He hesitated awhile, but then opening a drawer, he said,

"Alas! I fear recovery is hopeless, and you will probably say so too when you have perused this. I told you I had sometimes, in very want of other employment, undertaken a journal, which, from shame, I almost always destroyed as soon as written. This little record of only one month of my useless life is the only one that has escaped, and will prove to you how vain to me have been all the adventitious gifts of what men call good fortune, and how much the lowest menial of my house, while he perhaps envies my lot, might be himself the object of envy to his master."

At these words he put into my hands a small roll of paper. "I give it you," said he, "as my mental case, and as, if it were a bodily one, I would give it my physician. But our minds, perhaps, want physicians even more than our bodies. I feel that your presence here has already done me good."

I thanked him for this confidence, and was proceeding to read, when, with his usual disposition to procrastinate, he said,

"No; not now: by-and-by, if you please. To-night, to-morrow, or next day, will do quite as well. Besides, the post is just arrived with the daily and weekly papers ; and—thanks to the confounded energies of the press-merely to read, much more to digest, requires no small consumption of time; but, in short, it is the only reading I venture upon."

"Well," said I, rather anxious to peruse the journal, which I thought would interest my love of exploring character, "you shall not balk the fit while upon you; your arm-chair and desk, I see, court you, and while you settle the politics of Europe, I

"I hate all the political part of a newspaper," interrupted he," and always skip it, or lay it by for a more convenient time.”

"Which time," said I, "never comes."

"Not far wrong there," replied he. "In truth, discussion bores me; the cloudiness of the times alarms me; the weakness of our governors does not assure me; and the scurrility of parties disgusts

me."

"For heaven's sake, then," asked I, "what part of a newspaper does occupy you?"

"O! a great deal of it," answered he. "The advertisements, all of which I ponder, not only amuse, but instruct me in all that is really going on in trade, the arts, literature, and science, better than all the most elaborate leading articles, which are generally false estimates of every thing, every man, and every transaction of life. Then there are the deaths, births, and marriages; and the police reports, which give a truer history of the animal called man than all the columns of all the patriots, economists, and political philosophers put together.”

“I could not help smiling at this ingenuity of defence in excusing himself from every semblance of

exertion, even in reading a newspaper; but wishing to examine what I thought would be a rich curiosity, his journal, without the restraint of his presence, I said I would retire with it to my own room, and leave him to investigate the increase or decrease of our population in the deaths and marriages, and the history of man in the records of Bow Street.

CHAPTER VII.

MISCHIEFS OF INDOLENCE.-DANGERS OF INTERFERING IN OTHER PEOPLE'S AFFAIRS.

Is not this a strange fellow, my lord, that so confidently seems to undertake this business, which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do, and dares better be damn'd than do't?

SHAKSPEARE.-All's Well that Ends Well.

My own experience often makes me pity any sincere man who undertakes to record the operations of his own mind in its every day dress. For whatever the virtue or ability of the journalist, ten thousand to one, if he be honest, his pages will depict a great deal of weakness, a great deal of vanity, or a great deal of folly. What good did the historian of his own heart, or of his own actions, ever do, except amuse the world by making them laugh at him; or instruct them to avoid, by making them hate his faults?

Do we want proofs of this? Search the memoirs of Montpensier and Madame Roland, who are so good as to reveal their personal charms to the world; or Rousseau, who revealed all his vices; or Laud, who revealed his secret superstition; or Doddington, who seemed to boast of his venality; or Watson, or Cumberland, or Gilbert Wakefield, who, gifted with learn

ing and powerful intellect, disfigured themselves with vanities-in the first two, most amusing; in the last, most disgusting.*

O that mine enemy would write a book! was the wish of an injured man, panting for revenge. He would have improved upon it had he wished that book a journal. But if he does write one, let him have a care how he publishes it—or shews it, you will say, to a friend who will publish it for him.

Poor, dear Sir Simeon! But he is gone; and as his tranquillity cannot be disturbed, and it may do good to those who are devoutly disposed to imitate him, I will venture to tell them what they may come to. Besides, as he bequeathed me all his papers, to do what I pleased with, it is scarcely, even virtually, a breach of confidence.

Well; behold me in my arm-chair above stairs, probing my friend in all his weaknesses, as laid bare by himself, with a view to be a beacon to himself. It is thus he begins:

"I know my besetting sin, and this shall be its record, in order to warn me of its mischiefs. I am, and have been long, a slave, from sheer impatience of restraints upon my liberty. I am cursed with a fortune which delivers me from all attention to others, all regard to forms, and all anxiety to do any thing but

* Nothing is here meant in derogation of the learned, the sensible, the perspicuous, the eloquent Bishop of Llandaff, whose abilities and firm integrity cannot be disparaged even by the vanity scattered up and down his memoirs. But while the divine, the schoolman, and the patriot politician may profit much by them, at that vanity they have a legitimate right to laugh.