Though I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one, if I saw him, better than that comes to. No, no, sir, ghosts don't appear in such dresses as that, neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue, till the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling, that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage? "O la! sir," said he, "I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of anything; for I know it is but a play. And if it was really a ghost, it could do no one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company; and yet, if I was frightened, I am not the only person."—"Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou take to be such a coward here besides thyself?"-" Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! ay, to be sure! who's fool then? Will you? Lud have mercy upon such fool-hardiness! Whatever happens, it is good enough for you.-Follow you? I'd follow the devil as soon. Nay, perhaps, it is the devil-for they say he can put on what likeness he pleases.-Oh! here he is again. -No farther! No, you have gone far enough already; farther than I'd have gone for all the king's dominions." Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried, "Hush, hush, dear sir, don't you hear him!" And during the whole speech of the ghost, he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost, and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions which succeeded each other in Hamlet, succeeding likewise in him.

When the scene was over, Jones said, "Why, Partridge, you exceed my expectations. You enjoy the play more than I conceived possible."-" Nay, sir," answered Partridge, "if you are not afraid of the devil, I can't help it; but, to be sure, it is natural to be surprised at such things, though I know there is nothing in them not that it was the ghost that surprised me neither; for I should have known that to have been only a man in a strange dress: but when I saw the little man so

THE MONK.

-Now, was I a King of France, cried I—what a moment for an orphan to have begged his father's portmanteau of me!

I had scarce uttered the words, when a poor monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his convent. No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies-or one man may be generous, as another man is puissant-sed non, quoad hanc-or be it as it may-for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for aught I know, which influence the tides themselves—'twould oft be no discredit to us to suppose it was so: I'm sure at least for myself, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied, to have it said by the world, "I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin or shame," than have it pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much of both.

-But be this as it may. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous, and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket-buttoned it up-set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him: there was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs upon his temples, being all that remained of it, might be about seventy-but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty-Truth might lie between-he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the

account.

It was one of those heads, which Guido has often paintedmild, pale-penetrating, free from all common-place ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth-it

looked forwards; but looked, as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows ; but it would have suited a Bramin, and had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of anyone to design, for 'twas neither elegant or otherwise, but as character and expression made it so it was a thin, spare form, something above the common size, if it lost not the distinction by a bend forwards in the figure -but it was the attitude of Intreaty; and as it now stands present to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast, a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his right-when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent, and the poverty of his order—and did it with so simple a grace-and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure-I was bewitched not to have been struck with it

-A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sous.

-Tis very true, said I, replying to a cast upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address—'tis very trueand heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

As I pronounced the words great claims, he gave a slight glance with his eye downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic-I felt the full force of the appeal-I acknowledge it, said I,—a coarse habit, and that but once in three years with meagre diet are no great matters: and the true point of pity is, as they can be earned in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirmthe captive who lies down counting over and over again the days of his afflictions, languishes also for his share of it; and had you been of the order of mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis,

good man, that had such a mother, would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me; but indeed, madam, though I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country; and the king for my money. He speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Any body may see he is an actor."

While Mrs. Miller was thus engaged in conversation with Partridge, a lady came up to Mr. Jones, whom he immediately knew to be Mrs. Fitzpatrick. She said she had seen him from the other part of the gallery, and had taken that opportunity of speaking to him, as she had something to say which might be of great service to himself. She then acquainted him with her lodgings, and made him an appointment the next day in the morning; which, upon recollection, she presently changed to the afternoon; at which time Jones promised to attend her.

Thus ended the adventure at the playhouse; where Partridge had afforded great mirth, not only to Jones and Mrs. Miller, but to all who sat within hearing, who were more attentive to what he said, than to anything that passed on the stage.

He durst not go to bed all that night for fear of the ghost; and for many nights after sweated for two or three hours before he went to sleep with the same apprehensions, and waked several times in great horrors, crying out, "Lord have mercy upon us! there it is."

Tom Jones.

I

THOMAS GRAY.

Thomas Gray was born in London in 1716, was brought up at Eton and Cambridge, travelled with Horace Walpole, and then returned to Cambridge, which was the headquarters of his life of studious ease till his death in 1771. His prose has not the elaborate perfection of his poetry, but exhibits much of the same scholarly character. In appreciating nature he has few predecessors in English.

A SUNRISE.

MUST not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was that, in the course of my late tour, I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea coast time enough to be at the sun's levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapours open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide, as it flowed gently in upon the sands, first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that, before I can write these five words, was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be distinctly seen. It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least as I endure. I wonder whether any body ever saw it before; I hardly believe it.

Letter to Bonstetten.

This brief passage gives what hardly exists before in prose English, an attempt to describe landscape from nature and not conventionally. It is probably this very difference from conventional writing which made the author complain that it "made no figure upon paper." We do not think so now.