his pirouettes, and his pistes, his croupade and his balotade, his gallop galliard and his capriole. I have been on him when he has glided through the sky with wings outstretched and motionless, like a kite or a summer cloud; I have bestrode him when he went up like a bittern, with a strong spiral flight, round, round and round, and upward, upward, upward, circling and rising still; and again when he has gone full sail or full fly, with his tail as straight as a comet's behind him. But for a hobby or a night horse, Pegasus is nothing to Nobs. Where did we go on that memorable night? What did we see? What did we do? Or rather what did we not see! and what did we not perform!

CHAPTER IV. A. I.

A CONVERSATION AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

Tel condamne mon Coq-à-l'âne qui un jour en justifiera le bon sens. LA PRETIEUSE.

I WENT down to breakfast as usual overflowing with joyous thoughts. For mirth and for music the skylark is but a type of me. I warbled a few wood notes wild, and then full of the unborn work, addressed myself to my wife's eldest sister, and asked if she would permit me to dedicate the book to her. "What book?" she replied. "The History," said I, "of Dr. Daniel Dove of Doncaster, and his horse Nobs." She answered, "No, indeed! I will have no such nonsense dedicated to me!" and with that she drew up her upper lip, and the lower region of the nose. I turned to my wife's youngest sister: "Shall I have the pleasure of dedicating it to you?" She raised her eyes, inclined her head forward with a smile of negation, and begged leave to decline the hon"Commandante," said I, to my wife and commandress, "shall I dedicate it then to you?" My commandante made answer, Not unless you have something better to dedicate." "So, ladies!" said I, "the stone which the builders rejected"-and then looking at my wife's youngest sister"Oh, it will be such a book!" The manner and the tone were so much in earnest that they arrested the bread and butter on the way to her mouth; and she exclaimed, with her eyes full of wonder and incredulity at the same time, "Why you never can be serious?" "Not serious," said I; why I have done nothing but think of it and dream of it the whole night." "He told me so," rejoined my commandante, "the first thing in the morning." "Ah, Stupey!" cried my wife's eldest sister,

our.

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accompanying the compliment with a protrusion of the head, and an extension of the lips, which disclosed not only the whole remaining row of teeth, but the chasms that had been made in it by the tooth drawer; hiatus valde lacrymabiles. "Two volumes," said I," and this in the title page!" So, taking out my pencil, I drew upon the back of a letter the mysterious monogram, erudite in its appearance as the digamma of Mr. A. F. Valpy.

It passed from hand to hand. Why he is not in earnest ?" said my wife's youngest sister. "He never can be," replied my wife. And yet beginning to think that peradventure I was, she looked at me with a quick turn of the eye-"A pretty subject, indeed, for you to employ your time upon! You-vema whehaha yohu almad otenba twandri athancod!" I have thought proper to translate this part of my commandante's speech into the Garamna tongue.

CHAPTER III. A. I.

THE UTILITY OF POCKETS-A COMPLIMENT PROPERLY RECEIVED.

La tasca è propria cosa da Christiani.

BENEDETTO VARCHI.

My eldest daughter had finished her Latin lessons, and my son had finished his Greek; and I was sitting at my desk, pen in hand, and in mouth at the same time; (a substitute for biting the nails which I recommend to all onygophagists ;) when the Bhow Begum came in with her black velvet reticule, suspended as usual from her arm by its silver chain.

Now of all the inventions of the tailor, (who is of all artists the most inventive,) I hold the pocket to be the most commodious, and saving the fig leaf, the most indispensable. Birds have their craw; ruminating beasts their first or ante-stom

ach; the monkey has his cheek, the opossum her pouch; and, so necessary is some convenience of this kind for the human animal, that the savage who cares not for clothing makes for himself a pocket if he can. The Hindoo carries his snuffbox in his turban. Some of the inhabitants of Congo make a secret fob in their woolly toupee, of which, as P. Labat says, the worst use they make is-to carry poison in it. The Matolas, a long-haired race who border upon the Caffres, form their locks into a sort of hollow cylinder, in which they bear about their little implements; certes a more sensible bag than such as is worn at court. The New Zealander is less ingenious; he makes a large opening in his ear and carries his knife in it. The Ogres, who are worse than savages, and whose ignorance and brutality are in proportion to their bulk, are said, upon the authority of tradition, when they have picked up a stray traveller or two more than they require for their supper, to lodge them in a hollow tooth as a place of security till breakfast; whence it may be inferred that they are not liable to toothache, and that they make no use of toothpicks. Ogres, savages, beasts, and birds all require something to serve the purpose of a pocket. Thus much for the necessity of the thing. Touching its antiquity much might be said; for it would not be difficult to show, with that little assistance from the auxiliaries must, and have, and been, which enabled Whitaker of Manchester to write whole quartoes of hypothetical history in the potential mood, that pockets are coeval with clothing: and, as erudite men have maintained that language and even letters are of divine origin, there might with like reason be a conclusion drawn from the twenty-first verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis, which it would not be easy to impugn. Moreover, nature herself shows us the utility, the importance, nay, the indispensability, or, to take a hint from the pure language of our diplomatists, the sinequanonniness of pockets. There is but one organ which is common to all animals whatsoever : some are without eyes, many without noses; some have no heads, others no tails; some neither one nor the other; some there are who have no brains, others very pappy ones; some no hearts, others very bad ones; but all have a stomachand what is the stomach but a live inside pocket? Hath not Van Helmont said of it," Saccus vel pera est, ut ciborum olla?”

Dr. Towers used to have his coat pockets made of capacity to hold a quarto volume-a wise custom; but requiring stout cloth, good buckram, and strong thread well waxed. I do not so greatly commend the humour of Dr. Ingenhouz, whose coat was lined with pockets of all sizes, wherein, in his latter years, when science had become to him as a plaything, he carried about various materials for chymical experiments: among the rest so many compositions for fulminating powders in glass tubes, separated only by a cork in the

middle of the tube, that, if any person had unhappily given him a blow with a stick, he might have blown up himself and the doctor too. For myself, four coat pockets of the ordinary dimensions content me; in these a sufficiency of conveniences may be carried, and that sufficiency methodically arranged. For mark me, gentle or ungentle reader! there is nothing like method in pockets, as well as in composition: and what orderly and methodical man would have his pocket handkerchief, and his pocketbook, and the key of his door, (if he be a bachelor living in chambers,) and his knife, and his loose pence and halfpence, and the letters which peradventure he might just have received, or peradventure he may intend to drop in the postoffice, twopenny or general, as he passes by, and his snuff, if he be accustomed so to regale his olfactory conduits, or his tobacco-box, if he prefer the masticable to the pulverized weed; or his box of lozenges, if he should be troubled with a tickling cough; and the sugar plums and the gingerbread nuts which he may be carrying home to his own children, or to any other small men and women upon whose hearts he may have a design; who, I say, would like to have all this in chaos and confusion, one lying upon the other, and the thing which is wanted first fated always to be undermost!-(Mr. Wilberforce knows the inconvenience :)— the snuff working its way out to the gingerbread, the sugar plums insinuating themselves into the folds of the pocket handkerchief, the pence grinding the lozenges to dust for the benefit of the pocketbook, and the door key busily employed in unlocking the letters?

Now, forasmuch as the commutation of female pockets for the reticule leadeth to inconveniences like this, (not to mention that the very name of commutation ought to be held in abhorrence by all who hold daylight and fresh air essential to the comfort and salubrity of dwellinghouses,) I abominate that bag of the Bhow Begun, notwithstanding the beauty of the silver chain upon the black velvet. And perceiving at this time that the clasp of its silver setting was broken, so that the mouth of the bag was gaping pitiably, like a sick or defunct oyster, I congratulated her as she came in upon this further proof of the commodiousness of the invention; for here, in the country, there is no workman who can mend that clasp, and the bag must therefore either be laid aside, or used in that deplorable state.

When the Bhow Begum had seated herself I told her how my proffered dedication had been thrice rejected with scorn, and repeating the offer I looked for a more gracious reply. But, as if scorn had been the influenza of the female mind that morning, she answered, "No; indeed she would not have it after it had been refused by everybody else." "Nay, nay," said I; "it is as much in your character to accept, as it was in their's to refuse." While I was speaking she took

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a pinch of snuff; the nasal titillation co-operated with my speech, for when any one of the senses is pleased, the rest are not likely to continue out of humour. Well," she replied, "I will have it dedicated to me, because I shall delight in the book." And she powdered the carpet with tobacco dust as she spake.

CHAPTER II. A. I.

CONCERNING DEDICATIONS, PRINTERS' TYPES, AND IMPERIAL INK.

Il y aura des clefs, et des ouvertures de mes secrets.

LA PRETIEUSE.

MONSIEUR DELLON, having been in the inquisition at Goa, dedicated an account of that tribunal, and of his own sufferings, to Mademoiselle Du Cambout de Coislin, in these words:

MADEMOISELLE,

*

J'aurois tort de me plaindre des rigueurs de l'inquisition, et des mauvais traitemens que j'ay éprouvez de la part de ses ministres, puisqu'en me fournissant la matiére de cet ouvrage, ils m'ont procuré l'avantage de vous le dédier.

This is the book which that good man Claudius Buchanan with so much propriety put into the hands of the grand inquisitor of India, when he paid him a visit at the inquisition, and asked him his opinion of the accuracy of the relation upon the spot!

The Frenchman's compliment may truly be said to have been far-fetched and dearly bought. Heaven forefend that I should either go so far for one, or purchase it at such a price!

A dedication has oftentimes cost the unhappy author a greater consumption of thumb and finger nail than the whole book besides, and all varieties of matter and manner have been resorted to. Mine must be so far in character with the delectable history which it introduces that it shall be unlike all which have ever gone before it. I knew a man (one he was who would have been an ornament to his country if methodism and madness had not combined to overthrow a bright and creative intellect) who, in one of his insaner moods, printed a sheet and a half of muddy rhapsodies with the title of the "Standard of God displayed:" and he prefaced it by saying that the price of a perfect book, upon a perfect subject, ought to be a perfect sum in a perfect coin; that is to say one guinea. Now, as Dr. Daniel Dove was a perfect