him to move from place to place with extraordinary frequency, and always as if in a hurry; but, as has been well observed in the passage already quoted from lord Orford's "Noble Authors,” even particularities were becoming in him, as he had a natural ease that immediately adopted and saved them from the air of affectation." We cannot, therefore, be surprised to find that he succeeded in attaching to himself all persons among whom he chose familiarly to converse: or that, uniting to these elegances of manner a pleasing countenance, and a light though rather diminutive figure, he should have been a great favourite with that sex to which he professed especial devotion.

Peterborough was generous, even to profusion; and, as a necessary consequence, always in embarrassed circumstances. The common people, of course, esteemed him highly on this account; for there is no quality which more surely wins the hearts of the multitude; and they did not fail, especially towards the end of queen Anne's reign, to draw many and invidious comparisons between his conduct in money matters, and that of the illustrious Marlborough. That Peterborough felt the advantage which he so far possessed over his rival, and was not always careful to use it with moderation, the following anecdote will show :-It chanced, after Marlborough had fallen into disgrace, that a crowd, mistaking Peterborough's carriage for the duke's, surrounded it in a hostile manner, and

began to utter yells of disapprobation. Peterborough looked from the window and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, I will prove to you that you are mistaken; and that I am not the duke of Marlborough. In the first place, I have but five guineas in my pocket; in the next, they are very much at your service." So saying, he threw the money among them, and their yells were instantly changed to shouts of applause. But we have better proof of the liberality of lord Peterborough than is afforded here. His refusal to accept compensation for the loss of his baggage in Spain, the promptitude with which he was ever ready to expend his last shilling in the public service; these, with a variety of acts of private beneficence, bear full testimony to his open-heartedness. He was a strange compound of great and little qualities; of magnanimity and meanness; of patriotism and party prejudice: forming altogether at once the most selfish and the most disinterested public character of his own, or, perhaps, of any other age.

Peterborough was twice married: first, to Carey, daughter of sir Alexander Frazer, who died in the year 1709, after bringing him two sons and two daughters; and next, in 1735, only a few months previous to his decease, to Anastasia Robinson, a celebrated singer at the theatre. Of the latter union he was himself evidently ashamed; and it is more than once painfully alluded to by his correspondents who survived him.

1

PREFACE.

THE writer of this trifling volume was suddenly sentenced, in the cold evening of his life, to drink the mineral waters of one of the bubbling springs, or brunnens, of Nassau. In his own opinion, his constitution was not worth so troublesome a repair; but, being outvoted, he bowed and departed.

On reaching the point of his destination, he found not only water-bibbing-bathing—and ambulation to be the orders of the day, but it was moreover insisted upon, that the mind was to be relaxed inversely as the body was to be strengthened. During this severe regimen, he was driven to amuse himself in his old age by blowing, as he toddled about, a few literary Bubbles. His hasty sketches of whatever chanced for the moment to please either his eyes, or his mind, were only made--because he had nothing else in the whole world to do; and he now offers them to that vast and highly respectable class of people who read from exactly the self-same motive.

The critic must, of course, declare this production to be vain-empty-light-hollow-superficial. . . . . but it is the nature of Bubbles to be so.

"The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them."

MACBETH, Act I., Scene 3.

BUBBLES.

THE VOYAGE.

By the time I reached the Custom-house Stairs, the paddles of the Rotterdam steam-boat were actually in motion, and I had scarcely hurried across a plank, when I heard it fall splash into the muddy water which separated me farther and farther from the wharf. Still later than myself, passengers were now seen chasing the vessel in boats, and there was a confusion on deck, which I gladly availed myself of, by securing, close to the helmsman, a corner, where, muffled in the ample folds of an old boatcloak, I felt I might quietly enjoy an incognito: for, as the sole object of my expedition was to do myselfas much good and as little harm as possible, I considered it would be a pity to wear out my constitution by any travelling exclamations in the Thames.

The hatches being now opened, the huge pile

of trunks, black portmanteaus, and gaudy carpet bags which had threatened at first to obstruct my prospect were rapidly stowed away; and, as the vessel, hissing and smoking, glided, or rather scuffled, by Deptford, Greenwich, Woolwich, etc., a very motley group of fellow-passengers were all occupied in making remarks of more or less im portance. Some justly prided themselves on being able to read aloud inscriptions on shore, which others had declared, from their immense distance, to be illegible ;-some, bending forward, modestly asked for information; some, standing particularly upright, pompously imparted it; at times, wondering eyes, both male and female, were seen radiating in all directions; then all were concentrated on an approaching sister steam-boat, which, steering an opposite course, soon rapidly passed us; the gilt figure at her head, the splashing of the paddles, and the name written on her stern, occasioning observations which burst into existence nearly as simultaneously as the thunder and lightning of heaven ;-handkerchiefs were waved, and bipeds of both sexes seemed to be delighted, save and except one mild, gloomy, inquisitive little man, who went bleating like a lamb from one fellowpassenger to another, without getting even from me any answer to his harmless question, "whether we had or had not passed yet the men hanging in chains?"

after

As soon as we got below Gravesend, the small volume of life which, with feelings of good-fellowship to all men, I had thus been calmly reviewing, began to assume a graver tone; and, as page page presented itself to my notice, I observed that notes of interrogation and marks of admiration were types not so often to be met with, as the comma, the colon.. and, above all.. the full stop.

The wind, as it freshened with the seemed sun, to check all exuberance of fancy; and, as the puny river-wave rose, conversation around nie lulled and lulled into a dead calm. A few people, particularly some ladies, suddenly at last broke silence, giving utterance to a mass of heavy matter-of-fact ejaculations, directed rather to fishes than to men. Certain colours in the picture now began rapidly to alter the red rose gradually looked like the lily -brown skin changed itself into dirty yellow, and I observed two heavy cheeks of warm, comfortable, fat flesh gradually assume the appearance of cold wrinkled tallow. Off Margate, a sort of hole-andcorner system very soon began to prevail, and one human being after another slowly descending heels

foremost, vanished from deck into a sub-stratum, or infernal region, where there was moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth; and, as head after head thus solemnly sunk from my view, I gradually threw aside the folds of my ægis, until finding myself alone, I hailed and inhaled with pleasure the cool fresh breeze which had thus caused me to be left, as I wished to be, by myself. The gale now delightfully increased-(ages ago I had been too often exposed to it to suffer from its effect); and, as wave after wave became tipt with white, there flitted before my mind a hundred recollections chasing one another, which I never thought to have re-enjoyed ;-occasionally they were interrupted by the salt spray, and as it dashed into my face, I felt my grizzled eyebrows curl themselves up as if they wished me once again to view the world in the prismatic colours of "Auld lang syne." Already was my cure half effected, and the soot of London, being thus washed from my brow, I felt a re-animation of mind and a vigour of frame which made me long for the moment when, like the sun bursting from behind a cloud, I might cast aside my shadowy mantle : however, I never moved from my nook, until the darkness of night at last encouraging me, without fear of observation, to walk the deck, "I paced along upon the giddy footing of the hatches," till tired of these vibrations, I stood for a few moments at the gangway.

There was no moon-a star only here and there was to be seen; yet, as the fire-propelled vessel cut her way, the paddles, by shivering in succession each wave to atoms, produced a phosphoric sparkling, resembling immense lanterns at her side; and while these beacons distinctly proclaimed where the vessel actually was, a pale shining stream of light issued from her keel, which, for a ship's length or two, told fainter and fainter where she had been.

The ideas which rushed into the mind, on contemplating by night, out of sight of land, the sea, are as dark, as mysterious, as unfathoinable, and as indescribable as the vast ocean itself. One sees but little-yet that little, caught here and there, So much resembles some of the attributes of the Great Power which created us, that the mind, trembling under the immensity of the conceptions it engenders, is lost in feelings which human beings cannot impart to each other. In the hurricane which one meets with in southern latitudes, most of us have probably looked in vain for the waves which have been described to be "mountain high;" but, though the outline has been exaggerated, is there not a terror in the filling in of the picture which no human artist can delineate ? and in the raging of the tempest-in the darkness which the lightning makes visible-who is there among us that has not fancied he has caught a shadow of the wrath, and a momentary glimmering of the mercy, of the Almighty?

Impressed with these hackneyed feelings, I

slowly returned to my nook, and all being obscure, except just the red, rough countenance of the helmsman, feebly illuminated by the light in the binnacle, I laid myself down, and sometimes nodding a little and sometimes dozing, I enjoyed for many hours a sort of half sleep, of which I stood in no little need.

As soon as we had crossed the Briell, the vessel being at once in smooth water, the passengers successively emerged from their graves below, until, in a couple of hours, their ghastly countenances all were on deck.

A bell, as if in hysterics, now rang most violently, as a signal to the town of Rotterdam. The word of command, "STOP HER!" was loudly vociferated by a bluff, short, Dirk Hatteraicklooking pilot, who had come on board off the Briell. "Stop her!" was just heard faintly echoed from below, by the invisible exhausted sallow being who had had, during the voyage, charge of the engine. The paddles, in obedience to the mandate, ceased-then gave two turns-ceased, -turned once again-paused,-gave one last struggle, when, our voyage being over, the vessel's side slightly bumped against the pier.

With a noise like one of Congreve's rockets, the now useless steam was immediately exploded by the pale being below, and, in a few seconds, half the passengers were seen on shore, hurrying in different directions about a town full of canals and spirit-shops.

"Compared with Greece and Italy-Holland is but a platter-faced, cold-gin-and-water country, after all!" said I to myself, as I entered the great gate of the Hôtel des Pays-Bas ; "and a heavy, barge-built, web-footed race are its inhabitants," I added, as I passed a huge amphibious wench on the stairs, who, with her stern towards me, was sluicing the windows with water: "however, there is fresh air, and that, with solitude, is all I here desire!" This frail sentimental sentence was hardly concluded, when a Dutch waiter (whose figure I will not misrepresent by calling him "garçon") popped a long carte, or bill of fare, into my hands, which severely reproved me for having many other wants besides those so simply expressed in my soliloquy.

As I did not feel equal to appearing in public, I had dinner apart in my own room; and, as soon as I came to that part of the ceremony called dessert, I gradually raised my eyes from the field of battle, until, leaning backwards in my chair to ruminate, I could not help first admiring, for a few moments, the height and immense size of an apartment, in which there seemed to be elbow-room for a giant.

Close before the window was the great river upon whose glassy surface I had often and often been a traveller; and, flowing beneath me, it occurred to me, as I sipped my wine, that in its transit, or course of existence, it had attained at Rotterdam, as nearly as possible, the same period in its life as my own. Its birth, its froward infan