ment de condoléance; il pleure d'un œil, et il rit de l'autre. Se formant quelquefois sur les ministres, ou sur le favori, il parle en public des choses frivoles, du vent, de la gelée; il se tait au contraire, et fait le mystérieux, sur ce qu'il sait de plus important, et plus volontiers encore sur ce qu'il ne sait point.—

"J'entends Théodocte de l'anti-chambre: il grossit sa voix à mesure qu'il s'approche; le voilà entré; il rit, il crie, il éclate: on bouche ses oreilles, et c'est un tonnerre: il n'est pas moins redoutable par les choses qu'il dit que par le ton dont il parle: il ne s'appaise, et il ne revient de ce grand fracas, que pour bredouiller des vanités et des sottises; il a si peu d'égard au tems, aux personnes, aux bienséances, que chacun a son fait sans qu'il ait eu intention de lui donner; il n'est pas encore assis qu'il a à son insu désobligé toute l'assemblée. A-t-on servi, il se met le premier à table, et dans la première place. Il mange, il boit, il conte, il plaisante, il interrompt tout à la fois. Il n'a nul discernement des personnes, ni du maître, ni des conviés; il abuse de la folle déférence qu'on a pour lui. Est-ce lui, est-ce Eutedeme, qui donne le repas? Il rappelle à soi toute l'autorité de la table; et il y a un moindre inconvénient à la lui laisser entière, qu'à la lui disputer. Le vin et les viandes n'ajoutent rien à son caractère: si l'on joue, il gagne au jeu; il veut railler celui qui perd, et il l'offense; les rieurs sont pour lui. Il n'y a sorte de fatuités qu'on ne lui passe. Je cède enfin, et je disparois, incapable de souffrir plus long-tems Théodocte et ceux qui le souffrent."

These two last characters I have happily found dur ing my short residence here, and within a stone's throw of my lodgings. To my discerning readers I leave the task of matching the first. In the mean time I will endeavour to amuse them with the relation of an odd kind

of dream, which I fell into last night, after having consumed most part of the day in rambling over the different squares in the neighbourhood of Oxford-street. My thoughts had been diverted, amidst the whirl of opulence and splendour which surrounded me, with reflections on the topsy-turvy dispositions of civilised life, where the law of inheritance and succession places us frequently in situations so wide of those for which nature has formed us. I could not get these thoughts out of my head, when I laid it upon my pillow; they pursued me in a dream, and brought the following scene before my eyes. Methought I stood by the road side, on the margin of a pellucid stream, of which some one at my elbow told me the following tradition.-Persecution had once borrowed the Furies of Proserpine, to lash Truth out of the world. The poor maid, whose custom it was to go about half naked, was cruelly driven by these implacable Billingsgates. She was pursued from city to city, and from town to town, till, at the moment when she was beginning to faint with fatigue and the loss of blood, she came to the brink of this little rivulet, into which she forthwith plunged, and was preserved, by the presiding deity, from the further vengeance of her tormenters. In recompence for this happy rescue, the stream was endued with the property of reflecting each person that passed by, in the true character and office for which nature had designed him, had nature been suffered to take her course.

I was now desired to contemplate in the stream the images of those who passed, and observe well the metamorphoses it represented. At that moment there appeared, in a chair, an elderly lady, in her way to St. James's: there was as much of her, clothes and all, as the chair could well contain. As soon as she was opposite the faithful pool, the transformation was

surprising. Her vehicle was converted into an ordinary wheelbarrow; and the same person that I had, but a moment before, beheld enveloped in flounce and brocade, fell to crying potatoes with the lustiest scream, and the most hearty good-will imaginable. I had scarcely taken leave of my old dowager potatoe-woman, before I beheld, at a distance, a couple of noble peers approach in a phaëton and four. As soon, however, as they arrived at the spot, the water reflected back the image of a cart carrying two criminals to the place of execution, and the blue riband round one of their necks took the likeness of a halter. A very spruce gentleman in black now came forward, with a cane and tassel in his hand, and a glittering something on his finger. This gentleman, I was told, was an evening lecturer, and a very popular preacher. It was singular enough to see so venerable a personage, as soon as he came to this oracular water, equipped with a bag and brush, and crying forth, "Sweep! Sweep!" with the most natural tones conceivable. A nobleman's carriage now came rolling by, when what was my astonishment, to see his lordship get out of his vehicle, and, after handing the coachman into it, mount the box himself! could not observe his lordship's skill in driving for the noise made in my ears by a passing nabob, who was stunning me with the cry of "Black your shoes, your honour! My attention was now diverted by a long funeral procession: the hearse underwent but small alteration, as no dead man is out of character, but the plumes all fell upon the ground, and were trampled under foot; in the succeeding carriages there was one roar of laughter; the chief mourners were changed into merry-andrews, while the mutes fell to singing with a very hearty good-will.

I turned my eyes from this disgusting spectacle, and beheld, at some distance, two gentlemen arm in arm, who, I was informed, had long passed for models of disinterested friendship. They had hardly, however, come up with me, before, as it appeared in the stream, one of them drew out a pistol from his bosom, and would certainly have shot the other through the head, if he had not taken to his heels the moment his arm was disengaged. A couple that had been united some years, as a bystander informed me, succeeded these bosom friends. I thought I blushed, after my fashion, that is, as much as my adust complexion would allow me, to see them change their lower garments in the watery mirror, and the lady walk off, en cavalier, with her husband's breeches. A surgeon happening most opportunely to meet a carcase-butcher just at the critical spot, appeared to give him up his box of instruments, and march away with his tray on his shoulder. A very fine man, in a red coat, was now coming up, with a truly martial stare; in a moment, however, his regimentals were covered with a smock frock, and his cane changed into a carter's whip, and in this equipment he plodded away like another Cincinnatus retiring to the plough.

At this instant, as I looked into the stream, a person seemed to be picking my pocket as he passed: I turned hastily round, and was told that the gentleman that was walking by, was a methodist preacher. A stately person that now advanced, was, as I was informed, a famous poet at watering-places, and celebrated for his elegies on ladies' larks, and linnets, and lap-dogs, and ladies themselves: as he approached, the whole inside of a book, which he held under his arm, seemed to be dispersed a thousand ways, like

the leaves of the Sybillæ, and nothing but the covers were left him, while the man himself was reflected by the stream in the character of an undertaker.

Methought, after this, a most solemn scene rose before my eyes. A succession of the OLIVE-BRANCHES, for ten generations back, passed beside the stream; and, what was truly surprising, it reflected them all just as they were, in their native simplicity, not a lineament of their faces altered, not a shred of their garments transposed. I thought my great-grandfather, whom I knew by the tobacco-stopper in his hand, cast a discontented look at the modish appearance of my buckles, which I had purchased since my arrival in town; which circumstance so terribly disconcerted me, that I was on the point of throwing myself into the stream, if I had not waked at that instant, and changed my mind in consequence.