and set us all spinning our webs like spiders on the dark concave? If great wits be really allied to madness, then the danger grows serious, to judge by the increase of books. The lunacy commission ought to be enlarged, and Sir William Ellis, and Dr. Warburton, and the rest, may look to make speedy fortunes of men of letters whose brains and nerves are in a state of progressive derangement, functional and organic, and who, exactly in proportion as they develope more intellect than the rest of mankind, must be supposed to be deficient in common sense. But we suspect that an oversupply in the publishing market, like an oversupply in all other markets, must ultimately correct itself. Books, like indigo, will be sure to find their own level. When men relapse into temporary insanity in this way, and find that their eccentricity is treated with marked indifference, they

have a facility in restoring themselves to reason which is certainly denied to lunatics of every other description. It would not be easy to decide how many of the volumes to which we have referred have already fallen into that oblivion which acts so powerfully upon the nervous system of writers: but, although new patients may continue to appear in print day after day, we fancy that an equal number of the former ones will be found to have returned to their proper and more appropriate occupations. Publishers are in the habit of calling their stocks in books "ideal property:"-the combination of words is a little contradictory, but we are afraid it must be granted at once that whether books can be considered as property or not, there is very little doubt that the value of the great bulk is, unfortunately, “ideal” enough.

My uncle was a prodigious story-tellerI don't mean that he indulged in a propensity to fibbing-but like the Sultana of the "Arabian Nights," his brain was a reservoir of tales that seemed perfectly inexhaustible. Judging of his forehead by craniological rules, I could not fancy them to be his invention and yet how else could he come by them?to the best of my knowledge he never read any thing but "Carey's Book of Roads," for he was a prodigious traveller. But whencesoever the tales came, he was in great requisition with us, who formed the younger part of his establishment, particularly in the long winter evenings. Like the Sultana already alluded to, he was sure to find a Dinarzade at his elbow, to jog his memory when it happened to slumber.

Suppose us all seated round the Christmas fire; the wood blazes, the hearth is clean swept, and the servant retires with the tea-things. In a great arm-chair sits my aunt, half-dozing over her knitting; on the opposite side is my uncle, his little bright eyes twinkling with good humour and penetration; and around is a formidable array of us, his seven nephews and nieces, a handsome legacy, as he used to say, from his deceased brother.

According to his usual wont at this part of the evening, the pipe was in my uncle's mouth; this, as it was a custom, I was never disposed to find fault with; but when, as on

the present occasion, he indulged in a second pipe, I must honestly own it encroached not a little on my patience. But there was no help for it; to all our entreaties, not to say grumblings, was a laugh of those little bright eyes, and a "puff! puff!" till he fairly puffed out pipe the second.

"And now," said my uncle, "I am ready for you. I'll tell you a true story—as true as if it were in print- and it happened to myself."

"Tell!-tell!-tell!" cried the seven younger voices in chorus.

“ Will !—will !-will!" responded my uncle. And thus he began.

"I was travelling to Southampton by the mail. The ground was covered with snow, the wind blew a hurricane, and the night was so intensely cold, that when the coach stopped at Alton, where they allowed a few minutes" space for refreshment, my limbs were almost frozen. You may easily suppose I was glad to find myself before a good fire, and a well-spread table. Yet there was not much to boast of in the room either; it was a low, old-fashioned place, with a well-sanded floor, and in one corner was that horror of horrors, to my fancy-a Dutch clock. I don't know why, but I never could abide this compound of brass and wood-and the present fellow was particularly disagreeable to me. Above the dial-plate was a little figure of a Saracen,

with huge goggling eyes, that rolled to and fro by the action of the watch-work within; what's worse, he squinted most abominably. For all that, I didn't neglect my supper; on the contrary, I was busily employed discussing a second rummer of hot brandy and water, when the guard came in with his usual-Ready, Sir.'

But the dead pause that followed was still more awful, and the voice of the clock in the silence sounded yet more solemnly. On a sudden the ticking ceased, and the eyes stood still; a loud whizzing of wheels followed, and in the next moment the clock fell to the ground and was shivered to pieces like so much glass. Amidst the shower of

"The horn sounded- Ta-ra-ra!' "Confound it,' said I, 'the brandy is so hot.'

"Ta-ra-ra,' said the horn again. “You may wait,' said I, rather waspishly, as a man who was loth to leave good liquor.

"Another flourish of the detestable horn. "The clatter of horses' feet on the hard ground followed, and the waiter bustling in, somewhat superfluously informed me that the coach had gone. I never bore a disappointment better in my life. Without a single remark-which, indeed, would have been useless-I ordered a bowl of punch to be brought in, and fresh wood to be heaped upon the fire. There was nothing left for it, but to make myself comfortable and comfortable I was, never more so in my life, except for the ticking of that horrible Dutchman, and the squinting of the little goggle-eyed Saracen.

"I wish the fellow who made it was at the devil,' quoth I.

“Tick, tick, tick,' replied the Dutchman. A death-watch couldn't have been half so unpleasant.

66 6 Tick, tick, tick-roll, roll, roll.' "There was something ominous in the sound; and as the wind howled about the chimneys, and the hail pattered against the windows, I began to feel first odd-then cold-then alarmed: for the more I listened the more singular was the 'tick, tick,' of the Dutchman. It was evident the clock was talking to me, and I really thought I began to understand his language. In the midst of my terror a whimsical thought came over me, and I couldn't help holding up the punch-bowl to Meinheer, and exclaiming You must be thirsty after so much talking; suppose you drink?'

"At this moment, there was a fierce gust of wind that seemed to shake the house to its very foundation, and the spirit of the clock -for there certainly was a spirit in itgroaned heavily, 'Tick, tick, tick-and the Saracen rolled his eyes as if he were mad.

that, like the beasts in the Apocalypse, set language at defiance. The first was an indefinable compound of the eagle and the human being. The second had the appearance of a man of gigantic stature, with a lofty brow, upon which sat determination, while the muscles of his chest and arms swelled with restless energy. The third wore the form of Venus, as poets have described her when she rose from the foam of the sea.

"I am the PAST,' said, or rather screamed the eagle figure, and his eyes glistened, and his talons shot out from their covering, as if about to stoop and seize me. 'I am the PAST; how hast thou used me?' "I am the PRESENT,' said the second figure, sternly. Use me wisely, treat me kindly, and thou shalt have no need to fear the beak and talons of my brother. Look, the world is full of briars; take this axe, and hew thyself a way through them. The earth is stern and niggard; take this spade, and compel her bounty.'

"I am the FUTURE,' said the third spirit, in a tone so sweet and musical, that, while I listened, all fear departed from me, and the heart within me kindled. Follow me,' continued the beautiful spirit, and I will lead you to the Islands of the Blest; see, how calmly the waters glide; feel how softly the winds blow; follow me, poor creature of clay, and be happy.'

"And I did follow her-who could have resisted the fascination of that voice? Strange to say, the storm had passed off, and a warm summer moon was glowing upon the midnight waters. In the next moment, we were in her little skiff, with the light breeze filling our sails, and the sea sparkling about

relaxed the muscles, filled my heart with an unknown pleasure. Oh, that this voyage could have ended but with life itself! but in the midst of my languid enjoyment, the clouds gathered, the thunder rolled, the waves rose, and the winds burst from their caverns in the distant north. It was a fearful hurricane. At the first threat of the angry elements, the beautiful spirit spread her wings and vanished with a lamentable cry. In the next moment I found myself struggling with the furious billows, which, rising mountains high, flung me on the point of a sharp rock, standing out like a solitary light-house in the middle of the pathless ocean. There I lay upon the crag, beaten by the winds and rain, and unable to move a limb. Then came a fearful rushing of winds, and the eagle spirit fell upon me with his cruel talons and struck his beak into my side. I was, as Prometheus of old, nailed to a rock, and condemned to be the everlasting prey of the bird of Jove. I could not die; his thirst exhausted not the current in my veins; his hunger still found a liver to feed upon. Night went, and the day came, but still it was the same and again the stars rose, and still his claws were in my flesh, and his beak was at my heart. There was no respite-none-none-none. The moon grew old, and again young, as if she had renewed her youth in the magic kettle of

the Colchian witch-yet still I writhed upon my rock. The summer solstice brought its scorching sun, the winter solstice came on the wings of the tempest-yet still I writhed upon my rock. Comets passed away and returned in their path of centuries-yet still I writhed upon my rock. The earth itself grew old, and brought forth shrubs instead of oaks; the milk of her teeming bosom-the springs and rivers-that should have fed the green leaf and the fruit, had dried up-yet still I writhed upon my rock!

"At last the trumpet sounded to call the dead and the living before the throne of judgment. At the first summons the ocean shrunk back like a guilty thing, the planets stood still, and the affrighted earth was motionless. At the second, the grave yielded up its dead, and in the air was a sound of wailing and lamentation, and the shrieks of millions who dreaded to meet the last account. A third time the trumpet sounded, and-whirr, whirr, whirr-my old friend the Dutchman struck seven, and the Saracen squinted, as I thought, very significantly upon me. The trumpet was the horn of the early coach, which awoke me just in time to resume my journey, that had been delayed by the punch-bowl. "Children-never forget 'The Three

Spirits.'

MR. JOSEPH TOMKINS, a large distiller living within the bills of mortality and the liberties of Westminster, had been an old friend of Vernon's father, and an especial favourite, because he compounded the best British cordials in his Majesty's dominions, and was not, like the doctors, afraid to drink the compounds of his own concocting. This worthy purveyor of choice spirits had, as most men do, whether distillers of gin or distillers of knowledge, taken unto himself a wife, a young, gawky, giddy miss, as her washerwoman used to call her in meek humility, who wedded herself to his gold and to his gin rather than to the living body into which he poured so many potations of that "vile and leperous distilment;" and for this aforesaid body she cared about as

much as for the grains upon which Mr. Joseph Tomkins fed his pigs, of which he had a numerous and thriving family.

Mrs. T., as her friends familiarly called her, T being one of the stateliest letters in the alphabet, although it does stand upon one leg as I was saying, Mrs. T. had taken a fancy to a tall, stout made, chestnut-coloured youth, with curly mustachios, black hair, broad shoulders, and muscular legs, which he stuffed into janty pantaloons more for his tailor's benefit than his own. While poor Mr. Tomkins was engaged in the stillery with whiskey and juniper, Mrs. Tomkins was exhibiting herself at morning concerts and charity bazaars with the handsome Peregrine Clifford; nor until the wife's penchant had become notorious

throughout the neighbourhood, had the purblind rectifier of malt spirits the most distant idea of the imprudence of his better half. When, however, it had become the common gossip of the stillery, and he at length discovered that the world, that busytongued slanderer, was making free with Mrs. Joseph's reputation, he lifted up his wig, and, sapiently scratching the broad poll underneath, finally came to the awful conclusion that it would be positively incumbent upon him to vindicate his injured honour by calling to account the disturber of his domestic tranquillity.

After sundry conferences, therefore, with his friends in the trade, keepers of wine vaults, where the only commodity sold is gin, portly Bonifaces and the like, as to the moral necessity of such a perilous measure, which they pronounced to be a social obligation, Mr. Tomkins incontinently made his will, left his wife a paltry two hundred per annum, and forwarded a challenge to the vile author of his disgrace. It was couched in the following terms :

Before we proceed, we shall just present our readers with a brace of portraits, sketched by a hand acknowledged to be very apt at a likeness. Mr. Joseph Tomkins, being of the more honourable gender, his portrait is presented first. He was a tall portly man, with a fat vacant countenance, round, hard, and tawny, like a wooden head over the penthouse of a tobacconist's shop; his frame had acquired an obesity which would have become the dignity of an alderman, while his pursy circumference, the dread of all cheap tailors who make no extra charge for size, might have rivalled in copiousness the vat in his own stillery. The deep glowing tint of occasional crapulence was upon his naturally rubicund cheeks. His limbs were large but shapeless, strictly harmonising with his prodigious head, which had precisely the symmetry of a huge family dumpling in fact, they might have passed for correlatives-upon which he wore a scanty

scratch*—he had laid aside his bob—whilst from beneath it the grey hair peeped, bristling like prickles upon the back of an inflated hedgehog, as if in derision both of the maker and wearer, exposing at once the incapacity of the one and the senility of the other. To give its finishing touch to the portrait, in body Mr. Joseph Tomkins was an absolute mountain of flesh, bones, and sinews; in mind he was a mere homunculus.

Mrs. Tomkins was a smart dapper sort of person, tall and straight, young and freshcoloured, with red hair, a freckled skin, an immoderately wide mouth, and legs shaped like the tusks of the "wild Hyrcanian boar." Her hair—I have before hinted that it was red-was as glowing as a firebrand, dangling like so many lighted links over her broad temples. Her eyes were grey and never at rest, frequently looking at each other as if to confer the benefit of mutual reflection, but more frequently wandering about in search of a victim. Her nose was pointed, having a lateral undulation like the gnomon of a dial in a village church-yard bent by the constant pressure of rustic fingers. Though an irregular feature, however, it was upon the whole a tolerably good one, for her husband used to say of her, “Ah, my Betsy has the nose of a cockert." Her mouth was prodigiously capacious, displaying to the extremity of each jaw two rows of large white even teeth, set in gums the colour of faded peach-blossoms. She was perpetually upon the titter, talked as incessantly as the ticking of a clock, and with as little sense as her footman's magpie-for Mr. Tomkins kept both a footman and a carriage, the one promoted from the piggery to the parlour, the other saved by the distiller's liberal bidding at the sale of "a gentleman going abroad" from the degradation of being converted into a hackney-coach.

Such was the lady for whom Clifford was about to be called to so terrible an account. He received Mr. Tomkins' challenge without absolutely running mad from terror, although it produced an effect nearly as dreadful, for he almost fell into convulsions with laughter, and really did crack the strings of his waistcoat with the vehement shaking of his sides. In truth, he

the days of Charles the First, but by whom there exists no authentic record to inform us.

*The scratch and the bob are wigs invented since

† No sportsman need be told that a cocker is a small spaniel, of a peculiar breed; but we don't write for sportsmen.