The Genius of Mirth never hit upon a happier subject than the humours of Cockneyland. “Man made the town and a pretty sample it is of the maker! Behind or before the counter, at home and abroad, the man of business or the beau, the Cockney is the same whimsical original, baffling imitation, and keeping description in full cry. See him sally forth on a fine Sunday to inhale his weekly mouthful of fresh air, * the world all before him, where to choose occupying his meditations, till he finds himself elevated on High-gate Hill or Hampstead Heath. From those magnificent summits he beholds in panorama, woods, valleys, lofty trees, and stately turrets, not forgetting that glorious cupola dedicated to the metropolitan saint, which points out the locality where, six days out of the seven, his orisons are paid to a deity not contemplated by the apostle.

He lays himself out for enjoyment, and seeks good entertainment for man and (if mounted, or in his cruelty-van) for horse. Having taken possession of a window that commands the best prospect, the waiter is summoned, the larder called over, the ceremony of lunch commenced, and, with that habitual foresight which marks his character, the all-important meal that is to follow, duly catered for. The interval for rural adventure arrives; he takes a stroll; the modest heath-bell and the violet turn up their dark blue eyes to him; and he finds blackberries enough (as Falstaff's men did linen!) on every hedge. Dinner served up, and to his mind, he warms and waxes cosey, jokes with the waiter, talks anything, and to anybody,

Drinks a glass

To his favourite lass!”

pleased with himself, and willing to please. If his phraseology provoke a laugh, he puts it to the account of his smart sayings, and is loudest in the chorus; for when the ball of ridicule is flying about, he ups with his racket and strikes it off to his neighbour.

He is the worst mortal in the world to be put out of his way. The slightest inconvenience, the most trifling departure from his wonted habits, he magnifies into a serious evil. His well-stocked larder and cheerful fireside are ever present to his view: beef and pudding have taken fast hold of him; and, in default of these, his spirits flag; he is hipped and melancholy. Foreign travel exhibits him in his natural light; his peculiarities break forth with whimsical effect, which, though not always the most amiable, are nevertheless entertaining. He longs to see the world; and having with due ceremony arranged his wardrobe, put money in his purse, and procured his passport to strange lands, he sets forward, buttoned up in his native consequence, to the capital of the grand monarque, to rattle dice, and drink champagne. His expectations are not the most reasonable. Without considering the different manners and customs of foreign parts, he bends to nobody, yet takes it as an affront if everybody bend not to him! His baggage is subjected to rigorous search. The infernal parlez-vous!—nothing like this ever happens in old England! His passport is inspected, and his person identified. The inquisitors!—to take the length and breadth of a man, his complexion and calling! The barriers are closed, and he must bivouac in the Diligence the live-long night. Monstrous tyranny! Every rogue enjoys free ingress and egress in a land of liberty! He calls for the bill of fare, the “carte,” and in his selection puts the cart before the horse! Of course there is a horrible conspiracy to poison him! The wines, too, are sophisticated. The champagne is gooseberry; the Burgundy, Pontac; and the vin ordinaire neither better nor worse than a dose of “Braithwait's Intermediate.” The houses are dirty and dark; the streets muddy and gay; the madames and mademoiselles pretty well, I thank'e; and the Mounseers a pack of chattering mountebanks, stuck over with little bits of red ribbon, and blinded with snuff and whiskers! Even the air is too thin: he misses his London smoke! And but one drunken dog has he encountered (and he was his countryman!) to bring to fond remembrance the land we live in! * What wonder, then, if he sigh for luxurious bachelorship in a Brighton boarding-house? Beds made, dinner provided, the cook scolded by proxy, and all the agreeable etceteras incidental to good living set before him, without the annoyance of idle servants, and the trouble of ordering, leaving him to the delightful abandonment of every care, save that of feasting and pleasure-taking!

With moderate gastronomical and soporific powers, he may manage to eat, drink, and sleep out three guineas a-week; for the sea is a rare provocative to feeding and repose. Besides, a Brighton boarding-house is a change both of air and condition; bachelors become Benedicks, and widows wives, for three guineas a-week, more or less! It furnishes an extensive assortment of acquaintance, such as nowhere else can be found domiciled under the same roof. Each finds it necessary to make himself and herself agreeable. Pride, mauvaise honte, modesty? that keep people apart in general society, all give way. The inmates are like one family; and when they break up for the season, 'tis often in pairs!

“Uncle Timothy to a T! Pardon me, sir, but he must have sat to you for the portrait. If you unbutton his native consequence a little, and throw a jocular light over his whim-whams and caprices, the likeness would be perfect.”

This was addressed to us by a lively, well-to-do-in-the-world-looking little gentleman, who lolled in an arm-chair opposite to an adjoining window, taking things in an easy pick-tooth way, and coquetting with a pint of old port.

“The picture, sir, that you are pleased to identify is not an individual, but a species,—a slight off-hand sketch, taken from general observation.”

“Indeed! That's odd.”

“Even so.”

“Never knew Uncle Tim was like all the world. Would, for all the world's sake, that all the world were like Uncle Tim!”

“A worthy character.”

“Sir, he holds in his heart all the four honours,—Truth, Honesty, Affection, and Benevolence,—in the great game of humanity, and plays not for lucre, but love! I fear you think me strangely familiar,—impertinent too, perhaps. But that portrait, so graphical and complete, was a spell as powerful as Odin's to break silence. Besides, I detest your exclusives,—sentimentalising! soliloquising!—Their shirt-collars, affectedly turned down, puts my choler up! Give me the human face divine, the busy haunts of men, the full tide of human existence.”

The little gentleman translated the “full tide” into a full glass to our good healths and better acquaintance, at the same time drawing his chair nearer, and presenting a handsomely embossed card, on which was inscribed, in delicate Italian calligraphy, “Mr. Benjamin Bosky, Dry-salter, Little Britain.”

Drysalter,—he looked like a thirsty soul!

“Pleasant prospect from this window; you may count every steeple in London. There's the 'tall bully,'—how gloriously his flaming top-knot glistens in the setting sun! Wouldn't give a fig for the best view in the world, if it didn't take in the dome of St. Paul's! Beshrew the Vandal architect that cut down those beautiful elms.—

'The rogue the gallows as his fate foresees,

And bears the like antipathy to trees,'

and run up the wigwam pavilions, the Tom-foolery baby-houses, the run mad, shabby-genteel, I-would-if-I-could-but-I-can't cottages ornÉe—ornÉe?—horney!—the cows popping in their heads at the parlour windows, frightening the portly proprietors from their propriety and port!”

It was clear that Mr. Bosky was not to be so frightened; for he drew another draught on his pint decanter, though sitting beneath the umbrage of a huge pair of antlers that were fixed against the wall, under which innumerable Johnny New-comes had been sworn, according to ancient custom, at the Horns at Highgate. It was equally clear, too, that Mr. Bosky himself might have sat for the portrait that he had so kindly appropriated to Uncle Timothy.

A fine manly voice without was heard to troll with joyous melody,—

“The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,—

With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay,

Are summer songs for me and my aunts,

While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

“Uncle Tim! Uncle Tim!” shouted the mercurial little Drysalter, and up he started as if he had been galvanised, scampered out of the room, made but one leap from the top of the stairs to the bottom, descended À plomb, was up again before we had recovered from our surprise, and introduced a middle-aged, rosy-faced gentleman, “more fat than bard beseems,” with a perforating eye and a most satirical nose. “Uncle Timothy, gentlemen.—A friend or two, (if I may presume to call them so,) Uncle Timothy, that I have fallen in with most unexpectedly and agreeably.”

There is a certain “I no not like thee, Doctor Fell,” feeling, and an “I do,” that have rarely deceived us. With the latter, the satirical-nosed gentleman inspired us at first sight. There was the humorist, with a dash of the antiquary, heightened with a legible expression that nature sometimes stamps on her higher order of intelligences. What a companion, we thought, for “Round about our coal fire” on a winter's evening, or, “Under the green-wood tree” on a summer's clay!

We were all soon very good company; and half a dozen tea-totallers, who had called for a pint of ale and six glasses, having discussed their long division and departed, we had the room to ourselves.

“Know you, Uncle Timothy,” cried Mr. Bosky, with a serio-comic air, “that the law against vagabonds and sturdy beggars is in full force, seeing that you carol in broad daylight, and on the King's highway, a loose catch appertaining to one of the most graceless of their fraternity?”

“Beggars! varlet! I beg nothing of thee but silence, which is gold, if speech be silver. * Is there aught unseemly in my henting the stile with the merry Autolycus? Vagabonds! The order is both ancient and honourable. Collect they not tribute for the crown? Take heed, Benjamin, lest thine be scored on! Are they not solicitors as old as Adam?”

“And thieves too, from Mercury downwards, Uncle Timothy.”

“Conveyancers, sirrah! sworn under the Horns never to beg when they can steal. Better lose my purse than my patience. Thou, scapegrace! rob best me of my patience, and beggest nought but the question.”

“Were not the beggars once a jovial crew, sir?” addressing ourselves to the middle-aged gentleman with the satirical nose.

“Right merry! Gentlemen—

'Sweeter than honey

Is other men's money.'

“The joys of to-day were never marred by the cares of to-morrow; for to-morrow was left to take care of itself; and its sun seldom went down upon disappointment. The beggar, * though his pockets be so low, that you might dance a jig in one of them without breaking your shins against a halfpenny; while from the other you might be puzzled to extract as much coin as would pay turnpike for a walking-stick, sings with a light heart; his fingers no less light! playing administrators to the farmer's poultry, and the good housewife's sheets that whiten every hedge!

Mendicity is a monarchy; it is governed by peculiar laws, and has a language of its own. Reform has waged war to the knife with it. The soap-eater, whose ingenious calling was practised in the streets of London as far back as Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, is admonished to apply the raw material of his trade to an exterior use; * and the tatterdemalions of the Beggar's Opera no longer enjoy the privileges that belonged to their ancestors three centuries ago, when the Barbican, Turnmill Street, and Houndsditch, rang with their nocturnal orgies; and where not unfrequently “an alderman hung in chains” gratified their delicate appetites; as in more recent times,

the happy but bygone days of Dusty Bob and Billy Waters. * The well- known mendicants of St. Paul's churchyard, Waithman's crossing, and Par- liament-Street have, by a sweeping act of the

legislature, been compelled to brush; their brooms are laid up in ordinary, to make rods for their backs, till the very stones they once swept are ready to rise and mutiny. Well might Epicurus say, 6 Poverty, when cheerful, ceases to be poverty.'”

“Suppose, gentlemen, as the day is closing in, we each of us take our wallet and staff, trudge forth, and levy contribution! I am in a valiant humour to cry 'stand!' to a too powerfully refreshed citizen of light weight and heavy purse.” And Mr. Bosky suited the action to the word.

“Sit down, soul of a grasshopper! The very ghost of his wife's tweezers would snuff out thy small courage. Thou hast slandered the beggars' craft, and, like greater rogues, shalt be condemned to live by thine own! Thou 'gibier de potence!' Thou a prigger! Why thou art only a simple prig, turned out by thy tailor! Steal if thou canst into our good graces; redeem thy turpitude by emulating at least one part of the beggars' calling, ballad-singing. Manifest thy deep contrition by a song.”

“A bargain, Uncle Timothy. If thou wilt rake from a sly corner of that old curiosity shop, thy brain, some pageant of the ancient brethren of Bull-Feathers-Hall. What place more fitting for such pleasant chronicle, than the Horns at Highgate?”

This proposal being assented to by the middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Bosky “rosined,” (swallowed a bumper) and sounded a musical flourish as a preludio.

“But gentlemen, you have not said what I shall sing.”

“Beggars, Mr. Bosky, must not be choosers!”

“Something heroic?

Wonderful General Wolfe,

Uncommon brave; partic'lar!

Swam over the Persian Gulf,

And climb'd rocks perpendic'lar!

Sentimental and tender?

'The mealy potato it grows

In your garden, Miss Maddison cries;

'So I cannot walk there, for I knows,

Like love—that potatoes have eyes!'”

“No buffoonery, if you please, Benjamin Bosky,” cried Uncle Tim.

“Or furiously funny—eh?”

My pipe at your peeper I'll light,

So pop out your jazey so curly;

A jorum of yeast over night,

Will make you next morning rise early!

Arrah I thro' your casement and blind

I'll jist sky a copper and toss one,,

If you do not, Miss Casey, look kind,

Wid your good-natured eye that's a cross one!”

“My good friends,” sighed the middle-aged gentleman, “this unhappy nephew of mine hath as many ballads in his budget as Sancho Panza had proverbs in his belly. And yet—but he seems determined to break my heart.”

Mr. Bosky appeared more bent upon cruelly cracking Uncle Timothy's sides.

“Now I bethink me of a ditty of true love, full of mirth and pastime.” And Mr. Bosky began in a droll falsetto, and with mock gravity,

THE LAST OF THE PIGTAILS.=

“When I heard she was married, thinks I to myself,

I'm now an old bachelor laid on the shelf;

The last of the Pigtails that smok'd at the Sun,

My Dora has done me, and I am undone!

I call'd at her lodgings in Dean Street, Soho;

My love's gone for ever! alas! she's no go.

A nip of prime Burton shall warm my cold blood,

Since all my enjoyments are nipp'd in the bud!

The picture of famine, my frame half reduced;

I can't eat a quarter the vittles I us'd!

O dear! what can ail me? I once was so hale—

When my head's underground let this verse tell my tale.

I sought the Old Bailey, despairing and lank,

To take my last cut of boil'd buttock and flank,

To sniff my last sniff in those savoury scenes,

And sigh my last sigh over carrots and greens!

'A pot of mild porter, and take off the chill,'

A damsel came smirking, in curls, cap, and frill.

I started! she scream'd! 'twas my Dora! off flew

Flank, buttock, greens, carrots, and peas-pudding too!

'Yes, I am your true love!' she curtsey'd, and said,

'At home I'ma widow, but here I'm a maid!

My spouse kick'd the bucket last Sunday at Leeds,

And left me, a rose-bud, all cover'd with weeds.'

'For all your fine speeches, a widow, in fine,

Is an article madam, I mean to decline I

Though wedlock's a bolus to physic and fright,

A black draught—a widow! would finish me quite.”

“A vile stave! Commend me to 'fonde Elderton,' * and the troop of 'metre ballad-mongers' that sleep among the dull of ancient days; but save me from that doleful doggrel of which, I shrewdly suspect, thou, Benjamin Bosky, art the perpetrator.

It smells woundily of thy peculiar locality, and might have befringed the walls of Bedlam and Soho. Henceforth be the Magnus Apollo of thy native Little Britain, and divide the crown with Thomas Delony, of huck-ster-fame! Jack of Newbery, the Gentle Craft, garlands, strange histories,

'And such small deer,

Had been Tom's food for many a year,'

and may serve for thine, Benjamin; for, in poetical matters, thou hast the maw of a kite and the digestion of an ostrich.”

“A sprat to catch a herring!”

“A tittlebat! thou triton of the minnows!”

“But the Bull-Feather! Uncle Timothy, the Bull-Feather

'Must not be forgotten

Until the world's rotten.'

Let me refresh thy memory. Once upon a time——”

“Peace, babbler! If I must take the bull by the horns, it shall be without thy jockeyship. I will not ride double. 'Tis an idle tale, gentlemen; but there are charms in association that may render it interesting.”

Uncle Tim regaled with a fragrant pinch his satirical nose, and began

“A MIRTHFUL PAGEANT OF THE BULL-FEATHERS TO THE HORNS AT HIGHGATE.

“The ancient brethren of Bull-Feathers-Hall were a club of warm citizens; 'rich fellows enough! fellows that have had losses, with everything handsome about them.' Their place of rendezvous was the Chequer-Yard in Whitechapel, every Tuesday and Thursday at seven o'clock. The intent of their meeting was to solace themselves with harmless merriment, and promote good fellowship * among neighbours.

The president, arrayed in his crimson satin gown, with his cap furred and surmounted by a pair of antlers, and seated in a chair of state beneath a canopy, commanded (by the crier of the court) every member to be covered; and in the twinkling of an eye their horns were exalted. On a velvet cushion before him lay the comuted sceptre and sword. The brethren drank out of horn-cups, and made oath upon a book of statutes bound in horn. Their revenues were derived from a toll upon all the gravel carried up Highgate Hill and Hornsey;—Cow-lane; and beyond sea, Crook-horn; Leg-horn; and Ox-mantown paying them yearly tribute! On Monday, the 2nd May, 1664, a deputation of the fraternity met at Busby's Folly, * near Sadler's Wells, ** Islington, from whence they marched in grand order, headed by their Captain of Pioneers, with between thirty and forty of his men, with pick-axes and spades to level the hill, and baskets to carry the gravel;

After which followed the standard, an enormous pair of horns mounted on a lofty pole, borne by three officers, and attended by the master of the ceremonies, the mace-bearer, the herald at-arms, the sword-bearer and the crier, their footsteps keeping time to a flourish of trumpets and horns. *

Arriving near the Gate-house—(gentlemen, we are within a few yards of the very spot!)—the viceroy of the gravel-pits went forth to meet them, presenting the horn of plenty as a token of hearty welcome; and passing through the gate, they made a circuit round the old pond, and returning to their starting-post, one of the brethren delivered a poetical oration, humorously descriptive of Bull-Feathers-Hall, and expatiating on the antiquity and dignity of horns. The speech being ended, they paraded to the dinner-table, which groaned under every luxury of the season. There they regaled themselves, amidst the sounding of trumpets and the winding of horns. Between dinner and dessert, those of the officers who had singing faces volunteered a festive chant, in which the whole company joined chorus.

The shortest, the tallest, the foulest, the fairest,

The fattest, the leanest, the commonest, rarest,

When they and their cronies are merry together,

Will all do their best to advance the Bull's Feather!

A king and a cobbler, a lord and a loon,

A prince and a pedlar, a courtier, a clown;

Put all their degrees and conditions together,

Are liable always to wear the Bull's Feather.

Any candidate desirous of being admitted a member of the fraternity was proposed by the sword-bearer; and the master of the ceremonies placing him in the adopting chair, the comptroller made three ejaculations, upon which the brethren doffed their hats. Then the master of the ceremonies exchanged his own comuted castor for a cap, and administered to his newly elected brother, on a book horned on all sides, an oath in rhyme, recapitulating a long string of duties belonging to their peculiar art and mystery, and enjoining their strict performance.

Lastly, observe thou shalt esteem none other

Equal to this our club;—so welcome brother!” *

“Thus ends my story, gentlemen; and if you have found it tedious, visit the offence on the LaurÉat of Little Britain, by enjoining him the penance of a bumper of salt and water.”

But mine host of the Horns, very prim about the wig, his coat marked with his apron strings, which left a seam all round, as if he had been cut in two, and afterwards stitched together again, having been slyly telegraphed, that obedient functionary, who was as neat as his wines, entered, bearing before him what Mr. Bosky facetiously called “a good afternoon,” to wit, a brimming bowl, in which whiskey had been judiciously substituted for salt. Uncle Timothy rose; so did the voice of Mr. Bosky! and to such an altitude as to drown his expostulations in contumacious carolling, which, truth obliges us to add, received laughing impunity from the company.

Come merrily push round the toddy,

The cold winter nights are set in;

To a roquelaire wrapp'd round the body

Add a lining of lamb's-wool within!

This liquor was brew'd by my grandam,

In a snug quiet still of her own;

'Tis fit for my Lord in his tandem,

And royal King Will on his throne.

In the glass, see it sparkles and ripples,

And how it runs merrily down!

The absolute monarch of tipples,

And richly deserving a crown!

Of mirth 'tis the spring and the fountain,

And Helicon's stream to the Muse;

The pleasantest dew of the mountain—

So give it, good fellows, its dues.

It opens the heart of the miser,

And conjures up truth from the knave;

It makes my Lord Bishop look wiser,—

More frisky the curate, his slave.

It makes the glad spirit still gladder,

And moistens the splenetic vein;

When I can't see a hole through a ladder,

It mounts on the sly to my brain.

Then push round the glasses, be cosey,

Fill bumpers to whiskey and whim;

Good luck to each man, while his nose he

Hangs pleasantly over the brim!

There's nothing remarkably odd in

A gent who to nap is inclined;

He can't want a blanket while noddin',

When he's two or three sheets in the wind.

“Sirs,” exclaimed the satirical-nosed gentleman, “I alone am to blame for this audacious vivacity of my sister's son. I turned it on, and lo! it hath inundated us with buffoonery. Sirrah!” shaking the identical plant that Dr. Johnson travelled with through the Hebrides, Tom Davies's shilling's worth for the broad shoulders of Macpherson, “thou shalt find in future that I joke with my cudgel!” *

But it was labour in vain; the “laughing devil,” so peculiar to the eye of the middle-aged gentleman, leered ludicrous defiance to his half-smiling half-sulky mouth. As a last determined effort, he shook his head at Mr. Bosky, whereupon Mr. Bosky shook his hand. The mutual grasp was electrical, and thus ended the brief farce of Uncle Timothy's furor.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Bosky, in a subdued tone, “if I could believe that Uncle Timothy had been really in earnest, my penitential punch should be turned into bitter aloes, sweetened with assafoetida, to expiate an offence against the earliest, best, and dearest friend I ever knew! But I owed Uncle Timothy a revenge. Of late he has worn a serious brow, a mournful smile. There has been melancholy in his mirth, and sadness in his song; this, he well knows, cuts me to the quick; and it is not until he is angry,—or, rather” (smiling affectionately at Uncle Tim) “until he thinks himself so,”—(here Uncle Tim gave Mr. Bosky one of his blandest looks) “that he is 'cockered and spirited up,' and the cloud passes away. What do I not owe to my more than father?”

Uncle Timothy got enormously fidgety; he beat Lucifer's tattoo with his right leg, and began fumbling in both waistcoat pockets for his snuffbox.

“A precocious young urchin, gentlemen, in every sort of mischief!” interrupted Uncle Timothy with nervous impetuosity, “on whose birch-provoking little body as many besoms were bestowed as would set up the best chandler in Christendom!”

“An orphan too—”

“Benjamin Bosky! Benjamin Bosky! don't—don't be a blockhead!”

“He reared, educated, and made me what I am. And, though sometimes I may too far presume upon his good-nature, and foolishly, fondly fancy myself a boy again—”

“Putting hot parched peas and cherry-stones into my boots, as being good for chilblains, * and strewing the inside of my bed with horse-hair to send me to sleep, after a fortnight's dancing round my room with the toothache!”

“Three strokes from the club of Caliban would not so effectually break my head, as the reflection would break my heart that I had done aught to displease him! Now, gentlemen, the murder's out; and if for blabbing family secrets Uncle Timothy in his wrath will insist upon fining me—an extra glass of punch! in truth I must submit and sip.”

“You see, my good friends,” said Uncle Timothy, after a short pause, “that the rogue is incorrigible! But Benjamin Bosky”—(here Uncle Tim tried to look sententious, and adopted the bowwow style)—“I cannot but blush, deeply blush for thy morals, or rather, Benjamin Bosky, for thy no-morals, when thou canst thus blurt thy flattery in my face, because I simply did a duty that kindred imposed upon me, and the sweet consciousness of performing made light and pleasant.

What I have done was at the whisper of a higher monitor than man; and from Him alone—even if I could suppose myself worthy, which I do not—I hope for reward. He who is capable of ingratitude is incapable of any virtue. But gratitude, the most dignified return we can lavish on our benefactor, is the silent aspiration of the heart, and must not, good Benjamin, be placarded on every wall, like a play-bill, a lottery puff, or thy rigmarole ballads, three yards for a penny! There is not a being, however humble his station, but may find some deserving object to awake his friendship and share his benevolence. And be assured, dear Benjamin, that a judicious and timely distribution of fortune's good gifts is the best preparation for that final moment when we must resign them altogether.

And when life's sweet fable ends,

May soul and body part like friends;

No quarrels, murmurs, no delay,—

A kiss, a sigh, and so away.”

“As Cicero said of Plato, I say of Uncle Timothy,—I would rather be wrong with him than right with anybody else. One more volunteer from the Laureate's 'three yards for a penny,' and then my nest of nightingales—”

“Tom-tits! Benjamin Bosky, tom-tits!”

“Well, then, tom-tits! dear Uncle Timothy,—shall go to roost for the night.”

MR. BOSKY'S L'ENVOY,=

From childhood he rear'd me, how fondly my heart

Forgets not, nor lets not my tongue silent be;

But whispers, while sweet tears of gratitude start,

A blessing and pray'r for his kindness to me!

I'll breathe not his name, though its record is deep

In my warm beating bosom, for fear he should frown,

Go read it where angels their register keep

Of the gifted and good, for 'tis there written down.

The conversation now took a more lively turn. Mr. Bosky fired off his jokes right and left; and if there be truth in physiognomy, the animated countenance of Uncle Timothy beamed with complacency and joy. He was in full song, and showered forth his wit and eloquence in glorious profusion, beauty following upon beauty. Thus another Attic hour glided imperceptibly away. The midnight chimes at length admonished us to depart. A galaxy of stars had risen in the unclouded firmament, and a refreshing air breathed around. And as we had many times during the evening filled our horns, the harvest moon had filled hers also to light us home.