transport-hulks? These, and similar meditations, occupied me during the remainder of my walk; and before I reached my own door, I had more than once heaved a wish, with the Macedonian conqueror, that, choosing my own time, I might be allowed to take just one interesting peep from my grave, in order to ascertain, not what the then world would say of me, but what I should think of it. The last Number of the New Monthly lay upon my table -I took it up, and having read the continuation of "Jonathan Kentucky's Journal," retired to rest. My brain was still busy with the thoughts of the evening-I was no sooner asleep than I became, instanter, the Editor of "The New Monthly Magazine." In that capacity I fancied myself to be in the act of inspecting some papers offered for insertion, when a person of a strange and indescribable appearance, whom I had not observed entering the room, touched my elbow, and presented a letter, which, he said, he had particular instructions to deliver into my own hands. Having broken the seal, I turned round to ask if an immediate answer was required; but the messenger had vanished. The following were the contents of this mysterious communication : To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. Futurity-Hali, Aug. 3, 2200. MR. EDITOR, I am not in the habit of intruding myself on the public; I am, on the contrary, by nature, of a proverbially retiring disposition--yet it is well known, that if flattery could have made me vain, I ought to entertain no mean opinion of myself; for not only did Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and the few other British writers with whom I am acquainted, compose their works professedly rather for me than for their contemporaries, but I am credibly informed, that myriads of authors besides, of every age and country, but whose names have never reached me, have had the kindness to express themselves as peculiarly ambitious of my approbation-and in all the controversies upon their respective merits, have invariably referred the question to me as sole and final arbitrator. I have no doubt that several of your literary friends, both poets and others, entertain the same favourable opinion of my taste and judgment, and are generously devoting their time and talents for my instruction and amusement. Pray present my compliments to them (I wish I knew their names), and say from me, that I am fully sensible of their liberality, though I may never feel the benefits of it. However, as a small mark of my gratitude, I have determined, for once, to depart from my usual habits of silence and reserve; and as you and my other ancestors must doubtless be curious to get a glimpse of Old England in the 23d century, and to have an authentic specimen, however trifling, of the literary and social opinions of us moderns, I beg leave to inclose for your and their perusal, a few extracts from the last number of one of our monthly magazines the "Old Hampstead." It is considered as one of the best-conducted of our periodical publications, and far superior to its inveterate rival, the "Highgate Critic." In this judgment I am impartial, for I occasionally throw off an article for both; but the "Old Hampstead" has really more talent, and, besides, it is venerable to my imagination from its antiquity. It was established as far back as the year 2050, when the Hampstead side of the metropolis was first becoming, what it now unquestionably is, the centre of fashion and intellect. The first editor was Mr. Stapleton Scott-a very worthy and intellectual person by all accounts-and who claimed to be lineally descended from a Sir Walter of the same name, who flourished in literature (as Stapleton used often to boast) between two and three hundred years before. This Sir Walter, by the by, wrote some pleasing poems, as far as I can judge from one or two extracts preserved in the lately-published "Specimens of the ancient Schools of English Poetry." His descendant also asserted that the old Baronet had amassed a large fortune, and acquired great reputation in his day (the latter of which alone devolved upon Stapleton), by a series of novels and romances; but hearing that they all were written in the Scotch dialect of the time, and dealt too much in dialogues between hags and marauders, I never felt inclined to read them. I hope that what I write is perfectly intelligible to you. In fact, I have taken some pains to hit upon the exact degree of antiquation that may accord with the style of your age-a task for which, I flatter myself, I am not entirely unfit, as I often take up a volume of old Fielding, Goldsmith, Junius, and that venerable dame of blessed memory to the lovers of the marvellous, Anne Radcliffe. I have done the same with the following extracts-expunging modernisms, and substituting the ancient phraseology wherever I considered the alteration requisite. But, on the whole, our sturdy language wears well, and has been less affected by the shocks of time than many of your day predicted. With compliments to the 19th century, I am, Mr. Editor, POSTERITY. "From the Old Hampstead Magazine for August 2200. "MISCELLANEOUS. "When I reside in the country, I am seldom thrown into trains of melancholy reflection upon the evanescence of human hopes and concerns or (what is but an extension of the same sentiment) upon the general tendency to decay in all the visible productions of nature. The reason, I take it, is, that in the case of vegetable mortality, the season of reproduction so regularly and rapidly succeeds-or, to adopt the expression of a celebrated living poet, "the death of the year" is so quickly followed by a glorious resurrection, that it were an idle and fastidious sorrow to mourn over what is less a loss than a temporary separation. It were as rational to pass every night of our lives in bewailing the decease of the sun. It is only where the spectator himself is on the eve of a final removal, either to another world, or to some distant land whence he may never return, that such a feeling should be indulged; and then, I allow, it is both natural and relieving, as we look for the last time upon the homeliest of the familiar objects around us, to heave a farewell sigh, and shed a parting tear. But I never pass many days in a large city, more especially in this gigantic metropolis, where every street and edifice reminds me of past ages, and is itself, as it were, the monument of some dead generation, without being forcibly reminded of the lapse of time, and the vicissitudes it brings upon the affairs of men. Considered in this view, a stately capital, with its grand spires, and palaces, and squares, all in the most complete repair, becomes as strong and affecting an evidence of mortality, as if, with old Babylon, it lay in ruins and desolation, with nothing save a huge mound, like an ancient giant's grave, to mark the spot where all its glory was buried. In either case, the imagination will equally ask ---Where are the builders? Where are the old joys, and hopes, and projects, that once revelled within these walls? Where the nowforgotten poet, that strutted in the prophetic assurance of immortal renown-or the young enthusiast, with his burning vows of eternal constancy and love-or the founders of the many races of extinct opinions, which they fondly imagined had been immovably fixed upon a time-proof basis?--Alas, even their epitaphs are gone! and the sole remnants of their former existence, could we discover where they lay, would be a few handfuls of nameless dust! "Such were the reflections that passed through my mind in rapid but mournful procession, as I looked down the other day from the steeple of Primrose church upon the circumjacent wilderness of buildings. (This noble structure, if I recollect right, was commenced in the last year of the reign of Stephen the Third, of glorious memory, A. D. 2096, and completed in the following year by his illustrious successor, Henry the Twelfth, the wisest and most accomplished prince, excepting his present gracious Majesty, that ever adorned the British Throne.) I had ascended to this eminence in company with a friend, his wife, and their young family, who had lately arrived from Devonshire, and being suddenly recalled, were anxious to be enabled to say, on their return home, that they had seen the whole of London. We were accompanied by my ingenious neighbour, the author of " Isaac's Letters to his Great-Grandchildren," a writer who, in addition to his being a profound antiquarian, possesses the happy talent of enlivening every topic that he touches, by that style of genuine humour, in which we are confessedly so superior to any preceding age. scene. "The view was a glorious one; yet my constitutional melancholy began to break out, and I could not refrain from moralizing upon it. 'I have a painting (said I, turning to my Devonshire friend,) of the scene beneath us, as ancient as the beginning of the nineteenth century-the good old days of Wellington and Nelson. It was then a rural The mound over which we stand was, as the name imports, covered with primroses. Hither, on Sundays and holidays, the citizens of London, or, to adopt the simple phraseology of the time, "numerous well-dressed persons of both sexes," delighted to resort. Happy and innocent times! Methinks I still can see the cheerful groups moving along in tranquil procession, to enjoy their homely recreation, their little children trotting by their side, or sporting in the new-made hay upon the plain, or gaily clambering up the yellow mount, and returning, each with a glorious bunch of primroses in his Alas! they little imagined what a change a few generations of bricklayers were destined to work upon this spot. The site of yonder murky brewhouse was then a delicious tea-garden. In the adjacent lane, then a shady sequestered avenue, in which the grasshopper chirped a welcome to the strolling lovers, the lazy waggon now growls along. For the lowing herd we have now the bawling watchman-to shrubberies and hedgerows have succeeded files of hackney-coachesand the very spot, perhaps, upon which the coy maiden of those days blushed her acceptance of the plighted vow, is now usurped by antipastoral barrels of pickled beef for exportation, or "all articles in the hardware line, for ready money only." These changes make me sad. The enormous corpulency of our metropolis is, doubtless, a proud test of our opulence and power; still I can never recur to its effects upon our rural habits, without envying those simpler times, when the humblest and most central citizen could sally forth once a week to refresh his senses, and ventilate himself and his little ones, in a country excursion; but now interminable streets and squares fence him in on every point, and nature and fresh air have become a day's journey from Cheapside.' What “And yet (returned my antiquarian friend, taking up the conversation) I have never repined at being condemned to live in the present age. I know something of the "good old times" of which you speak. Let not a sounding phrase impose upon us. Our ancestors of the nineteenth century may have had a few wise and virtuous men among them; but as a generation, they were barbarous and perverse. With what contempt do the philosophers of our days refer to their maxims of state and legislation-their eternal wars-their senseless restrictions upon commerce-their criminal code-their laws for killing men and preserving pheasants-their taxation, the child of glory and the parent of grumbling-their sinecures their legal fictions-their special action on the case for calling a scoundrel by his proper name. trifling with common sense! what tampering with human life! The same act in those days was murder in a court of justice, and honour in a ball-room. You see that spot beneath us which still retains its primæval name, the once famous Chalk Farm. It was there that our "good old forefathers" used to meet and pistol one another upon principles which we are unable to comprehend. I shall not go in detail through the folly of their institutions: let a single fact suffice. The youth of those times were taught their first notions of government in the Republican writers of Greece and Rome; and when they came to man's estate, were certain of being pilloried or hanged if they ventured, in word or act, to manifest a distaste to monarchical establishments. The same spirit of perverseness disgraced their literature. I have sometimes taken up a volume of their now-forgotten poetry, but at the first page have been compelled to fling away the unnatural trash in disgust. Their most popular poetry was the apotheosis of all that can be conceived most loathsome or abominable in wretchedness or in crime. Reprobates, who even then would not have been admitted into decent society, and who, if indicted at the quarter-sessions, must have been sentenced to whipping and low diet, were versified into right good poetical heroes; and the records of their misdemeanours were (to use the critical cant of the day) "to last as long as the English language." What a complimentary presentiment of our morals and our taste! Nor was this generation only irrational; it appears to have been completely miserable. I read that suicide was one of the customs of the country. Only imagine what a fearful and precarious tenure must have been existence, when a man, though he should escape the vengeance of the laws, and his neighbour's spring-guns, and his friend's bullet, was, after all, in hourly danger of blowing out his own brains. We laugh or shudder at these things; but they called themselves enlightened, and would have denounced as a fantastic speculator, any one who should hold (what we admit as self-evident truths) that capital punishments may be abolished without increasing crimes that the laws should not favour partridges that it is wiser to spend our money in drinking French wine, than in shedding French and English blood-that an appetite for military glory is the test of a barbarous age-that the democratic writers of antiquity are not the fittest manuals of allegiance that poetry should not countenance beldames and ruffians-and, finally, that it was very unthinking in those who denied all this, to call themselves "a thinking people.": "Music.-Mamaboo, the celebrated violin player from Timbuctoo, who for the last four years has been performing in the principal capitals of Africa and Europe, made his first appearance before a British audience on the 20th ult. We found that fame had not belied his powers. Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of his execution. He was frequently and rapturously encored. Mamaboo is not only one of the most admirable musicians of his age, but we have it from good authority that he possesses the mind and manners of an accomplished gentleman. He speaks his own language with great elegance, and French and English with considerable fluency. One little trait of him is worth relating. The day after his arrival in London, when asked what national object of curiosity he was most desirous to visit, he feelingly replied, The grave of Clarkson.' He confirms our late statement, that a splendid monument to the memory of that illustrious philanthropist has been erected in the capital of Timbuctoo. The following is the inscription, as translated by Mamaboo. The Africans, now free and happy, remember the benefits conferred four hundred years ago upon their suffering ancestors by Thomas Clarkson, an Englishman.' And yet perhaps the single specimen of the civilization of modern Africa, as manifested in the talents of this interesting stranger, should be contemplated as a more valuable and affecting memorial of our countryman's merits, than the most gorgeous tribute that architecture could bestow." "Antiquities. Velocipede. A Fellow of Cambridge has just published an interesting Treatise upon the origin and use of this curious instrument, respecting which the opinions of antiquarians have been so long divided. The prevailing notion of late has been, that it was a |