which they are related with great nicety and sensitive

ness.

Reader. What, Sir, sorry to say that a lady is a good poetess?

Indicator. Only inasmuch, Madam, as the lady gives such authority to the antisocial view of this subject, and will not agree with us as to the beatitude of the Hackney-coach.—But hold :-upon turning to the Manuscript again, we find that the objections are put into the mouth of a Dandy Courtier. This makes a great difference. The Hackney resumes all which it had lost in the good graces of the fair authoress. The only wonder is, how the Courtier could talk so well. Here is the passage.

Eban, untempted by the Pastry-Cooks,

(Of Pastry he got store within the Palace),

With hasty steps, wrapped cloak, and solemn looks,

Incognito upon his errand sallies,

His smelling-bottle ready for the allies;

He pass'd the Hurdy-gurdies with disdain,

Vowing he'd have them sent on board the gallies:
Just as he made his vow, it 'gan to rain,

Therefore he call'd a coach, and bade it drive amain.

“I'll pull the string,” said he, and further said,
"Polluted Jarvey! Ah, thou filthy hack!
Whose strings of life are all dried up and dead,
Whose linsey-wolsey lining hangs all slack,
Whose rug is straw, whose wholeness is a crack;
And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter;
Whose glass once up can never be got back,
Who prov'st, with jolting arguments and bitter,

That 'tis of vile no-use to travel in a litter.

"Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop
For all corn! thou snail-creeper to and fro,
Who while thou goest ever seem'st to stop,
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go;

I' the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
Unto some Lazar-house thou journiest,

And in the evening tak'st a double row

Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest,

Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.

"By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien,

An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge;
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign,

Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge,
School'd in a beckon, learned in a nudge;

A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare;
Quiet and plodding thou dost bear no grudge
To whisking Tilburies or Phaetons rare,
Curricles, or Mail coaches, swift beyond compare."

Philosophising thus, he pull'd the check,
And bade the coachman wheel to such a street,
Who turning much his body, more his neck,
Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet.

The tact here is so nice, of the infirmities which are but too likely to beset our poor old friend, that we should only spoil it to say more. To pass then to the merits.

One of the greatest helps to a sense of merit in other things, is a consciousness of one's own wants. Do you despise a Hackney-Coach? Get tired; get old; get young again. Lay down your carriage, or make it less uneasily too easy. Have to stand up half an hour, out of a storm, under a gateway. Be ill,

and wish to visit a friend who is worse.

Fall in love, and want to sit next your mistress. Or if all this will not do, fall in a cellar.

Ben Jonson in a fit of indignation at the niggardliness of James the First, exclaimed, "He despises me, I suppose, because I live in an alley-tell him his soul lives in an alley." We think we see a hackney-coach moved out of its ordinary patience, and hear it say, "You there, who sit looking so scornfully at me out of your carriage, are yourself the thing you take me for. Your understanding is a hackney-coach. It is lumbering, ricketty, and at a stand. When it moves, it is drawn by things like itself. It is at once the most stationary and the most servile of common places. And when a good thing is put into it, it does not know it."

But it is difficult to imagine a hackney-coach under so irritable an aspect. Hogarth has drawn a set of hats or wigs with countenances of their own. We have noticed the same thing in the faces of houses; and it sometimes gets in one's way in a landscape-painting, with the outlines of the rocks and trees. A friend tells us, that the hackney-coach has its countenance, with gesticulation besides: and now he has pointed it out, we can easily fancy it. Some of them look chucked under the chin, some nodding, some coming at you sideways. We shall never find it easy, however, to fancy the irritable aspect above-mentioned. A hackney-coach always appeared to us the most quiescent of moveables. Its horses and it, slumbering

on a stand, are an emblem of all the patience in creation, animate and inanimate. The submission with which the coach takes every variety of the weather, dust, rain, and wind, never moving but when some eddying blast makes its old body shiver, is only surpassed by the vital patience of the horses. thing better illustrate the poet's line about

-Years that bring the philosophic mind,

Can any

than the still-hung head, the dim indifferent eye, the dragged and blunt-cornered mouth, and the gaunt imbecility of body dropping its weight on three tired legs in order to give repose to the lame one? When it has blinkers on, they seem to be shutting up its eyes for death, like the windows of a house. Fatigue and the habit of suffering have become as natural to the creature, as the bit to its mouth. Once in half an hour it moves the position of its leg, or shakes its drooping ears. The whip makes it go, more from habit than from pain. Its coat has become almost callous to minor stings. The blind and staggering fly in autumn might come to die against its cheek.

Of a pair of hackney-coach horses, one so much resembles the other, that it seems unnecessary for them to compare notes. They have that within them, which is beyond the comparative. They no longer bend their heads towards each other, as they go. They stand together as if unconscious of one another's company. But they are not. An old horse misses

D 3

his companion, like an old man. The presence of an associate, who has gone through pain and suffering with us, need not say any thing. It is talk, and memory, and every thing. Something of this it may be to our old friends in harness. What are they thinking of, while they stand motionless in the rain? Do they remember? Do they dream? Do they still, unperplexed as their old blood is by too many foods, receive a pleasure from the elements; a dull refreshment from the air and sun? Have they yet a palate for the hay which they pull so feebly? or for the rarer grain, which induces them to perform their only voluntary gesture of any vivacity, and toss up the bags that are fastened on their mouths, to get at its shallow feast?

If the old horse were gifted with memory (and who shall say he is not, in one thing as well as another?) it might be at once the most melancholy and pleasantest faculty he has; for the commonest hack has probably been a hunter or racer; has had his days of lustre and enjoyment; has darted along the course, and scoured the pasture; has carried his master proudly, or his lady gently; has pranced, has galloped, has neighed aloud, has dared, has forded, has spurned at mastery, has graced it and made it proud, has rejoiced the eye, has been crowded to as an actor, has been all instinct with life and quickness, has had his very fear admired as courage, and been sat upon by valour as its chosen seat.