PARTHIAN DARTS. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE LOVERS' QUARrel.' Of all the queer animals in the vast menagerie of society, there is none so queer as a middle-aged Scotchman, who has been brought up in a counting-house. Notwithstanding that his character is replete with a strong, manly judgment, a sly, modest wit, and a grave dignity, which insures respect, because we know it to be built upon honesty; still, the more he approaches the stars, the more we are compelled to think of Ursa Major. Unremitting attention to his duty has elongated his countenance, and picked his bones, till he is nothing but profile and right angles. Seclusion from the world has divided him from its tastes, manners, and costume, as far as the bear of Lapland from the monkey of Cochin China. His thin light hair is still cut quickset-wise over his forehead, an eternal monument to his patrimonial porridge pot; his dingy neck-cloth seems well nigh to have strangled him; and his trowsers are crowding about his heels, precisely as if the hangman had been pulling at them. When he gazes (and he gazes at every thing, because nothing is familiar to him), his mouth is drawn open by the weight of his chin; when he talks, it is always in the same key, which neither love nor murder could elevate or depress; when he laughs, he laughs with his arms and legs. If he stands, it is with his great nobs of knees bent in, and his huge double-soled feet squared out; his walk is a hop, step, and a jump, in which he goes all fours like a windmill; if it be wet, he splashes himself up to the eyes, and if it be slippery, he tumbles down. Run he cannot, for fear of knocking his heels together; his only knowledge of a horse is that it has no horns; and as for dancing—oh, Terpsichore! he would kick down a set of quadrillers like nine-pins! Just such a good kind of a hippopotamus as this was my friend Mac (the proper name at the end of this would make him too frightful), born far north, and bred in Lombard-street, where he had lived on a few broth, and a singed sheep's head, till he had bought breeches for all his clan. The simplicity of his habits, resulting from a sensible conviction that he was unfit for those of other men, rendered money an incumbrance to him ; and Mac turned restive upon two thousand a year, and vowed to heaven that he would make no more. As soon as he had given up business, it was necessary for him to consider what he should do with himself. Alas! for the amusements of London he was too much of a clown; for those of the country he was too much of a cockney; and a |