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clergyman? A man who has only to preach an old sermon of his old father, need not, surely, feel himself called upon by the stern voice of duty to put on his small-clothes before eight in summer, and nine in winter. Reader, are you a halfpay officer? Then sleep till eleven; for well thumbed is your copy of the Army List, and you need not be always studying. Reader, are you an Editor? Then doze till dinner; for the devils will be let loose upon thee in the evening, and thou must then correct all thy slips.

But I am getting stupid-somewhat sleepy; for, notwithstanding this philippic against early rising, I was up this morning before ten o'clock; so I must conclude. One argument in favour of early rising I must however notice. We are told that we ought to lie down with the sun, and rise with that luminary. Why, is it not an extremely hard case to be obliged to go to bed whenever the sun chooses to do so? What have I to do with the sun-when he goes down, or when he rises up? When the sun sets at a reasonable hour, as he does during a short period in the middle of summer, I have no objection to set likewise, soon after; and in like manner, when he takes a rational nap, as in the middle of winter, I don't care if now and then I rise along with him. But I will not admit the general principle; we move in different spheres. But if the sun never fairly sets at all for six months, which they say he does not very far north, are honest people on that account to sit up all that time for him? That will never do.

Finally, it is taken for granted by early risers, that early rising is a virtuous habit, and that they are all a most meritorious and prosperous set of people. I object to both clauses of the bill. None but a knave or an idiot-I will not mince the matter-rises early, if he can help it. Early risers are generally milksop-spoonies, ninnies with broad unmeaning faces and grozet eyes, cheeks odiously ruddy, and with great calves to their legs. They slap you on the back, and blow their noses like a mail-coach horn. They seldom give dinners. "Sir, tea is ready." "Shall we join the ladies ?" A rubber at whist, and by eleven o'clock the whole house is in a snore. Inquire into his motives for early rising, and it is perhaps to get an appetite for breakfast. Is the great healthy brute not satisfied with three penny rolls and a pound of ham to breakfast, but he must walk down to the Pier-head at Leith to increase his

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voracity? Where is the virtue of gobbling up three turkey's eggs, and demolishing a quartern loaf, before his Majesty's lieges are awake? But I am now speaking of your red, rosy, greedy idiot. Mark next your pale, sallow early riser. He is your prudent, calculating, selfish money-scrivener. It is not for nothing he rises. It is shocking to think of the hypocrite saying his prayers so early in the morning, before those are awake whom he intends to cheat and swindle before he goes to bed.

I hope that I have sufficiently exposed the folly or wickedness of early rising. Henceforth, then, let no knavish prig purse up his mouth and erect his head with a conscious air of superiority, when he meets an acquaintance who goes to bed and rises at a gentlemanly hour. If the hypocrite rose early in the morning, he is to be despised and hated. But people of sense and feeling are not in a hurry to leave their beds. They have something better to do.

I perceive that all the letters that appear in your Magazine are numbered as if they belonged to a series,-I., II., III., and so forth. If you choose, you may number mine, "On Early Rising. No. I." If I continue the series, my future communications shall all be written in bed in the forenoon, and will not fail of being excellent.

Yours sincerely,

SERO SED SERIO.

OLD NORTH AND YOUNG NORTH;

OR,

CHRISTOPHER IN EDINBURGH, AND CHRISTOPHER IN LONDON.

A MIDSUMMER-DAY'S DREAM.

[JUNE 1828.]

We have no idea what is thought of us in the fashionable world. Most probably we are looked on as a pretty considerable Quiz. Our external or personal appearance is, we cheerfully confess, somewhat odd, both face and figure. It is not easy for you to pass us by on the streets without a stare at our singularity, or to help turning round, as soon as you think you are out of reach of our crutch,-which, by the by, we sometimes use as a missile, and can throw almost as far as that celebrated Gymnast of the Six Foot Club can swing the thirteen pound sledge-hammer; while, with a placid smile of well-pleased surprise, you wonder if that can indeed be the veritable and venerable Christopher North.

Such is our natural and acquired modesty, that so far from being flattered by these proofs of public esteem and popular favour, they fret and annoy us more than we care to express. The truth is, we can seldom, on such occasions, help feeling as if there were a hole in our black silk stocking, the white peeping through like a patch of snow-a shoe minus a silverbuckle-a button off some part of our dress-the back part of our hat in front-the half-expanded white rosebud-tie of our neckcloth, of which we are alike proud and particular, dissolved into two long slips, which, more than anything else appertaining to a man's habiliments, give your person the impress of a weaver expert at the treddle and fly-shuttle-or, to us who keep a regular barber on the chin establishment, with a salary of £80, worst suspicion of all, and if verified to the

touch, death to that day, a Beard! A Beard! fair reader, as rough as the brush-naughty little mermaid-with which you keep combing your glossy locks in that mirror-no, you do not think it flatters-both before you lie down in your loveliness," and after you rise up in it,-alarmed by the unexpected and apparently endless ringing of the breakfast bell.

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Yet, we are not so very much of a Quiz after all; and considering how the storms of so many seasons have beat against us, it is astonishing how well we wear, both in root, branch, and stem. We cannot help-in our pride-Heaven forgive and pity us!—sometimes likening ourselves to an old Ash beside a Church. There stands the tree, with bark thick as cork, and hard as iron-hoary arms overshadowing with a pleasant glimmer-for his leaves are beautiful as those of some little plant, come late and go early, and are never so umbrageous as to exclude the blue sky-overshadowing with a pleasant glimmer a whole family of tombstones,—stem with difficulty circled by the united arm-lengths of some half-dozen schoolboys, never for a day satisfied, without, during a pause of their play, once more measuring the giant,-roots, many of them visible like cables along the gravel-walk leading from the kirkyard-gate, where on Sabbath stands the elder beside the plate, and each Christian passing by droppeth in the tinkling charity, from rich man's gold to widow's mite-and many of them hidden, and then reappearing far off from among the graves-while the tap-root, that feeds and upholds all the visible glory, hath for ages struck through the very rock-foundation of the humble house of the Most High! Solemn image! and never to be by us remembered but through a haze of tears! How kindred the nature of mirth and melancholy! What resemblance seemeth that tree now to have to a poor, world-wearied, and almost life-sick old man! For in a few short years more we shall have passed away like a shadow, and shall no more be anywhere found; but Thou, many and many a midsummer, while centuries run their course, wilt hang thy pensive, "thy dim religious light" -over other and other generations, while at that mystic and awful table, whiter than the unstained mountain-snow, sit almost in the open air, for the heavens are seen in their beauty through the open roof of that living temple, the children of the hamlet and the hall, partaking of the sacrament, or, ere

that holiest rite be solemnised in simplicity, all listening to the eloquence of some grey-haired man inspired by his great goodness, and with the Bible open before him, making, feeble as he seemed an hour ago before he walked up into the Tent, the hearts of the whole congregation to burn within them, and the very circle of the green hills to ring with joy!

What a blessed order of Nature it is that the footsteps of Time are "inaudible and noiseless," and that the seasons of life are like those of the year, so indistinguishably brought on, in gentle progress, and imperceptibly blended the one with the other, that the human being scarcely knows, except from a faint and not unpleasant feeling, that he is growing old! The boy looks on the youth, the youth on the man, the man in his prime on the grey-headed sire, each on the other, as on a separate existence in a separate world. It seems sometimes as if they had no sympathies, no thoughts in common,—that each smiled and wept on account of things for which the other cared not, and that such smiles and tears were all foolish, idle, and most vain; but as the hours, days, weeks, months, and years go by, how changes the one into the other, till, without any violence, lo! as if close together at last, the cradle and the grave! In this how Nature and Man agree, pacing on and on to the completion of a year-of a life! The Spring how soft and tender indeed, with its buds and blossoms, and the blessedness of the light of heaven so fresh, young, and new—a blessedness to feel, to hear, to see, and to breathe! Yet the Spring is often touched by frost—as if it had its own Winter, and is felt to urge and be urged on upon that Summer, of which the green earth, as it murmurs, seems to have some secret forethought. The Summer, as it lies on the broad blooming bosom of the earth, is yet faintly conscious of the coming-on of Autumn with "sere and yellow leaf,"the sunshine owns the presence of the shade—and there is at times a pause as of melancholy amid the transitory mirth! Autumn comes with its full or decaying ripeness, and its colours grave or gorgeous-the noise of song and sickle-of the wheels of wains-and all the busy toils of prophetic man gathering up, against the bare cold Winter, provision for the body and for the soul! Winter! and cold and bare as fancy pictured-yet not without beauty and joy of its own, while something belonging to the other seasons that are fled, some

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