abroad, like many other errors; but it does not become men of imagination to give in to it; and I must protest against it, as a flat irreligion. I do not pretend to be as romantic in my conduct as the Genevese philosopher, or as poetical in my nature as the bard of Rydalmount; but I have, by nature, perhaps, greater animal spirits than either; and a bit of health is a fine prism to see fancies by. It may be granted, for the sake of argument, that the bookLignon and the book-Yarrow are still finer things than the Lignon and Yarrow geographical; but to be actually on the spot, to look with one's own eyes upon the places in which our favourite heroes or heroines underwent the circumstances that made us love them this may surely make up for an advantage on the side of the description in the book; and, in addition to this, we have the pleasure of seeing how much has been done for the place by love and poetry. I have seen various places in Europe, which have been rendered interesting by great men and their works; and I never found myself the worse for seeing them, but the better. I seem to have made friends with them in their own houses; to have walked, and talked, and suffered, and enjoyed with them; and if their books have made the places better, the books themselves were there which made them so, and which grew out of them. The poet's hand was on the place, blessing it. I can no more separate this idea from the spot, than I can take away from it any other beauty. Even in London, I find the

principle hold good in me, though I have lived there many years, and, of course, associated it with every common-place the most unpoetical. The greater still includes the less and I can no more pass through Westminster, without thinking of Milton; or the Borough, without thinking of Chaucer and Shakspeare: or Gray's Inn, without calling Bacon to mind; or Bloomsbury Square, without Steele and Akenside-than I can prefer brick and mortar to wit and poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture, in the splendour of the recollection. I once had duties to perform, which kept me out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay through a neighbourhood in which Dryden lived; and though nothing could be more common-place, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me, I never hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I might pass through Gerard Street, and so give myself the shadow of a pleasant thought.

I am, sir, your cordial well-wisher,

A LOVER OF Books.

JACK ABBOTT'S BREAKFAST.

Animal spirits.-A Dominie Sampson drawn from the life.— Many things fall out between the (breakfast) cup and the lip. —A magistrate drawn from the life.—Is breakfast ever to be taken, or is it not?—The question answered.

"WHAT a breakfast I shall eat!" thought Jack Abbott, as he turned into Middle Temple Lane, towards the chambers of his old friend and tutor Goodall. "How I shall swill the tea! how cram down the rolls (especially the inside bits)! how apologize for one cup more!'-But Goodall is an excellent old fellow-he won't mind. To be sure I'm rather late. The rolls, I'm afraid, will be cold, or double baked; but anything will be delicious. If I met a baker, I could eat his basket."

Jack Abbott was a good-hearted, careless fellow, who had walked that morning from Hendon, to breakfast with his old friend by appointment, and afterwards consult his late father's lawyer. He was the son of a clergyman more dignified by rank than by solemnity of manners, but an excellent person

too, who had some remorse in leaving a family of sons with little provision, but comforted himself with reflecting that he had gifted them with good constitutions and cheerful natures, and that they would "find their legs somehow," as indeed they all did; for very good legs they were, whether to dance away care with, or make love with, or walk seven miles to breakfast with, as Jack had done that morning; and so they all got on accordingly, and clubbed up a comfortable maintenance for the prebendary's widow, who, sanguine and loving as her husband, almost wept out of a fondness of delight, whenever she thought either of their legs or their affection. As to Jack himself, he was the youngest, and at present the least successful, of the brotherhood, having just entered upon a smal tutorship in no very rich family; but his spirits were the greatest in the family (which is saying much), and if he was destined never to prosper so much as any of them in the ordinary sense, he had a relish of every little pleasure that presented itself, and a genius for neutralizing the disagreeable, which at least equalized his fate with theirs.

Well, Jack Abbott has arrived at the door of his friend's room. He knocks; and it is opened by Goodall himself, a thin grizzled personage, in an old greatcoat instead of a gown, with lanthorn-jaws, shaggy eyebrows, and a most bland and benevolent expression of countenance. Like many who inhabit

Inns of Court, he was not a lawyer. He had been a tutor all his life; and as he led only a book-existence, he retained the great blessing of it -a belief in the best things which he believed when young. The natural sweetness of his disposition had even gifted him with a politeness of manners which many a better-bred man might have envied; and though he was a scholar more literal than profound, and, in truth, had not much sounded the depths of anything but his tea-caddy, yet an irrepressible respect for him accompanied the smiling of his friends; and mere worldly men made no grosser mistake, than in supposing they had a right to scorn him with their uneasy satisfactions and misbelieving success. In a word, he was a sort of better-bred Dominie Sampson—a Goldsmith, with the genius taken out of him, but the goodness leftan angel of the dusty heaven of bookstalls and the British Museum.

Unfortunately for the hero of our story, this angel of sixty-five, unshaved, and with stockings down at heel, had a memory which could not recollect what had been told him six hours before, much

less six days. Accordingly, he had finished his breakfast, and given his cat the remaining drop of milk long before his (in every sense of the word) late pupil presented himself within his threshold, Furthermore, besides being a lanthorn-jawed cherub, he was very short-sighted, and his ears were none of the quickest; so in answer to Jack's " Well