How happy were those stolen mornings! I suppose the rod and line, (for which I exchanged the tutor's rod and cane!) and guns and powder-horns of poor Meanwell, were little different from other fishing tackle, or other sporting apparatus. To me, they were unique. To get away from Tickle, and find them in my hands-to get away from Tickle, and find myself and them in the hands of one who regarded the tutor as a sneaking fellow, was a holiday indeed!

And then Mrs. Meanwell was such an incomparable creature, (incomparable, I mean, to the appreciation of twelve years old!) Such an accomplished woman-such a delicate artist! No trumpery getter-up of fancy screens, or dauber of unmeaning landscapes. Her apricot marmalade was the thing-her queen-cakes were the brightest emanation of her genius; nor did the Marquis of Hertford, with all his Italian confectioners, ever taste such clarified currants! In my estimation, Madame Dacier and Mrs. Barbauld were fools to Mrs. Meanwell! A sweetmeat closet is, after all, the only cabinet d'étude appropriate to the sweet sex!

It was in that parsonage I learnt to appreciate the erroneousness of priestly celibacy, as enforced by the Roman canons. Mrs. Meanwell was nursing mother to the village. The old women would never have got through their rheumatism, or the young ones through the production of younger, but for her opodeldoc and caudle. The squire's wife is usually too busy to think of such matters, or too fine a lady not to administer as much fright as comfort by her domiciliary visits. But Mrs. Parson is as comfortable to the poor as a gift of fleecy-hosiery; and I know that in the disposal of my preferment, I am much more likely to insist upon the incumbents of my family livings being married men, than either on their classics or their oratory. Few Bachelors of Arts but can read the Bible without much spelling,-but what is to become of a helpless village, in fever time, with a bachelor parson?

Between Mrs. Meanwell's preserves, and the means afforded by her husband for attacking my father's, the whole happiness of my life lay at the Parsonage. Of the two little girls, their offspring, I thought nothing. They were sewing their samplers; and even had they been as idle and mischievous as myself, a girl of ten is never otherwise than a bore to a boy of twelve.

It was only by the time I came to be a young gentleman of eighteen, that Harriet and Emma advanced into rivalship with the apricot marmalade; and I own I would then have given the whole contents of the parson's fishing-cases, or rather, I would have given the parson the whole contents of Ustonson's shop, for a glance of the black eyes of the one, or a gleam of the blue eyes of the other.

For Meanwell had progressed into a bore, just as the little humdrums in pinafores had progressed into beauties. Tickle was now Dr. Tickle, and the principal of a college. His bore-ishness had found an appropriate sphere, and was unperceived, amid that of five hundred other bores, greater than himself. He now abided, moreover, one hundred and forty-five miles distant from the hall, and his boredom regarded me no longer-whereas Meanwell was a permanent evil. Meanwell was anchored within a quarter of a mile of me for life;-a Bore moored at my park gates, like the convict ship at Woolwich.

Strong in the obligations he had conferred on my boyhood,-fortified

against my peace with all the apricot marmalade and queen-cakes I had swallowed in his parlour, he assumed towards the young squire a privilege of familiarity which my Oxford susceptibilities could scarcely brook. I might be excused some degree of pride and selfsufficiency, for I had only twelvemonths before exchanged my princedom of Wales for the Crown of Ganderfield; and had assumed my first airs of sovereignty, and assumed them in vain, with the view of shaking off my Falstaff. Meanwell had become as inseparably my shadow as Tickle had ever been. The Hall lay as convenient to the Parsonage as the Parsonage had formerly lain to the Hall. My cellar was just as attractive now, as Mrs. Meanwell's sweatmeat closet of yore; and the cloth evinced its usual instincts by sticking to the tablecloth.

The worst of it was, that I could dispose of my new shadow neither to devil nor angel. Not a minute of the day could I get rid of him!— least of all, when I visited the Parsonage, and felt that he ought to be visiting the sick;-or, at all events, he might have gone and tickled my trout and shot my pheasants, as he had taught me to shoot my father's, while I was trying to ascertain whether the two girls were as adroit at netting purses as they had formerly been at marking canvas. But the bustling helpmate of poor Meanwell was at length quiet in the churchyard; and instead of replacing her in her parochial office of nursing the old women, he chose to devote himself to watching the young ones. Yes!-decidedly, he was twice as great a bore as Tickle.

Three years afterwards, the Parsonage possessed three Bores instead of one; for on the attainment of my majority, both Harriet and Emma insisted on becoming my better half! Had they proposed going thirds, I might have submitted; but the difficulty of selection saved Both pretended equal claims upon my heart and hand. All I

me.

"Detenero meditatur A mores ungui !”—

could say in answer was, that if I ever made an offer of either, I must have been dreaming; and as it appeared that whatever I might have said or done in my sleep, I had written nothing,-I had not committed myself sufficiently to be required to commit matrimony. Besides, the lawyers would have had to toss up, to decide in favour of which sister to institute proceedings for a breach of promise. I had sauntered in the green lanes in company with Harriet quite as often as in company with Emma; and then, as well as in my fishing parties, with both sisters in alternation, the eternal shadow was ever behind us!

Three bores, however, in conjunction-tria juncta in uno-a very Cerberus of Boredom-was three times too much for my nerves! So long as I sojourned at the Hall, I fancied that they looked briefs at me from the pulpit and family pew; and mistook every invitation to dinner for a subpœna

"Militia species amor est!"

To avoid all this, like other gentlemen in difficulties, I went abroad. My family seat was quite bore enough in itself, without this accession. It was

"To gild refined gold, and paint the lily,"

to increase its powers of offuscation.

What keeps her back? why lags she Spoke only three words in return,

THE ELLISTON PAPERS.

EDITED BY GEORGE RAYMOND.

And then, the lover."-SHAKSPEARE.

V.

PROFESSOR MARTYN, by the assistance of his old fellow-collegian, Dr. Farmer, now introduced our young aspirant to Mr. George Steevens, who took an early opportunity for making him personally known to Mr. John Kemble. By that gentleman he was received with much courtesy; he heard him recite, and before him the country candidate for metropolitan advancement went through the usual ordeal. The effect of these interviews was extremely flattering. Mr. Kemble suggested the part of Romeo for Elliston's particular study, proposing that character for his first London appearance, at Drury Lane Theatre. It was July, 1793, in which these meetings took place, and as the new splendid edifice was not then completed, and unlikely to be by the ensuing winter, it was arranged that Elliston should appear about the commencement of the season 1794. For the interim, Mr. Kemble strongly recommended that he should return either to Bath or York. "The former," said he, "is, I think, preferable. You require but study, the want of which no genius in the world can supply. It is the exercise of an art which forms the artist; and some day," added he, with a smile, "you may repay this advice with the ingratitude of disputing with me public favour." Mr. Dimond was at this precise time acting at Richmond. Thither Elliston went on the following day-an engagement was speedily concluded between them-for the Bath manager had had too favourable a foretaste of the young actor's quality, not to desire a fresh importation of it.

Bidding adieu, in a less abrupt manner than on the first occasion, to his parents in Charles-street, with whom he had lodged during his stay in London, Elliston proceeded to Bath, in October, and made his re-appearance there, in the same month, in the character recommended to his attention by Mr. Kemble. His success in Romeo was a yet brighter colouring of that hue which had decked his earlier days. The wild, romantic passion of the Veronese boy-the pouring out of soul on the altar of a youth's first dream-the glowing diction of the poet, and the "mould of form" in which nature would have best rejoiced for the lodgment of such a spirit-stood forth, a beautiful identity of that vision which imagination wakens, as it dwells on the progress of this Italian tale.

Complete and brilliant as was the success of his second visit to Bath,

Author of an "Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare," and Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

† George Steevens-the able coadjutor of Dr. Johnson, in an edition of the Works of Shakspeare, whose testimony to the worth of the great lexicographer should be ever borne in mind, as his character has been too frequently misunderstood,--" It is unfortunate," says Steevens, "that his particularities and frailties can be more distinctly traced than his good and amiable exertions. Could the many bounties be studiously concealed, the many acts of humanity he performed in private, be displayed with equal circumstantiality, his defects would be so far lost in the blaze of his virtues, that the latter would alone be visible."