get off, with a few broken words, when I had meant to part with a long speech perhaps the broken words pleased the audience better. Spurring away, I gained a little eminence and looked back. There, were the poor faithful fellows gathered in a ring, watching me-their hats off-their hands shading their eyes from the sun. And Guy had thrown himself on the ground, and I heard his loud sobs distinctly. His wife was leaning over his shoulder, trying to soothe forgive him, fair helpmate, you will be all in the world to him-to-morrow!

And the blue-eyed sister, where was she? Had she no tears for the rough friend who laughed at the silk shoes, and taught her how to hold the reins, and never fear that the old pony would run away with her? What matter?—if the tears were shed, they were hidden tears. No shame in them, fair Ellen-since then, thou hast wept happy tears over thy firstborn those tears have long ago washed away all bitterness in the innocent memories of a girl's first fancy.

Imagine my wonder-Uncle Jack has just been with me, and-but hear the dialogue.

UNCLE JACK. So you are positively going back to that smoky, fusty, old England, just when you are on your high road to a plumb. A plumb, sir, at least! They all say there is not a more rising young man in the colony. I think Bullion would take you into partnership. What are you in such a hurry for?

PISISTRATUS. To see my father, and mother, and Uncle Roland, and -(was about to name some one else, but stops.)

You see, my dear uncle, I came out solely with the idea of repairing my father's losses, in that unfortunate speculation of The Capitalist.

UNCLE JACK (coughs and ejaculates) -That villain Peck!

PISISTRATUS. And to have a few thousands to invest in poor Roland's acres. The object is achieved: why should I stay?

UNCLE JACK.-A few paltry thousands, when in twenty years more, at the farthest, you would wallow in gold!

PISISTRATUs.-A man learns in the Bush how happy life can be with plenty of employment, and very little money. I shall practise that lesson in England.

UNCLE JACK.-Your mind's made

up?

PISISTRATUS.-And my place in the ship taken.

UNCLE JACK.-Then there's no more to be said. (Hums, haws, and examines his nails-filbert nails, not a speck on them.) Then suddenly, and jerking up his head. "That Capitalist! it has been on my conscience, nephew, ever since; and, somehow or other, since I have abandoned the cause of my fellow-creatures, I think I have cared more for my relations."

PISISTRATUS, (smiling, as he remembers his father's shrewd predictions thereon.)-Naturally, my dear uncle : any child who has thrown a stone into a pond knows that a circle disappears as it widens.

UNCLE JACK.-Very true-I shall make a note of that, applicable to my next speech, in defence of what they call the "land monopoly." Thank you-stone-circle! (Jots down notes in his pocket-book.) But, to return to the point: I am well off now-I have neither wife nor child; and I feel that I ought to bear my share in your father's loss: it was our joint speculation. And your father, good dear Austin, paid my debts into the bargain. And how cheering the punch was that night, when your mother wanted to scold poor Jack! And the £300 Austin lent me when I left him: nephew, that was the remaking of me -the acorn of the oak I have transplanted. So here they are, (added Uncle Jack with a heroical effortand he extracted from the pocketbook, bills for a sum between three

and four thousand pounds.) There, it is done and I shall sleep better for it! (With that Uncle Jack got up, and bolted out of the room.)

Ought I to take the money? Why, I think yes!-it is but fair. Jack must be really rich, and can well spare the money; besides, if he wants it again, I know my father will let him have it. And, indeed, Jack caused the loss of the whole sum lost on The Capitalist, &c.; and this is not quite the half of what my father paid away. But is it not fine in Uncle Jack! Well, my father was quite right in his milder estimate of Jack's scalene conformation, and it is hard to judge of a man when he is needy and down in the world. When one grafts one's ideas on one's neighbour's money, they are certainly not so grand as when they spring from one's own.

UNCLE JACK, (popping his head into the room.)—And you see, you can double that money if you will just leave it in my hands for a couple of years, you have no notion what I shall make of the Tibbet's Wheal! Did I tell you?-the German was quite right, I have been offered already seven times the sum which I gave for the land. But I am now looking out for a Company: let me put you down for shares to the amount at least of those trumpery bills. Cent per cent,-I guarantee cent per cent! (And Uncle Jack stretches out those famous smooth

hands of his, with a tremulous motion of the ten eloquent fingers.)

PISISTRATUS.-Ah, my dear uncle, if you repent

UNCLE JACK.-Repent! when I offer you cent per cent, on my personal guarantee!

PISISTRATUS, (carefully putting the bills into his breast coat-pocket.) Then, if you don't repent, my dear uncle, allow me to shake you by the hand, and say that I will not consent to lessen my esteem and admiration for the high principle which prompts this restitution, by confounding it with trading associations of loans, interests, and copper mines. And, you see, since this sum is paid to my father, I have no right to invest it without his permission.

UNCLE JACK, (with emotion.)—— "Esteem, admiration, high principle!"

these are pleasant words, from you, nephew. (Then shaking his head and smiling.) You sly dog! you are quite right: get the bills cashed at once. And hark ye, sir, just keep out of my way, will you?-and don't let me coax you out of a farthing! (Uncle Jack slams the door, and rushes out. Pisistratus draws the bills warily from his pocket, half-suspecting they must already have turned into withered leaves, like fairy money; slowly convinces himself that the bills are good bills, and by lively gestures testifies his delight and astonishment.) SCENE CHANGES.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY, when skilfully and judiciously done, is one of the most delightful species of composition of which literature can boast. There is a strong desire in every intelligent and well-informed mind to be made acquainted with the private thoughts, and secret motives of action, of those who have filled the world with their renown. We long to learn their early history, to be made acquainted with their first aspirations-to learn how they became so great as they after wards turned out. Perhaps literature has sustained no greater loss than that of the memoirs which Hannibal wrote of his life and campaigns. From the few fragments of his sayings which Roman admiration or terror has preserved, his reach of thought and statesmanlike sagacity would appear to have been equal to his military talents. Cæsar's Commentaries have always been admired; but there is some doubts whether they really were written by the dictator; and, supposing they were, they relate almost entirely to military movements and public events, without giving much insight into private character. It is that which we desire in autobiography: we hope to find in it a window by which we may look into a great man's mind. Plutarch's Lives owe their vast and enduring popularity to the insight into private character which the innumerable anecdotes he has collected, of the heroes and statesmen of antiquity, afford.

Gibbon's autobiography is the most perfect account of an eminent man's life, from his own hand, which exists in any language. Independent of the interest which naturally belongs to it as the record of the studies, and the picture of the growth of the mind of the greatest historian of modern times, it possesses a peculiar charm from the simplicity with which it is written, and the judgment it displays, conspicuous alike in what is revealed and what is withheld in the narrative. It steers the middle channel so diffi

cult to find, so invaluable when found, between ridiculous vanity on the one side, and affected modesty on the other. We see, from many passages in it, that the author was fully aware of the vast contribution he had made to literature, and the firm basis on which he had built his colossal fame. But he had good sense enough to see, that those great qualities were never so likely to impress the reader as when only cautiously alluded to by the author. He knew that vanity and ostentation never fail to make the character in which they predominate ridiculous-if excessive, contemptible; and that, although the world would thankfully receive all the details, how minute soever, connected with his immortal work, they would not take off his hands any symptom of his own entertaining the opinion of it which all others have formed. It is the consummate judgment with which Gibbon has given enough of the details connected with the preparation of his works to be interesting, and not enough to be ridiculous, which constitutes the great charm, and has occasioned the marked success, of his autobiography. There are few passages in the English language so popular as the well-known ones in which he has recounted the first conception, and final completion of his history, which, as models of the kind, as well as passages of exquisite beauty, we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of transcribing, the more especially as they will set off, by way of contrast, the faults in some parallel passages attempted by Chateaubriand and Lamartine.

"At the distance of twenty-five years, I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot-where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell-was at once present to my eyes; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before

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I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. It was at Rome, on the 15th October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing this Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work."(Life, p. 198, 8vo edition.)

Again, the well-known description of the conclusion of his labours :

"I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature

limited sale it met with for some time He knew after its first appearance. well how these humble beginnings would be contrasted with its subseAmidst quent triumphant success. his many great and good qualities, there is none for which Sir Walter Scott was more admirable than the unaffected simplicity and good sense of his character, which led him to continue through life utterly unspotted by vanity, and unchanged by an amount of adulation from the most fascinating quarters, which would probably have turned the head of any Among the many causes other man. of regret which the world has for the catastrophes which overshadowed his latter years, it is not the least that it prevented the completion of that autobiography with which Mr Lockhart has commenced his Life. His simplicity of character, and the vast number of eminent men with whom he was intimate, as well as the merit of that fragment itself, leave no room for doubt that he would have made a most charming memoir, if he had lived to complete it. This observation does not detract in the

due to Mr Lockhart, for his admirable Life of his illustrious father-in-law: on the contrary, it forms its highest encomium. The charm of that work is mainly owing to its being so embued with the spirit of the subject, that it may almost be regarded as an autobiography.

Continental writers of note have, more than English ones, fallen into that error which is of all others the most fatal in autobiography-inordinate vanity. At the head of all the delinquents of this class we must place Rousseau, whose celebrated Confessions contain a revelation of folly so extreme, vanity so excessive, and baseness so disgraceful, that it would pass for incredible if not proved by the book itself, which is to be found in every library. Not content with affirming, when past fifty, that there was no woman of fashion of whom he might not have made the conquest if he chose to set about it,* he thought fit to entertain the world

with all the private details of his life, which the greater prudence of his most indiscreet biographers would have consigned to oblivion. No one who wishes to discredit the Genevese philosopher, need seek in the works of others for the grounds of doing so. Enough is to be found in his own to consign him to eternal execration and contempt. He has told us equally in detail, and with the same air of infantine simplicity, how he committed a theft when in service as a lackey, and permitted an innocent girl, his fellow-servant, to bear the penalty of it; how he alternately drank the wine in his master's cellars, and made love to his wife; how he corrupted one female benefactress who had sheltered him in extremity of want, and afterwards made a boast of her disgrace; and abandoned a male benefactor who fell down in a fit of apoplexy on the streets of Lyons, and left him lying on the pavement, deserted by the only friend whom he had in the world. The author of so many eloquent declamations against mothers neglecting their children, on his own admission, when in easy circumstances, and impelled by no necessity, consigned five of his natural children to a foundling hospital, with such precautions against their being known that he never did or could hear of them again! Such was his vanity, that he thought the world would gladly feed on the crumbs of this sort which fell from the table of the man rich in genius. His grand theory was that the human mind is born innocent, with dispositions only to good, and that all the evils of society arise from the follies of education or the oppression of government. Judging from the picture he has presented of himself, albeit debased by no education but what he himself had afforded, we should say his disposition was more corrupt than has even been imagined by the most dark-minded and bigoted Calvinist that ever existed.

Alfieri was probably as vain in reality as Rousseau; but he knew better how to conceal it. He had not the folly of supposing that he could entertain women by the boastful detail of his conquests over them. He judged wisely, and more like a man

who had met with bonnes fortunes, that he would attain more effectually the object of interesting their feelings, by painting their conquests over him. He has done this so fully, so sincerely, and with such eloquence, that he has made one of the most powerful pieces of biography in any language. Its charm consists in the picture he has drawn, with equal truth and art, of a man of the most impetuous and ardent temperament, alternately impelled by the strongest passions which can agitate the breast-love and ambition. Born of a noble family, inheriting a great fortune, he exhibited an uncommon combination of patrician tastes and feelings with republican principles and aspirations. He was a democrat because he knew the great by whom he was surrounded, and did not know the humble who were removed to a distance. He said this himself, after witnessing at Paris the horrors of the 10th August." Je connais bien les grands, mais je ne connais pas les petits." He drew the vices of the former from observation, he painted the virtues of the latter from imagination. Hence the absurdity and unnatural character of many of his dramas, which, to the inhabitant of our free country, who is familiar with the real working of popular institutions, renders them, despite their genius, quite ridiculous. But, in the delineation of what passed in his own breast, he is open to no such reproach. His picture of his own feelings is as forcible and dramatic as that of any he has drawn in his tragedies; and it is far more truthful, for it is taken from nature, not an imaginary world of his own creation, having little resemblance to that we see around us. His character and life were singularly calculated to make such a narrative interesting, for never was one more completely tossed about by vehement passions, and abounding with melodramatic incidents. Alternately dreaming over the most passionate attachments, and labouring of his own accord at Dante fourteen hours a-day; at one time making love to an English nobleman's wife, and fighting him in the Park, at another driving through France with fourteen blood horses in harness;