(For the Mirror.)

Country society has but little relief; and in proportion to intellectual refinement, this monotony appears to increase. We have always been favourable to Book Clubs in country towns, and about ten years since, established one in the anti-social town of ——. The plan worked well; its economy was admired, and extensively adopted all over England, but we heard little of its contributing to the social enjoyments of the people. Twenty families reading the same books, and these passed from house to house, among the respectability of the town, might have brought about a kind of consanguinity of opinion, and led to frequent interchange of civilities, meetings of the members at each others' houses, or at least a sort of how-d'ye-do acquaintance. The case was otherwise. The attorney and the doctor joined our society that their families of ten or twelve sons and daughters might keep under the sixpences and shillings of the circulating library; but they soon became jealous of new books, although they often returned them uncut and unread; and so far from knitting the bonds of acquaintance, we at last thought our plan served to estrange the members, by affording the little aristocracy frequent opportunities for venting their splenetic pride; the books were like disjunctive conjunctions, and when we left the place, the "society" did not promise to live another year.

We could entertain ourselves, at least, with sketches of a few of the members of this disjointed body; but we must be content with one, and that shall be the bookseller of the town.

Imagine a man of middle height, rather inclined to obesity, and just turned of fifty-eight. He had a broad, low forehead, sunken eyes, an aquiline nose, a heavy, hanging lip, and a chin which buried its projections in ample and unclassical folds of neckerchief. He was bald, except a tuft on the occiput, or hinder part of his head, and on dress occasions he wore powder. He was a widower, his wife having been dead about ten years, leaving him two daughters, the amiability of whose dispositions was a painful contrast to the uneven temper of their father. He kept a good table, and had the best cellar of grape wine in the town, but entertained little company. His guests were usually the valets or butlers of the gentry in the neighbourhood; but the housekeepers were never invited by his daughters, a point of propriety in male and female acquaintanceship which amused us not a little. His business was of a most multifarious description, and besides the trades of bookseller, stationer, and druggist, he had a printing-office, and was, moreover, a self-taught printer, He was post-master and stamp sub-distributor, receiver of bail, and agent for insurances—little official appointments which would have made him mayor in a corporate town. Of late years, he seldom meddled with these matters of business; but tired of their common track, he struck out a course of life, which was neither public nor private, but made him a sort of oracle in the town, whose opinions were freely printed and gratuitously circulated, whilst the author was seldom seen except at vestry-meetings. In this way he acted as secretary to a benevolent society established by the gentry, and such was his enthusiasm that he gave his services and £200. worth of printing during the first year; and the Committee in return presented him with a handsome piece of plate with a complimentary inscription, which he had the modesty to keep locked up, and never to display even to his visiters. This proved him to be a benevolent man, and he would have been ten times more useful had not his charitable disposition been over tinged with oddity and caprice. His contact with the poor of the parish soon made him overseer, although his religious observances would not qualify him for churchwarden; for he only went to church at funerals, to which he was frequently invited, his staid appearance, and a certain air of gentility of which he was master, being in such cases no mean recommendation. Overseer and select vestryman, he printed the parish accounts, for the most part gratuitously, although the poor and even the better portion of the towns-people never gave him full credit for this generosity, conceiving that he was repaid by some secret services or funds. The oddity of his pursuits was only exceeded by their variety. In politics he was a disciple of Cobbett, and year after year, foretold a revolution, an alarm which he communicated to every one of his household. He took extreme interest in all new mechanical projects, but seldom indulged in the practical part of them. In wine-making he was once a very experimentalist, and studied every line of Macculloch and unripe fruit; next, he turned over every inch of his garden, analyzed the soil À la Davy, and salted all his growing crops. His cogitative habits led him to take long walks in the country, and he soon flew from horticultural chemistry to real farming; and about the same time took to road making and macadamization, and became a surveyor of the highways. But the trustees wanting to macadamize the miserably pitched street of the town, he bethought him of dust in summer and mud in winter, and drew up a long memorial to the lords of the soil, remonstrating with them on their impolitic conduct; but all in vain. It is curious, however, to reflect that what the people of a country town about ten years ago thought a curse to their roads should now be adopted in many of the principal London Streets. The last we heard of our bookseller's hobbies, was that he had bought the lease of a house for the sake of the large garden attached to it, and here, like Evelyn in his Elysium Britannicum, he passes his days in the primitive occupation of gardening.

Our bookseller is a self-educated man, and in some pamphlets on the charitable institution to which we have alluded, are many of the errors of style peculiar to self-educated writers. Among his acquaintance we remember an attorney who practised in London, but had a small house in the town. He had been editor and proprietor of four or five morning and evening newspapers, and furnished our bookseller with all the news off 'Change and about town. This friend and the journals were his oracles, and their influence he digested in morsels of political economy, so introduced into his pamphlets as not to offend the landed gentry of the neighbourhood. To them, it should be mentioned, he was a most useful personage, and his aid and auspices, were almost necessary to the success of any project for the interest of the town. The trades-people looked up to him; they would agree if Mr. —— did, or they would wait his opinion.

We have heard that he has been a gallant in his time; and more than once he has told little stories of dances and harvest homes, and merry meetings at the wealthy farmers' in the neighbourhood, of the moonlight walk home, and of his companions counting their won guineas on their return from an evening party—all of which throw into shade the social amusements of our artificial times. We have said that he kept a good table; for presents of game poured in from the gentlemen's bailiffs in the neighbourhood, fish from town to be repaid by summer visits, and if the fishmonger of the place was overstocked, the first person he sent to was our bookseller. Again, he would take a post-chaise, or the White Hart barouche, for a party of pleasure, when his neighbours would have been happy with a gig. He did not join, or allow his daughters to mix with them at the tradesman's ball, but they staid moping at home, because there was none between the gentry and trade. Yet the professional and little-fortune people cried —— trade, and thus our bookseller belonged to neither class. The people of the place know not whether he is rich; he has been "making money" all his life-time say they, but he has "lived away." It is, however, to be regretted that they cannot settle the point, since they determine to a pound the income of every gentleman and lady in the neighbourhood, and, doff their hats according to the total.

To sum up his character, he is just and sometimes generous; hospitable but not unostentatious; dictatorial and circumlocutory to excess in his conversation, and of an inquisitive turn of mind, and considering his resources, he is well informed and even clever in matters of the world; in short, he is a perfect pattern of the gentleman tradesmen of the present day.

PHILO.