cluded. I know not but that the artificial and natural lights combatting each other, provoke a greater pain. Memnon's head roared at the rising, my groans are at the setting sun. I am, too, more affected within doors than in the fields. I am persuaded there must be something in the quality of light at this time of day, that has escaped the notice of philosophers. Nor is the effect the same at all times of the year-the most distressing feeling is towards the end of autumn-then, indeed, in a certain measure it affects all, and has become notorious. But there is not a day in the year in which I do not feel it in some degree. There is a quarter of an hour worse than that which took its name from Rabelais. I am not suf fering from it now; but a little more than half an hour ago, this fourth day of December, the evil influence was strong upon me. I was in a lane, returning home from visiting a cheerful friend. I had walked a mile or two only, when the cold moment broke upon the sight: cold and comfortless did all appear to me; the rutty, damp, yet half frozen lane; the melancholy leafless boughs shooting up into the dull gray sky; the lower branches and leafage of hedges huddled together, without order, without beauty, as if hurrying from, if they could do so, and cowering under the melancholy light; the broad gray band of cloud, not unaccompanied by lighter vapour coming in, and gradually overspreading and making less the warmer light, every instant becoming more luridthis cloud, or this night rather, coming in upon pature, like an evil genius, to drive her from her patrimony, and to hold a wide and surly dominion in her stead. was of the foul fiend. The fiend of fen and quagmire, and the fiend of the heart-care-first cousins, showing their affinity by sympathies of howl and groan, from the utmost verge of the horizon to the innermost core of human life, and even sometimes by a stillness of electric horror.

All

And yet was there a blithe country girl that drove her melancholy cows to or from milking, and heeded not the evil hour, or the foul fiend, though his leaden finger had passed over her perhaps fair, or nut-brown forehead, and given it a hue that utterly belied the song she was singing,

VOL. III.

7

if song it could be; for to my sense the damp earth and air were dividing it between them, and flinging it back upon the ear mutteringly and in mutilation. And now night is over all-ruts, leafage, cattle, earth and sky, are obliterated like a feeble outline under a deep wash of Indian ink. I feel not the miseries without; I am beyond their power. I am within-in the shelter of home. I am lighted by the real magician's lamp. No magic circle ever bid defiance to demon more effectually than this blessed inclosure of four bright walls, rich in simple patterns, from which shine out partially, and with enticing looks of delight, well-varnished pictures in their gilt frames. Their very surfaces look sleek, and happy, sensative, companionable, as they are, and communicative of ideas and here I sit among them,

"Monarch of all I survey."

And oh! how unlike the miserable Selkirk, when the cold hour came upon his brow in his lonely island, and his heart was filled with despair. A cheerful warm fire, a few gentle home-sunny faces that bring spring in contact with winter; objects of taste fascinating, yet unobtruding; voices that are always music, and music proper when you will; and sometimes silence, contemplative or excursive in fancy, the quiet thankfulness for blessings felt and twice enjoyed in that thankfulness; the consciousness of freedom from tyrant self or tyrant custom; no storm beating at your windows or at your heart— what a contrast are they all to that "darkness visible," that evil hour of external day that makes up the aẞirov Biov, the life that cannot be lived, and that they must feel the misery of, who rush for shelter from this present misery to the melancholy pond, or the garret gallows!

How striking are the contrasts of life!-And as I thought thus, I retraced my life step by step; and as the cheerfulness of all around me would not let the mind dwell upon the gloomy, I determined to steal a passage from my autobiography, which rather whimsically shows some of the contrasts of things, of life, and manners. And you perceive, my dear Eusebius, what nonsense I

have daringly spurted from my goosequill by way of preface, and from its gravity you will think it no preface at all to so simple a matter as I have to narrate. But a kind friend will clearly see intelligence through obscurities of diction and difficulties of grammar; it will beam from his own eye on the paper, if there be little there before; and in your sight, and through your own brightness, my dear Eusebius, the letter of your friend becomes an illuminated missal.

66

Yet have missals of this kind been somewhat reduced in value; the golden age of letters has long departedthen came the silver-but now literary love and friendship are mere dross; the tenderest as well as most hostile communications to be had for fourpence, so the copper age of letters hath come upon us. "Etas mox datura progeniem vitiosiorem”—that is, the post-office will be nothing more than a Penny Magazine. This is a sort of post obiť" given by the ministry for their continuance in office. A truce with foolery, either theirs or my own, Eusebius, and let me come to the incident I have engaged to tell you; and if you publish my letter in Maga, as you have before done, I give you timely notice that we shall both be considered indecent characters, for I must use discarded words to speak about discarded things-things cast off-and that, but for a few remnants among the poor, would have been altogether brushed away from our vocabulary. For I must tell you of my being properly "breeched," and sent out into the world, that is, to a public school. Let others boast that they have lived in the age of Wellingtons and Greys; let us, Eusebius, rejoice that we were born in the age of breeches. And why should we be ashamed of that toga virilis, the first day of first assuming the which was in our time a day of honour, a white day, and marked with "money in both pockets?"

You have always considered it a disgrace to the present generation that they should ever have discarded either the name or thing-and the substitution of "inexpressibles," as an immodest lie, unworthy the simplicity of manhood. We were the "Braccotorum pueri," as Juvenal has it, sons of the breeched. Our fathers were

breeched before us. Now old and young are fallen into the "lean and slippered pantaloon." Bracca-Anglicé, breeches. There is something sterling in the name, that comes not mincingly upon the tongue, but boldly, as it should, out of the mouth. Braccæ are of ancient origin -vide Ainsworth—" Vox Gallica,”—meaning that many have been galled who have worn them-and so let the galled jade wince. The laxa bracçæ were said to be "shipmen's hose," so saith the same authority. Many have I seen unshipped, and for that purpose should rather be called "demissæ braccæ." For the laxx-vide Sir Charles Wetherill; for the demissæ-consult the Education Board, or rather Board of Education, not the modern, but a "chip of the old block,” if there be such, as I have seen at the college of St. Mary's Winton, yet in these degenerate days existing. But of that ancient, sweet, and wholesome custom anon. At present I must maintain the respectability of breeches-they are Greek, as the very name implies, Bgaxus short-ßgaxeia “shorts" -hence the Roman's Bracca-hence breeches.

66

How then, Mr. Ainsworth, can you have the face to say that they are Gallic, vox Gallica,-for we all know the Gaels boast of philibegs? and wear no breeches; and if by Gallic you mean the French, they were, for a long period, Sansculottes, and are very little better now. There are, however, who deny the etymology, and assert the word is from ῥακος, not βραχυς. "Paxos," saith the lexicon, a piece let in"-"a rag." Now, though the piece let in may answer to very many bracca, the word braccæ would here lose the b, a very material part in formation; and it would be not a part, but a mere patch put for the whole. Certainly I have both seen and worn many that have been really rags; but, as I said before, there is a b in breeches, there was ever a b in braccæ, and there ever will be a β in βραχυς; for though βραχυς expresses "shorts," they have never been shortened yet to that pass, and it is to be hoped never will be; they might as well be taken away altogether.

I do not consider that I was properly breeched until I was between twelve and thirteen years of age; what I wore before that time I make no account of, the materials

were as often feminine as masculine, things really inexpressibles, made out of my father's, my mother's, and even sisters' garments. I took no note of them; I was not proud of them. The first virile pair I ever put on, were upon the occasion of my going to St. Mary's College at Winchester, and it happened thus that they came to be what they were. My father, who was a literary character, and entirely given up to books, happened to have in his hand one of those old books one sees in old respectable libraries, of most sombre appearance, when my mother abruptly asked him what colour John's new breeches should be. My father, who had forgotten all about me, my breeches, my schooling, and every thing else, held his book somewhat loosely a foot or two nearer my mother, whilst he looked in her face as only conscious of the interruption, not having an idea of the subject of it. My mother looked at the book. She had been accustomed to signs and dumb-show, and concluded my father to mean of this colour.

66

That," quoth she, " is a mouse-colour."

"Yes," says he, "mouse-colour."

"And what material?" said my mother.

My father looked at the book and said "leather." Nothing more was said, and so it turned out that the first breeches, and with which I made my public appearance in the world, for such may be called the first going to a public school, were mouse-coloured leather; or, I think, according to the vocabulary of those days, I should say "leathers."

The present generation little know, that when their fathers were born the art of breeches-making was not confounded with the general cutting-out and trimming business of the tailor. It was a separate business, and the leather-breeches maker, in particular, was a man of considerable skill and importance.

I have heard dandies say that no man could make a pair of boots. The right foot must go to Hoby, the left to some one else. Luckily for the breeches-maker, his right and left made an indivisible pair. They were lovely and undivided.

This being the case, the morning after this scene in