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When they had come under the shade of our banyan, we gave them notice to quit, in a manner which it was impossible to misunderstand, namely, by pelting them with sticks and stones, which we had previous ly collected, and other convenient missiles. For some time, notwithstanding, they kept their ground, and continued the cackling as before, varied occasionally by a sharp noise made by clapping their forepaws together. One among them attempted to climb into the tree; but his clumsiness was perfectly ridiculous, and amused us exceedingly. So much indeed was I delighted, that I jumped and squeaked, and nearly fell off the branch on which I sat. Never, that I recollect, was I in higher spirits. I considered the animals below us, in every respect beneath me; and in mere wantonness, took deliberate aim at the one with a halfmoon head, whom I hit with part of a cocoa nutshell in the cheek, whereat he appeared to be much exasperated, and immediately seized what I then fancied was a stick, from one of his companions, and pointed it towards me. The manner in which he did this was, as I thought, exceedingly preposterous; for he held it as if to make me believe that it formed part of his own nose. I was much astonished, however, when a great noise, as of thunder, issued out of the end, with a cloud of dust, and my wife, who was close by my side, began to scream, and tumbled out of the tree. I attributed the fall to her own clumsiness, as she was an awkward monkey; and, to say the truth, we had not lived happily together for some time, for she was considerably larger than myself, and had given me a severe beating only the day before. When I saw her lying on the ground, and perfectly quiet, I knew she must be dead, being satisfied that nothing less would have quieted her; and I felt my mind greatly relieved, and began to look round among our troop for another mate.

In the meanwhile, the new-comers below began pulling my dead old wife about in a strange manner, turning her round and round, and jabbering to each other. At first I fancied they were going to eat her; but, at length, they laid her down, and I was glad to perceive that they had not

had the sense to take the fruit which was in her pouch, and which I resolved to make my own immediately on their departure; for, it is one thing to lose one's wife, and another to be deprived of her property.

The strange creatures now clustered together, and began to eat and drink, after an extraordinary fashion, out of the shells of cocoa nuts and large gourds. Their mode of drinking out of the latter particularly in terested us; and, when they went away, we were somewhat surprised to observe that they left several behind them standing on the ground.

Perhaps my spirits were somewhat elevated in consequence of my wife's fall. Be that as it may, I was one of the first to descend and examine the hollow gourds left by the strangers; and I was accompanied by several young females of our tribe, who had witnessed Glumdalla's accident, and therefore knew that I was at liberty to attend them. The things were half filled with what seemed to be water; so following our natural imitative propensity, we either lifted them in our forepaws, or dipped in our heads and began to drink, as the strange animals had done. In a very short space of time, I felt myself unusually vigorous and active: it seemed to me as though I was larger and stronger than any of our troop; and my courage was such, that I almost wished my old wife alive again, that I

might return the drubbings she had given me. My companions likewise appeared to have undergone a change. The females seemed handsomer, and the males uglier than usual; but all were merry and clamorous; and, indeed, it appeared as though we were trying which should make the most noise, and most frequently get possession of the gourds to imitate the strangers.

I have a very confused recollection of the manner in which that eventful scene terminated. There was some quarrelling, I remember, among us, and we fought; but I have no idea what it was about. The last thing that I can call to mind appears like a dream; and I should ever have believed it nothing more, but for the deplorable consequences, by which the whole tenor of my life has been changed. It seemed as though the strange and great animals suddenly

came upon us; but their manner was altogether different from that which they had practised on their first visit. Instead of moving slowly as before, they now flew about, like birds, in every direction; and I was astonished to see them overtake and lay hold of several of the most active among us. At length one approached me, and stretched out his long forepaw. Resistance against such a monster was not to be thought of. I therefore ran towards a stem of the banyan, which I unaccountably missed; but in a very short time I laid hold of another, which I thought to climb with the speed of lightning; when, to my great amazement, the whole tree had suddenly grown to such a height that its branches were above the clouds, which I plainly perceived rolling between me and them. Overcome by the dread of my pursuer, and this appalling change in the face of nature, my limbs refused to perform their office-I fell, exhausted, to the ground, and all remains a blank on the tablet of memory, from that moment till I awoke, ill and feverish, and surrounded by the human species.

It seems that the liquid which they had left in the calibashes (as they call them) was of an intoxicating nature, and had deprived us of the use of our faculties. I had got drunk. What "drunk" means, together with many other terms and things unknown among us, shall be explained in a glossary, which I shall annex to this manuscript, for the benefit of all inquisitive monkeys.

The cruelty of thus depriving us of our senses, for the sake of afterwards taking us prisoners, must appear to the reader as most execrable. But, to do justice to the human race, they do not consider the

former any punishment; on the contrary, it is an infliction which they constantly practise on their dearest friends, and nothing seems to afford them greater pleasure. They meet together frequently in large bodies for this very purpose; and at the commencement of their proceedings, I have sometimes been quite startled at their very close resemblance to us, as they sit and grin and nod at each other; but, after a while, they become awkward and stupid, and are not fit to be compared with the meanest of our tribes. The only motive that I guess for this strange practice is, that they thereby get rid, for a time, of a very troublesome thing which they call " "about which they are eternally chattering, and pretending that it is something superior to our instinct.

reason,

What the precise nature of this boasted "reason" is, I have never been able satisfactorily to decide. It is, however, somewhat remarkable, that whenever a man has lost what little falls to his share, in one of these drinking bouts, he always imagines that he is possessed of much more than any one else, and believes himself the only animal fit to rule over his tribe. One can hardly conceive any thing more ridiculous. If they had any quality at all comparable with instinct, it would be impossible for them to fall twice into such a stupid error; for they really make themselves quite ill by this foolish custom; and I have heard that some even hasten their death, and make their lives miserable thereby. Yet, while they are at it, they every now and then interrupt the general course of conversation, and cry out "Health!" But enough of this folly!

THE COUNTRY IN WINTER.

Ar one time it was a proof of the truth of any thing, however improbable it might appear, that it was in print. Allegory itself became real the moment it came forth in types, and a mere supposition in manuscript issued with the dignity of history from the press. Now indeed the case is greatly altered. I very seldom believe above one half of what I hear, and refuse my credence entirely to any thing I read. By persisting in this resolution, I avoid numberless mistakes. I follow my own judgment, without being misled by the prejudices of others; and now the accounts of Bloomfield's piety and Rowland's Kalydor, Sumner's learning and Warren's blacking, are viewed with the same respect as the veracious chronicles of Gulliver and Munchausen. In former times Imagination was the mark of the poet, as well as his privilege; but now, proser and bard, writers of essays and writers of epics, are equally devoted to fiction and romance. Descriptions even of scenery, which any one may see for himself, are not free from this besetting sin; cascades spout up in the page which were never visible in the landscape, and rivers glide in silvery meanders through winding sentences in print, which never were heard of in the neighbourhood where the scene is laid. The country has been the most fruitful theme of fanciful declamation from Horace's days till now-woods have been clothed in everlasting verdure by authors whose ideas of a forest are formed from the dusty trees of some suburban villa-fields, whether in May or December, have been loaded with perennial flowers, and the country, in all climates and at all times, has flourished, according to our novelists and romancers, in perpetual charms. No sooner has Mrs Radcliffe described the smiling vales and clear skies of Italy, than the sublime Mr Joseph Fox gives us the airs of Lapland, breathing with equal softness over the laurel groves of that delicious region; daisies burst forth on the summits of the Andes, to reward the labours of Mr Francis Lathom, and nightingales sing in every hedge of the flower-enamelled fields of Sibe

ria, to bless the listening ear of Anne of Swansea. Strange effect of a residence in Grub-street! The cries of London, which fall harshly on the outward ear, are changed, by some unaccountable power, into the melody of birds and the gush of waterfalls; the breezes of Arabia whisper in dulcet music through the unmended pane, and every sound and sight in that lofty chamber is transformed in a moment into something rural and picturesque. Who, in reading an account of the fragrant meads and dewy uplands in which every volume is certain to abound, would imagine that he was in danger, at every step, of spraining his ankle in some half-hidden rut, of being stung by unnumbered nettles, pricked by a thousand thorns, and, finally, of being run through the body by the long sharp horns of some outrageous cow, or trodden to death by the hoofs of some prodigious bull? Yet to all these accidents, and a hundred others, he is liable in the very scenes which look so harmless and inviting in description. And babbling rills are scarcely less liable to objection, though so warmly and unanimously applauded by bards and Cockneys. The Romans, to be sure, managed to add some more pleasing circumstances to their meads and rivers than our northern fancies have hitherto devised. Every stream that murmured gently down the valley, or ran sparkling through the plain, was the habitation of some nymph clothed in ethereal beauty. Every secluded nook formed by the windings of the river, was hallowed to their imaginations as the resting-place of the Guardian Naiad;-every deep recess where the osier bent over the stream, or the willow cast its shade upon the waters, was the bower where she retired to shade herself at noon; and the wanderer along the banks heard the whispers of her voice in every ripple of the current, or caught the flashing whiteness of her naked limbs in every crest of foam that glistened for an instant against the rock. But surely in our days the case is miserably altered. Naiad-mortal or ethereal-who should fix her pellucid home in one of our northern streams,

or float down its stone-encumbered in the morning; walks, wades, climbs, channel, would be found drowned and stumbles, till drizzle and darksome morning on the bank of her ness close in the day, after all which own river, with her lovely body wearisome and laborious exertion he bruised and disfigured by bumping finds he has slaughtered sundry head against the roots of trees, her eyes of game, besides shooting his favourknocked out by the stakes of a fish- ite Ponto, and slightly wounding the ing-net, and her nose entirely bitten gamekeeper. He then gets home to off by the previous winter's frost. dinner, relates the wonders of his And yet people persist, beneath such aim, and in the third bottle, and foura climate as ours, in giving the same teenth edition of how he shot the praises to gentle waters and spring- pheasant, he suddenly stops short in ing fountains which were applicable his story, loses his memory and his enough to the Peneus or Blandusia, seat together, and awakens next but have certainly no connexion with morning on the outside of his bed, the rumbling, roaring, dashing tor- with his shoes still on his feet, and a rents we hear of, carrying away flavour in his mouth, with regard to bridges, and drowning men, women, which the tenth commandment is in and children; while hay, corn, and no danger of being broken. The furniture, pigs, chests of drawers, day's exploits of a boisterous redand crockery-ware, float on its de- faced Nimrod bear a great resemstructive billows in undistinguish- blance to those of brother Ramrod. able confusion. There is something Instead of disabling a gamekeeper, to me utterly detestable in the cha- he only dislocates his collar in perracter of a river. When it seems forming an involuntary somerset over smooth and quiet, it is only acting a hedge; but if he escapes this danthe hypocrite, and gains our confi- ger, his fatigue, conversation, and dence and esteem by an appearance finale, are pretty nearly the same. of peaceableness and good order, that it may overwhelm us the more easily whenever it gets the power. In summer, it seems to be labouring under disabilities; the faint gurgle in its throat, which gets dry from so constantly crying out for water, moves us with compassion, and we can surely dread no danger from one so humbled and exhausted. But behold the moment his prayer is granted, and his restrictions withdrawn, off rushes the Jesuitical scoundrel in every direction, emptying the farm-yard, entering and destroying the peaceful cottage, spreading fear and desolation all over the country, and even sapping the foundation of the grey turreted church, which has been the pride and admiration of the village for centuries before. All social intercourse is cut off; the banks are totally destroyed; and who is to reduce this violent and lawless agitator, now grown strong and formidable, within his ancient and legitimate bounds?

At all seasons of the year the country is dull and uninteresting, but about the dreary month of December, to every one but a regular sportsman, it becomes altogether intolerable. To him time passes pleasantly enough. He begins his labours early

Last winter-who does not remember it, with all its concomitants of snow and storms?-solitude and the country oppressed me, till the nightmare, which regularly carried me over precipices and pits, or shook me into a blazing furnace, was a sort of relief from the dreamless ennui of my waking thoughts. Various plans occurred to me to get quit of the horrors of my situation. Marriage, strangulation, and a razor, all presented themselves in turn, but I found I had not sufficient firmness of nerve to avail myself of any of these expedients. The Slough of Despond spread its world of waters in front of my door, the window was afflicted with a sweating sickness of rain and hail in all its panes. Night came on before I was well aware that daylight had commenced; and crows cawing, rain splashing, and wind howling, formed a most agreeable concert, to which I sat and listened in loneliness, wondering all the time what the devil tempted me to remain a single week in the country after June. Away, away! the coach and I upon the pinions of the wind — and Bath, with its unnumbered lamps, glowing like a single file of stars in the high blue firmament of Lansdown, presented itself to my longing

eyes. Ten minutes after I had left my seat upon the box, I found myself as comfortable as if winter had been banished to the Pole, and the word Rus expunged from the Dictionary of Nature.

Is there a happier hour in the recollection of a human being than that in which, after a cold seat on the outside of the mail, with the wind whist ling round the enormous hat of the coachman, jutting past the promontory of his shoulder, and doubling the cape so as to come with full force on your unprotected visage, you at last arrive in the coffee-room, with fires blazing, gas shining, clean sanded floors, and a couple of grilled fowls smoking in a quiet box for your own peculiar entertainment, flanked with a huge birlas of Meux's own, and succeeded by toasted cheese, and an ad libitum of cogniac and water? Moments such as these never depart from the memory. Old men of eighty years of age remember (after their sainted wives are quietly forgotten) the hot suppers which enchanted them after cold and travelling sixty years before. The eye of one of these, which is dimly fixed on the white head of his youngest granddaughter, and scarcely distinguishes the flaxen ringlets on which his palsied hand is laid, sees quite distinctly the beef-steaks which cheered him that dreadfully cold night in November when he returned from London in the year 1769. With preternatural vision he beholds the foam of the tankard, and recollects even the individual features of the fowl, the breast melting in loveliness and gravy, the parson's nose lying half hid beneath the odoriferous ocean, and the mushrooms scattered over its surface, as the Isles of Greece repose on the bosom of the blue Egean. All these memories come vividly back upon his heart; and, in the gradual failing of nature-in the decay of his fancy, and blunting of his feelings-the suppers of his youth are the only ties which still bind him to his fellows. Yes! till the last pulse of pain in my gouty toe, before it follows my other foot into the grave-till Memory comes to the last page of her day-book, and Death writes Finis to all the accounts of life -shall I remember, with a pensive and melancholy satisfaction, the pe

tits soupers of the Castle and Ball! Thomas's brown wig and the bald pate of Bob shall be equally dear to my heart; and whisky punch shall be to me a blank in the creation ere I forget one smile of the loveliest bar-maid and best maker of toddy in the King's wide dominions. On one occasion, and one only, I established myself at a boarding-house; but great and manifold are the dangers and discomforts of that situation. For the first two days I sat at dinner next to a young lady, who paid me the most marvellous attentions. Smiles followed my commonest remarks; and, such is the force of good-nature, I almost began to fancy, in spite of a squint, and an unusual prolongation of the nasal feature, that she was interesting and pretty. A friend of mine, who had received a call to repentance just before marrying a lady of great piety and fortune, was very desirous of effecting a similar conversion upon me; and, on my dining with him, he reasoned very deeply on the ugliness of vice and the beauty of virtue, magnifying at the same time the charms of temperance, till, in the middle of a sentence about matrimony and hell, his eyes grew glazed, his mouth opened to a superhuman width, and, about the same moment, a confusion came on my own thoughts, for which I have never been able to account. I recollect, however, that I left him with tears running down his cheeks, muttering something which sounded very like a song. On arriving at my temporary domicile, I hurried as rapidly and unostentatiously as possible up stairs, but unluckily encountered some one in my progress-rank, name, and denomination to me unknown. Oblivion rests on what I said on that occasion, and all my efforts to remember only involve me in greater uncertainty and forgetfulness. Next morning, what deep silence brooded over the breakfast table-what awful dignity gloomed upon every brow!-alas! even my smiling friend smiled and was attentive to me no more. She, it appeared, had been my fair inter locutor in my hurried ascent to my couch; and from what I gathered from the hints of the disconsolate damsel herself, and the hostess's guarded enquiries, I began to discover that I

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