upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come. Still, the prospect of its coming threw something of an illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom.

ness.

Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for busiThis, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis to which I should be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had I had grown to my desk, as it were, and the wood had entered into my soul.

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the trouble legible in my countenance, but I did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 5th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L, the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks and frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words, of course, to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I remained laboring under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my dis

closure that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal.

A week passed in this manner-the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life-when on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about quitting my desk to go home (it might be about eight o'clock), I received an awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formidable back parlor. I thought now my time was surely come; I have done for myself; I am going to be told that they have no longer occasion for me. L-, I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me, when to my utter astonishment B, the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of my services. my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time. (The deuce! thought I; how did he find out that? I protest I never had the confidence to think as much.) He went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart panted!), and, asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own property

of which I have a little-ended with a proposal, to which his three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had served so well, a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary-a magnificent offer. I do not know what I answered, between surprise and gratitude, but it was understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went home-for ever. This noble benefit (gratitude forbids me to conceal their names) I owe to the kind

ness of the most munificent firm in the world -the house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet & Lacy!

ment.

fe

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my licity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastille suddenly let loose after a forty years' confineI could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity, for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more Time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue. I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward or judicious bailiff to manage my

estates in Time for me.

And here let me caution persons grown old in active business not lightly nor without weighing their own resources to forego their customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient ; and, now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away; but I do not read in that violent measure with which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone

winters. I walk, read or scribble (as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure: I let it come to me. I am like the man

"that's born, and has his years come to him, In some green desert."

Years!" you will say. What is that superannuated simpleton calculating upon? He has already told us he is past fifty."

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow; for that is the only true Time which a man can properly call his own-that which he has all to himself: the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair Rule-of-Three sum.

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was that a vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the counting-house. I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday.

The partners and the clerks

with whom I had for so many years and for so many hours in each day of the year been closely associated, being suddenly removed from them, they seemed as dead to me.

There is a fine passage which may serve to illustrate this fancy in a tragedy by Sir Robert Howard. Speaking of a friend's death:

""Twas but just now he went away;

I have not since had time to shed a tear;

And yet the distance does the same appear As if he had been a thousand years from me! Time takes no measure in Eternity."

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them once or twice since to visit my old desk-fellows-my cobrethren of the quill that I had left below in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity which I had hitherto enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk, the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. Dl take me if I did not feel some remorse-beast if I had not-at quitting my old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged, then, after all? or was I simply a coward? Well, it is too late to repent; and I also know that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart I had violently broken the bands It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies! yet not for long, for again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell, Ch- dry, sarcastic and friendly! Do- mild, slow to move and gentlemanly! Pl, officious to do and to volunteer good services! And thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of old, stately house of merchants, with thy labyrinthine passages and light-excluding, pent-up offices,

betwixt us.

where candles for one-half the year supplied the place of the sun's light, unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my "works." There let them rest as I do from my labors, piled on thy massy shelves-more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful. My mantle I bequeathe among ye.

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At that period I was approaching to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm, indeed, but it was comparative only. Something of the first flutter was left-an unsettling sense of novelty, the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than my own master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. I digress into Soho to explore a bookstall. Methinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish Street Hill? Where is Fenchurch Street? Stones of old Mincing Lane, which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for six and thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and