BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.

Who that had once met Jack Gay at dinner, where'er the feast of venison and the flow of port prevailed, ever forgot him! What lady, the luckiest of her sex, ever experienced his "delicate attentions" at a quiet evening party, a quiet concert, or a quiet dance, without speaking of him from that moment, not as the most charming of acquaintances, but as a very old friend—without feeling quite sure that she had known him all her life, though she had never seen him but that once?

What spirits he had! Other men had their jovial moods, but Jack was always jovial. To be lively by fits and starts, to be delightful when the humour sets in, to emulate the fair exquisite of Pope,

is within anybody's reach. But Jack had no fits and starts; the humour flowed in one unebbing course, and his whim consisted in making everybody as happy as he was at all seasons.

His joviality never depended upon the excellence of a dinner, the choice of wines, or any accident of the hour. His high spirits and invariable urbanity were wholly independent of the arrangements of the table, the selection of the guests, and the topics of conversation. He discovered pleasant things to hearken to, and found delightful themes to chat upon, even during the dreary twenty minutes before dinner. Yes, even that was a lively time to Jack. Whenever he went out it was to enjoy a pleasant evening, and he enjoyed it.

but for all this Jack cared about as much as a flying-fish cares for a shower of rain. No combination of ill omens and perverse accidents ever proved a damper to him.

He is invited to meet (say) Johnson and Burke, and is greeted, on his entrance, with the well-known tidings that Johnson and Burke "couldn't come." Does Jack heave one sigh in compliment to the illustrious absentees, and in depreciation of the company who have assembled? Not he. No momentary shade of disappointment dims his smiling face. He seems as delighted to meet the little parlour-full of dull people, as though the room were crammed with Crichtons. He has the honour of being presented to little Miss Somebody, from the country, who seems shy; and he takes the same pains to show his pleasure in the introduction, and to tempt the timid stranger to talk, that he would have exerted in an effort to interest Mrs. Siddons. He sits next to a solemn ignoramus, who is facetious in expounding the humours of Squire Bog, his neighbour, or didactic in developing the character of Dogsby the great patriot in his parish; and Jack listens as complacently as though his ear were being regaled with new-born bonmots of Sheridan's, or anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham.

Jack, like some statesmen, was born to be out; and to him, as to some other statesmen, all parties were the same. The only preference he ever seemed to entertain was for the particular party that chanced at the particular moment to rejoice in his presence. He enjoyed everything that happened. Leigh Hunt, describing a servant-maid "at the play," observes, that every occurrence of the evening adds to her felicity—for she likes even the waiting between the acts, which is tiresome to others. So with Jack at a party. He enjoyed some dislocated experiments on the harp, by an astonishing child, aged only fifteen; and was the sole person in the room who encored with sincerity that little prodigy's convulsive edition of "Bid me discourse." He listened with laudable gravity to Master Henry's recitation of "Rolla's Address," and suggested the passages in which John Kemble was rather too closely followed. He enjoyed the glasses of warm wine handed round between the songs; he liked the long flat pauses, "when nobody said nothing to his neighbour;" and he liked the sudden burst of gabble in which, at the termination of the pause, as if by preconcerted agreement, every creature eagerly joined.

He liked the persons he had never met before, and those whom he was in the habit of meeting just seven times a week. He admired the piano that was always out of tune, and the lady who, kindly consenting to play, was always out of temper. He thought the persons to whom he had not been introduced very agreeable, and all the rest extremely entertaining. He was delighted with his evening, whether it exploded in a grand supper, or went-off, flash-in-the-pan fashion, with a sandwich.

He never bottled up his best things, to uncork them in a more brilliant company the next night; he was never dull because he was expected to shine, and never, by laborious efforts to shine, succeeded in showing that dulness was his forte. He pleased everybody because he was pleased himself; and he was himself pleased, because he could not help it. Many queer-looking young men sang better, but nobody sang with such promptness and good taste; many awkward gawkies danced with more exactness and care, but nobody danced so easily to himself or so acceptably to his partner; many handsome dashing fellows were more showy and imposing in their manners, but none produced the agreeable effect that followed a few words of his, or one of his joyous laughs—nay even a kind and sprightly glance. The elaborate, and long meditated impromptu of the reputed wit fell still-born, while one of Jack's unstudied gay-hearted sallies burst like a rocket, and showered sparkles over the room.

Everybody went away convinced that there was one human being in the world whose oasis of life had no surrounding desert. Jack lived but for enjoyment. The links of the chain that bound him to existence, were of pure gold—there was no rough iron clanking between. He seemed sent into the world to show how many may be amused, cheered, comforted, by one light heart. That heart appeared to tell him, that where his fellow-creatures were, it was impossible to be dull; and the spirit of this assurance prevailed in all he said and did; for if he staid till the last half dozen dropped off, he was just as fresh and jocund as when the evening began. He never knew what it was to be tired, and as the hospitable door was at last closed upon him, you heard him go laughing away down the steps. Upon his tomb indeed might be written a paraphrase of the epitaph so gloriously earned by his illustrious namesake:—

But did anybody, who may happen to see this page, ever see the aforesaid Jack at home?—at high-noon, or in the evening when preparing to go out! Behold him on the eve of departure—just going—about to plunge, at the appointed moment, into the revelries of a brilliant circle, where, if he were not, a score of sweet voices would fall to murmuring "I wish he were here!" For the admiration, the envy, the cordial liking which surely await him there, you would now be apt to substitute commiseration, regret—a bit of friendly advice to him to stop at home, and a pull at the bell for pen-and-ink that he might write an excuse.

The truth is, that Jack was a morbid, irresolute, wayward, cross-grained chap. He was kind-hearted in the main, and even generous; but his temper was often sullen, and his spirit often cynical. Catch him on a winter's afternoon, half an hour before he dressed for dinner! You would think him twenty years older, and five bottle-noses uglier. You would conclude that he was going to dine with Diogenes in his tub, or to become a partaker of a skeleton-feast in Surgeons'-hall. The last time we ever saw Jack out of company, he was in such a mood as we have hinted at. It was a November afternoon between five and six—there was no light in the room—but by the melancholy gleam of a low fire, he was to be seen seated on a music-stool with his feet on the fender, his elbows on his knees, his head resting upon his hands, and his eyes listlessly wandering over the dull coals in search of the picturesque.

"Come in!" growled the voice of the Charmer. "Can you grope your way? Dreary rooms these—and lights make 'em worse."

Then without moving his seat to give us a share of the fire, he applied the poker to the cinders, not to kindle a blaze and throw a light upon the gloom, but evidently to put out any little stray flame that might happen to be lingering there. There was just light enough to show that his face wore an air of profound sadness and despondency. To a serious inquiry as to the cause—if any thing had happened.

"Yes," murmured the Fascinator, with an amiable scowl, "the weather has happened, November has happened, and dinner will happen in another hour. Here's a night to go three miles for a slice of saddle o' mutton! My luck! Cold and wet, isn't it?" continued the Irresistible, knocking cinder after cinder into the ashes; "I'm miserable enough at home, and so forsooth, I must dress and go out. Ugh! This is what they call having a pleasant life of it. I don't know what you may think, but I look upon an invitation to dinner as nothing less than an insult. Why should I be dragged out of my wretched nook here, without an appetite, and against my will? We call this a free country, where nobody's allowed to be miserable in his own way—where every man's a slave to ceremony—a victim to his own politeness, a martyr to civil notes. Here's my saddle o' mutton acquaintance, for example; I never hurt or offended the man in all my days, and yet I must go and dine with him. I'd rather go to a funeral.—Well if you've anything to say, out with it—for my hour's come. Now mind, before I ring this bell, I predict that there's no hot water, and that my boots are damp."

The difference between Jack at six, and Jack at seven, was the difference between a clock down and a clock wound up—between a bird in the shell, and a bird on the wing—between a bowl of punch before, and after, the spirit is poured in,—it was the difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober (or the reverse if you will)—between a lord mayor in his plain blue-coat and kerseys, and a lord mayor in his state robes;—between Grimaldi at the side-scene waiting to go on, with that most melancholy shadow on his face which tradition has so touchingly painted, and Grimaldi on the stage, in view of the convulsed spectators, the illuminator of congregated dulness, the instantaneous disperser of the blues, the explorer of every crevice of the heart wherein care can lurk—an embodied grin. It was the difference, to speak more exactly still, between Sappho at her toilet, and Sappho at an evening mask.

To see Jack when just beginning to prepare for a drop-in somewhere, late at night—between ten and twelve—was almost as good as seeing him when arrived there. The rash promise made, he always contrived to fulfil it—though it was often ten chances to one that he did not, and he appeared to keep his engagements by miracle. As the hour drew nigh, you would imagine that he had just received tidings of the dreadful loss of several relatives per railroad, or that half his income had been swallowed up in a mine, or forged exchequer-bills. It would be impossible to conjecture that his shrugs and sighs, peevish gestures and muttered execrations, were but the dark shadows of a brilliant "coming event"—that discontent and mortification were the forerunners of the gay Hours, and that bitter moroseness, limping and growling, announced the approach of the dancing Pleasures!

So it was; for Jack at that moment, instead of hailing these dancing Pleasures by anticipation, and meeting them at least half-way, would gladly have ridden ten miles in any other direction. He could make himself tolerably comfortable anywhere, save at the place to which he was ruthlessly, imperiously bound—with anybody, save with the people who were anxiously waiting for a glimpse of his good-humoured visage. He was fully bent on going, in fact he felt that he must; yet he raised every obstacle that ill-temper could invent, knowing all the while that he should be obliged to surmount them.

He would even allow his reluctance to stir, to prevail so far over the gentlemanly principle of his nature, as to question secretly within himself whether he ought to go, while he entertained a suspicion that the people who had again invited him were not quite prudent in giving so many expensive parties!

He would catch hold of any rag of an acquaintance just then, to cover his loneliness, and to save him from utter solitude; to give him an excuse for procrastinating, and an opportunity of grumbling out his regrets at stripping from head to foot, not to go to bed, but to go out; at being doomed to shake off his quiet moping mood, and plunge head-foremost into festivity. And then, when the effort had been made, when the last obstacle had been overcome, when he was arrayed from top to toe, and could no longer complain of this thing not in readiness, and that thing mislaid, or the glove that split in drawing it on, or the cab that was not (and never was) on the stand when he wanted one, he would ask himself with a deep-drawn sigh the melancholy question: "Isn't it hard that a man must go out, with a broken heart, to take an hour or two's jollification at this time of night!"

Off went Jack Gay; and until four in the morning the merry Hours lagged far behind his joyous spirits. Hospitality put on his magic boots to run a race with him, and the bewitching eyes of Pleasure herself looked grave and sleepy compared with the glistening orbs of her votary!