lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how."

He advised Dr. Maxwell, if possible, to have a good orchard. "He knew," he said, 66 a clergyman of small income, who brought up a family very reputably, which he chiefly fed with apple dumplings."

He said, "Get as much force of mind as you can. Live within your income. Always have something saved at the end of the year. Let your imports be more than your exports, and you'll never go far wrong."

No. XIII.

LONDON.

OF London, Johnson observed, "Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of the city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists." "I have often amused myself," adds Boswell," with thinking how different a place London is to different people. They, whose narrow minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, view it only through that medium. A politician thinks of it merely as the seat of government in its different departments; a grazier, as a vast market

for cattle; a mercantile mau, as a place where a prodigious deal of business is done upon Change; a dramatic enthusiast, as the grand scene of theatrical entertainments; a man of pleasure, as an assemblage of taverns, and the great emporium for ladies of easy virtue: but the intellectual man is struck with it, as comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible."

Johnson had a little money when he came to London; and he knew how he could live in the cheapest manner. His first lodgings were at the house of Mr. Norris, a stay-maker, in Exeter street, adjoining Catherine street, in the Strand. "I dined,” said he, 66 very well, for eight-pence, with very good company, at the Pine-Apple in New-street, just by. Several of them had travelled: they expected to meet every day, but did not know one another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine but I had a cut of meat for six-pence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing

How Johnson employed himself upon his first coming to London is not particularly known. A curious anecdote was communicated by himself to Mr. John Nichols. Mr. Wilson, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an author, eyed his robust frame attentively, and, with a significant look, said, "You had better buy a porter's knot." He however added, "Wilson was one of my best friends.”

His Ofellus, in the Art of living in London, was an Irish painter, whom he knew at Birmingham,

and who had practised his own precepts of economy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who was then meditating to try his fortune in London, but was apprehensive of the expense, "that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending three-pence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt-day he went abroad, and paid visits." He more than once talked of his frugal friend, whom he recollected with esteem and kindness, and did not like to have one smile at the recital. "This man," said he, gravely, 66 was a very sensible man, who perfectly understood common affairs: a man of a great deal of knowledge of the world, fresh from life, not strained through books. He borrowed a horse and ten pounds at Birmingham. Finding himself master of so much money, he set off for West Chester, in order to get to Ireland. He returned the horse, and probably the ten pounds too, after he got home."

Considering Johnson's narrow circumstances in the early part of his life, and particularly at the interesting æra of his launching into the ocean of London, it is not to be wondered at, that an actual instance, proved by experience, of the possibility of enjoying the intellectual luxury of social life upon a

very small income, should deeply engage his attention, and be ever recollected by him as a circumstance of much importance. He afterward amused himself occasionally by computing how much more expense was absolutely necessary, to live upon the same scale with that which his friend described, when the value of money was diminished by the progress of commerce. How much would be suffi cient now others may calculate.

He related the following minute anecdote of this period: "In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it; the peaceable and the quarrelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked me, whether I was one of those that gave the wall, or those who took it. Now it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; or, if one is taking the wall, another yields it; and it is never a dispute."

Talking of a London life, he said, "The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom." BOSWELL. "The only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one another." JOHNSON. "Yes, sir, but that is occasioned by the largeness of it, which is the cause of all the other advantages." Boswell. "Sometimes I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desert." JOHNSON. "Sir, you have desert enough in Scotland."

Walking one evening in Greenwich Park, he

asked Boswell, by way of trying his disposition, "Is not this very fine?" Boswell, having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, and being more delighted with "the busy hum of men," answered, "Yes, sir; but not equal to Fleet-street." JOHNSON. "You are right, sir." Johnson and his friend appear to have agreed in taste with a baronet very fashionable in the brilliant world, sir Michael le Fleming, who, on his attention being called to the fragrance of a May evening in the country, observed, "This may be very well; but, for my part, I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse."

Johnson was much attached to London: he observed, that a man stored his mind better there than any where else; and that in remote situations a man's body might be feasted, but his mind was starved, and his faculties apt to degenerate, from want of exercise and competition. No place, he said, cured a man's vanity or arrogance so well as London; for as no man was either great or good per se, but as compared with others not so good or great, he was sure to find in the metropolis many his equals, and some his superiors. He observed, that a man in London was in less danger of falling in love indiscreetly than any where else; for there the difficulty of deciding between the conflicting pretensions of a vast variety of objects kept him safe. He had frequently been offered country preferment, if he would consent to take orders; but he could not leave the improved society of the capital, or consent to exchange the exhilarating joys and splendid decorations of public life, for the obscurity, insipidity, and uniformity of remote si. tuations.