is "The Club," written by an author of whom little is known; neither is he ambitious of fame, for he does not praise a noble lord with a quire of dedication, but dedicates it to three "Virginia merchants ;" and as to posterity, he says, "If they (the following pages) help to set youth a-thinking, the end is answered." It would be well if some of our fast writers would try to set the youth a-thinking; it is a noble aim. The characters in the Club answer to the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, and are prefaced--"These characters being merely intended to expose vice and tolly, let none pretend to a key, nor seek for another's character, lest he find his own; for, qui capit ille facit (ne who takes it, makes it). They are introduced thus :-A certain father, a Nestor in age and a Mentor in wisdom, asks his son

"What me you out so late last night?"

Son. Mr. invited me to his club at the Noah's Ark, where sat a great many round the fire, till more came in, when they cried to the table-to the table !" where one began his right hand man's good health, over the left thumb, which having gone round the next was began, and so they drank on till each had pledged every man's health in the room.

Father.-Many cups, many diseases; too much oil chokes the lamp. Drinking healths, according to t. Austin, was invented by pagans and infidels. But what followed ?-for wine immoderately taken makes men think themselves wondrous wise.

The son in i answer relates what each speaker, to the number of twenty-four, said-the father commenting thereon; and thus the son sketches four-and-twenty characters of the time, with nearly the grace and freedom, and after the manner of Butler, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Eacle; and the father gives an essay on the character, nearly in some points as excellent as those of Bacon. Thus it is that the curious alphabet begins, with the

Antiquary, who is a pedantic personage, "an idolator of ages past;" who pities the ignorance of modern writers, and scorns to read any book less than a hundred years old; who is a great admirer of ancient coins and manuscripts, which if effaced or obliterated by time, were in his opinion the more valuable. By the rest of his discourse he seemed to esteem everything as Dutchmen do cheese-the better for being mouldy." The father here gives a very sensible reproof to the character of the antiquary, and tells the son to go on with the relation of what he heard. As our retrospective glance at this old work will be all the better for arrangement and compression, we shall place all the characters of the club first, and then digest a few of the maxims. The son proceeds to a very common character of a party, the

Buffoon, who is "skilled in making wry mouths, mimical gestures, and antic postures"-was ever misconstruing and perverting others' words to a preposterous meaning, jingling of words or syllables in scraps of verses or senseless rhymes, and all the dregs and refuse of wit. After speaking, he always laughed first, and generally alone; and whilst he drolled and scoffed at the false steps of others, wearied the company with his own. At length he met with his match, which mortified him extremely; for Buffoon, forsooth, could no more endure to be outfooled than Nero to be outfiddled. The next is a

Critic, wise enough in his own conceit to correct the Magnificat, pretending to an exquisite niceness; censuring Cicero tor being so verbose, and Virgil for using rustic language. Plato, he told us, was neither fertile nor copious; Aristotle neither solid nor substantial; and Theophrastus neither smooth nor agreeable; that Shakspere wanted manners; Congreve was a laborious writer, and Ben Jonson a pedant. Next

comes the

Splenetic Detractor, who is excellent at misrepre

senting, misunderstanding, and misinterpreting his neighbour's thoughts, words, and actions; deals much in malicious insinuations and in sinister and covert reflections, uttering his calumnies in such ambiguous words and half sentences as left worse to be guessed than he dared express; usually began his stories with "I have heard," or "Tis whispered;" and never seconded a commendation but to smooth the way to some malicious remarks upon the party's defects. The next of these remarkable characters is

Envioso, a pale, lean, ghastly carcass, quickened by envy, who would willingly have lost an eye to think his neighbour might lose both. His neighbour's welfare or his own woe caused a like sourness in his looks. His mind had the vapours: a sweet report of any would throw him into convulsions and agonies.

A Flatterer, "with a fleering countenance," is the next; and he dedicates all his attentions to a rich young man whose character is last but one in the alphabet. Let us pass to the

Gamester, who, after losing his patrimony, had for selling his friend been taught cards and dice. Having duped all his old companions, Knave, his friend, introduces him to his club, when after drinking till the others were nearly drunk-Buffoon, Critic, Knave, and Gamester-" went to whisk" (the reader will observe the old manner of spelling whist); Buffoon and Critic are first suffered to win, and then stripped of all their money, rings, and watches; and “from the gulfs of despair in their faces Angelo might have finished his famous piece of the Last Judgment."

Next in rotation is the Hypocrite, that could bend either to the house of God or Rimmon, declared for moderation, and complained much of mankind's want of charity. He wrought also, mole-like, to throw up tears and disturb the nation's peace; till growing drunk he dropped his mask.

An Impertinent, a very great talker, is the next. Then a Knave. Then a Lawyer, who made it as much

his care and business to create feuds and animate differences as the vestal virgins used to maintain the sacred fire; growing drunk, he boasts that he has a knack of improving trifles and frivolous contests into good fat causes-who can set man and wife at difference the first day of their marriage. He does not trouble his head with "Coke upon Littleton:" law lay in a little compass; trials chiefly depended upon evidence; let him alone with the witnesses.

Moroso, whose name speaks for itself. Newsmonger and Opiniator follow to give place to a Projector, whose portrait is a finished one: he is an old man, who seems to want bread; who has by him scores of rare projects in posse, esse, and futuro; who says that he can extract volatile spirits from wine lees, beer, or grounds and dust of tea, one drop whereof would turn a quart of water into the best wine, beer, or tea. That to save watermen the labour of rowing against tide he had contrived to make the Thames continually ebb on one side and flow on the other. At this rate he made ropes of sand, built castles in the air, and talked as if capable of benefiting mankind more than the invention of spectacles, though he had never yet obliged the world with anything so useful as a mouse-trap.

Next we have a Quack; and then a

Rake, who never opened his mouth but to affront Christianity, civil society, decency, or good manners; who after punishing our cars with the filthy history of his debauchery and excess, still laughing whilst he repeated his sins, as if extremely tickled at the remem- || brance of them, began to inveigh against marriage; and for that

The bane of all pleasures, and luggage of life,
Was the best could be said of a very good wife.

A Swearer and a Traveller-two well-drawn characters, and a third, an Usurer, give place to

Wiseman, a character delightful in itself-the only good man of the party. His countenance was full of mildness and courtesy, his eyes more smiling than his mouth, his discourse grave and sober, words smooth and proper, distinctly uttered, with due regard to time, place, and person. His religion was legible in the innocency of his life, the exactness of his morals, the integrity and truth of his words, and the justice and honesty of his conversation. He abstained from offending, as if none ever pardoned; yet pardoned as if he daily offended. His passions he made servants to his reason and religion; and if they rebelled first, concealed, then suppressed, their mutiny. He drank wine as sick men take physic-merely for health. Reason was his rule, conscience his counsellor, and his actions were ever contrary to those he found fault with. Age rendered him neither morose nor imperious; his knowledge influenced and tempered his mind with all the humanity, goodness, calmness, strength, and sincerity of a sound and unaffected philosopher, and made his conversation so affable, pleasant, and instructive, that young and old both delighted and profited in his company. The scholar and the gentleman were so perfectly united, no critic could find the least distinction. The approach of death terrified him not; he seemed to fear recoiling back to childishness more than to dust. One would now imagine that our author is puzzled to find an X for his curious club; and, in fact, he is obliged to introduce

Xantippe-a newsmonger's wife, who "bolts in at the door" (that slang word bolt is no new thing; in fact slang itself is very old)-to fetch her husband home; and next to her, the

Youth who was flattered is described thus:-"The Lushroom squire sat at the upper end of the table, accoutred with a large muff, long peruke, dangling cane, sword, snuff-box, diamond ring, picktooth-case, silk handkerchief, all of the newest fashion; and after Wiseman, his uncle, was gone, fell to telling them what each cost, and that, thank his stars, he had a plentiful estate and a heart to enjoy it. He frequently laughed to show his white teeth; threw back his wig to discover the fine ring in his ear, and looked what's a clock to show his gold watch. He loved and hated with the same infatuation; and when the heat was over, was cool enough to friends and enemies."

Zany, who is the host of the "Noah's Ark," comes in, and the only thing worth recording about the old sot is a drinking song which he "obliges the club with." Here it is

If any so wise is

That wine he despises,

Let him drink small beer and be sober,
Whilst we who drink claret, sing
Like birds in the spring,
He shall droop like the trees in October.

But be sure over night,

If this dog you do bite,

You take it henceforth for a warning,
Soon as out of your bed,

To settle your head,

Take a hair of his tail in the morning.

The company then being nearly all drunk, fall to fighting and swearing, and the describer of these various characters takes his leave of them.

We will now pass to a few of the aphorisms used by the father. Of the Buffoon he says-"Some use their wits as bravoes wear stillettos, not for defence, but mischief." "He whose jests make others afraid of his wit, had need be afraid of their memory." Of Criticism"When men talk of others, why not, like Suetonius of the twelve Cæsars, tell virtues as well as vices? Were our eyes only for spots and blemishes?" Of Detraction" Think it no part of your business curiously to search into other men's lives, but narrowly inspect your It is much better to mend one fault in yourself than to find a hundred in your neighbour."

own errors.

the dog wags his tail, not for thee but for the bread." Of Hypocrisy-"Hypocrisy is a homage vice pays to virtue." (This is undoubtedly Rochefoucauld's, and should have been acknowledged). Of Moroseness "A morose man is a very troublesome companion, and a stranger to the sweetest thing on earth-the pleasure of pleasing." Of Birth-"It is not birth, wit, riches, or great employments, but a right use of them in the discharge of his duty to God, himself, and neighbour, makes the worthy man. The honour paid such as usurp their ancestors' arms without inheriting their virtues, belongs to them no more than the reverence the good man did to Isis belonged to the ass that carried her image."

Of such good things this little book is full; and as it is gratifying to look back upon the dangers, difficulties, and vices which we are seeking to avoid, the glance just taken at a faithful picture of society as it was more than one hundred years ago must afford satisfaction and thankfulness; and with this we place the little book on the shelf again, and so take leave of James Puckle, A.P. J. F.

TRUE GREATNESS. Honour where honour's due! Once let the man be found, Place him among the few

That tread the highest ground. Whether his fame he earn From toil in realms of thought; Whether in labour stern The rich reward be bought; Whether on battle-field

He strike for freedom's right; Or bear the conq'ring shield

Of truth in peaceful fight. Not from the armed camp,

Where tyranny is found; Not from the student's lamp, That scatters poison round; Though Caesar's wondrous deeds Be done in cause of wrong, Though he who falsehood reads, Confess the pow'r of song. Seek him who dare abide A sneer in truthful cause; Nor lightly turn aside

To win a world's applause. To whom the poor man's sigh Is never breath'd in vain; Who daily looks on high

His needful strength to gain. Who wields the mighty pen

With all that mind may give, To teach his fellow-men

For what they ought to live. Be this the honour'd one

To lift the world above; Not on a kingly throne, But in a people's love!

LIOLETT.

Ar this most picturesque season of the year-when the rich tints of autumn paint the woods with added beauty, and a warmth genial and unoppressive seems to diffuse itself from the earth into the air, rather than to be poured down on it-methinks the simpler's art had never sweeter period for its application. Flowers, brighter hued than those of spring, though wanting their primaveral sweetness, bloom in the fields and hang about the hedge-rows; and wide-spread heaths and sandy sea shores are more than ever redolent of beauty. The slender stems of our ladies' bed-straw lift their loose panicles of perfumed flowers under the sheltering hedges. In bygone days-perchance before the down of the cat's tail typha was used for beds, as in the time of Gerard, this herb was so employed. There are two species of it, yellow and white, both possessing, in common with the rest of the stellatae tribe, the property of dyeing red, a circumstance which a few years since occasioned its being experimentally cultivated for the purpose of superseding madder. Nothing can be more delicate than the appearance of the white, which straggling through the hedge-rows throws the weight of its frail corollas upon them, and hangs a minute shower of floral snow under the sunshine of the summer solstice. It has faded, but the hardier yellow still remains, rich in concurrent virtues. An ointment made of the leaves and flowers was full of coolness and refreshment; and a bath in which the herb was infused was said to be a restorative for pains in the limbs, and to comfort and strengthen the feet of "travellers and lacquies" whose "long running caused weariness and stiffness in their sinews and joints." Oh, charmed art, that by the waysides found an antidote for the weary and footsore wanderers in them! Close beside its square stems, whorled leaves, and branches clustered with minute flowers, the pale grey scabious bows her tall stem and sorrowfully coloured corolla-the "nun of the field" and "widow flower" of France. Its juices were accounted vulnerary and cleansing, and not only leprosy but the plague The spot were believed to be removed by its use. milfoil too, or varrow, with virtues almost as numerous as its leaves, flourishes near at hand. There was witchery in this plant in olden times; and even now in Ireland there is a spell in it, and maidens lay it beneath their pillows on All-Hallow eve in order that it may bring their lovers to them in their dreams. Its dark-green doubly pinnatified leaves, from amongst which spring up divers green stalks, stayed as old Culpepper daintily describes it, with knots of white or faintly tinted flowers, renders it one of the prettiest of our rustic plants. Each separate cffioresence is a study, and the whole corymbus looks like the exquisite miniature of the carved brainstone shaped bosses that ornament the groined roofs of antique cathedrals. We find it blowing early and late, as much at home in our hardier climate as on the plains of Thessaly (where Chiron first made known its uses to his pupil Achilles), and love it more for its faith to us in all weathers than for its beauty or utility. In olden times it ranked amongst the astringents in the English Dispensatory, though at present it has but a name in the Materia Medica and a place in old wives' baskets on the vigil of All Saints' day. Even this custom seems peculiar to Eblana,* out of which we do not remember to have heard the annual cry of "Yarrow for young men and maidens!" with which that saturnalia

*The ancient name of Dublin.

But

But in thus lingering by the way-side, we forget that other spots have equal claims to the regards of the simpler-that in woods and pastures, as well as in dry, gravelly fields, pink centaury is blown. Mild and fair to all appearance, the whole herb is full of intensest bitterness; which renders it as a tonic little inferior to gentian-root, to which family it belongs. It is still sought for by the herb-gatherers for the chemists, and at this season of the year you may recognise its simple stems, pale-green leaves, and corymbus of carnation-coloured flowers, garnishing the bitter burden of wormwood and May-wort, Artemisia, absinthium, and vulgaris, which forms the greater portion of their stock. In Master Turner's days, that "painful and curious searcher of simples," the "golden floure," or yellow ox-eye, famous as a vulnerary, would have helped to fill their hampers, and have found ready customers in Cheapside. Pheasant's-eye-the flos Adonis of our gardens, with dark-green multified leaves and solitary scarlet flowers, sprinkled as it were upon the plant like the fabled blood-drops from which it rose, would have glowed beside it with juices full of healing. We gathered it very lately in a field near Watford; but it is by no means common out of the western counties, where its bright flowers-the "rose a rubie " of London women when Gerard wrote-are sometimes neighboured by the low-lying purple corollas of Venus' looking-glass, shining upon the surface of the stubble-field with all the lustre of the fragmentary mirror whose fall, according to mythology, bequeathed them to the earth.

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From the dry banks near at hand they would have gathered mullien (verbascum), with fair, large, woolly leaves, that if applied in decoction to sinews stark Its with cold or cramp," eased and comforted them. stately stem, rising to several feet in height and set about with densely-clustered flowers, their soft perfume, delicate primrose tint, and above all the curious wrapping of vegetable wool which covers every portion of it, and frequently whitens a large space of ground around it, render it one of the handsomest as well as most curious of our wild plants. The Germans were wont to use the woolly nap as tinder, and wicks for lamps were made of it, from whence the name lychnitis has been applied to one of the sp cies. In the same neighbourhood comes up the viper's bugloss (echium vul

gar) with bristly spotted stems, rough leaves, and bicoloured racemes of beautiful flowers, cerese and blue, shared with its humble relative, borage officinalis, which peeps its small blue rotate corolla from amongst its wavy, asperated leaves in the same vicinity-cardiac properties, expelling (so the old simplers say) pensiveness and melancholy, and comforting the heart and spirits of such as were in consumption. Sweet uses these to dwell within such rough exteriors!—and yet in human nature we sometimes find the kindliest qualities hidden in rudest guise. What sweet relief the light-green crowded leaves, erect stems, and terminal spikes of toadflax (linaria vulgaris) afford us; how beautifully blended are its shades of primrose and orange; how exquisitely they agree with the fresh hue of its lanceolated leaves! It is charming; but so also is the digitalis, foxglove as we were wont to call it, whose bell-crowned stem affects the higher ground, and all day long chimes in the breeze its floral sonnettes to the bourdons of revelling bees. In simplery these plants possessed kindred virtues, and were used for epilepsy and to heal fresh wounds.

Even the shining scarlet berries of the cuckoo-pint or arum, rising in a club-shaped cluster where its broad halbert-shaped leaves and purple clapper caught the eye in spring, were not without medicinal excellencies; while the late-flowering briony, hanging its delicately-veined signets and vine-shaped leaves from one bough to another in the sheltering hedge, had no end of virtues in that mixture of faith and fable which the pages of the elder herbalists unfold to us. For them the torpid trance of catalepsy vanished before the odour, singular bat sweet, of the wild valerian; its winged leaves and corymbus of flesh-coloured flowers-a fair successor to the meadow-queen by dike and river-rose up with healing in it. Neither were the gamboge-coloured flowers of lysimachia, or yellow loosestrife, growing beside it, without a hidden charm; while the purple ones of its namesake not only cured blindness, but received its English name from the superstition that if laid upon the yokes of restive cattle it quicted them.

If the delightful author of the "Flora Historica" had visited Essex at this period of the year, he would have been convinced of the wrong done to our native Flora in disbelieving the indigenous claims of one of our loveliest plants, the rose-bay or willow-herb (epilobium hersutum), or as it was anciently called, from the odour of its bruised leaves, "codlings-and-cream." By every dike and water-course, in the rich marshes and their vicinity you find its copiously branched stems and curiously placed petals, making a glorious show upon the banks; the elegant flowering rush-old Gerard's "water gladiole". fades beside its rosy brightness: and yet this last, raising its tall stem and flower-crowned branches a foot or more above its watery bed, is an object of exceeding beauty. No wonder that the "braverie thereof" made it serve well for the trimming and decking up of houses; for in seeking out the useful qualities of plants our ancestors were not blind to their ornamental ones. Here on the moist banks where ranunculus flammula reclines its stems and glitters its gold cups in the autumn sun, and the blue labiate blossoms of common skull-cap (scutellaria galericulata), surprise us with their beauty and the exquisite mechanism of its lidded capsules-the tapering stems of water horehound, with opposite, deeply serrated leaves and tiny whorls of small grey flowers, wastes in our land the quality which is said to render it useful on the continent, and dyes nothing unless it be a spurious gipsey's face.

How beautiful in the still waters of these dikes are the shining leaves and pellucid flowers of the frog-bit!-so fragile, so snow-like in texture, that if handled they absolut ly melt away. The moon in ancient pharmacy held dominion over these floating islands; which, like

the "green mantle of the standing pool," was accounted effectual to help inflammation, to cool the pains of the head coming by heat, and to cure St. Anthony's fire. Its long tubular roots, the transparent capsule in which the young plant is germinated, the soft odour of the flowers, which shrink and close at noon, except in very shady places, and crowd the surface of the green bed towards sunset, when we have seen numbers of minute moths of a silver whiteness playing over them, as if intoxicated with their beauty and fragrance--render this very common but lovely ornament of our streams and pools one of exceeding interest to the observer. Close at hand comes up the water plantain, with its arrow-shaped acute leaves, and simple stem beset with triple petals; and yet, with all this flower dressing of the earth, by brooksides and ozier-holts, and other shady and humid places, the sandy dunnes and rock-bound sea-coast exhibit just as beautiful efflorescence, and even brighter. There the large rose-coloured convolvulus, soldanella, spreads its rich pattern on the shining sand, and hides within its pale green leaves and milky veins medicinal uses. There, too, horned poppy flaunts its gorgeous flowers, brighter than gold; and blue eringo lifts up its spiny leaves and globose heads of blossom: candied with sugar, the root was accounted a valuable restorative, and the whole plant of wonderful efficacy. Sea lavender, with its silken panicles, was rather sought for by the herbalist as an ornament than for any curative property it possessed: like the cudweed and everlasting, it retains its beauty when dried, and its fine hue renders it a charming addition to the white or yellow flowers of these plants. Then there is thrift, armeria maritima, throwing around the fickle sand-hilis its gentle spells, and binding them, as affection does the wayward heart, in a chain whose strength is sweetness. If we mount the cliff-side and track the simpler on the heights above, we shall find that nature has lavished as lovely a flower-pattern on the short soft turf as if, instead of lonely shepherds and their Pythagorean flocks, bright angels trod the downs. Hyblaen odours greet us in every breeze and are exhaled at every footstep. The wild thyme overspreads each mound, richly as it might Hemetius; and eyebright, with its span-long stem, dark pointed leaves, and small white flowers exquisitely veined with purple and yellow, lifts up its tubular corolla to heaven, as full of healing for the dimmed sight now as when blind Milton sang of 'rue and euphrasy." Then there are the grey-blue globose flowers of sheeps' scabious; and the delicate bells of the campanula_rotundifolia; and heaths with waxen flasks, and Bacchanalian bees for ever hovering round them, whose ceaseless bombus falls upon the ear as low and soothingly as a nurse's song. Each and all of these were "simples operative," which in skilled hands would "close the eye of anguish" and bring to the worn frame the glow of health. Happy, thrice happy art, which in the practice blessed the bestower as well as the recipient; and in the search for the materials conferred Hygean gifts upon the searcher! Think of their "simpling voyages" to the coast, and journeys at this season to woods, brown heaths, and valleys, with all the gentle adjuncts of such pilgrimages!--the softened skies, the mellow air, the faint odour of decaying leaves, like that of flowers upon graves (sweet, but with a waft of sadness in it). The very passing of the thistle down upon its voyage to futuritywho can tell how guided?-the floating by of the frail gossamer threads, coming we know not whence, going we know not where, but carrying reflection with themmust have lifted up these old men's thoughts to heaven even while their looks were bent upon the earth; and amidst the superstition and wild fancies that defaced in olden time this antique art, have let in glimmerings of divinest light, and saith, and feeling!

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