bition which estranges PISISTRATUS for a time from the sedentary occupations in which the man of civilised life must usually serve his apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe the fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind, rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is but the symptom of health.

PISISTRATUS, in this respect (as he himself feels and implies), becomes the specimen or type of a class the numbers of which are daily increasing in the inevitable progress of modern civilisation. He is one too many in the midst of the crowd: he is the representative of the exuberant energies of youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for space and development, from the Old World to the New. That which may be called the interior meaning of the whole is sought to be completed by the inference that, whatever our wanderings, our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and amidst the objects more immediately within our reach; but that we are seldom sensible of this truth (hackneyed though it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till our researches have spread over a wider area. To insure the blessing of repose, we require a brisker excitement than a few turns up and down our room. Content is like that humour in the crystal, on which Claudian has lavished the wonder of a child and the fancies of a Poet

"Vivis gemma tumescit aquis."

E. B. L.

THE CAXTONS.

Ꮲ Ꭺ Ꭱ Ꭲ FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

"SIR-sir, it is a boy!"

"A boy," said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much puzzled; "what is a boy?"

Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery, physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious sages, and lies still involved in the question, "What is man?" For, as we need not look further than Dr Johnson's Dictionary to know that a boy is

แ

a male child”—i. e., the male young of man; so he who would go to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be able first to ascertain

VOL. I.

A

"what is a man."

But, for aught I know, my father may have been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with Monboddo. He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley-he may have contented himself with Professor Combe-he may have regarded the genus spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus. Grant that boy is the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to choose from. He might have said, "Man is a stomach-ergo, boy a male young stomach. Man is a brain-boy a male young brain. Man is a bundle of habits-boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a machine-boy a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey-boy a male young tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases-boy a male young combination of gases. Man is an appearance-boy a male young appearance," &c. &c., and et cetera, ad infinitum! And if none of these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs Primmins for a new one.

But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer-or was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the sudden affirmation, "It is a boy!" did not seem to him pertinent to the thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, "What is a boy?"-vaguely, and, as it were, taken by surprise.

"Lord, sir!" said Mrs Primmins, "what is a boy? Why, the baby!"

"The baby!" repeated my father, rising.

66

"What!

you don't mean to say that Mrs Caxton is-eh— ? ” Yes, I do," said Mrs Primmins, dropping a curtsy; "and as fine a little rogue as ever I set eyes upon."

"Poor dear woman!" said my father with great compassion. "So soon, too—so rapidly!" he resumed in a tone of musing surprise. Why, it is but the

other day we were married."

"Bless my heart, sir," said Mrs Primmins, much scandalised, "it is ten months and more."

"Ten

"Ten months!" said my father, with a sigh. months! and I have not finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory! In ten months a child—and I'll be bound complete-hands, feet, eyes, ears, and nose !—and not like this poor Infant of Mind (and my father pathetically placed his hand on the treatise), of which nothing is formed and shapednot even the first joint of the little finger! Why, my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve her, and send me strength—to support this blessing!"

"But your honour will look at the baby?—come, sir!" and Mrs Primmins laid hold of my father's sleeve coaxingly.

"Look at it-to be sure," said my father kindly; "look at it, certainly; it is but fair to poor Mrs Caxton; after taking so much trouble, dear soul!"

Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe

round him in more stately folds, followed Mrs Primmins up-stairs into a room very carefully darkened.

"How are you, my dear?" said my father with compassionate tenderness, as he groped his way to the bed.

"Better now,

and so

A faint voice muttered, happy!" And, at the same moment, Mrs Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a small cradle, and, holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped nose, cried emphatically, "There-bless it!"

"Of course, ma'am, I bless it," said my father, rather peevishly. "It is my duty to bless it; BLESS IT! And this, then, is the way we come into the world !—red, very red, blushing for all the follies we are destined to commit."

My father sat down on the nurse's chair, the women grouped round him. He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said musingly :"And Homer was once like this!"

At this moment-and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle to his visual organs-Homer's infant likeness commenced the first untutored melodies of nature.

"Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older," observed Mr Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner of the room.

My father stopped his ears:-"Little things can make a great noise," said he philosophically; "and the smaller the thing the greater noise it can make."

So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasp