a ditch, the horse threw up his head, gave the major a douse in the chaps, and plumped him into a gravelpit, just by the powder-mills.

SIR J. Dreadful !

MAJOR S. Whether from the fall or the fright, the major moved off in a month.

an unfortunate day for us all.

SIR J. As how?

Indeed it was

MAJOR S. Why, as Captain Cucumber, Lieutenant Puttyman, Ensign Tripe, and myself, were returning to town in the Turnham-green stage, we were stopped near the Hammersmith turnpike, and robbed and stripped by a single footpad. SIR J. An unfortunate day, indeed.

MAJOR S. But, in some measure, to make me amends, I got the major's commission.

SIR J. You did?

MAJOR S. O yes. I was the only one of the corps that could ride; otherwise we always succeeded of course; no jumping over heads, no underhand work among us; all men of honour ; and I must do the regiment the justice to say, there never was a set of more amiable officers.

SIR J. Quiet and peaceable.

MAJOR S. As lambs, Sir Jacob. Excepting one boxing-bout at the Three Compasses, in Acton, between Captain Sheers and the colonel, concerning a game at all-fours, I don't remember a single dispute.

SIR J. Why, that was mere mutiny; the captain ought to have been broke.

MAJOR S. He was; for the colonel not only took away his cockade, but his custom; and I don't

think poor Captain Sheers has done a stitch for him since.

SIR J. But you soon supplied the loss of Molossas !

MAJOR S. In part only: no, Sir Jacob, he had great experience; he was trained up to arms from his youth. At sixteen, he trailed a pike in the Artillery-ground; at eighteen, got a company in the Smithfield pioneers; and by the time he was twenty, was made aide-de-camp to Sir Jeffrey Grubb, knight, alderman, and colonel of the yellow.

SIR J. A rapid rise!

MAJOR S. Yes, he had a genius for war; but what I wanted in practice, I made up by doubling my diligence. Our porter at home had been a serjeant of marines; so after shop was shut up at night, he used to teach me my exercise; and he had not to deal with a dunce, Sir Jacob.

SIR J. Your progress was great.

MAJOR S. Amazing. In a week, I could shoulder, and rest, and poise, and turn to the right, and wheel to the left; and in less than a month, I could fire without winking or blinking.

SIR J. A perfect Hannibal!

MAJOR S. Ah, and then I learned to form lines, and hollows, and squares, and evolutions, and revolutions. Let me tell you, Sir Jacob, it was lucky that monsieur kept his myrmidons at home, or we should have peppered his flat-bottomed boats.

X

Captain Jackson plays host and wizard HE whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer,

with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they were too.

And was I in danger of forgetting this man?— his cheerful suppers-the noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your foot in the cottage—the anxious ministerings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered.Althea's horn in a poor platter-the power of selfenchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties. You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag-cold savings from the foregone meal-remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door contented. But in the copious will the revelling imagination of your host-the "mind, the mind, Master Shallow,' whole beeves were spread before you-hecatombs -no end appeared to the profusion.

It was the widow's cruse-the loaves and fishes; carving could not lessen nor helping diminish it— the stamina were left-the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its accidents.

"Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed creature exclaim; "while we have, let us not want"; "here is plenty left "; want for nothing"-with many more such hospitable

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sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking boards, and feast-oppressed charges. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the daughters', he would convey the remnant rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "the nearer the bone," etc., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside. For we had our table distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in a manner sate above the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were verè hospitibus sacra. But of one thing or another there was always enough, and leavings: only he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings.

Wine we had none; nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I remember

"British beverage," he would say "Push about, my boys"; "Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corners. You got flustered without knowing whence; tipsy upon words; and reeled under the potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements.

We had our songs-" Why, Soldiers, Why and the "British Grenadiers "-in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters

sang. Their proficiency was a nightly themethe masters he had given them—the "no-expense which he spared to accomplish them in a science so necessary to young women.' But thenthey could not sing " without the instrument."

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Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, Secrets of Poverty! Should I disclose your honest aims at grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that slender image of a voice.

We were not without our literary talk either. It did not extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed well; had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a room, which

tradition authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of the present inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to have met with the poem in question. But that was no matter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family importance. It diffused a learned air through the apartment, the little side casement of