"his cups"). The verses were extempore, and ad

dressed to Mrs. Thrale:

"And now, I pray thee, Hetty dear,

That thou wilt give to me,

With cream and sugar softened well,
Another dish of tea.

But hear, alas! this mournful truth,

Nor hear it with a frown,

Thou canst not make the tea so fast

As I can gulp it down."

Now, this is among the pleasures of reading and reflecting men over their breakfast, or on any other occasion. The sight of what is a tiresome nothing to others shall suggest to them a hundred agreeable recollections and speculations. There is a teacup, for example. "Well, what is a teacup?" a simpleton might cry: "it holds my tea, that's all." Yes, that's all to you and your poverty-stricken brain: we hope you are rich and prosperous, to make up for it as well as you can. But, to the right tea-drinker, the cup, we see, contains not only recollections of eminent brethren of the bohea, but the whole Chinese nation, with all its history, Lord Macartney included; nay, for that matter, Ariosto and his beautiful story of Angelica and Medoro; for Angelica was a Chinese: and then collaterally come in the Chinese neighbors and conquerors from Tartary, with Chaucer's

"Story of Cambuscan bold,”

and the travels of Marco Polo and others, and the Jesuit missionaries, and the Japanese with our friend Golownin, and the Loo Choo people, and Confucius,

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whom Voltaire (to show his learning) delights to call by his proper native appellation of Kong-foo - tsee (reminding us of Congo tea): and then we have the Chinese Tales, and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and Goldsmith brings you back to Johnson again, and the tea-drinkings of old times: and then we have the Rape of the Lock" before us, with Belinda at breakfast, and Lady Wortley Montague's tea-table eclogue, and the domestic pictures in the "Tatler" and " Spectator," with the passions existing in those times for chinaware; and Horace Walpole, who was an old woman in that respect; and, in short, a thousand other memories, grave and gay, poetical and prosaical, all ready to wait upon anybody who chooses to read books, like spirits at the command of the book-readers of old, who, for the advantages they had over the rest of the world, got the title of Magicians.

Yea, pleasant and rich is thy sight, little teacup (large, though, at breakfast), round, smooth, and colored; composed of delicate earth, like the earth, producing flowers and birds and men; and containing within thee thy Lilliputian ocean, which we, after sending our fancy sailing over it, past islands of foam called "sixpences," and mysterious bubbles from below, will, giant-like, ingulf:

But hold! there's a fly in.

Now, why could not this inconsiderate monster of the air be content with the whole space of the heavens round about him, but he must needs plunge into this scalding pool? Did he scent the sugar? or was it a fascination of terror from the heat? "Hadst thou my three kingdoms to range in," said James the First to a

fly, "and yet must needs get into my eye?" It was a good-natured speech, and a natural. It shows that the monarch did his best to get the fly out again; at least, we hope so: and therefore we follow the royal example in extricating the little winged wretch, who has struggled hard with his unavailing pinions, and become drenched and lax with the soaking.

He is on the dry clean cloth. Is he dead? No: the tea was not so hot as we supposed it. See! he gives a heave of himself forward; then endeavors to drag a leg up, then another; then stops, and sinks down, saturated and overborne with wateriness; and assuredly, from the inmost soul of him, he sighs (if flies sigh; which we think they must do sometimes, after attempting in vain, for half an hour, to get through a pane of glass). However, his sigh is as much mixed with joy as fright and astonishment and a horrible hot bath can let it be; and the heat has not been too much for him. A similar case would have been worse for one of us with our fleshy bodies. For, see! after dragging himself along the dry cloth, he is fairly on his legs: he smoothes himself, like a cat, first one side, then the other, only with his legs instead of his tongue; then rubs the legs together, partly to disengage them of their burthen, and partly as if he congratulated himself on his escape; and now, finally, opening his wings (beautiful privilege! for all wings, except the bat's, seem beautiful, and a privilege, and fit for envy), he is off again into the air, as if nothing had happened.

He may forget it, being an inconsiderate and giddy fly; but it is to us, be it remembered by our conscience,

us.

that he owes all which he is hereafter to enjoy. His suctions of sugar, his flights, his dances on the window, his children, yea, the.whole House of Fly, as far as it depends on him their ancestor, will be owing to We have been his providence, his guardian angel, the invisible being that rescued him without his knowing it. What shall we add, reader? Wilt thou laugh, or look placid and content; humble, and yet in some sort proud withal, and not consider it as an unbecoming meeting of ideas in these our most mixed and reflective papers, — if we argue from rescued flies to rescued human beings, and take occasion to hope, that, in the midst of the struggling endeavors of such of us as have to wrestle with fault or misfortune, invisible pity may look down with a helping eye upon ourselves; and that what it is humane to do in the man, it is divine to do in that which made humanity.

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BREAKFAST CONCLUDED.

Tea and Coffee, Milk, Bread, &c.

E have said nothing of coffee and chocolate at breakfast, though a good example has been set us in that respect in the pleasant pages of Mr. D’Israeli. We confined ourselves to tea, because it is the staple drink. A cheap coffee, however, or imitation of it, has taken place of tea with many; and the poor have now their "coffee-houses," as the rich used to have. We say "used," because coffee-drinking in such places among the rich is fast going out in consequence of the later hours of dinner and the attractions of the club-houses. Coffee, like tea, used to form a refreshment by itself, some hours after dinner. It is now taken as a digester, right upon that meal or the wine; and sometimes does not even close it; for the digester itself is digested by a liqueur of some sort, called a chasse-café (coffee-chaser). We do not, however, pretend to be learned in these matters. If we find ourselves at a rich table, it is but as a stranger in the land to all but its humanities. A custom may change next year, and find us as ignorant of it as the footman is otherwise.*

* We advert to the knowledge of this personage, out of no undue feeling either towards himself, or those whom he serves. Both classes comprise natures of all sorts like others. But fashion, in itself, is a poor business, everlastingly shifting its customs because it has nothing but