seat to embrace Mr. Sheil, and says-Sir, I honour ye. Dine with me to-morrow."

Then, during that brief intimacy with the renowned and the influential, I had the free admissions of the theatres. What a privilege was that! Drury was in ashes. But there was Covent Garden, with the two Kembles and Young. O'Neil and Kean were not as yet. But there were Munden, and Fawcett, and Emery.

They tell me there are no actors now. Perhaps not. I cannot judge. There are some things that look to me ever fresh, as of old-the face of nature, the smile of love, the gush of poetry, the wisdom above all wisdom. But for meaner things, surely

'Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.'

And with this brief experience I went back to my native town, to be one of those who bore the honoured name of best public instructor.' My range of pupils was very limited. I had little honour in my vocation, and less profit. The world in which I lived was a very singular one. There was the Court atmosphere; and the Collegiate atmosphere; and the Corporate atmosphere-all very much opposed to a free inflation of that air which was called the Liberty of the Press. Yet I was resolved to be independent, and I was unaffectedly patriotic. I hated Napoleon with a true English fervour. That covered some of my sins in not having an undoubting faith in the rulers of the day, with their ex-officio informations. I had some compliments to soothe me. Sir William Herschel came to thank me for telling the people that they were blockheads for attributing the high floods to him;—and the vicar once quoted my leader in a fast-day sermon.

reverence.

SAINT JOHN'S GATE

WHEN Samuel Johnson first saw St. John's Gate, he 'beheld it with reverence,' as he subsequently told Boswell. But Boswell gives his own interpretation of the cause of this St. John's Gate, he says, was the place where the Gentleman's Magazine' was originally printed: and he adds, I suppose, indeed, that every young author has had the same kind of feeling for the magazine or periodical publication which has first entertained him.' He contine with happy naïveté, I, myself, recollect such impressions from the "Scots' Magazine." Mr. Croker, in his valuable notes to Boswell's 'Johnson,' has a very rational doubt of the correctness of this explanation: If, as Mr. Boswell Johnson looked at St. John's Gate as the printing. office of Cave, surely a less emphatical term than revere would have been more just. The "Gentleman's Magazine had been, at this time, but six years before the public, and its contents were, until Johnson himself contributed to improve it, entitled to anything rather than it is more probable that Johnson's reverence was excited by

supposes,

reverence;

but

the recollections connected with the ancient gate itself, the last relic of the once extensive and magnificent priory of the heroic knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive

dilapidations.'

More than a century is passed away since Johnson, from hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. There it still remains. whatever motive, beheld with reverence the old gate of the in a quarter of the town little visited, with scarcely another relic of antiquity immediately about it. Extensive im provements are going forward in its neighbourhood; and

it may probably be one day swept away with as ruthless a hand as that of the Protector Somerset, who blew up the stately buildings of the hospital to procure materials for his own palace in the Strand. May it be preserved from the most complete of all destroyers-the building speculator! It has, to me, a double interest. It is the representative of the days of chivalrous enthusiasm on the one hand, and of popular improvement on the other. The Order, which dates from the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, has perished, even in our own time-an anomaly in the age up to which it had survived. The general desire for knowledge, which gave birth to the Gentleman's Magazine,' is an increasing power, and one which depends upon no splendid endowments and no stately mansions for its maintenance and ornament. Cave, the printer, was the accidental successor of the Prior of the Hospital of St. John. But, representing the freedom of public opinion, he was the natural successor of the despotic power of a secret society. At any rate, the accident invests St. John's Gate with an interest which would not otherwise belong to it; and in its double character we may not be ashamed to behold it with reverence.'

It was in 1841 that I first saw St. John's Gate. Turning out of St. John's Street to enter St. John's Lane-a narrow street which runs obliquely from that wide thoroughfarethe Gate presented itself to view, completely closing the road, and leaving a passage into St. John's Square only through the archway. The large masses of stone of which the gate is composed were then much decayed; but the groined arch had recently been restored. A huge board which surmounted the archway informed the few passersby that they might here solace themselves with the hospitalities of the Jerusalem Tavern;' and, lest they might dread to be subjected to any of the original notions of abstinence which a pilgrim might once have been expected to bring within these walls, a window of a house or bulk on the eastern side of the gateway displayed all the attractions of bottles with golden labels of Cordial Gin,' 'Pine-apple Rum,' and Real Cognac.' Passing under the arch, I per