and a shake of the head expressive of his regret at having thus remorselessly annihilated a fellow-creature)—" and now that the thing is done, I wish I had not been quite so severe, for he used, generally, to treat me with respect. However," and here came another sigh," however, his best friends will admit that, as I said before, he brought it upon himself. Yet I wonder he has not sent me an answer! Some sort of an excuse he must make; don't you think so?"

Before I had time to reply, Colonel S, the party in question, entered the place: much to the astonishment, and no little to the disappointment of Simon Techy, who, by this visit, was deprived of a written reply, which would infallibly have provoked a rejoinder, and, perhaps, led to a protracted paper-war :-a mode of hostility in which he, like most thin-skinned people, took especial delight.

The Colonel shook me by the hand, nodded good-humouredly to Techy, deliberately drew a huge letter from his pocket, and laughed. Techy, who had drawn himself up at the rate of fifteen inches to the foot, and put on an awfully-pompous look, (which, by-the-by, it was hardly possible to behold and yet maintain one's gravity,) was utterly disconcerted by this unexpected movement of the Colonel's: it entirely deranged his plan of battle.

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Really, Sir," stammered Simon," really-aw-this unexpectedaw-I-aw-under the-aw-circumstances-aw

During this time Colonel S- - had quietly torn the letter into quarters, and (not thrown it, but) let it drop into the fire."

"My dear Mr. Techy," said he, addressing, with imperturbable good humour, his would-have-been adversary, that is the only notice I shall take of your very-very ill-considered letter. Any one less your friend than I am might have used it greatly to your disadvantage. But be under no alarm about it: I give you my word I have not shown it to a living soul; for you must know how much the laugh would have been against you had I taken so unfriendly a course-besides

Techy now made an ineffectual attempt to rally his forces, but the Colonel pressed his advantage.

"Besides, my dear Mr. Techy, the injury it might have done you in your business!”

The effect of this "besides " upon Techy was like that of the last charge of the Guards at Waterloo upon Napoleon: Techy was defeated beyond all hope of recovery. There was no need of any more; yet the Colonel added, " As to your bill, which you have sent me, you may, if you please, have a cheque for it now; but as I don't intend to withdraw my custom from you, it may as well remain till Christmas."

These words fell unheeded on the ear of Techy, as fall the shouts of the multitude on that of the dying criminal. For a week after this encounter, the crest-fallen Simon, upon whose dignity the tables had been so unexpectedly and unmercifully turned, did not "show." Some reports went that he had gone into the country; but it was most generally believed that he had taken to his bed with a bilious attack. At about the period of his re-appearance, George the Third was deposed from his station in the office-window, and for his gracious presence was substituted a transparent blind bearing the dignified and respectable words, MR. TECHY'S GALLERY.

Men who are "above their business," or, to use a more vulgar phrase,

-(and it unfortunately happens that vulgar phrases are sometimes superlatively expressive,)—who " quarrel with their bread-and-butter," are seldom successful in their vocation. To most of those the breadand-butter is doled out in very thin slices-many of them get none at all. The case of Simon was no exception to this rule. In proportion as the irritation increased to which Mr. Techy's "dignity," and the 66 respect which he owed to himself," rendered him liable, the number of his clients diminished. This defalcation, which his Christmas accounts insisted most disrespectfully upon his acknowledging, he attributed to unfair competition in the trade, to private malice, to public enmity, to everything, in short, but its true cause; till at length" the particular occupation in which he happened to be engaged" ceasing, from want of "clients," to be an occupation, he sold his " gallery," and retired into private life, upon three hundred a-year, which, luckily for him, he possessed, independently of his sho—that is to say his office. He was now, to all intents and purposes, a gentleman; for he lived upon his means, and had nothing to do. Whether or not, no human being ever manifested the slightest intention to dispute his claim to the title. His dignity and self-respect were not likely to be invaded. Yet was Simon still less at his ease than before. His friends were either too warm or too cold with him, too distant or too familiar. Did you give him a friendly nod in passing-he was now as good as yourself, and could not understand why you should not have stopped to talk with him. Did you stop and shake him familiarly by the hand-he did not like that sort of patronage from any one who was now no more than his equal. If, when he made a morning call, he was invited to stay and dine-it was an offensive hint that they thought him not as well able, now, as formerly, to provide himself with a dinner. Was he allowed to depart uninvited there was a time when he should not have been treated with such insulting neglect. He unceremoniously refused to dine with Lord R—, one of his former "clients," because the invitation was for Sunday: "He saw through that: why did his lordship select that particular day? all days were at his disposal now: it was evidently in allusion to his late occupation,' and he would not submit to such disrespectful treatment from the best lord in the land." In fact, any allusion, intentional or not, to his " late occupation," was, of all offences, the gravest that could be offered to his dignity and self-respect. It was dangerous to talk about prints in his presence; and if a few engravings happened to be scattered upon a table in a room which he entered, he had no doubt on his mind they had been placed there purposely to remind him that he had been a print-seller.

6

No one can sit long at ease upon a barrel of gunpowder. As formerly his ill-conditioned spirit had driven his "clients" from him, so now did it gradually detach from him his friends. One by one they fell from him: for the task of quarrel and reconciliation, of apology and explanation for slights and offences which existed nowhere but in his own hyper-sensitive mind, became at length too irksome for their endurance. At last he quarrelled with me! me, the most inoffensive of heaven's creatures! I met him one day in Regent-street. "Mr. Techy," said I, "you, I dare say, can help to decide a wager for me: it is concerning the age Raphael Morghen: pray how old— ?”

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of

Sir," exclaimed he, with the fierceness of a bantam," I understand

why I am singled out for this offensive question. Good morning, Sir."

For the soul of me I could not perceive where lay the offence; but, meeting him the next morning, I resolved to request of him a solution of the mystery.

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My dear Mr. Techy," said I, "I give you my word that, when I asked you the age of Raphael Morghen, I had no idea of offending you: but he, being a celebrated engraver, I thought you were the most likely

"Sir," he replied, (and as he spoke his yellow face reddened, and his head seemed to be growing out and away from his shoulders with indignation,)" Sir, this is adding insult to injury."

From that instant I never saw him more.

But soon an affront was to be put upon him for which no apology vould be offered. He had eaten voraciously of a sour gooseberry pudding. At two o'clock on the following morning he was taken violently ill, and, before ten, Simon Techy was no more! His last faint words were"We nust all die-I am resigned to my fate-but it is very humiliatingo one's dignity and self-respect-to be taken off-without reasonable noice-and-by so undignified a thing, too, as a gooseberry dumpling!"

P*.

STANZAS.

I KNOW it is not made to last,

The dream which haunts my soul;
The shadow even now is cast

Which soon will wrap the whole.

Ah! waking dreams that mock the day
Have other end than those,
Which come beneath the moonlight ray,
And charm the eyes they close.

The vision colouring the night

'Mid bloom and brightness wakes,
Banished by morning's cheerful light,
Which gladdens while it breaks.
But dreams which fix the waking eye
With deeper spells than sleep,
When hours unnoted pass us by,
From such we wake and weep.

We wake, but not to sleep again;
The heart has lost its youth,-
The morning light which wakes us then,
Calm, cold, and stern, is Truth.

I know all this, and yet I yield
My spirit to the snare,

And gather flowers upon the field,

Though Woe and Fate are there.

The maid divine, who bound her wreath

On Etna's fatal plain,

Knew not the foe that lurked beneath
The summer-clad domain.

But I-I read my doom aright,
I snatch a few glad hours,
Then where will be the past delight-
And where my gathered flowers ?

Gone-gone for ever! let them go ;
The present is my meed-
Aye let me worship, ere I know
The falsehood of my creed.

The time may come- -they say it must-
When thou, my idol now,

Like all we treasure and we trust,
Will mock the votive vow.

And when the temple's on the ground-
The altar overthrown-

Too late the bitter moral's found,-
The folly was our own.

It matters not, my heart is full
With present hopes and fears,
The future cannot quite annul-
Let them be bought by tears.

Though sorrow, disbelief, and blame
May load the fallen shrine;
To think that once it bore thy name
Will make it still divine.

And such it was-for it was love's;
And love its heaven brings,
And from life's daily path removes
All other meaner things;

And calls from out the common heart
Its music, and its fire;

Like that the early hours impart
To Memnon's sculptured lyre.

A touch of light-a tone of song-
The sweet enchantment's o'er;
The thrilling heart and lute ere long
Confess the spell no more.

The music from the heart is gone;

- The light has left the sky;

And time again flows calmly on,
The haunted hour past by.

And thus with love the charmed earth
Grows actual, cold, and drear;

But that sweet phantasy was worth
All else most precious here.

'Mid the dark web that life must weave,
'Twill linger in the mind

As angels spread their wings, yet leave
The trace of heaven behind.

Ah! let the heart that worships thee
By every change be proved;

Its dearest memory will be

To know that once it loved.

L. E. L.

MONTHLY COMMENTARY.

Incendiarism-Black Neckcloths-Steam-Suicides-Autumnal Gaieties-Melton --National Gallery.

INCENDIARISM. One of the most remarkable features of the past month has been the sudden and simultaneous reappearance of incendiarism; no longer confined to any particular county or district, fires have been blazing at once in the maritime and inland divisions of the kingdom. It has been remarked, and the coincidence is certainly very strange,—that these acts of outrage and villany are generally preceded and accompanied by similar atrocities upon the continent of Europe, and even in remoter parts of the world.

Is it part of a great and general system of warfare upon property?have the ramifications of revolutionary principles spread so far and wide over the face of the earth? In England, at all events, it is clear that the result of such crimes must be anything but favourable to the class of people in which we must naturally look for the criminals. Burning wheat-ricks, with a view to make corn cheap, is much like the Irish plan of destroying the notes of a country banker who had become unpopular. That this is not the object, is clear from the fact that in almost all the cases which have come to the public eye, the neighbours of the sufferers, even of the humblest classes, have been most assiduous in endeavouring to extinguish the flames.

We consider it a political problem, and the sooner it is solved the better for the farmer. A discovery of the principle upon which these iniquities are committed, and the detection of the incendiaries, would be a better object to keep in view than a senseless resistance to the payment of taxes, which are absolutely necessary to the support of the country. The distress of the sheriff's officer is light by comparison with the fieri facias of the incendiary.

BLACK NECKCLOTHS.-The funds are looked upon in England as the national pulse. By the indications which they afford, the financial health of the country is judged and determined, and the price of stocks becomes the criterion by which the quidnuncs regulate their political opinions of passing events. In the fashionable world we apprehend the price of stocks is likely to decline very considerably-strong symptoms of what is called in 'Change-alley a backwardation will speedily exhibit themselves in consequence of the indignity which was recently offered to etiquette at the Pavilion at Brighton, and the indignation which followed the attempt.

On the occasion of a party recently given by their Majesties, in honour of the birth-day of her Royal Highness Princess Augusta, several of the gayest among the élite of the circle made their appearance in black neckcloths-stocks. Till that evening no objection had been taken to the colour of the article; and those who wore them recollecting that the late King not only admitted the costume, but set the fashion himself, flattered themselves that they were "doing the thing" in the best possible style; but no, they were refused admission to the royal presence until they had discarded the offensive black, and assumed the purer white.