agents of this deliverance were represented under the feline figure, which may be plausibly considered as a bodily representative of the spirit of reform.

After all, Selima, I doubt whether thou hast lost as much by never being worshipped as thou hast gained by living in a Christian country. State is burdensome, and superstition is seldom prone to regard its objects with affection.

But there is one of thy hue whose condition might have been envied by all the sacred mousers of Egypt. Well may she be proud and coy, whom fate has appointed, not to be the idol of the children of Ham, but the favourite of the loveliest of the daughters of Britain.

ΑΙΛΟΥΡΟΦΙΛΟΣ.

66

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS UPON BREVITY.

BREVITY," says Polonius, "is the soul of wit," and twenty men as wise as he have said so after him. "Truth," says Mr. Stephen Jones, the worthy compiler of various Biographical, Geographical, and Lexicographical Duodecimos, "is the soul of my work, and brevity is its body." Strange quality, that can at once be body and soul! Rare coincidence, that the soul of wit should be the body of a pocket dictionary.

Many excellent things, good reader of six feet high, partake of the property which thou dost look down upon, or else overlook, so scornfully. To take a few casual instances, such as life, pleasure, a good style, and good resolutions, all which are notoriously, nay, proverbially brief, would scantly raise the matter to the altitude of the apprehension. Go then, and learn by experience; read lawyers' briefs without a fee; study the Statutes at Large; regale thyself with Viner's Abridgement: if thou beest a tradesman, give long credit; if thou dost set a value on the moments, bind thine ears to seven hours' apprenticeship to the British Senate, or the British Forum: or, if thou canst, recal the days of Auld Lang Syne, of

long sermons, and the long Parliament; when the long-winded preachers were accustomed to hold forth over their glasses, to the long-eared and long-suffering multitude: over their glasses, I say, but not such glasses as were wont to inspire the tragic sublimity of Eschylus, the blistering humour of Aristophanes, and the blustering humour of Old Ben; not such glasses as whetted the legal acumen of Blackstone, and assisted the incomparable Brinsley to weep for the calamities of India. No, my jovial friends, the Gospel trumpeters were as dry as they were lengthy. Their glasses were such as that which old Time is represented as running away with, though in sober truth they run, or rather creep, away with him; such glasses as we naturally associate with a death's head, a college fag, or a lawyer's office. Should a modern pulpit orator undertake to preach by the hour-glass, I am inclined to think he would be building his hopes of preferment on a sandy foundation, and would most probably see his congregation run out before his sand. At all events, he would make the world (meaning thereby the parish clerk, and charity children, who were compelled to a final perseverance) as much in love with brevity, as if they had each inherited a chancery suit, or had their several properties charged with long annuities.

I am brief myself; brief in stature, brief in discourse, short of memory and money, and far short of my wishes. In most things, too, I am an admirer of brevity; I cannot endure long dinners. All the delicate viands that sea and land, with all the points

All

"on the shipman's card," produce, are not so irresistible a temptation to gluttony, as the ennui of a needless half-hour at table: certain motions of the jaws are undoubtedly infectious; such are laughing, yawning, and eating. Should the nightmare, "and her nine fold," descend visibly upon the dishes; should indigestion, after the old fashion, assume the shape of Abernethy to admonish me, and gout appear in the yet more formidable likeness of a racking toe, the mere dead weight of time would turn the balance of my resolves. I am partial to short ladies. Here I shall be told, perhaps, that the Greeks include size in their ideal of beauty; that all Homer's fair ones are "large and comely," and that Lord Byron has expressed his detestation of "dumpy women.” this is very true, but what is it all to me? Women are not ideals, nor do we love or admire them as such; Homer makes his heroes tall as well as his heroines; there cannot, as Falstaff says, be better sympathy. And as for his Lordship, when I am the Grand Turk, he shall choose for me. I revere the sex as much as any man, but I do not like to look up to them. I had rather be consorted "with the youngest wren of nine," than with any daughter of Eve whose morning stature was taller than my evening shadow. Whatever such an Amazon might condescend to say to me, it would sound of “nothing but low and little." Those pretty diminutives, which in all languages are the terms of affection, from her lips would seem like personalities; she could have but one set of phrases for fondness and for scorn. If

I would " whisper soft nonsense in her ear," I must get on my legs, as if I were going to move a resolution; if in walking I would keep step with her, I must stride as if I were measuring the ground for two duellists, one of whom was my very good friend, and the other a very good shot. Should I dance with her, (alas, I am past my dancing days,) I should seem like a cock-boat tossing in a storm, at the stern of a three-decker. And should I wed her: (proh dolor; I am declared by signs infallible an old bachelor elect; cats, the coyest of the breed, leap on my knees; that saucy knave,* called the old bachelor, falls eternally to my share, and no soft look of contradiction averts the omen; candles shrink self-extinguished when I would snuff them, and no sweet voice will chide my awkwardness): but should I wed her, I must "stand the push of every beardless vain comparative." The young Etonian jackanapes would call us Elegiacs (carmen lugubre!) the Cantab pedants would talk of their duplicate ratios; yea, unbreeched urchins, old ale-wives, and coblers in their stalls, would cry out after us, There goes eighteen pence; and prudential punsters would wish the match might prove happy, but it was certainly very unequal.

But of all long things, there are three which I hold in special abhorrence: a long bill, a long coach, and a long debate. Bills, it must be observed, are apt to grow long in proportion as the means of paying them. are short; and tradesmen do not, like "honourable

* It is needless to mention that this alludes to a Christmas gambol, wherein a particular knave in the pack is called the old bachelor, and the person drawing it is set down as a confirmed Cœlebs.

VOL. I.

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