you have a chance of getting your head broke. I remember once, to have myself got a most inhuman drubbing for saying, as I thought, a smart thing to my master upon such an occasion.

Endeavour to conceal as much as possible, your being bound apprentice to a writer; for, to say the truth, all business is below a gentleman of any spirit; and when the world sees you strolling about the country, with a fowling-piece on your shoulder and a pointer at your heels, they will never suspect that you mean to work for your bread; they will naturally conclude, either that you are a gentleman of considerable landed property, or that you have gained a capital prize in the last state lottery, or that somebody has left you something somewhere; and in either of these cases, depend upon it, you will be treated by strangers with much respect. The profession of an attorney too, you will recollect, is far from being popular, and this is an additional motive for your concealing, with some adroitness, your connection with it. Pope, you know, has said,

"Boastful and rough, your first son is a 'squire,
"The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar.
"Tom struts a soldier, honest, bold, and brave;
"Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave.”

If you get a paper from your master which he wants copied in a hurry, lay it down deliberately on your desk, and after taking a pinch of snuff, take up a law book, if there should be one in the office, and read, or pretend to read half a dozen pages for the improvement of your mind is surely an object of much greater importance than the copying, it may be, of some very foolish paper.

Should you be sent in the morning with papers to the Parliament-house, which are in a very great hurry, and should your master anxiously desire you to run the whole way that you may not be too late, walk with the utmost so

lemnity, and as slow as if you were going to be hanged. For why should you run the risk of catching a fever, by overheating yourself merely to oblige your master? besides, this behaviour of yours will teach him in future to be more orderly and timeous with his papers in a morning, and order is absolutely requisite in carrying on business.

Always walk with a cane, or some fashionable switch, or a short bludgeon, (as the vogue may be) although you should be sent a message to the next door. Every person who wears a cane, switch, or bludgeon, is, eo ipso, a gentleman.

If you can any how contrive to procure a pair of boots, your fortune is made; for wearing boots, when you have not the most distant intention of riding, nor perhaps as much money in your repositories as would hire a hack for a day, is another infallible mark of a gentleman. See that the tops of your boots, however, are pushed down to your ankles, otherwise people might suspect that your master was about to send you into the country upon business; an aspersion against which you cannot, on your entry into life, be too careful of guarding against.

Copying your master's letters is a most intolerable slavery, especially if he has taken a crotchet into his wise head, of writing to his clients a dull history of his proceedings in every dull law-suit. Make short work with them. Leave out whole sentences, and by contractions, et ceteras, and expunging absurd passages, you may condense a letter of three pages into about as many lines. Nothing is more beautiful and elegant than a short concise stile, especially in letters; and from the days of the elder Pliny, down to those of Mr. Gamaliel Pickle inclusive, every man of taste and genius has cultivated this study with diligence and attention. In the first volume of Peregrine Pickle, a book never to be sufficiently commended, (and which buy) you will find a very beautiful illustration of what I am now recommending to you. I mean the letter from Mr. Gamaliel Pickle to his mistress, and which I take to be a perfect model of the epistolary stile,

although I confess, that it has not been noticed either by Mr. Harris, Lord Kames, or Doctor Blair; a proof, that even the most laborious and elegant writers on composition and the Belles Lettres, will sometimes overlook a very striking exemplification. So true it is, that

66

Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus."

Make it a point with your master, that he must give you the whole of both vacations, and also Christmas holidays, that you may enjoy the sporting seasons, as well as the days of festivity. What gentleman would sit from morning to night, and from morning to night again, poring over bundles of musty papers?

Send out your master's servant upon as many of your messages as you can, and in the more ignoble parts of your business, such as buying pens, paper, and ink, and carrying letters to the post-office, and which no gentleman would be seen in. This will teach the lad to be smart, and who knows, but that one day he become a writer himself, and be as good a man as your master, of which I could name some very notable instances already, now flourishing in this great city. Should your master have occasion for the servant when you have ordered him out, he will only be very angry, when he finds that you have been the occasion of it; but your master's being in a passion is surely of no consequence to you, and it will do him good, by making his blood circulate, for a brisk circulation is now and then of much benefit to a sedentary person. This is the reason that you see all lawyers fond of walking.

If you happen unfortunately to be only your father's third or fourth son, and perhaps a very slender income to maintain you all, take care that your eldest brother does not outdo you in spirit. The proverb says, "The younger brother "the better gentleman," and do not shame the proverb, but run into every expence, foolery, and affectation you can. This was so perfectly understood among the Romans, that

when the extravagance of a younger brother exceeded that of the elder, they used to call it his Gestio pro hærede, as you will see in the law books, when you come to divert yourself with the civil law.

During the whole period of your apprenticeship, go out regularly to drink tea every afternoon, without missing it so much as once, and stay about two hours, till your master has raised the hue and cry after you, which is perhaps better. This will show your master that you have not been bred up like a country booby, without getting tea in the afternoon. Besides, tea is of a refreshing, sedative, and aromatic quality, and the chit-chat of the ladies extremely alluring, after your drudging, perhaps for near half an hour, in your master's office. Whatever hints your master may have given you from time to time, about this same tea-drinking business, take no notice of them. The only danger to be apprehended indeed, is his getting into a horrible unchristian passion some night, and perhaps, with divers profane oaths, absolutely prohibiting tea in all time to come, under severe and exemplary penalties. In such a case, it is difficult how to advise you, but I think your best plan would be, immediately upon this, to throw up your master's service altogether, and to ship yourself off directly for the East Indies, where tea is in great abundance, both Bohea and Green, and where you must very soon make a fortune. The expence of the passage is indeed considerable, and consequently may be inconvenient, but I have known some of our brethren very ingeniously surmount this obstacle, by getting themselves entered as convicts, and by which means you pay not a farthing; on the contrary, every thing necessary, either for your back or belly, is most plentifully administered and supplied. If, however, you have taken any private disgust at the proceedings of Messrs. Hyder Ally and Tippo Saib, or perhaps conceived some foolish prejudice at the Black Hole of Calcutta, you may easily, by passing your trials, qualify yourself for a birth in the steerage in the next Botany Bay fleet, and

where you will be perfectly safe from any irruption of the Mahrattas.

One word more, and I have done. If a letter is left in the office for your master, observe if you think it is from a woman. If you do, endeavour to pry into it, and follow the same rule with all letters going from your master to any lady, and which may pass thro' your hands. It has been both said and sung, that “'Tis woman that seduces all "mankind;" and as you are bound by your indenture to defend your master's good name, and to prevent as much as in your power, any injury to his character or fortune, you cannot render him a more essential service, than by preventing him from forming improper intimacies with the sex, for such connections often lead a man to ruin.

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS, junior.

X.

EPIGRAM ON THE LATE HUGO ARNOT, ESQ. ADVOCATE.

Written by the Honourable Henry Erskine.

The Scriptures assure us much may be forgiven
To flesh and to blood, by the mercy of heaven;
But I've searched all the books, and texts I find none
That extend such forgiveness to skin and to bone.*

Hugo was so attenuated as to be almost a walking skeleton,-had he lived till the year 1825, he might have proved a formidable rival to the living skeleton of that period. One day he was eating a split dried haddock, commonly called a spelding, when the reputed author of these lines came in,-" You see," says Hugo, "I am not starving," "I must own," observed Henry Erskine, "that you are very like your meat."