give one of our Pectoral Lozenges to be told, we are looking better than a month ago—not a splinter of our broken crutch to be promised a new lease of life—a renewal of our youth like the eagle's! Such flatteries go in at one ear, the deaf one, and out at the other. We never shall be well again, till broken bones are mended with "soft-sawder."

Are we, therefore, miserable, hypped, disconsolate? Answer, ye book-shelves, whence we draw the consolations of Philosophy, the dreams of Poetry and Romance-the retrospections of History; and glimpses of society from the better novels; mirth, comfort, and entertainment even for those small hours become so long from an unhealthy vigilance. Answer, ye pictures and prints, a Portrait Gallery of Nature!—and reply in your own tones, dear old fiddle, so often tuned to one favorite sadly-swee. air, and the words of Curran :

"But since in wailing
There's naught availing,
But Death unfailing
Must strike the blow,
Then for this reason,
And for a season,

Let us be merry before we go!"

It is melancholy, doubtless, to retire, in the prime of life, from the whole wide world, into the narrow prison of a sick-room. How much worse if that room be a wretched garret, with the naked tiles above and the bare boards below-no swinging bookshelf—not a penny colored print on the blank wall! And yet that forlorn attic is but the type of a more dreadful destitution, an unfurnished mind! The mother of Bloomfield used to say, that to encounter Old Age, Winter, and Poverty, was like meeting three giants; she might have added two more as huge and terrible, Sickness, and Ignorance-the last not the least of the Monster Evils; for it is he who affects pauperism with a deeper poverty-the beggary of the mind and soul.

"I have said how unavailing is luxury when the body is distressed and the spirit faint. At such times, and at all times, we cannot but be deeply grieved at the conception of the converse of our own state, at the thought

of the multitude of the poor suffering under privation, without the support and solace of great ideas. It is sad enough to think of them on a winter's night, aching with cold in every limb, and sunk as low as we in nerve and spirits, from their want of sufficient food. But this thought is supportable in cases where we may fairly hope that the greatest ideas are cheering them as we are cheered; that there is a mere set-off of their cold and hunger against our disease; and that we are alike inspired by spiritual vigor in the belief that our Father is with us-that we are only encountering the probations of our pilgrimage-that we have a divine work given us to carry out, now in pain and now in joy. There is comfort in the midst of the sadness and shame when we are thinking of the poor who can reflect and pray-of the old woman who was once a punctual and eager attendant at church-of the wasting child who was formerly a Sunday-scholar-of the reduced gentleman or destitute student who retain the privilege of their humanity-of 'looking before and after.' But there is no mitigation of the horror when we think of the savage poor, who form so large a proportion of the hungerers-when we conceive of them suffering the privation of all good things at once-suffering under the aching cold, the sinking hunger, the shivering nakedness-without the respite or solace afforded by one inspiring or beguiling idea.

"I will not dwell on the reflection. A glimpse into this hell ought to suffice (though we to whom imagery comes unbidden, and cannot be banished at will, have to bear much more than occasional glimpses); a glimpse ought to suffice to set all to work to procure for every one of these sufferers, bread and warmth, if possible, and as soon as possible; but above everything, and without the loss of an hour, an entrance upon their spiritual birthright. Every man, and every woman, however wise and tender, appearing and designing to be, who for an hour helps to keep closed the entrance to the region of ideas-who stands between sufferers and great thoughts (which are the angels of consolation sent by God to all to whom he has given souls), are, in so far, ministers of hell, not themselves inflicting torment, but intercepting the influences which would assuage or overpower it. Let the plea be heard of us sufferers who know well the power of ideas-our plea for the poor-that, while we are contriving for all to be fed and cherished by food and fire, we may meanwhile kindle the immortal vitality within them, and give them that ethereal solace and sustenance which was meant to be shared by all, without money and without price.'"

Never, then, tell a man, permanently sick, that he will again be a perfect picture of health when he has not the frame for itnor hint to a sick woman, incurably smitten, that the seeds of her disease will flourish and flower into lilies and roses. Why deter them from providing suitable pleasures and enjoyments to replace those delights of health and strength of which they

must take leave for ever? Why not rather forewarn them of the Lapland Winter to which they are destined, and to trim their lamps spiritual, for the darkness of a long seclusion? Tell them their doom; and let them prepare themselves for it, according to the Essays before us, so healthy in tone, though from a confirmed invalid-so wholesome and salutary, though furnished from a Sick Room.

AN AUTOGRAPH.

To D. A. A., Esq., Edinburgh.

I AM much flattered by your request, and quite willing to accede to it; but, unluckily, you have omitted to inform me of the sort of thing you want.

Autographs are of many kinds. Some persons chalk them on walls others inscribe what may be called auto-lithographs, in sundry colors, on the flag stones. Gentlemen in love delight in carving their autographs on the bark of trees; as other idle fellows are apt to hack and hew them on tavern-benches and rustic seats. Amongst various modes, I have seen a shop-boy dribble his autograph from a tin of water on a dry pavement.

The autographs of the Charity Boys are written on large sheets of paper, illuminated with engravings, and are technically called "pieces." The celebrated Miss Biffin used to distribute autographs amongst her visitors, which she wrote with a pen grasped between her teeth. Another, a German Phenomenon, held the implement with his toes.

The Man in the Iron Mask scratched an autograph with his fork on a silver plate, and threw it out of the window. Baron Trenck smudged one with a charred stick and Silvio Pellico, with his fore-finger dipped in a mixture of soot-and-water.

Lord Chesterfield wrote autographs on windows with a diamond pencil. So did Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth. Draco, when Themis requested a few sentences for her album, dipped his stylus in human blood. Faust used the same fluid in the autograph he bartered with Mephistophiles.

The Hebrews write their Shpargotua backwards; and some of the Orientals used to clothe them in hieroglyphics. An ancient Egyptian, if asked for his autograph, would probably have sent to the collector a picture of what Mrs. Malaprop calls "An Allegory on the Banks of the Nile."

Aster, the Archer, volunteered an autograph and sent it bang into Phillip's right eye.

Some individuals are so chary of their hand-writing as to bestow, when requested, only a mark or cross:-others more liberally adorn a specimen of their penmanship with such extraneous flourishes as a corkscrew, a serpent, or a circumbendibus, not to mention such caligraphic fancies as eagles, ships, and swans.

Then again, there are what may be called Mosaic Autographs -i. e. inlaid with cockle-shells, blue and white pebbles, and the like, in a little gravel walk. Our grandmothers worked their autographs in canvass samplers; and I have seen one wrought out with pins' heads on a huge white pincushion-as thus:

WELCOME SWEET BABBY.

MARY JONES.

When the sweetheart of Mr. John Junk requested his autograph, and explained what it was, namely, "a couple of lines or so, with his name to it," he replied, that he would leave it to her in his Will, seeing as how it was "done with gunpowder on his left arm."

There have even been autographs written by proxy. For example, Dr. Dodd penned one for Lord Chesterfield; but to oblige a stranger in this way is very dangerous, considering how easily a few lines may be twisted into a rope.

According to Lord Byron, the Greek girls compound autographs as apothecaries make up prescriptions, with such mate. rials as flowers, herbs, ashes, pebbles, and bits of coal. Lord Byron himself, if asked for a specimen of his hand, would probably have sent a plaster cast of it.

King George the Fourth and the Duke of York, when their autographs were requested for a Keepsake,-royally favored the applicant with some of their old Latin-English exercises.