time I had occasion to go to Clifton, to play a game of skittles with a Jamaica captain for a dozen of rum; and as I went along, just as I entered the North Crescent, whom should I see but Cecilia !

Skittles were at once knocked down out of my head. She was alone, and I ventured to join her. Our mail-coach adventure afforded a common topic of conversation, which soon grew animated. We talked of every thing, and as I coaxed her towards Durham Downs, I had established her arm under mine. At last we came on that eminence which exhibits the most beautiful and varied prospect of that delightful tract. It was summer, about five o'clock on a lovely June evening. Every sight and sound about us was such as to dispose the soul to tender emotions. Never did Cecilia look more lovely than when I persuaded her to rest herself, by sitting down on one of the grassy plots overlooking the descent below.

What I said to her I cannot write-the first words of love are not to be profaned by exposure to the gaze of the world. Our thoughts were pure-pure as the cloudless sky overhanging the lovely landscape, in the midst of which we sat, forgetful even of its beauties, wholly absorbed in the consideration of one another. I had whispered, and she had heard without reply, what is never whispered a second time.

We might have been half an hour together—

it was but a moment to my thought-when she recollected that she had left her aunt waiting for her in a butcher's shop, where she was buying-how minutely love makes us recollect the merest trifles-buying a leg of pork, with a couple of pounds of sausages. I pressed her hand to my lips, and we retuned to Clifton. Delightful day! Were my life prolonged to the days allotted to Methuselah, I never could forget a particle of what happened upon thee! It is the bright spot in the waste of my

memory.

When we parted, I put my hand mechanically and mournfully into my waistcoat pocket, and found that I had forgotten my cigar-case. Love had so completely taken possession of my.soul, that I knew not what I was doing, and, by mere instinct, walked into a tobacconist's shop; which, such was the absence of my mind, I was about to leave without paying for the cigars, until the tobacconist rather energetically reminded me of my insouciance. Captain Snickersnee and his skittles were quite out of my head, and I went across to a low-browed public-house, where a portrait of Lord Nelson, more spirited in conception, than exact in likeness, or studied in composition, shone glittering in one-armed majesty in the evening sun. The room I went into-why need I conceal that it was the tap-room?was filled with the miscellaneous population of Bristol-men in general more noted for their

candonr than any other, particularly in their But I heeded them not. I was as

manners.

much alone as if I was in the deserts of Tadmor, where the ruins of Palmyra tower towards the sky, or moulder upon the ground, filling the awe-struck traveller with melancholy music on the instability of things. I lighted my cigar by the assistance of the pipe of a man sitting next me, who I have some reason to believe, but I shall not be positive, was a tailor. I puffed away-soft were my thoughts, delectable my visions. Every curl of smoke contained the countenance of my Cecilia-every twinkle from each surrounding pipe beamed upon me as if it was one of her celestial eyes. I had forgotten where I was, when the waiter came to me, and jogging,my elbow, said, "Thee musn't lumber the room, if thee'll not drink zummat." In general, I have remarked, that the language of these persons is seldom marked by the refinements of elegance, and that perhaps you might travel from one end of the country to the other withfinding a waiter at a public-house who combines the terseness of Addison with the magniloquence of Johnson!

I replied to this rude man mildly, yet, I think, with sufficient dignity.

"What have you in the house?"

"Every thing," said he.

In this the man's bad faith was evident; for, on scrutinizing the subject, I found that

he had nothing but gin, a liquor I ever detested, and rum. "Rum, then," said I, with a sigh, resigning myself to my fate, for I anticipated, in my ignorance, that I would dislike it.

My mouth was full of the cigar smokefull, ay, full as my heart was of my Cecilia. Divine girl! when I think upon thy perfections, on thy charms, in the manner in which thou wert lost to me, by that fatal and mysterious circle of events, never to be anticipatednever to be repeated! But I'll think no more. There is a point of human endurance, beyond which it cannot go. Let me proceed. I was saturated with smoke, when, in the wildness of the delirium of my love, I did not perceive the water-bottle standing by the bottom of rum, and swallowed the spirit unalloyed, unmoistened, undiluted, uninjured. It permeated my whole mouth-it filled it with a species of solidity that seemed altogether to have destroyed the liquid character of the spirits; I felt it melting into my palate, my tongue, my fauces, my gums. It was an intense gush, a simple, original, indivisible idea of delight. It rose to my brain, as the vapour of the tedded meadow rises to the sky in the balminess of morning. It descended to the sole of my foot as the sky sends back that delicious vapour in the shape of the dews of evening. It was a joy to be felt once, and no more. I never felt it again, it was!

Odour fled

As soon as shed;

'Twas morning's winged dream,

'Twas a light that ne'er shall shine again On life's dull stream!

I have tried it over and over, and it will not do. I smoke my cigar still in the evening, and frequently moisten it with a quart or so of rum, naked, in grog, in punch, in flip—every way that can be thought of, but it will not return. That feeling of intense and transporting delight is over.

my sorrows were

Days of my youth? when every thing was innocence and peace—when light, and my joys unsophisticated—when I saw a glory in the sky, and a power in the earth which I shall never see again-how delightful, yet how sad is your recollection? Here's, then, to the days gone by-to the memory of my first love, and my first libation of rum over a cigar! Some young heart is now going the same round as I was then-revelling in delights which he fondly fancies are to last for ever-anticipating joys which never are destined to exist. Light be his heart, buoyant his spirits-I shall not break in on his dreams by the crooking of experience,

Farewell again, Cecilia! I never saw her after that day-in the evening she left Bristol with her aunt's butler; they were married three days after by the Blacksmith at Gretna, and she is now, I understand, the mother of

B