as to have been altogether without a season which must be atoned for with an ever-recurring regret. To each of us there comes-to each at his own time -a day when we may say,—

"Some silent laws our hearts may make,
Which they shall long obey,

We for the year to come may take

Our temper from to-day."

Nor need we search the almanac to find the proper day for "Turning over a New Leaf."

CHAPTER XII.

LE GROS MATTHIEU LAENSBERG.

I SHALL always esteem it a great misfortune that I have not been permitted to meet and converse with "Le Gros Matthieu Laensberg," otherwise "Le Véritable Matthieu Laensberg," or, as he is sometimes called pleonastically, "Le Véritable Double Matthieu Laensberg." I feel that if we had known each other we should have become, as Wordsworth says,

"A pair of friends, though I am young,
And Matthieu,”

if his life has endured throughout the period over which his almanacs have extended, must be nearly three hundred years old. There are many instances of the longevity of almanac-makers, who, more than other men, possess what Henry Taylor calls the

old, inveterate habit of existence." Swift was at much pains to prove that Partridge, the almanacmaker of his day, had died in fulfilment of his own prophecy concerning himself, but all Swift's wit was insufficient to kill Partridge.

Francis Moore, physician, lives still, and I perceive that our own Zadkiel, or Tao-Sze, who was supposed to have died some time ago in the person of Lieutenant Morrison, and to have left his mantle to a sort of joint-stock company of prophets (limited), is alive again, inasmuch as he thus commences his preface to his almanac for this year:-"It is now forty-five years since I first began to write this almanac." It is clear, therefore, that he is still alive; but what is his longevity compared with that of Matthieu Laensberg? And what, I may also ask, are his works compared with those of my unseen friend? So bright, so varied, so comprehensive are those works that, if it had been possible for him to have gone from us, we might have transferred to him the epitaph which Burns wrote for another Matthieu, who succumbed to the laws of mortality:

"If thou on men, their works and ways,

Canst throw uncommon light, man;
Here lies wha weel had won thy praise,
For Matthieu was a bright man.

"If ony Whiggish, whingin sot

To blame my Matthieu dare, man;

May dool and sorrow be his lot,
For Matthieu was a rare man."

When I first became acquainted with the works of this many-titled and "myriad-minded" man, I found them so widely diffused that I was inclined

to suspect the existence of more than one Matthieu Laensberg, just as some mythologists have believed in the existence of more than one Hercules. Nor was this suspicion at once shaken by the discovery that all the particulars which I was able to collect with respect to any Matthieu Laensberg were referable to but one period, one locality, and one mind. "Were there not," said I, "about two centuries ago, two scholars of the name of Cunningham, who were for a long time regarded as but one man because they were both of Scotch parentage, both named Alexander, both resident at the Hague at one and the same time, both skilled in the game of chess, both bear-leaders to young noblemen, both very learned, and both long-lived? these two scholars, after each had been credited with the actions of the other for many years, were proved to have had separate existences. Why, then, may not I hope to resolve that seemingly single orb, Matthieu Laensberg, into a double, or even a triple star?" Further study, however, convinced me that all hope of this must be abandoned, and that the constant gravitation of new and varied epithets towards his central name merely denoted the affectionate respect in which he was held by an ever-growing circle of admirers. To this my own memory could produce a parallel. There was, many years ago, in the neighbourhood of Acton,

M

Yet

a roadside inn called "The Old Hat," which in course of years grew into such repute that a neighbouring innkeeper thought it worth his while to rechristen his inn as "The Original Old Hat;" whereupon another envious interloper, equally covetous of the sign and its popularity, built a new house, and called it "The Real Original Old Hat.” This filled the proprietor of "The Old Hat" with a well-grounded alarm. It seemed to him as if his house had set itself to produce "old hats"-by the process of gemmation, probably, that being the most common form of reproduction in sponges-and he saw that this unnecessary productiveness must be checked. He took heart of grace, therefore, bought up "The Original Old Hat" and "The Real Original Old Hat," and carried on a brisk triangular competition with himself in all three establishments for many years, to his own great profit, and to the effectual discomfiture of all other would-be participators in the advantages of the ancient sign.

Thus, too, Matthieu Laensberg, whether he be called Le Petit, or Le Gros, Le Véritable, or Le Véritable Double, is still one and the same; an Apollo with many varied attributes, but under each of them an Apollo still.

There are, indeed, many points of resemblance between Matthieu Laensberg and Apollo, which is but natural, as Apollo is certainly the patron of