est, good-natured, straightforward, middle-aged, easily-pleased Fogy is a worthy and amiable member of society, and a man who gets both respect and liking.

Even in the lovely sex, who has not remarked how painful is that period of a woman's life when she is passing out of her bloom, and thinking about giving up her position as a beauty? What sad injustice and stratagems she has to perpetrate during the struggle! She hides away her daughters in the schoolroom, she makes them wear cruel pinafores, and dresses herself in the garb which they ought to assume. She is obliged to distort the calendar, and to resort to all sorts of schemes and arts to hide, in her own person, the august and respectable marks of time. Ah! what is this revolt against nature but impotent blasphemy? Is not Autumn beautiful in its appointed season, that we are to be ashamed of her and paint her yellowing leaves pea-green? Let us, I say, take the fall of the year as it was made, serenely and sweetly, and await the time when Winter comes and the nights shut in. I know, for my part, many ladies who are far more agreeable and more beautiful too, now that they are no longer beauties; and, by converse, I have no doubt that Toplady, about whom we were speaking just now, will be a far pleasanter person when he has given up the practice, or desire, of killing the other sex, and has sunk into a mellow repose as an old bachelor or a married

man.

The great and delightful advantage that a man enjoys in the world, after he has abdicated all pretensions as a conqueror and enslaver of females, and both formally, and of his heart, acknowledges himself to be a Fogy, is that he now comes for the first time to enjoy and appreciate duly the society of women. For a young man about town, there is only one woman in the whole city. (at least very few indeed of the young Turks, let us hope, dare to have two or three strings to their wicked bows) he goes to ball after ball in pursuit of that one person; he sees no other eyes but hers; hears no other voice; cares for no other petticoat but that in which his charmer dances: he pursues her—is refused is accepted and jilted; breaks his heart, mends it of course, and goes on again after some other beloved being, until in the order of fate and nature he marries and settles, or remains unmarried, free, and a Fogy. Until then we know nothing of women the kindness

and refinement and wit of the elders; the artless prattle and dear little chatter of the young ones; all these are hidden from us until we take the Fogy's degree: nay, even perhaps from

married men, whose age and gravity entitle them to rank amongst Fogies; for every woman, who is worth anything, will be jealous of her husband up to seventy or eighty, and always prevent his intercourse with other ladies. But an old bachelor, or better still, an old widower, has this delightful entrée into the female world: he is free to come; to go; to listen; to joke; to sympathize; to talk with mamma about her plans and troubles; to pump from Miss the little secrets that gush so easily from her pure little well of a heart; the ladies do not gêner themselves before him, and he is admitted to their mysteries like the Doctor, the Confessor, or the Kislar Aga.

What man, who can enjoy this pleasure and privilege, ought to be indifferent to it? If the society of one woman is delightful, as the young fellows think, and justly, how much more delightful is the society of a thousand! One woman, for instance, has brown eyes, and a geological or musical turn; another has sweet blue eyes, and takes, let us say, the Gorham side of the controversy at present pending; a third darling, with long fringed lashes hiding eyes of hazel, lifts them up ceiling-wards in behalf of Miss Sellon, thinks the Lord Chief Justice has hit the poor young lady very hard in publishing her letters, and proposes to quit the Church next Tuesday or Wednesday, or whenever Mr. Oriel is ready — and, of course, a man may be in love with one or the other of these. But it is manifest that brown eyes will remain brown eyes to the end, and that, having no other interest but music or geology, her conversation on those points may grow more than sufficient. Sapphira, again, when she has said her say with regard to the Gorham affair, and proved that the other party are but Romanists in disguise, and who is interested on no other subject, may possibly tire you- so may Hazelia, who is working altar-cloths all day, and would desire no better martyrdom than to walk barefoot in a night procession up Sloane Street and home by Wilton Place, time enough to get her poor meurtris little feet into white slippers for the night's ball I say, if a man can be wrought up to rapture, and enjoy bliss in the company of any one of these young ladies, or any other individuals in the infinite variety of Miss-kind-how much real sympathy, benevolent pleasure, and kindly observation may he enjoy, when he is allowed to be familiar with the whole charming race, and behold the brightness of all their different eyes, and listen to the sweet music of their various voices!

In possession of the right and privilege of garrulity which is

accorded to old age, I cannot allow that a single side of paper should contain all that I have to say in respect to the manifold advantages of being a Fogy. I am a Fogy, and have been a young man. I see twenty women in the world constantly to whom I would like to have given a lock of my hair in days when my pate boasted of that ornament; for whom my heart felt tumultuous emotions, before the victorious and beloved Mrs. Pacifico subjugated it. If I had any feelings now, Mrs. P. would order them and me to be quiet: but I have none; I am tranquil - yes, really tranquil (though as my dear Leonora is sitting opposite to me at this minute, and has an askance glance from her novel to my paper as I write - even if I were not tranquil, I should say that I was; but I am quiet): I have passed the hot stage: and I do not know a pleasanter and calmer feeling of mind than that of a respectable person of the middle age, who can still be heartily and generously fond of all the women about whom he was in a passion and a fever in early life. If you cease liking a woman when you cease loving her, depend on it, that one of you is a bad one. You are parted, never mind with what pangs on either side, or by what circumstances of fate, choice, or necessity, you have no money or she has too much, or she likes somebody else better, and so forth; but an honest Fogy should always, unless reason be given to the contrary, think well of the woman whom he has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and tenderness, as a man remembers a place where he has been very happy.

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A proper management of his recollections thus constitutes a very great item in the happiness of a Fogy. I, for my part, would rather remember and -, and (I dare not mention names, for isn't my Leonora pretending to read "The Initials," and peeping over my shoulder?) than be in love over again. It is because I have suffered prodigiously from that passion that I am interested in beholding others undergoing the malady. I watch it in all ball-rooms (over my cards, where I and the old ones sit,) and dinner-parties. Without sentiment, there would be no flavor in life at all. I like to watch young folks who are fond of each other, be it the housemaid furtively engaged smiling and glancing with John through the area railings; be it Miss and the Captain whispering in the embrasure of the drawing-room window - Amant is interesting to me because of Amavi - of course it is Mrs. Pacifico I mean.

All Fogies of good breeding and kind condition of mind, who go about in the world much, should remember to efface

themselves—if I may use a French phrase - they should not, that is to say, thrust in their old mugs on all occasions. When the people are marching out to dinner, for instance, and the Captain is sidling up to Miss, Fogy, because he is twenty years older than the Captain, should not push himself forward to arrest that young fellow, and carry off the disappointed girl on his superannuated rheumatic old elbow. When there is anything of this sort going on (and a man of the world has possession of the carte du pays with half an eye), I become interested in a picture, or have something particular to say to pretty Polly the parrot, or to little Tommy, who is not coming in to dinner, and while I am talking to him, Miss and the Captain make their little arrangement. In this way I managed only last week to let young Billington and the lovely Blanche Pouter get together; and walked down stairs with my hat for the only partner of my arm. Augustus Toplady now, because he was a Captain of Dragoons almost before Billington was born, would have insisted upon his right of precedence over Billing. ton, who only got his troop the other day.

Precedence! Fiddlestick! Men squabble about precedence because they are doubtful about their condition, as Irishmen will insist upon it that you are determined to insult and trample upon their beautiful country, whether you are thinking about it or no; men young to the world mistrust the bearing of others towards them, because they mistrust themselves. I have seen many sneaks and much cringing of course in the world; but the fault of gentlefolks is generally the contrary an absurd doubt of the intentions of others towards us, and a perpetual assertion of our twopenny dignity, which nobody is thinking of wounding.

As a young man, if the Lord I knew did not happen to notice me, the next time I met him I used to envelop myself in my dignity, and treat his Lordship with such a tremendous hauteur and killing coolness of demeanor, that you might have fancied I was an Earl at least, and he a menial upon whom I trampled. Whereas he was a simple, good-natured creature who had no idea of insulting or slighting me, and, indeed, scarcely any idea about any subject, except racing and shooting. Young men have this uneasiness in society, because they are thinking about themselves: Fogies are happy and tranquil, because they are taking advantage of, and enjoying, without suspicion, the good-nature and good offices of other well-bred people.

Have you not often wished for yourself, or some other dear

friend, ten thousand a year? It is natural that you should like such a good thing as ten thousand a year; and all the pleasures and comforts which it brings. So also it is natural that a man should like the society of people well-to-do in the world; who make their houses pleasant, who gather pleasant persons about them, who have fine pictures on their walls, pleasant books in their libraries, pleasant parks and town and country houses, good cooks and good cellars: if I were coming to dine with you, I would rather have a good dinner than a bad one; if Soand-so is as good as you and possesses these things, he, in so far, is better than you who do not possess them: therefore I had rather go to his house in Belgravia than to your lodgings in Kentish Town. That is the rationale of living in good company. An absurd, conceited, high-and-mighty young man hangs back, at once insolent and bashful; an honest, simple, quiet, easy, clear-sighted Fogy steps in and takes the goods which the gods provide, without elation as without squeamishness.

It is only a few men who attain simplicity in early life. This man has his conceited self-importance to be cured of; that has his conceited bashfulness to be "taken out of him," as the phrase is. You have a disquiet which you try to hide, and you put on a haughty guarded manner. You are suspicious of the good-will of the company round about you, or of the estimation in which they hold you. You sit mum at table. It is not your place to "put yourself forward." You are thinking about yourself, that is; you are suspicious about that personage and everybody else: that is, you are not frank; that is, you are not well-bred; that is, you are not agreeable. I would instance my young friend Mumford as a painful example one of the wittiest, cheeriest, cleverest, and most honest of fellows in his own circle; but having the honor to dine the other day at Mr. Hobanob's, where his Excellency the Crimean Minister and several gentlemen of humor and wit were assembled, Mumford did not open his mouth once for the purposes of conversation, but sat and ate his dinner as silently as a brother of La Trappe.

He was thinking with too much distrust of himself (and of others by consequence) as Toplady was thinking of himself in the little affair in Hyde Park to which I have alluded in the former chapter. When Mumford is an honest Fogy, like some folks, he will neither distrust his host, nor his company, nor himself; he will make the best of the hour and the people round about him; he will scorn tumbling over head and heels for his