which in boyhood is continually strengthened by similarity of circumstance and pursuits, dies a natural death in most cases when that similarity ceases. If one goes north in the intellectual bearings of his course in life, and the other south, they will at last be far as the poles asunder. If their pursuits are altogether different, and their opinions repugnant, in the first case they cease to think of each other with any warm interest; in the second, if they think of each other at all, it is with an uncomfortable feeling, and a painful sense of change...

It may indeed safely be affirmed, that generous minds when they have once known each other, never can be alienated as long as both retain the characteristics which brought them into union. No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth. There are even some broken attachments in friendship as well as in love which nothing can destroy, and it sometimes happens that we are not conscious of their strength till after the disruption.

There are few persons known to me in years long past, but with whom I lived in no particular intimacy then, and have held no correspondence since, whom I could not now meet without an emotion of pleasure deep enough to partake of pain, and who, I doubt not, entertain for me feelings of the same kind and degree; whose eyes sparkle when they hear, and glisten sometimes when they speak of me; and who think of me as I do of them, with an affection that increases as we advance in years. This is because our moral and intellectual sympathies have strengthened; and because, though far asunder, we know that we are travelling the same road towards our resting place in heaven. 'There is such a pleasure as this,' says Cowper, which would want explanation to some folks, being perhaps a mystery to those

6

whose hearts are a mere muscle, and serve only for the purposes of an even circulation.'-The Doctor.

5. Shaving.

THE poet Campbell is said to have calculated that a man who shaves himself every day, and lives to the age of threescore and ten, expends during his life as much time in the act of shaving, as would have sufficed for learning seven languages.

The poet Southey is said to carry shaving to its ne plus ultra of independency, for he shaves sans looking-glass, sans shaving-brush, sans soap, or substitute for soap, sans hotwater, sans cold-water, sans every thing except a razor. And yet among all the characters which he bears in the world, no one has ever given him credit for being a cunning shaver!

(Be it here observed in a parenthesis that I suppose the word shaver in this so common expression to have been corrupted from shaveling; the old contemptuous word for a Priest.)

But upon reflection, I am not certain whether it is of the poet Southey that this is said, or of the poet Wordsworth. I may easily have confounded one with the other in my recollections, just as what was said of Romulus might have been repeated of Remus while they were both living and flourishing together; or as a mistake in memory might have been made between the two Kings of Brentford when they both quitted the stage, each smelling to his nosegay, which it was who made his exit P. S. and which O. P.

Indeed we should never repeat what is said of public characters (a denomination under which all are to be included who figure in public life, from the high, mighty and most illustrious Duke of Wellington at this time, down to

little Waddington) without qualifying it as common report, or as newspaper or magazine authority. It is very possible that the Lake poets may, both of them, shave after the manner of other men. The most attached friends of Mr. Rogers can hardly believe that he has actually said all the good things which are ascribed to him in a certain weekly journal; and Mr. Campbell may not have made the remark which I have repeated, concerning the time employed in mowing the chin, and the use to which the minutes that are so spent might be applied. . . .

Some one else may have made the calculation concerning shaving and languages, some other poet, or proser, or one who never attempted either prose, or rhyme. Was he not the first person who proposed the establishment of the London University, and if this calculation were his, is it possible that he should not have proposed a plan for it founded thereon, which might have entitled the new institution to assume the title of the Polyglot College?—The Doctor.

6. The Church Clock.

PERHAPS of all the works of man sun-dials and churchclocks are those which have conveyed most feeling to the human heart; the clock more than the sun-dial, because it speaks to the ear as well as to the eye, and by night as well as by day. Our forefathers understood this, and therefore they not only gave a Tongue to Time, but provided that he should speak often to us and remind us that the hours are passing. Their quarter-boys and their chimes were designed for this moral purpose as much as the memento which is so commonly seen upon an old clock-face, and so seldom upon a new one. I never hear chimes that they do not remind me of those which were formerly the first sounds

I heard in the morning, which used to quicken my step on my way to school, and which announced my release from it, when the same tune methought had always a merrier import. When I remember their tones, life seems to me like a dream, and a train of recollections arises, which if it were allowed to have its course would end in tears.-The Doctor.

LIV.

CHARLES LAMB.

1775-1834.

CHARLES LAMB, born in the Inner Temple, 10th of February, 1775; educated in Christ's Hospital; afterwards a clerk in the Accountant's Office, East-India House; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after thirty-three years' service; is now a gentleman at large; can remember few specialities in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying (teste sua manu). Below the middle stature; cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than in set and edifying speeches; has consequently been libelled as a person always aiming at wit; which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness. A small eater, but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper-berry; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the public a tale, in prose, called 'Rosamund Gray;' a dramatic sketch, named 'John Woodvil;' a 'Farewell Ode to Tobacco,' with sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in fact they were his recreations. His true works may be found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, whose Essays are extant in a little volume, published a year or two since, and rather better known