"Presently in steps another of the tarpaulin fraternity with his hat under his arm half full of money, which he hugged as close as a schoolboy does a bird's-nest. 'Ounds, mother, says our marine Croesus to the landlady, where are you? She hearing his tongue, thought by his lively expressing himself he had brought good news, and came running with all speed to meet him, crying Here I am, son Bartholomew, you're welcome ashore: I hope your captain and ship's crew are all well. By fire and gunpowder! I don't care if they be all sick; why, we are paid off in the Downs, and I am just come up in a hoy. Come, mother, let me have a bucket full of punch, that we may swim and toss in an ocean of good liquor, like a couple of little pinks in the Bay of Biscay.'-' I could not but reflect on the unhappy lives of these salt-water kind of vagabonds, who are never at home but when they're at sea, and always are wandering when they're at home. They're never at ease till they've received their pay, and then rever satisfied till they've spent it; and when their pockets are empty, they're just as much respected by their landladies (who cheat them of one half if they spend the other), as a father is by his son-in-law, who has beggared himself to give him a good portion with his daughter."

A FABLE.

A SERAPH, who once had his plumes unfurl'd
From his Eden, among the stars to stray,
As, returning, he flew by this unknown world,
Had to learn where he was, ere he found his way.
He saw a young Bridegroom,-his wings he stay'd,
Hung his dazzling wreath on a cloud of even,
Then, lighting, he ask'd to what world he had stray'd
The happy young mortal exclaim'd 'twas a "Heaven."
"Nay, nay," the radiant stranger cried,

If this be a Heaven, Oh it is not ours!"-
So, regaining his wreath, he flew on, and sigh'd
For his own glad land of immortal flowers.

Next he found, in a clime all sunny with fame,
A Bard, who could darken the heart too well;
The bright visitant ask'd him his world to name-
In a moment of gloom he replied, a Hell."

"Oh no," thought the Seraph, "though newly come down,
Well I know that neither of these is here."-

So again he resumed his shining crown,

Too bright for the eyes of a twilight sphere.
Last he lit before one, whose eyes, though dim,
Were fix'd on the tale of Redemption's birth;-
Asking what the planet was called of him,

The old man told him its name was "Earth."

"Happy they," said the Seraph," who dream it no heaven!
Happy they," said the Seraph, "who make it no hell!

For 'tis written above, that to them 'twill be given,
Who shall use it as earth, with their God to dwell."

J.

THE YOUNGER BROTHER.

To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine.

SIR,-I was not a little struck at a conversation, at which I was present the other evening, and which was chiefly carried on between a foreign professor and my elder brother, who is the head of a noble family, and in the enjoyment of a large fortune to support his title withal. When a person has been accustomed to one condition all his life, it is astonishing how little it affects his imagination. Although, therefore, the ungracious thought has sometimes, I confess, crossed my mind of the extent to which I should profit by my brother's "slipping his wind," yet it never occurred to me to conceive the possible existence of any other disposition of property, than that which gave him all, and left myself and the rest of the younkers nothing. My curiosity accordingly was intensely roused, when the professor, after many remarks on certain anomalies in our institutions, and the want of harmony between our general spirit of liberty and our particular notions on the means and end of government, fell upon the subject of primogeniture. The opinions of the professor, a man of great learning and celebrity, were of that cast which the members of our family are in the habit of censuring, as smacking of the Carbonaro; and with the timidity common to all natives of the despotic states of the Continent, mingled perhaps with the natural politeness of a travelled gentleman, he was at first rather unwilling to speak out in the presence of strangers and men whose notions, he felt, were not his own; but being pressed on the point by my brother, and encouraged by a sort of wondering attention in his auditors, he at length entered very much at large, into the bad consequences which, as he imagined, proceed from the establishment of the right of eldership in the distribution of property. His arguments were not, indeed, greatly relished by the party he addressed, being considered any thing but bon-ton by a reviewing lord and an official M. P., who are wont to set the fashion in matters of opinion, and who were present at the discussion; but somehow or other, notwithstanding this irrefragable proof of their insufficiency, whether they went to the head or the heart, the intellect or the pocket, they did seem to me to have more in them than the company gave credit for. My brother, however, who is accustomed to be listened to, and who speaks with an air of great self-conviction, maintained an excellent defence; being on his legs" three quarters of an hour, and talking as fluently as if he had crammed for the debate, or as if he had gutted an article of the Edinburgh Review. No wonder then he had the thing hollow, and that the poor professor was voted a twaddle and a bore. Indeed, I question if he will again be asked to dine at house, in a hurry.

For my own part, although I do not pretend to understand all he said, and indeed, did not at first pay much attention to what he was talking about, yet being by degrees interested in the dispute, I was both surprised and amused to perceive how little either of the parties knew of the real facts of the case. I soon found that neither of them felt where the shoe pinched, as I did; and though, in general, I do not affect to be a judge of any thing but horses and wine, I was soon satisfied that I could have given them some hints that would have vastly enlightened their intellects. But as my public speaking never extends beyond a

monosyllable, I wanted confidence to join in the debate; and not being willing that my experience should be lost to the world, and authorship, moreover, being at present rather voted a good concern, I have determined, Mr. Editor, to open my mind to you on the subject.

Very few people, Sir, but the parties themselves, can conceive what a cursed thing it is to be a younger brother, or can imagine a tithe of the annoyances which we poor devils undergo, who are launched into the world of fashionable extravagance, with no other means of carrying on the war than a commission in the army, or an odd five thousand pounds. We are neither provided for by our relations, nor qualified for shifting by ourselves. However blunted and cramped by circumstances, I am conscious of powers that, in another rank of life, would have enabled me to make a fortune with credit ;-but for the Hon. Major to work for his bread! what a solecism in the nature of things! Sir, the miseries of a younger brother begin from the starting-post; and the line of distinction between the cadet and his titled superior, (no serpentine line like that of the ministry, but a straight-forward, bold, broad dash,) is as strongly drawn by the nurse, as the herald. Servants are infernally quick at seizing the difference between uncommunicable blood, and wealth which is to be won by flattery and sycophancy; and the rascals can be as insolent to a seedy lord John, as to a tradesman. At school, things generally go somewhat better; the natural unsophisticated spirit of boyhood, tending powerfully towards equality. But, even there, tutors know who is who, and distinguish with an instinctive sagacity the embryo dispenser of deaneries and livings, from the uninfluential dependant upon the family patronage. Of this, however, I do not so much complain. It would indeed be better for us, if matters were pushed much further; for our destiny in life is so different from that of our more fortunate elders, that the less we are assimilated and associated, the better. Why should we be permitted to partake of the privileged idleness of the life tenants of the family estates; or why, by participating in their lavish expenditure of pocket-money, should we be encouraged in habits of indulgence so unsuited to our future havings? I and my brother were always on the best possible terms, and at college all our amusements were in common. We hunted, shot, drank, &c. &c. together; and at the end of three years my debts were nearly as heavy as his. By this time likewise I had acquired the same inaptitude for application, the same distaste for labour, and the same devotion to a trifling and lounging life. Thenceforward our position became widely different. My brother could borrow as much and as often as he chose, while I had no estate to anticipate. With the same taste for extravagance as he, I found old Post Obit as deaf to my prayers as a lawyer to a forma pauperis client. My father, it is true, pushed me up the stick in my regiment, and more than once paid my debts; but he was himself a man of expense, and had daughters to portion. A thousand times in my better hours I have lamented that chance had not placed me in a merchant's counting-house: a thousand times, in the depression of ennui and apathy, I have cursed my stars for not having made me the child of my uncle the bishop. All my four cousins have snug births in the church, and two of them are already dignitaries; while my honourable self have not a shilling to ring on a mile-stone, and but for

VOL. XIII. NO. LII.

2 D

the privilege of parliament, for which I am indebted to my brother, I should be unable to walk the streets. Even here the chances are against me. Ours is an old Whig family, and my lord is too proud to rat; so that I am cut out of all the good things going, the governorships and embassies: and God knows if I shall ever get even a regiment, if the present men keep in office. The contrast between the situation and the circumstances of our class comes home to us in a world of particulars-from the tyranny of the ministerial whipper-in, to the insolence of the duke's porter, who refuses to our agony" an entrance to his master's doorway; from the haughtiness of the princesses of Almack's to the contempt of the unpaid waiting-maid, the cut-mutton Lord Charles's and the Hampton-court Lady Mary's, are the butt of all sorts of indignities. Even in my mother's lifetime, my poor sisters were regarded by her femme de chambre as a natural enemy; but now, when they are in my brother's house, but not of it, when they are considered as much a burthen on the family establishment as on the family estate, they are viewed in no other light by the servants, than as intercepters of lace and little odd trinkets, and as troublesome guests who give no vails.

Young men of our rank generally come from the University, where they have figured in gold or silk, with a pretty strong conceit of their own importance; and the finery of a guardsman's uniform is little calculated to abate the failing. I had likewise the additional advantage of a good person and a confident address. Judge then of my astonishment, on my entrance upon London life, at finding that I was an object of the decided neglect and abhorrence of all prudent mo thers; at discovering that their equally prudent daughters had as instinctive a conviction that I was "not at all the sort of thing that would do." My brother, who by the by is as lively as my Lord Chancellor's woolsack, was one in all the snug dinners and family parties of speculating mammas; while I was thrown upon the mess-room and the club-house and if by chance I could now and then prevail on a disinterested Lady Cecilia or Lady Jane to trust herself with me in a waltz, neither fun nor fire could thaw the ice of her looks and demeanour. Not, however, that that was of much consequence. All the Lady Janes in the world might go to the devil for any interest they had with me; but then Clara! poor Clara! she had a heart; and I also was only too well convinced that, had I been born to my brother's estate, we might have been happy! Even now, when I see her dragging through the world the intolerable load of her dotard lord, her fine form faded, and her lovely eyes involuntarily confessing her bankrupt hopes, it requires all my knowledge of the world to preserve the calmness of my exterior, and all my affection, not to urge her upon guilt and shame. But I do not mean to be pathetic; younger brothers have no right to the luxury of love, and I was a fool, with Malthus staring me in the face, to think of it. A summer in Spain, and a ball through the thorax at Badajos, have almost driven the lovely Clara from her position in my heart; and I do not wisely thus to recall her image. What then is left for me! I am no longer young, yet I have neither purse nor habits for growing decently old. I pass my winters in London in an endless round of gaieties, which are no longer gay,

without occupation, without pursuit. I am too gouty to drink, too poor to gamble, and too shattered to intrigue. I pass my nights in sleeping over debates I do not understand, and in voting on interests I do not comprehend, according to the implicit instructions of my fraternal nominator. I listen to operas that have ceased to charm, and attend assemblies as uninteresting as a methodist conference. My summers are no less wasted in the country seats of anybody who will be charitable enough to give me a shelter from my creditors, and from that worst of all duns, myself. There I visit horse-races, to bet on other men's horses; I hunt with other men's hounds, shoot on other men's preserves, talk with other men's ideas, and save money to pay my tailor, and my club-house subscription for the next winter's campaign. With just sense and spirit enough to detest the thing I am, I want both activity and motive for becoming any thing else. A burthen to my country, my family and myself, my life slips away in weak repinings and unavailing regrets. In the mean time I daily witness the rising eminence of those individuals, my contemporaries in school and in college, who were then the objects of our childish contempt; and I see the virtues by which, from the circumstance of my birth, I have been excluded, obtaining rewards, to which titled poverty may look up in vain. Yet, unhappy as I am in my individual person, I am by no means the worst of my class. With many of its vices and follies, I have still avoided its graver crimes. I have not beggared a minor at play; I have not married a wealthy dowager to break her heart; I have not trafficked in the liberties of my country. I am not an ordained pluralist, nor a lay dealer in sinecures; a fungus in the state (to adopt the professor's words), an excrescence on society, nurtured at the expense of honest industry, under the false plea of decorating "the Corinthian capital." I am no hired stumbling-block in the way of reform; no standing advocate for every abuse. All this, my brother would call radicalism, and my uncle denounce as irreligion; and for aught I know, they may be right in their denunciations! But this I can tell them, that, if such things must be maintained for the benefit of social order, none suffer more severely from their establishment, than those who are supposed to profit by it the most directly. As I hope to be saved, if I had the world to begin over again, and could choose between being a younger brother or a brewer's horse, I should not have a moment's hesitation in prefering the service of the fermentator, to dragging in the harness of dependence. I am, Mr. Editor, obedient Servant,

Your very

EPIGRAM.

JACK keeps his bed, and swears he 's very ill,
Yet eats and drinks, and sleeps from eve to dawn.
He takes from doctors neither draught nor pill.
What ails poor Jack ?-his breeches are in pawn.

M.