, rich in colour, refreshed with frequent showers, and not yet imbrowned by the summer sun, may be contemplated in all its variety of tinge. Creation seems to have arisen from the dead, all is being-instinct with life and motion. Love also awakes at this genial season, as Cunningham pleasingly sings:

From the west as it wantonly blows,

Fond Zephyr caresses the vine;
The bee steals a kiss from the rose,

And willows and woodbines entwine:
The pinks by the rivulet side,

That border the vernal alcove,

Bend downward to kiss the soft tide:
For MAY is the mother of Love.

MAY tinges the butterfly's wing,
He flutters in bridal array;
And if the wing'd foresters sing

The music is taught them by MAY.
The stock-dove, recluse with her mate,
Conceals her fond bliss in the grove,
And, murmuring, seems to repeat,-

"That MAY is the mother of Love."

Solomon also says, "The winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." To all conversant with the writings of the poets, striking descriptions of the season must be familiar. Milton makes the most heavenly clime to consist of an "eternal spring"

Virgil, in his second Georgic, places the cosmogony in the spring.
Such were the days, the season was the same,
When first arose this world's all-beauteous frame;
The sky was cloudless, balmy was the air,
And spring's mild influence made all nature fair.
... WARTON, Geo. L. ii. 1. 407.

.

7 "

Honest Chaucer, between four and five hundred years ago, speaks of the spring as we speak of it now, for the revolutions of time effect no change in natural sensations. Hear his beautiful lines in the "Romaunt of the Rose."

That it was Mey thus dreamid me,
In time of love and jolite,
That al thing ginneth waxen gay,
For there is neither buske nor hay
In Mey that it n'ill shroudid bene,
And that it with newè levis wrene;
These woddis eke recoveren grene
That drie in winter ben to sene,
And the erth waxith proude withal
For sote dewis that on it fall,
And the povir estate forgette

In whiche that winter had it sette,
And then becometh the grounde so
proude

That it wol have a newè shroude, f
And make so queint his robe and fayre,
That it had news an hundred payre
Of grape and flouris Inde and Pers,
And many newis full divers,
That is the robe I mene iwis
Through whiche the ground to praisin
is.

But it would be an interminable task to quote the beautiful apostrophes which have been addressed to this regal division of the year; we will only give another extract from a Turkish address to the season.

"Thou hearest the tale of the nightingale, that the vernal season approaches. The spring has spread a bower of joy in every grove, where the almond-tree sheds its silver blossoms. Be cheerful; be full of mirth; for the spring passes soon away, it will not last.