When this "dreaded visitation" has once taken place, all that follows is lamentable in the extreme. The brightest corruscations of genius, the tenderest feelings of the tenderest heart, the noblest efforts of the most enlightened or most reflecting mind, the most exact discretion, the most rigid reserve, all may, or may not, take an opposite direction; and chance, and mad, and momentary impulses alone decide the character. To view this change is the severest pang the heart can feel to lament over it is to be mad ourselves to stop or govern it is to direct the whirlwind and the storm. On this event taking place, the paper of the World, at which Major Topham had incessantly laboured for nearly five years, and which had now attained an unrivalled degree of eminence, lost in his eyes all its charms. He first determined to let it, reserving a certain profit from its sale, and in a short time he resolved to dispose of it altogether. Reynolds, the dramatist, on this occasion alluding to the name of the paper, quoted not unaptly the following phrase: "Who was it lost Mark Anthony the World? They who have known what the daily supply, the daily toil, the daily difficulty, the hourly danger, and the incessant tumult of a morning paper is, can alone know that chaos of the brain in which a man lives who has all this to undergo. Terror walks before him: fatigue bears him down: libels encompass him, and distraction attacks him on every side. He must be a literary man, and a commercial man: he must must be a political man, and a theatrical man; and must run through all the changes from a pantomime to a prime minister. What every man is pursuing, he must be engaged in ; and from the very nature and "front of his offence," he must be acquainted with all the wants, the weaknesses, and wickedness, from one end of London to the other. To view all this might gratify curiosity for the mo ment to live in it is to guide a little boat in a storm under a battery of great guns firing at him every moment; but even this has an advantage; it may endear retirement or make seclusion pleasant. In fact, and without a pun, on quitting the World, Major Topham retired to his native county, and has lived two hundred miles from the metropolis, without once visiting it during the space of six whole years. Who could have done this? Who could have thought that remote hills, solitary plains, and, what is worse, country conversation, would have found charms sufficient to detain a town-made man from the streets of London? The physicians would answer, "cooling scenes are the lenitives of fever." After the long labours of a sultry day, where can the weary fly better than to the shade? The man thus circumstanced will naturally say, "O rus! quando ego, te aspiciam, quandoque licibit Major Topham, we understand, has not found, even in retirement, time hang heavy upon his hands. The duties of a country magistrate, in a large county, are very great, and very incessant. He has a considerable 1804-1805. p derable farm of some hundred acres under his own management, and his occasional hours he is dedicating to the compilation of a History of his own Life. He has along with him, those who in his retirement have proved his best solace, three daughters, who are said to be nearly as beautiful as their mother, and whose manners and understandings are reported by those who have seen them, to be equal to all that might be expected. Major T. living in the wilds of Yorkshire, among other country amusements, has been the founder of many coursing establishments. His greyhound, the famous Snowball, is well known to the whole kingdom, as his breed has been sought after in every part of it. His daughters are said to be the best womenriders in England. The last of his literary works* was the Life of Mr. Amongst his dramatic productions are to be reckoned a farce, produced under the management of Mr. Sheridan at Drury Lane, called "Deaf Indeed," respecting which the audience fully justified the title, by not hearing above half of it. To that succeeded, at the same theatre, a farce called "The Fool," first produced for the benefit of Mrs. Wells, and afterwards repeated for many nights. The fame which Mrs. Wells had acquired in her performance of Becky Cadwallader, suggested the idea of the latter production, and she realized all the expectations that had been formed upon this occasion. His next was entitled "Bonds without Judgment," performed for many successive nights at Covent Garden. His last farce received the appellation of "The Westminster Boy ;" and being brought out for the benefit of Mrs. Wells, proved so in reality: not a Westminster boy being absent who could procure money to purchase admittance. For them, the very name was sufficient; and concluding there must be something hostile in it, they be gan, Elwes. If wide-spread circulation be any test of merit, it certainly had this to boast. It was originally published in numbers in the World, which it raised. in sale about one thousand papers. It was thence copied into all the different provincial ones, and afterwards, with some revisions, collected and published in a volume. It is now passing through an eleventh edition. The late Horace Walpole used to say of it, "that it was the best collection of genuine anecdote he knew." No man has more of the manners of a gentleman, or more of the ease and elegance of fashionable life, than Major Topham; though fond of retirement, he communicates himself through a large circle of acquaintance, and is of a temper so easy and companionable, that those who see him once, know him, and those who know him have a pleasing acquaintance, and, if services are required, a warm and zealous friend. His knowledge of life and manners, enlivens his conversation with a perpetual novelty, while his love of humour and ridicule, always restrained within the bounds of benevolence and good-nature, add to the pleasures of the social table, and animate the jocundity of the festive board. The major is what gan, by signal, their operations against it, as Mr. Holman commenced the prologue. The fact we understand to be, that the name was merely taken to introduce Mrs. Wells, who was a beautiful figure in boy's cloaths, in the dress of a Westminster boy. But this, among a thousand others in Stage History, will remain to prove how the fate of many pieces have been determined on ideas totally mistaken. Cicero was of old, a dexterous and incessant punster; this condensation of intellect and wit, as it approximates him more to the level of the society with which he is generally found, (for all cannot be wits and humorists) is so far excusable; but in a gentleman of the higher pretensions of literature, nothing shall escape our censure which conveys the suspicion of superficial genius, where the vein is known to be rich and exuberant. EARL OF BALCARRAS. THE family of Lindsay, like the greater part of the Scottish nobility, boasts of a remote origin and an illustrious descent.* Those conversant with the annals of the sister kingdom are enabled to trace its influence in the court, as well as its prowess in the camp, of the Caledonian monarchs, and the mottot to the arms, together with the crest which surmounts them, alike denote the warlike habits of this race. The intermarriages with other houses have also been, in general, such as were befitting powerful chieftains; and, accordingly, the Earls of Loudon, Roxburgh, and Aberdeen, in Scotland, and Guildford and Hardwicke in England, may be enumerated The Lindsays were originally English, or rather Saxon, and, like several other distinguished personages, are supposed to have retired into Scotland immediately after the Norman Conquest. ASTRA, CASTA, NUMEN, LUMEN. A tent. among |