Such was the wise conviction of

but what is life, without its pickles? young Brown, condemned to a thousand pounds. Brown had, at fiveand-twenty, done nothing; a circumstance which supplied him with an inducement to go on as he had begun. When at school, he "couldn't swim," and he had been soundly birched for venturing where only he could learn. Throughout his life it seemed that the argument of the schoolmaster exercised a subtle power over the mind of the scholar. He was ignorant, and how vain the endeavour to be wise!

Brown, though a fervent admirer of the beautiful sex, had never ventured to intrust the secret of that admiration to any person the most likely to be interested with it. At one-and-twenty, he was moderately in love with Maria, the daughter of the village attorney; Maria Writly, whose honoured father would have been but too happy to assign his seventh child to the protection of our hero. Brown, however, was conscious of his inexperience: he never had made love, and it was so awkward to begin to learn. He was sure that his passion became stronger and stronger; he thought, too, that the young lady saw it, and smiled benignantly upon its growth: still, he never had spoken to any woman upon a subject generally so offensive to the sex, and, perhaps, it was not yet time for him to open his mouth.

"Bless you, it's nothing," said Jack Simmons, clerk to old Writly. "Take my word for it," said Jack one day to Brown, " it's nothing!""

We fear our lady readers will be somewhat scandalised when they learn that what Jack Simmons proclaimed to be nothing, was no other than that most important passage in the life of every biped, whether the active or the passive party,-a declaration of love. Nothing!

"Well, it may be," said Brown, " very likely; but then, Jack, the fact is, I—if I must speak-I never did make an offer."

"I'll defy Solomon," replied Jack, " to find any young gentleman a better reason for beginning at the very earliest opportunity.'

Brown thrust his fingers through his hair, and looking upon the ground, and then into the sky, and then turning his head, and staring in the face of Jack Simmons, said, in a very serious voice, " Jack, I never did it." Jack laughed.

Time passed on, and Brown remained silent, because he had been silent; every hour and every day adding, in his opinion, a new reason for his taciturnity. Jack Simmons ceased to advise where his advice bore no fruit, and the early friends became mere acquaintance. Jack was one of those enviable, prosperous spirits, who look upon the very best things of this world as things made for themselves, and hence when fortune offers her goods, taking them with scarcely a flushing of the face or a trembling of the nerves, to betray a delicious feeling of surprise. Jack would have taken a coronet from the hand of the goddess, and clapping it upon his head, as if it were no more than a new beaver, would have walked airily away. While a humble, fearing spirit would have offered thanks for a hedge-side crab, Jack Simmons would have helped himself to a pine at five guineas, whistling as he cut it. Hence, Jack Simmons had many pines, when other Jacks were gaping for the crudest little apple!

Two months had flown since the meeting of Brown and Jack, when Jack had, in the opinion of Brown, sacrilegiously avowed a declaration of love to be" nothing." It was a beautiful morning in June, and

Brown-with thoughts of Maria Writly in his heart and head, and fishing-tackle in his hand-crossed the paternal threshold. Now he thought of Maria, and now of trout; now of his long-deferred declaration, and now of his bait. With the mixed feelings of a lover and an angler, though they may be thought the same, Brown plodded onward. He passed the school: his former master-his benefactor-was dead: a stranger flogged another generation, and, let us hope, with justice, strength, and wisdom equal to the gifts of the departed. Brown turned the corner of a lane; an action that, although lost upon the reader, denoted the two possessing passions of the pedestrian: the lane led to the stream wherein Brown hoped to catch his fish, and half-way up the lane stood the cottage of Jeffrey Writly, attorney-at-law.

We know not whether the reader has felt a surprise that has often smote us in our many wanderings through little country towns. If so, we could wish to exchange opinions on the matter. Why is it that the house of the lawyer and the house of the apothecary are nine times out of ten at some distance from the crowds of houses composing the town? Why do they stand-if we may use the term-pushed away from the sociality of neighbours? We believe there are certain statutes which confine the workers in unhealthy and noisome trades to the outskirts of a city; but what-we ask it of the curious-what principle can operate to the banishment of the lawyer and the apothecary? "We pause for a reply."

And Brown "paused," but for what, we will leave the imaginative reader to guess. He stood, his rod upon the ground, looking at the chamber window of Maria Writly, his unaccosted mistress!

"Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying,"

cries the vaccillating Hamlet stumbling on the kneeling Claudius. Now, thought Brown, as he gazed upon the lattice, now could I tell my love, although I never did before. Brown stood and looked.

Oh, reader! if you have ever been in love-and if you have not, you are worse than any beast of years of discretion-and if, having been in love, you have ever stood and looked at the lattice of your sleeping mistress, have you not felt your heart drawn up-up-up to the casement? Has not the house lain in the sweet moonlight, or basked in the morning sun like a living thing? That within it you have loved has given a sense, a vitality, to the outward walls: you could with reverent, pilgrimlips have knelt and kissed the threshold: the martlet building beneath the eaves was to you a sacred thing-a household religion. There was not a part of that habitation-we care not whether of stone or mud— that was not enriched by the unconscious magic of the dear sleeper within. As the sun rose, from the very chimneys, as from the olden statue, it drew forth hidden harmonies.

We cannot answer for the feelings of Brown, but we put it to the reader to say what our hero ought to have felt, gazing at the sweet domestic cot, where his own unpaired dove lay nestling. No stranger would have thought the cottage the house of Jeffrey Writly, the town attorney. It was a very bower built of roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle-an abode for Flora. Not a brick but was hidden by some climbing shrub. "Jeffrey Writly live here! who'd have thought it?" Such was the cry of those suddenly made aware of his practice, but

before ignorant of his dwelling-place. We remember a circumstance which provoked a like surprise in an elderly lady admiring, with others, a most beautiful foreign snake. "What a lovely skin! What a beautiful outside! What a dear! Ha!"-and the lady gave a truly feminine shriek-" look at its sting! Well, who'd have thought it!"

Brown continued to gaze in silence, when there suddenly broke upon his meditations a sound of wheels. He turned his eyes from the window of Maria, and bending them upon the dusty, white road, walked, trailing his rod behind him, slowly on. He was absorbed, fighting his infirmity; yes, he felt his silence to be weak-foolish: he certainly would declare himself to Maria; because he had not spoken, should he always hold his tongue? Because he knew not how to make love, was he never to learn?

"Hey! hillo! hey! Want to be run over?" shouted a voice behind.

Brown started to the side of the road, looked round, and, amidst a cloud of dust raised by the vehicle, caught a rapid but a very certain glance of Maria Writly, about three minutes before lifted from her bedroom window by Jack Simmons, who, for his politeness, had been rewarded by the lady with a seat by her side. Brown had been wafting all sorts of prayers and wishes to the sleeping Maria-the said Maria at the time waiting with her band-boxes for Jack Simmons and a postchaise. Within the past month a dead aunt had considerably enhanced the value of Maria Writly, at least in the judicious eyes of Jack Sim

mons.

Angling is a contemplative employment: hence, Brown having lost his mistress was, we presume, in the best mood to fish. He walked to the stream-to that very stream into which in bygone years he had ventured with Jones, Robinson, and the hapless Smith!

It was evening when the suffering Brown returned from the "great waters." The day had, indeed, been Juckless; a truth that unconsciously escaped him. He returned down the lane; but, could he pass the cottage of Maria? No; again he paused before the door; again, he stared at the window.

"What sport to-day?" asked a yeoman of the rapt angler, still looking at the window. "What sport?"

"Too bad-too bad!" said Brown, pondering on the flight of Maria. "What! got nothing-eh ?" cried the farmer.

With a profound sigh, and an unutterable look at the casement, Brown incoherently exclaimed," Not even a nibble!"

CHAP. II.

We have seen Brown fail in his first hopes-we have seen him a victim to the dogmas of his schoolmaster. The judicious sentence of that profound teacher continued, as we hope to show, to influence the conduct of the pupil through all his days. The fate of Brown was a practical example of the wisdom of the pedagogue. Jack Simmons and Maria Writly are man and wife, and Brown is gone from his native village.

"A thousand pounds! What can I possibly do with a thousand pounds?" asked Brown with an air of deep distress. The question was put to a middle-aged man with a pounds-shillings-and-pence face,

who shrank from the question as a devout Mahometan would recoil from the profane inquiry of a Jew.

"Do with it, Mr. Brown?" cried Dribbleton-(he had been left executor by Brown deceased)" do with it!" Dribbleton raised his eyes to the ceiling and was dumb.

"and

"I have never been used to money," observed Brown; and-" the helpless condition of the speaker was really pitiable, "what can I do with it ?"

"Do with it!" exclaimed Dribbleton, for the third time; why," and the advice was quite paternal," lay it out to the best advantage.' Solon, turned huckster, could not have spoken better wisdom. It was, however, lost upon Brown, who still excused himself from future action on the cogent ground of past and present passiveness.

"Suppose, Mr. Brown,-for I think I can put you in the way of turning your patrimony to account,-suppose you go abroad, and-"

"I should have no objection, none whatever; only, the fact is, I—I never was at sea," said Brown, " and how can I go?"

"Then what is to be done with you?" cried Dribbleton, with a look of despair, and the look was exchanged with interest by Brown.

The main points of the above brief dialogue were for several days repeated. At length, Dribbleton, on the seventh meeting with Brown, had prepared himself to end the difficulty, at least so far as it involved his duty as an executor.

"Well, Mr. Dribbleton!" said Brown, entering the room with his customary sickly smile, "Well, Mr. Dribbleton!" and he sank resignedly upon a chair.

The executor acknowledged the greeting; lifted the lid of his desk; took from it a bank-note; produced a stamp; and then held out a pen to his visitor, who continued to stare wonderingly at the action. "Here

is the note," said Dribbleton; and now sign me a receipt. My time is precious, Mr. Brown, and-you see-it is a thousand pound, and-" and still Dribbleton proffered the goose-quill.

"But I never did sign for such a sum," said Brown; and if, Mr. Dribbleton-" but the executor was inexorable. He almost forced the pen between the rigid thumb and finger of Brown, who, after a great internal struggle, signed the receipt as he let fall the pen, he broke into a perspiration, for he had never signed for a thousand pounds

before!

Brown quitted Mr. Dribbleton, and, with a thousand pounds upon him, found himself alone-alone in the hungry streets of wicked London. Here was a situation! With his hand griping the note in his pocket, he stood and stared about him. As his fingers played with the flimsy treasure, he felt as if his whole anatomy was turning into bank paper. He could scarcely breathe, so much was he oppressed with a sense of his own value. He seemed sublimated into one piece of treasure! And then-for we will not be silent on the infirmity-the uncharitable looks he darted upon every passenger! Brown, with only a trifle in his pouch, was really a benevolent fellow,-thinking the best of everybody about him. But the same Brown with a thousand pounds in his pocket looked upon every man, woman, and child as a trickster and a cut-purse. With his fingers still playing about the paper to be sure of its presence with his whole anatomy drawn in and up, and

his eyes, like the eyes of a bandit in the phantasmagoria, rolling from side to side, Brown pursued his way, starting at intervals from the too near approach of suspected passengers. It will impart a vague idea of the morbid terror of Brown-of his fantastic weakness, transforming goodness itself into something evil-when we inform the reader that our hero absolutely trembled and grasped his note with a convulsive hand as he was accidentally jostled by what he considered to be three notorious pickpockets, when, in very truth, they were a leash of the most respectable stockbrokers; nay, once, in his fright and fumbling for the note, he was about to scream "Stop thief!" after an elderly gentleman, who proved to be not only a Quaker, but a corn-dealer. May all our friends be preserved from a thousand pounds, say we: and, with the long ears of our imagination, we hear the reader respond "Amen!" Who would not rather choose philanthropy with empty pockets, than low suspicion with a thousand pounds?

"My dear fellow! the very man I wanted to see! How are you?" Such was the rapid greeting of Miles Butcherly to Brown, as he walked, or rather slunk, feverishly down Ludgate-hill, his fingers still at his treasure. "Eh? Why, don't you know me? What's the matter? Lost anything?" asked Butcherly.

Sooth to say, the manner of Brown fully authorized the question and the assumed calamity. For Butcherly having, with all the face of goodfellowship, thrust his arm suddenly within the arm of Brown-the arm belonging to the hand, the fingers of which played with the bank-note -caused that valuable document to rise up to the very brink of Brown's pocket, and in so doing, we may, in popular phrase, declare brought Brown's "heart to his mouth." Indeed, the analogy of the accidents is very striking. Thus, it was no wonder Butcherly was astonished at the strange looks of his recent friend-it was no wonder that Brown looked at Miles Butcherly as if he did not know him. Brown had a thousand pounds in his pocket, and such forgetfulness under such circumstances may have often happened. However, Brown felt that his bank-note was perfectly safe, and then held out his unemployed hand to Butcherly. Miles Butcherly was one of the ten thousand men on town who, according to the vulgar notion, live upon nothing. There was once the same popular fallacy respecting the nature of cameleons; they sustained themselves, it was asserted, by merely breathing. Later science has shown the error of this conclusion; has proved that the animal finds its nourishment in flies. Now, Miles Butcherly was a human cameleon; his enemies declared he had nothing whatever to exist upon; whereas, Miles Butcherly lived, and well too, upon flies; from the "small gilded" insect to the big blue-bottle, every fly was food to him. For the present we must beg the reader to consider Brown--a fly.

"Where are you going?" asked Butcherly; and, without waiting for a reply, hospitably observed-" You must dine with me: must; I have said it."

Brown suffered himself to be walked away under custody of Butcherly, and, the effect of the first shock being past, even looked upon his friend as a sort of body-guard to the thousand pound note. They walked some distance in silence; at length, Butcherley broke the peace.

"Did you ever have a French dinner ?"

"Never," said Brown; "and, as I never did, I think I—”