a Sworn Appraiser, nor bound by oath like an Ale-Conner to think small beer of small beer.

From these reflections I was suddenly roused by the Optimist, who earnestly begged me to look out of the Window at a prospect which, though pleasing, was far from a fine one, for either variety or extent.

“There, sir,

there's a Panorama! A perfect circle of enchantment! realizing the Arabia Felix of Fairy Land in the County of Kent!"

"Very pretty, indeed."

"It's a gem, sir, even in our Land of Oaks

and may

challenge a comparison with the most luxuriant Specimens of what the Great Gilpin calls Forest Scenery!"

"I think it may."

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By the by, did you ever see Scrublands, sir, in Sussex?" "Never, sir."

“Then, sir, you have yet to enjoy a romantic scene of the Sylvan Character, not to be paralleled within the limits of Geography! To describe it would require one to soar into the regions of Poetry, but I do not hesitate to say, that if the celebrated Robinson Crusoe were placed within sight of it, he would exclaim in a transport, 'Juan Fernandez !'"

"I do not doubt it, sir."

"Perhaps, sir, you have been in Derbyshire ?" No, sir."

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a

"Then, sir, you have another splendid treat in futuro — Braggins - a delicious amalgamation of Art and Nature, perfect Eden, sir, — and the very spot, if there be one on the Terrestrial Globe, for the famous Milton to have realized his own 'Paradise Regained'!"

In this glowing style, waxing warmer and warmer with his own descriptions, the florid gentleman painted for me a series of highly-colored sketches of the places he had visited; each a retreat that would wonderfully have broken the fall of our first Parents, and so thickly scattered throughout the counties, that by a moderate computation our Fortunate Island contained at least a thousand "Perfect Paradises," copyhold or freehold. A pleasant contrast to the gloomy pictures which are drawn by certain desponding and agriculturally-depressed Spirits who cannot find a single Elysian Field, pasture or arable, in the same country!

In the mean time, such is the force of sympathy, the Optimist had gradually inspired me with something of his own spirit, and I began to look out for and detect unrivalled forest scenery, and perfect panoramas, and little Edens, and might in time have picked out a romantic pump, or a picturesque post, but, alas! in the very middle of my course of Beau Idealism, the coach stopped, the door opened, and with a hurried good-morning, the florid gentleman stepped out of the stage and into a gig which had been waiting for him at the end of a cross-road, and in another minute was driving down the lane between two of those hedges that are only to be seen in England.

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Well, go where thou wilt," thought I, as he disappeared behind the fence, "thou art certainly the Happiest Man in England!"

Yes - he was gone; and a light and a glory had departed with him. The air again felt raw, the sky seemed duller, the sun more dim and pale, and the road more heavy. The scenery appeared to become tamer and tamer, the inns more undesirable, and their signs were mere daubs. At the first opportunity I obtained a glass of sherry, but its taste was vapid; everything in short appeared "flat, stale, and unprofitable." Like a Bull in the Alley, whose flattering rumors hoist up the public funds, the high, sanguine tone of the Optimist had raised my spirits considerably above par; but now his operations had ceased, and by the usual reaction my mind sank again even below its natural level. My short-lived enthusiasm was gone, and instead of the cheerful, fertile country through which I had been journeying, I seemed to be travelling that memorable long stage between Dan and Beersheba where "all was barren."

Some months afterwards I was tempted to go into Essex to inspect a small Freehold Property which was advertised for sale in that county. It was described, in large and small print, as “a delightful Swiss Villa, the prettiest thing in Europe, and enjoying a boundless prospect over a country proverbial for Fertility, and resembling that Traditional Land of Promise described metaphorically in Holy Writ as overflowing with Milk and Honey."

Making all due allowance, however, for such professional flourishes, this very Desirable Investment deviated in its

features even more than usual from its portrait in the prospectus.

The Villa turned out to be little better than an ornamented Barn, and the Promised Land was some of the worst land in England, and overflowed occasionally by the neighboring river. An Optimist could hardly have discovered a single merit on the estate; but he did; for whilst I was gazing in blank disappointment at the uncultivated nature before me, not even studded with rooks, I heard his familiar voice at my elbow:

“Rather a small property, sir but amply secured by ten

solid miles of Terra Firma from the encroachments of the German Ocean."

"And if the sea could," I retorted, "it seems to me very doubtful whether it would care to enter on the premises."

"Perhaps not as a matter of marine taste," said the Optimist. "Perhaps not, sir. And yet, in my pensive moments, I have fancied that a place like this with a sombre interest about it, would be a desirable sort of Wilderness, and more in unison with an Il Penseroso cast of feelings than the laughing beauties of a Villa in the Regent's Park, the Cynosure of Fashion and Gayety, enlivened by an infinity of equipages. But excuse me, sir, I perceive that I am wanted elsewhere," and the florid gentleman went off at a trot towards a little man in black, who was beckoning to him from the door of the Swiss Villa.

"Yes," was my reflection as he turned away from me, if he can find in such a swamp as this a Fancy Wilderness, a sort of Shenstonian Solitude for a sentimental fit to evaporate in, he must certainly be the Happiest Man in England."

As to his pensive moments, the mere idea of them sufficed to set my risible muscles in a quiver. But as if to prove how he would have comported himself in the Slough of Despond, during a subsequent ramble of exploration round the estate, he actually plumped up to his middle in a bog; an accident which only drew from him the remark that the place afforded "a capital opportunity for a spirited proprietor to establish a Splendid Mud Bath, like the ones so much in vogue at the German Spaws!"

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'If that gentleman takes a fancy to the place," I remarked to the person who was showing me round the property, “he will be a determined bidder."

"Him bid!" exclaimed the man, with an accent of the utmost astonishment "Him bid!- why he's the Auctioneer that's to sell us! I thought you would have remarked that in his speech, for he imitates in his talk the advertisements of the famous Mr. Robins. He's called the Old Gentleman." "Old! why he appears to be in the prime of life.” "Yes, sir, but it's the other Old Gentleman

"What! the Devil?"

"Yes, sir,- because you see, he 's always a knocking down of somebody's little Paradise."

THE LONGEST HOUR IN MY LIFE.

AN EXTRAVAGANZA.

CHAPTER I.

"TIME," says Rosalind, in that delicious sylvan comedy called "As You Like It," "Time travels in divers paces with divers persons."

And thence she prettily and wittily proceeds to enumerate the parties with whom he gallops, trots, ambles, or comes to a stand still. And nothing can be truer than her theory.

Old Chronos has indeed infinite rates of performance from railway to snail-way. As the butcher's boy said of his horse, "He can go all sorts of paces - as fast as you like, or as slow as you don't."

But hark! what says a clear, bell-like voice from the HorseGuards, that " time is time, and one o'clock is one o'clock all the town over."

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True, old Regulator! The remark is as correct as striking, time is time, and the horological divisions are, or should be, synchronous from Knightsbridge to Whitechapel. But the old Mower is, like ourselves, a compound being body and spirit. Hence he hath, as the Watchmakers say, a duplex movement:" namely, Mechanical and Metaphysical ; · - the first, governed absolutely by the march of the sun, and the swing of a pendulum; the second, determined by moral contingencies: the one capricious as the ad libitum, the other exact as the tempo obligato of the musician. Thus the manifold bells of London-sounding, like the ancient chorus, a solemn accompaniment to the grand drama of Human Life thus hundreds of iron tongues simultaneously proclaim the