to be found out. He felt the approaches of age; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to him. "They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like any thing important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses; but such as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings.

He left little property behind him. Of course, the little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his escrutoire, which have been handed over to the Editor of this Magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed signature.

He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the Export department of the East India House will forgive me, if I acknowledge the readiness with which they assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts. They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk, at which he had been planted for forty years; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed tracts, JAN. 1823.

might be called his "Works." They seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian doubleentry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some newer German system-but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm regard for his associates in office, and how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewdness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would say) than in twice the number of authors by profession that I have conversed with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the "old days of the India House," when he consorted with Woodroffe, and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representative, bating the point of sanctity, of old facetious bishop Corbet), and Hoole who translated Tasso, and Bartlemy Brown whose father (God assoil him therefore) modernized Walton-and sly warmhearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those days), and Campe, and Fombelle-and a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell (the bon vivant of the South Sea House), and little Eyton (said to be a fac simile of Pope-he was a miniature of a gentleman) that was cashier under him, and Dan Voight of the Custom House that left the famous library.

Well, Elia is gone-for aught I know, to be reunited with themand these poor traces of his pen are all we have to show for it. How little survives of the wordiest authors! Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only! His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly; how they will read, now they are brought together, is a question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his "weaved-up follies."

PHIL-ELIA.

NEW Year's Day is the day best suited to universal holiday of any of the three hundred and sixty-five. It is the period of the regeneration of the Calendar in the most interesting parts of the civilized world. Persons of all ranks and occupations take an interest in it. It is the beginning of a new era. We have made up our accounts of happiness and sorrow with the old year; we have struck the moral balance, calculated the profit and loss, and taken stock as a trader does of his goods. We turn over a new leaf, we enter upon a fresh series of transactions, and the common maxim, "As is the beginning so shall be the ending," disposes us to enter upon it joyfully. It is a day of peace-making. Family quarrels are adjusted, broken intimacies repaired, severed friendships reunited; and many a one who would reject an overture of reconciliation on the second of March, would make no scruple of being the foremost to propose it on the first of January: the season levels all the distinctions of etiquette which usually restrain the better impulses of the heart. These are among its positive advantages over all the other days of the year; it possesses many negative ones derived from their inefficiencies for holiday-making in its complete

sense.

Christmas Day, notwithstanding its gambols, turkeys, and plum-puddings, is of some what too serious a character for the purpose; besides that it suggests ideas of tradesmen's bills. Michaelmas, indeed, is hallowed by the roasting of geese, and, which is still better, the eating of them; but then the twenty-ninth of September is Quarter-day! As for Lady Day, and Midsummer-Midsummer duck-and-green-pease is mere affectation, the impotent struggle of a would-be holiday-they owe their prominence in the almanack purely to the invention of rent and taxes, and impudently stand forth as claimants on our purses, without even a decent attempt to render their approach less unwelcome, by affording us a pretext for merry-making: they are a couple of surfy tax-ga

therers. Easter and Whitsuntide are not altogether destitute of merit, but the advantages they possess are considerably abated by their being more or less considered by different sects. This destroys their universality.— Kings' birth-days are too local: one is not obliged to rejoice on the birthday of any king, excepting the king of one's own country. The joyous influence of the twelfth of August is necessarily confined to England and its immediate dependencies; but there is no law to compel a Dutchman to cut capers and be lively on that day, to keep British subjects in countenance. The birth-day of Louis XVIII is a day of jubilee throughout all France, and the English residents there emulate the natives of the country in their manifestations of happiness on the occasion ; but in London an Englishman may rejoice or not, just as he pleases; and it is even pro bable that a Frenchman, living under the protection of a foreign government, might, on the seventeenth of November, exhibit a long face with impunity. Kings' birth-days are, decidedly, too local; but in all other respects they are so admirably fitted for holidays, that it is much to be lamented that all the crowned heads in Christendom were not ushered into the world on the same day of the year. One's own birth-day! It is an excellent holiday for one's own self, but infinitely too limited in its joyous influence for general use. And, alas! how many poor souls are there to whom the anniversary of their birth brings nought but bitter recollections, to whom it is a day of sorrow rather than of joy, who look back with repentance or regret upon the years which have passed, and heavily step forward into the year that is to come, without a hope perhaps-except that it may be their last!

Lord Mayor's Day would be scarcely worth a passing notice, but that many persons of sense and erudition have considered it a fitting opportunity for holiday-making. The main objection against it is, that it is even more limited in its influence than a king's birth-day. It is purely a Lon

day indeed. The Parisians pay no honours to the old year; it has performed its office, resigned its place; it is past, gone, dead, defunct; all the harm or the good it could do is done, and there is an end of it. But what a merry welcome is given to its successor! Perhaps this is somewhat owing to national character: the French soon forget an old acquaintance, and speedily become familiar with a new one. The very appearance of New Year's Day is sufficient to distinguish it; and any one acquainted with Parisian manners, dropping from the clouds down upon the Boulevards, would at once exclaim, "Parbleu! c'est le Jour de l'An!"

It is unlike the Carnival, which is distinguished by its maskings and its buffooneries; at every turn you meet a tall lanky punch, or an unwieldy harlequin, with his hands in his breeches-pockets; and coachloads of grotesque disguises rattle through the streets.

It is unlike the Saint Louis, which is the holiday of the rabble, when all the scum of Paris is in motion, when bread, and sausages, and wine, are distributed gratis, and all the theatres are thrown open at noon-day.

It is unlike the Fête Dieu, which is the holiday of the religious, or the pretenders to religion; when solemn processions move along the streets, and the air is perfumed with incense and sweet herbs.

It is unlike Longchamps, the period devoted to the worship of Fashion, the goddess who exercises unbounded sway over all ranks and classes in Paris. It is then she issues her mandates, and dictates the mode in which it is her will to be worshipped for the 'season to come. It is the holiday of the fop and the petite maitresse; it is the harvest of the taylor and the marchande des modes: from the prince to the porter, from the duchess down to the poissarde, every one who has a reputation to maintain in the fashionable world-and who has not?-must sport something new on the occasion. A carriage, a pelisse, a new set of harness, liveries, a gown, a hat, a ribband, each according to their station. It is the period of universal pretension. Not a little daughter of a little bourgeois, whose severe eco

nomies throughout the preceding winter have enabled her to procure a coloured muslin gown for Longchamps, but fancies, as she shuffles along from the Fauxbourg St. Martin to the Champs Elysées, that she is the paramount object of attention. " Dieu! comme ma robe a fait de l'effet à Longchamps!" The countess thinks the same of her new liveries; the dandy of his cabriolet; the opera girl of her carriage, just presented to her by some booby milord, who is duped, jilted, laughed at, ridiculed, and caricatured, for his misplaced liberality. My landlord had bought a new umbrella. One day I begged him to lend it to me. It was impossible; for he had not bought it to have it rained upon at least till after he had shown it at Longchamps. And then the jealousies, the quarrels, the heart-burnings, this important season excites! Previously to the last Longchamps, Madame St. Leon, in pure openness of heart, showed the bonnet she intended to wear to her intimate friend Madame Desrosiers. Will it be credited! Madame Desrosiers went immediately to the marchande des modes who made it, and ordered one precisely similar, in which she appeared at Longchamps an hour earlier than her friend. Madame St. Leon justly stigmatized this conduct as a piece of unheard-of treacheryune trahison inouïe! But what follows is scarcely in human nature-it is so improbable, yet so true, that it might form the subject of a melodrama. Madame La Jeune and Madame St. Victor were bound together by the strongest bonds of friendship and affection--they were sisters rather than friends-their hopes, their fears, their wishes, their sorrows, their pleasures, were in common-their confidence was mutual-they often swore that they had no secrets from each other; and, in fact, this was almost true. As might be expected, at the approach of Longchamps, they consulted together about the dresses they should wear; and, as might be expected, it was settled that, as on former occasions, their dresses should be exactly alike. The chief point agreed upon was, that their gowns should be made with four ruches, or flounces. My pen almost rejects its office. Madame St. Victor appeared in a

gown with six ruches! Every one admitted that Madame St. Victor's conduct was de la dernière infamie. The infamy of Madame St. Victor's conduct is, perhaps, somewhat redeemed by the circumstance of her dear friend's having secretly ordered five ruches to her gown, of which fact Madame St. Victor was fortunately informed in time to advance upon the encroaches of her treacherous

amie.

In former times, Queens did not disdain to mingle in this combat of vanity and display. The unfortunate Marie Antoinette once ordered a mistress of the Comte d'Artois to be turned out of the Champs Elysées, for presuming to appear in an equipage which eclipsed the splendour of her own. Now the struggle is abandoned to opera girls, fourth-rate actresses, kept mistresses, and the petite bourgeoisie. The real fashion either goes on foot to behold the scene, or in a carriage sans pretension.

But the Jour de l'An is every body's holiday, the holiday of all ages, ranks, and conditions. Relations, friends, acquaintance, visit each other, kiss, and exchange sugar-plums. For weeks previous to it, all the makers and venders of fancy articles, from diamond necklaces and tiaras, down to sweetmeat boxes, are husily employed in the preparation of Etrennes New Year's presents. But the staple commodity of French commerce, at this period, is sugar-plums. At all times of the year are the shops of the marchands de bon-bons, in this modern Athens (as the Parisians call Paris), amply stocked, and constant is the demand for their luscious contents; but now the superb magazins in the Rue Vivienne, the splendid boutiques on the Boulevards, the magnificent dépôts in the Palais Royal, are rich in sweets beyond even that sugary conception, a child's paradise, and they are literally crowded from - morning till night by persons of all ages, men, women, and children. Vast and various is the invention of the fabricants of this important necessary of life; and sugar is formed into tasteful imitations of carrots, cupids, ends of candle, roses, sausages, soap, bead-necklaces-all that is nice or nasty in nature and art. Ounce weights are thrown aside, and

nothing under dozens of pounds is to be seen on the groaning counters; the wearied venders forget to number by units, and fly to scores, hundreds, and thousands. But brilliant as are the exhibitions of sugar-work in this gay quarter of the town, they must yield for quantity to the astounding masses of the Rue des Lombards. That is the place resorted to by great purchasers, by such as require, not pounds, but hundred weights for distribution. There reside all the mighty compounders, the venders at first hand; and sugar-plum makers are as numerous in the Parisian Lombard-street, as are the traffickers in douceurs of a more substantial character in its namesake in London.

The day has scarcely dawned, and all is life, bustle, and movement. The visiting lists are prepared, the presents arranged, the cards are placed in due order of delivery. Vehicles of all descriptions are already crossing and jostling in every quarter of the city. Fortunate are they who, unblest with a calèche or a cabriolet of their own, have succeeded in engaging one for the day at six times its ordinary cost. Happy is he whose eloquence has prevailed with the driver of a fiacre or a cabriolet, to engage by the hour for three or four times the usual fare, or his purse would become lighter by thirty sous at each visit he made, though but the width of a street interposed between them. These servants of the public, the hackneycoachmen, are rather a more decent set of people than the same class in London, and the cabriolet drivers are again superior to them. The superiority of the latter may in some measure be accounted for, from their constant opportunities of conversation with their fares; while the coachmen, like ours, are either left by themselves on their seats, or to associate one with the other, each alternative leaving them in tolerably bad company. Abandoning this important point to the consideration of any young aspirant in moral philosophy who may be in want of a thesis, I shall merely suggest, as a probable reason why both are as civil and well-conducted as such gentry can be, that a very benevolent institution, called the police, watches over