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"What have you been doing at the theatre?" said Sheridan.

"Why," replied Tregent, "Harris is going to make Bate Dudley a present of a gold watch, and I have taken him half a dozen that he may choose one for that purpose."

"Indeed," said Sheridan.

They wished each other good day, and parted.

Mr. Sheridan proceeded to Mr. Harris's room, and when he addressed him, it was pretty evident that his want of punctuality had produced the effect which Mr. Tregent described.

66

'Well, Sir," said Mr. Harris, "I have waited at least two hours for you again; I had almost given you up, and if—”

"Stop, my dear Harris," said Sheridan, interrupting him; "I assure you these things occur more from my misfortunes than my fault; I declare I thought it was but one o'clock, for it so happens that I have no watch, and to tell you the truth, am too poor to buy one; but when the day comes that I can, you will see I shall be as punctual as any other man.”

"Well, then," said the unsuspecting Harris, "if that be all, you shall not long want a watch, for here-(opening his drawer)—are half a dozen of Tregent's best -choose any one you like, and do me the favour of accepting it."

Sheridan affected the greatest surprise at the appearance of the watches; but did as he was bid, and selected certainly not the worst of the cadeau."

Such are the light and amusing materials which the author, by a has been able to put together. His accounts singular power of memory, of the Italian singers and composers with whom he lived when abroad, will serve to fill up an important gap in the history of music, and will be read with pleasure by all lovers of the stage. To those who, like ourselves, are advanced in life, the latter portion of these volumes will afford a melancholy interest, though the frequent mention of names gracious to the recollection by their association with our earliest pleasures. The dropping off of actor after actor, as it stands recorded in Mr. Kelly's page, affords food for much melancholy reflection. All biography ends in a tragedy; but that of an actor is peculiarly sombre in its close. The strong contrast of the brilliant triumphs and gay dissipations of youth, with the decrepitude, dependence, and abandonment of old age, furnishes a better lesson on the world's vanity and the flight of time, than the most wearisome homily that it was ever our misfortune to listen to.

Poor Mich, it must be owned, makes a terrible hash of his French and Italian, if the printer be not more to blame than he; and has fallen into some ludicrous mistakes about persons. He makes Mad. Albani to be the Pretender's daughter instead of his wife. These, however, are trifles which those who knew better may correct, and those who do not will not be led into any serious error by them. One thing is commendable, that there is not a single ill-natured phrase in the whole book. We shall be very much mistaken if these volumes do not become a favourite, and take their place in Theatrical Libraries, beside the Davies's, the Cibbers, the Murphys, and other established historians of "the brief chroniclers of the times."

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A LETTER TO THE BELLS OF A PARISH CHURCH IN ITALY.

FOR God's sake, dear bells, why this eternal noise? Why do you make this everlasting jangling and outcry? Is it not enough that the whole village talk, but you must be talking too? Are you the representative of all the gossip in the neighbourhood? Now, they tell me, you inform us that a friar is dead: now you jingle a blessing on the vines and olives, "babbling o' green fields:" anon you start away in honour of a marriage, and jangle as if the devil were in you. Your love of information may be generous where there are no newspapers; but when you have once informed us that a friar is dead, where is the necessity of repeating the same intelligence for twelve hours together? Did any one ever hear of a newspaper which contained nothing from beginning to end but a series of paragraphs, informing us that a certain gentleman was no more?

Died yesterday, Father Paul-
Died yesterday, Father Paul-
Died yesterday, Father Paul—

and so on from nine in the morning till nine at night? It is like a piece of cut-glass with a thousand faces in it, turned into a sound. You shall have some information in return, very necessary to be known by all the bells in Christendom. Learn then, sacred, but at the same time thoughtless tintinnabularies, that there are dying, as well as dead, people in the world, and sick people who will die if they are not encouraged. What must be the effect of this mortal note unceasingly reiterated in their ears? Who would set a whining fellow at a sick man's door to repeat to him all day long, "Your neighbour's dead ;-your neighbour's dead." But you say, "It is to remind the healthy, and not the dying, that we sound; and the few must give way to the many." Good: it delights me to hear you say so, because every thing will of course be changed in the economy of certain governments, except yourselves. But in this particular instance allow me to think you are mistaken. I differ from a belfry with hesitation. Triple bob majors are things before which it becomes a philosophic inquirer to be modest. But have we not memorandums enough to this good end? Have we not coughs, cold, fevers, plethoras, deaths of all sorts occurring round about us, old faces, churchyards, accidents infinite, books, muskets, wars, apothecaries, kings? Is not the whole nation swallowed up in grief when a minister dies? Does not even a royal old lady die now and then? You remind the sick and the dying too forcibly: but you are much mistaken if you think the healthy regard your importunity of advice in any other light than that of a considerable nuisance. They may get used to it; but what then? So much the worse for your admonitions. In like manner they get used to a hundred things which do them no sort of good; which only tend to keep their moods and tempers in a duller state of exaspe ration. Pray think of this. As to the bell-ringers, whom I should be unwilling to throw out of bread, they might be given some office in the

state.

Then the marriages. Dear bells, do you ever consider that there are people who have been married two years, as well as two hours. What

here becomes of your maxim of the few giving way to the many? Have all the rest of the married people, think you, made each other deaf, so that they cannot hear the sound? It may be sport to the new couple, but it is death to the old ones. If a pair or so love one another almost as much as if they had never been married, at least they are none the better for you. If they look kindly at one another when they hear the sound, do you think it is not in spite of the bells, as well as for sweetness of recollection?

In my country it is bad enough. A bell shall go for hours telling us that Mr. Ching is dead.

"Ring, ring, ring—Ching, Ching, Ching-Oh Ching!—Ah Ching! -Ching, I say-Ching is gone-Gone, gone, gone-Good people, listen to the steeple-Ching, Ching, Ching."

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"Ay," says a patient in his bed, "I knew him. He had the same palsy as I have.”

66 Mercy on us," cries an old woman in the next house, poor Mr. Ching, sure enough."

"I just had a pleasant thought," says a sick mourner, that bell! that melancholy bell !"

"there goes

"and now

"The bell will go for me, mother, soon," observes a poor child to its weeping parent.

"What will become of my poor children ?" exclaims a dying father. It would be useful to know how many deaths are hastened by a bell: at least how many recoveries are retarded. There are sensitive persons, not otherwise in ill health, who find it difficult to hear the sound without tears. What must they feel on a sick bed! As for the unfeeling, who are the only persons to be benefited, they, as I said before, care for it no more than the postman's.

But in England we can at least reckon upon shorter bell-ringings, and upon long intervals without any. We have not bells every day as they have here, except at the universities. The saints in the protestant calendar are quiet. Our belfries also are thicker; the clappers do not come swinging and flaring out of window, like so many scolds. Italians talk of music; but I must roundly ask, how came Italian ears to put up with this music of the Chinese? Every thing in its proper place. In China, I doubt not, you are a just relief to the monotony of the people's feelings, neither more nor less than you ought to be. Those fat, little, bald-headed, long-gowned, smirking, winking-eyed, smoke-faced gentlemen, who follow one another over impossible bridges on tea-cups, must be grateful for any information you choose to give them. But you belong to that corner of earth exclusively, and ought all to return thither. I am loth to praise any thing Mussulman in these times; but to give the Turk his due, he is not addicted to superfluous noise. His belfry-men cannot deafen a neighbourhood all day long with the death of an Imaun, for they are themselves the bells. Alas! why do not steeples catch cold, and clappers require a gargle? Why must things that have no feeling-belfries, and one's advisers-be exclusively gifted with indefatigability of tongue?

Lastly, your tunes! I thought, in Italy, that any thing which undertook to be musical, would be in some way or other truly so-harmonious, if not various; various and new, if not very harmonious. But I must say our bells in England have double your science. I once sang a

duet with St. Clement's Church in the Strand. Indeed, I have often done it returning from a symposium in the Temple. The tune was the hundred and fourth psalm. I took the second. And this reminds me that our English bells have always the humanity to catch a cold now and then, or something like it. They will lose two or three of their notes at a time. I used to humour this infirmity in my friend St. Clement's, as became on old acquaintance, and always waited politely till he resumed. But in Italy the bells have the oddest, and at the same time the most unfading and inexorable hops of tunes, that can be imagined.

Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.

One might suppose that the steeple, in some unaccountable fit of merriment, struck up a country-dance, like that recorded in Mr. Monk Lewis's account of Orpheus :

While an arm of the sea,
Introduced by a tree,

To a fair young whale advances;
And making a leg,

Says, "Miss, may I beg

Your fin for the two next dances?"

I used to wonder at this, till one day I heard the host announced in a procession by as merry a set of fiddler's as ever played to a ship's company. The other day a dead bishop was played out in church to the tune of Di piacer. But I forget I am writing a letter; and luckily my humour, as well as my paper, is out. Besides, the bells have left off before me; for which I am their

Much obliged, exhausted humble servant,
MISOCROTALUS.

NOW PUBLISHING BY S. H. PARKER, 12 CORNHILL, BOSTON.

Prospectus

OF

THIS CHEAP AND ELEGANT EDITION

OF THE

WORKS OF MARIA EDGEWORTH IN TWELVE OCTAVO VOLUMES, VIZ.

VOL. I.-Practical Education

VOL. II.-Letters for Literary Ladies,-Castle Rackrent,-Leonora,-Irish Bulls.

VOL. III.-Belinda.

VOL. IV.-Popular Tales, viz. Lame Jervas-The Will-The Limerick Gloves-Out of Debt out of Danger-The Lottery-RosannaMurad the Unlucky-the Manufacturers-The Contrast-The Grateful Negro-To-morrow.

VOL. V.-Tales of Fashionable Life, viz. Ennui-Almeria—Madame de Fleury-Dun-Manoeuvring.

VOL. VI.-Tales of Fashionable Life, continued; viz. Absentee— Emilie de Coulanges-Vivian.

VOL. VII.-Patronage.

VOL. VIII.-Harrington and Ormond.

VOL. IX.-Griselda,-Moral Tales, viz. Forrester-The Prussian Vase-The Good Aunt-Angelina-The Good French GovernessMademoiselle Panache-the Knapsack.

VOL. X.-Parent's Assistant.

VOL. XI.-Early Lessons.

VOL. XII.-Sequel to Frank,-Readings on Poetry,-Comic Dra

mas.

The price to Subscribers is One Dollar and a Half, per volume payable on delivery of each volume. It is not intended to print many more than shall be subscribed for, and the price will be raised on the completion of the edition.

The works are printed from the latest English edition, and volumes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 are already done to show as a specimen of the edition. An early subscription is respectfully solicited.

Subscriptions to the above works are received by the Publisher, 21 Cornhill, and by Munroe & Francis, No. 4 Cornhill, Boston; by George Dana, Providence; Cushing & Appleton, Salem; and John W. Foster, Portsmouth.

BOSTON, February, 1824.

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