courses.

In the depth of winter trying in vain to effect a union between unsoftened butter and the crumb of a very stale loaf, or a quite new

one.

Cracking a hard nut with your teeth, and filling the gap left by the grinder you have knocked out with black, bitter dust.

At the instant of drawing the cork, starting back from the eagerly expected burst of froth, but without the least occasion either for your hopes or fears, the liquor all remaining in the bottle as quiet as a lamb.

Dropping something, when you are either too lame or too lazy to get up for it; and almost breaking your ribs, and quite throwing yourself down, by stretching down to it over the arm of your chair, without reaching it at last.

Suddenly recollecting, as you lie at a very late hour of a Lapland night, that you have neglected to see, as usual, that the fires are all safe below; then, after an agonizing interval of hesitation, crawling out, like a culprit, and quivering down-stairs.

At a long table, after dinner, the eyes of the whole company drawn upon you by a loud observation that you are strikingly like Mrs. or Miss -, particularly when you smile.

The mental famine created among poor students by the modern luxury of the press hot-pressed paper-Bulmer's types-vignettes in every page, &c., obliging every reader with less than £5000 per annum to seek for all his knowledge of new books by hearsay; or through |

wisp, the reviewers; or out of the circulating library, where nothing circulates- but the catalogue!

Catching a glimpse, at a corner of a street, of your oldest and dearest friends, Punch and his party, all in full squeak and scuffle; from whom, however, the cruel decorums of age and character oblige you, after "snatching a fearful joy," to tear yourself away.

Wandering from one shop to another in. search of a book, and finding twenty copies of it, of a date immediately before and after that of the only edition which will be of any use to you, and which you, consequently, never find.

The state of writhing torture into which you are occasionally thrown by the sudden and unexpected questions or remarks of a child before a large company; a little wretch of your own, for instance, that will run up to an unmarried lady (one who would rather be thought a youthful sinner than an elderly saint), and then harrow you by crying out, before you have time to gag it, Now, do, miss-let me count the creases in your face-there's one, there's two, there's three," &c.; or, accosting another lady in the same explicit strain, electrifies you by breaking out with, "Why do you come here so often? for, do you know, my aunt always says she can't abide you-don't you, aunt?" &c. &c.

Taking a step more or a step less than you want in going up or down stairs.

The task of inventing a new dinner every morning devolving on you in the long absence of your wife.

On shaking off a long reverie, the sudden consciousness that, during the whole of your absent fit, your eyes have been intently fixed on a letter which a stranger is writing or reading close at your elbow.

JAMES BERESFORD.