with winking eyes, it threatens to trip them up. To lose the ferrule on a country road, renders the end liable to the growth of a sordid brush; which, not having a knife with you, or a shop in which to borrow one, goes pounding the wet up against your legs. In a crowded street, you may have the stick driven into a large pane of glass; upon which an unthinking tradesman, utterly indifferent to a chain of events, issues forth, and demands twelve shillings and sixpence. But perhaps we have been anticipated on these points by that useful regulator of the philosophy of every-day matters, who wrote a treatise entitled "The Miseries of Human Life." We shall only add, that the stick is never more in the way than when you meet two ladies, your friends, whose arms you are equally bound and beatified to take. It cannot possibly be held in the usual way, to say nothing of its going against the gown or pelisse; and to carry it over the shoulder, endangers veils and bonnets, besides rendering you liable to the gallant reproaches of the unreflecting; who, thinking you must have walked with the ladies from all eternity, instead of the next street, ask you whether you could not leave your stick at home even for two. But see how situations the most perplexing to an unreflecting good-will may change their character before a spirit truly enlightened by the smiles on each side of him! Now is the time, if the fortunate sceptrosopher wishes to be thought well of in a fair bosom. He throws away the stick. The lady smiles and deprecates, and thinks how generously he could protect her without a stick.

It was thus that Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was an aspirant at Elizabeth's court at Greenwich, attending her one day on a walk, in company with other fine spirits of that age, and coming upon a plashy strip of ground which put her Majesty's princely foot to a non-plus, no sooner saw her dilemma than he took off a gallant velvet cloak which he had about him, and, throwing it across the mud and dirt, made such a passage for her to go over, as her royal womanhood never forgot.

N

A NOW.

DESCRIPTIVE OF A HOT DAY.

WOW the rosy- (and lazy-) fingered Aurora, issuing from her saffron house, calls up the moist vapours to surround her, and goes veiled with them as long as she can ; till Phoebus, coming forth in his power, looks everything out of the sky, and holds sharp uninterrupted empire from his throne of beams. Now the mower begins to make his sweeping cuts more slowly, and resorts oftener to the beer. Now the carter sleeps a-top of his load of hay, or plods with double slouch of shoulder, looking out with eyes winking under his shading hat, and with a hitch upward of one side of his mouth. Now the little girl at her grandmother's cottage-door watches the coaches that go by, with her hand held up over her sunny forehead. Now labourers look well, resting in their white shirts at the doors of rural alehouses. Now an elm is fine there, with a seat under it; and horses drink out of the trough, stretching their yearning necks with loosened collars; and the traveller calls for his glass of ale, having been without one for more than ten minutes; and his horse stands wincing at the flies, giving sharp shivers of his skin, and moving to and fro his ineffectual docked tail; and now Miss Betty Wilson, the host's daughter, comes streaming forth in a flowered gown and ear-rings, carrying with four of her beautiful fingers the foaming glass, for which, after the traveller has drank it, she receives with an indifferent eye,

looking another way, the lawful twopence; that is to say, unless the traveller, nodding his ruddy face, pays some gallant compliment to her before he drinks, such as, "I'd rather kiss you, my dear, than the tumbler," or, " I'll wait for you, my love, if you'll marry me;" upon which, if the man is good-looking, and the lady in good-humour, she smiles and bites her lips, and says, Ah, men can talk fast enough; upon which the old stagecoachman, who is buckling something near her, before he sets off, says in a hoarse voice, "So can women too, for that matter," and John Boots grins through his ragged red locks, and doats on the repartee all the day after. Now grasshopers "fry," as Dryden says. Now cattle stand in water, and ducks are envied. Now boots and shoes, and trees by the road-side, are thick with dust; and dogs, rolling in it, after issuing out of the water, into which they have been thrown to fetch sticks, come scattering horror among the legs of the spectators. Now a fellow who finds he has three miles farther to go in a pair of tight shoes is in a pretty situation. Now rooms with the sun upon them become intolerable; and the apothecary's apprentice, with a bitterness beyond aloes, thinks of the pond he used to bathe in at school. Now men with powdered heads (especially if thick) envy those that are unpowdered, and stop to wipe them up hill, with countenances that seem to expostulate with destiny. Now boys assemble round the village pump with a ladle to it, and delight to make a forbidden splash, and get wet through the shoes. Now also they make suckers of leather, and bathe all day long in rivers and ponds, and follow the fish into their cool corners, and say millions of " My eyes!" at "tittle-bats." Now the bee, as he hums along, seems to be talking heavily of the heat. Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be thought of. Now a green lane, on the contrary, thick set with hedgerow elms, and having the noise of a brook “rumbling in pebble-stone," is one of the pleasantest things in the world. Now youths and damsels walk

through hay-fields by chance; and the latter say, "Ha' done then, William ;" and the overseer in the next field calls out to "let thic thear hay thear bide;" and the girls persist, merely to plague "such a frumpish old fellow."

Now, in town, gossips talk more than ever to one another in rooms, in door-ways, and out of window, always beginning the conversation with saying that the heat is overpowering. Now blinds are let down, and doors thrown open, and flannel waistcoats left off, and cold meat preferred to hot, and wonder expressed why tea continues so refreshing; and people delight to sliver lettuces into bowls, and apprentices water door-ways with tin canisters, that lay several atoms of dust. Now the water-cart, jumbling along the middle of the street, and jolting the showers out of its box of water, really does something. Now boys delight to have a water-pipe let out, and see it bubbling away in a tall and frothy volume. Now fruiterers' shops and dairies look pleasant, and ices are the only things to those who can get them. Now ladies loiter in baths; and people make presents of flowers; and wine is put into ice; and the afterdinner lounger recreates his head with applications of perfumed water out of long-necked bottles. Now the lounger, who cannot resist riding his new horse, feels his boots burn him. Now buck-skins are not the lawn of Cos. Now jockies, walking in great-coats to lose flesh, curse inwardly. Now five fat people in a stage coach hate the sixth fat one who is coming in, and think he has no right to be so large. Now clerks in offices do nothing but drink soda-water and spruce-beer, and read the newspaper. Now the old clothes-man drops his solitary cry more deeply into the areas on the hot and forsaken side of the street; and bakers look vicious; and cooks are aggravated; and the steam of a tavern kitchen catches hold of one like the breath of Tartarus. Now delicate skins are beset with gnats; and boys make their sleeping companion start up, with playing a burning-glass on his hand; and blacksmiths are super-carbonated; and cobblers in their stalls almost feel a wish to be

transplanted; and butter is too easy to spread; and the dragoons wonder whether the Romans liked their helmets; and old ladies, with their lappets unpinned, walk along in a state of dilapidation; and the servant-maids are afraid they look vulgarly hot; and the author, who has a plate of strawberries brought him, finds that he has come to the end of his writing.

We cannot conclude this article, however, without returning thanks, both on our own account and on that of our numerous predecessors who have left so large a debt of gratitude unpaid, to this very useful and ready monsyllable-"Now." We are sure that there is not a didactic poet, ancient or modern, who, if he possessed a decent share of candour, would not be happy to own his acknowledgments to that masterly conjunction, which possesses the very essence of wit, for it has the talent of bringing the most remote things together. And its generosity is in due proportion to its talent, for it always is most profuse of its aid where it is most wanted.

We must enjoy a pleasant passage with the reader on the subject of this "eternal Now" in Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the "Woman-hater." Upon turning to it, we perceive that our illustrious particle does not make quite so great a figure as we imagined; but the whole passage is in so analogous a taste, and affords such an agreeable specimen of the wit and humour with which fine poets could rally the commonplaces of their art, that we cannot help proceeding with it. Lazarillo, a foolish table-hunter, has requested an introduction to the Duke of Milan, who has had a fine lamprey presented him. Before the introduction takes place, he finds that the Duke has given the fish away; so that his wish to be known to him goes with it; and part of the drollery of the passage arises from his uneasiness at being detained by the consequences of his own request, and his fear lest he should be too late for the lamprey elsewhere. "Count. [Aside to the Duke.]

"Let me entreat your Grace to stay a little,

To know a gentleman, to whom yourself