intrude;" or, "Who the devil can this be from?"-and the seal absurd, as that which represents Love playing on the violin to a little dog, and bidding him "Go to the devil and shake himself;" the seal persuasive and supplicatory, "Lisez et croyez," or, "Dites-moi oui ;" and last, not least, that richest among them all, of which Moore has told you in his poem respecting "Rings and Seals."

H. I. M.

MADRIGAL OF THE SEASONS.

SPRING MORN.

'Tis merry on a fair Spring morn,
When hush'd is ev'ry ruder wind,
And Nature, like a mother kind,
Smiles joyous on her babe just born :
When sparkling dew is on the ground,
And flowrets gay are budding round,
And Hope is heard in ev'ry sound,
'Tis merry, oh, 'tis merry!

SUMMER NOON.

'Tis merry on a Summer's noon,
When Zephyr comes with balmy kiss,
And wakes the drowsy earth to bliss
By gently breathing Love's own tune:
When leaves are green, and skies are blue,
And waters of a golden hue,

And ev'ry glance brings beauties new,
'Tis merry, oh, 'tis merry!

AUTUMN EVE.

'Tis merry on an Autumn eve,
When birds sing farewell to the sun,

And, corn well sheaved, and labour done,
The fields the healthful reapers leave:
When those whom daylight keeps afar
May meet beneath the vesper star
Without one fear their joy to mar,
'Tis merry, oh, 'tis merry!

WINTER IGHT.

'Tis merry on a Winter's night,
When fast descends the deep'ning snow,
And o'er the heath the shrill winds blow,
To watch the crackling faggot's light:
When spicy wine and nut-brown ale,
Give zest to each rare Christmas tale,
And song, and joke, and laugh prevail,
'Tis merry, oh, 'tis merry!

FAMILY DRAMATICALS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "TALES OF AN ANTIQUARY."

"A play, Frank-wherein are such things! such hideous, monstrous things! that it has almost made me forswear the stage."

The Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal.

THERE are no farther particulars known concerning the following letter, than that it was found upon a sequestered road, within a short distance of a celebrated and fashionable watering-place. From the tenor of its contents, it may certainly be supposed to have fallen from the pocket of an eminent son of Thespis, on his summer campaign, who had perhaps been reading it over, or studying his part, in that retreat. But though the direction was wanting, yet the memorandum of "Sent fifty pounds by next post" showed that it had been written to one whose hand was 66 open as day to melting charity;" though, unfortunately, the noble action so commemorated was a deed without a name." As there are still but too many persons in the metropolis who, like the Sticklebacks, make their passion for private theatricals the means of tormenting all their acquaintances, and of displaying their own absurdities, the following description of the tasteful and sagacious proceedings of that family is published, to show Folly "her own image," 66 pour encourager les autres," since, however extravagant the picture may appear, it never can be doubted that it is an "owre true tale," and actually copied from the life.

Though I have no letter, my dear Edmund, direct from yourself, yet I owe you many thanks for the country papers, which give me so much information of your motives, and relate how successfully you are starring it in the provinces, though as yet not quite a light of the first magnitude in the town hemisphere. With Jobson, however, I must caution you "not to grow saucy upon it," nor forget that, in less splendid times, before you either felt or deserved the sun of patronage, you have been known to walk the parades at certain fairs, and to dance a hornpipe with your white stockings curiously blackened round the feet, to supply the lack of pumps: which most ingenious device not only completely wore out their soles, and blistered your own, but, as I am confidently told, cost thee, from thine indulgent uncle, divers aching bones for a month afterward. Think not, however, that I write thus out of envy at your talent or your success. No! by the never-dying name of Roscius! perish the selfish thought! Only, as "an elder actor, not a better," "let me, who know the public, counsel you," that "lowliness is young ambition's ladder," which you should be careful not to throw down till you be safely off it at the top; and also, how certain other great actors are said not to have openly avowed their humble origin, by exhibiting the fishing-net which they had cast, or the lowly garb which they had once worn, until they were fairly clothed in "the purple," and the triple tiara was really won.

Notwithstanding all this, I must confess that I do almost envy you

your liberty; or rather, that I do most fervently desire to share it, as I told you with so much energy at your departure, in the yard of the Belle Sauvage, which had probably never witnessed such fine acting before, or at least not since the days when Inns were Theatres. For, trust me, my gay cousin Ranger," after all the privation and contempt attached to the life of strolling players, such as we have been; -you know, as Blandish says, "if you and I did not sometimes speak truth to each other, we should forget there was such a quality incident to the human mind ;"-after all these deductions, your strolling actor enjoys his freedom almost beyond any other animal in the world that I know of; and, at this present moment, I should certainly enjoy mine beyond any other stroller in existence; for, on the contrary, here am I restrained within limits which encourage much more of "fretting" than of "strutting," for they are still narrower than those in which you left me. They are confined, indeed, to a certain ancient verge, belonging to a certain ancient court of the sovereign, bounded on the North and East by Great Suffolk-street and the Borough of Southwark; on the South by Newington Causeway and the Elephant and Castle; and on the West by the Obelisk, the Surrey Theatre, and the Waterloo-road; the whole space of which, in my thoughts at least, well deserves to retain the old neighbouring name of "Melancholy Walk." Herein, I say, am I enclosed, like a spirit within a circle, and thou knowest what a choice spirit I am; whilst thou-too, too happy dog!-thou art at liberty to feel the free air upon thy cheek; to see the fields in all their brightness, and the blue summer sky in all its glory; to roam where you list, "till the livelong daylight fail;" and "then to the well-trod stage anon," where you behold nothing but holiday faces crowding all the benches-hear nothing but applauses, shouts, and encores, until you believe yourself really a king or a demigod, and are ready to say, Upon my life, I am a lord indeed!" But I think I hear you asking, Why, Tom, is thy part to be all patter ?" and charitably reminding me that my legitimate occupation is to rant fustian, and not to write it. I will therefore "deliver myself like a man of this world ;" and, taking up my story at your last cue of "let me hear from thee," first tell you of my "private griefs," and then of such a scene of mirth and folly, that though it be "seven out of the nine days' wonder with me," I have not yet decided whether it be most to be laughed at, or lamented. You may therefore think, if you will, that you and I are about to have a narrative-scene together, such as Dimond used so regularly to introduce in the second act of his pieces; when two performers always brought forward two chairs to the centre front of the stage, thereby indicating that the house was about to be favoured with a long story.

You doubtless remember that, touched by the distresses of our very clever and very worthless friend Sedley, when his best-beloved child lay at the point of death, I became security for him to Sykehouse the surgeon, and afterwards to Fillgrave the undertaker, that her remains might receive "a little earth for charity," to a stipulated amount, as I supposed, and easily within my power. Outcast as he is from almost all society by disinheritance, debts, imprudence, and unfortunate character, you will not wonder that, when his dear one died, she was " by strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned." Now that all these events are over, I dare say you can at once

guess at their actual result, much more easily than I could have even conceived the possibility of it. In a little time, Walter Sedley, Esq. M.A. author of, &c. &c. &c. was not to be found,-though I was, and to be answerable to an amount very far exceeding my abilities or engagements. Remonstrance availed me nothing, and therefore, like Prince Henry, "so far as my coin would stretch, I paid it;" but, unlike him, I could make no great use of my credit. I never possessed the consummate art of "Plausible Jack" Palmer, who could persuade the very bailiff who arrested him to become his bail; and so, to avoid such a stage direction as, "Scene changes to a room in a prison, Tom Fairspeech discovered seated in a melancholy attitude,"to escape this, I say, I determined to withdraw myself into the above well-known and worshipful limits, to muse certain term" upon the Pleasures of Friendship, and the best means of rendering my rock-stricken vessel fit for sea again, which I despair not of doing after all; for well do I believe that

"Time may still have one fated hour to come,

Which, wing'd with Liberty, may overtake
Occasion past."

"for a

The extension of my bounds was effected by "hard entreaty, and a good round sum ;-entreaty's weak without it;" and so I actually reside without the walls of " Denman's Park;" though "I pray you, in any case, possess no gentleman of our acquaintance with notice of my lodging."

I have no great philosophy in me, as thou knowest, Edmund; but I am very much of the mind of the young man in Gay's Fables; as I thought that Care, or his shadow, did go before my misfortunes, I have no fancy that either should follow me, like Goldsmith's Twitch and Flanigan, "Before and behind, you know." I am therefore indifferently cheerful in my cage: "And what for no?" as Meg Dods

has it.

"Then you be merry, merry there,

And we'll be merry, merry here;

For who can tell where we all may be
To be merry another year!"

Moreover, I can assure you that, if I had wit enough, I have quite gaiety enough to describe our neighbourhood in the picturesque and humorous style of Washington Irving or Mary Mitford: how Leandish's Royal Ordinary is opposite my window; and how Trimmings, the great West-end tailor, has recently come to live at the next door. However, like Old Philip Astley, as we can't snow white, we'll snow brown; and this leads me to the scene which I promised to relate to you half a page ago.

"the

By some little regularity of payment, the above-mentioned light heart, and the eloquence of a player's tongue and memory, I have made a very fair progress in the good liking of my Mistress Quickly, who, pitying my restraint and loneliness, has introduced me to the family of the great Mr. Stickleback, also our neighbour, as civilest and well-spokenest gentleman as ever she see, and one who can say as many funny things and fine speeches as any play-actor in the Rules, or out on 'em." She, however, little suspects that I am in reality one of those same "harlotry players," for I have changed my name; and, therefore, whenever thou writest, Edmund, do not

direct to me by style and title as such, if thou hast any regard for thy neck. Old Stickleback I had already found as thorny and hedgehog-like as his name; but his family made ample amends, by being as forwardly-complaisant and talkatively-conceited as imperfect mortality could well be. Moreover, they were about to have a private play, to which they invited me, lamenting that we were not sooner acquainted, that I might have taken a part in the same. It was a loss, however, which I assure you I did not at all regret; for, had their plot been "as good a plot as ever was laid," I, at least, have had too much honourable professional labour to resort to such private acting for amusement,-like Placido and the Little Devil, the noted tumblers, who, when visiting the King at Hampton, determined the distance of a pavilion by walking to it on their hands, with their legs upwards, as though their daily antics were not sufficient. But, in the present instance, I devoutly believe that "the gods took care of Cato," and preserved me from the irrecoverable contamination of the Stickleback theatricals.

In reading this account of them, Edmund, I will allow you to call them "Wonderful! wonderful! and most wonderful! and yet again wonderful! and after that, out of all whooping!" Nay, you may think it almost incredible that such things can be, and even say or swear that you could not have believed them had you seen them yourself; but for your life do not question my veracity. "Why should I carry lies about?" or how should the mind of any decent individual ever devise such folly? "I tell thee what, Edmund, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, and call me horse!"

At my first visit to Mr. Stickleback's, the day before the performance, I thought the house appeared rather defective in furniture, and in no little confusion; but all surprise at either appearance soon ceased on my being introduced into the room where the play was to be enacted, and beholding the fittings-up, the dresses, and the decorations. I am convinced that hardly a floor was left covered by its respective baize or carpet; that the windows were all despoiled of their curtains, and that the bedsteads were reduced to what sailors call "bare poles," by having resigned their valances, &c. to furnish forth the 'tirings and properties of the entertainments. These, as we were informed by a bill printed with the ordinary hand-types used for marking the household linen, were, "Pizarro; or, the Invasion of Peru; or, the Death of Rolla: a variety of singing and dancing; and the romantic romance of the Blind Boy; or, Rodolph, the Usurping Prince of Sarmatia, and Kalig, the Faithful Courtier!" But before I recount to you the follies of this performance, I ought, in equity to old Stickleback himself, to state that he was entirely ignorant and guiltless of them all, since the whole design was privately concocted between his wife and family, who also took the opportunity of his absence from home to astonish their acquaintance by such a display of taste and talent. "But they are coming to the play: get you a place!"

The proscenium of the stage was formed by the opening of two folding-doors, which, I was assured by Mrs. Stickleback, who appeared to have no little pride and complacency in pointing out the most preposterous of the arrangements, were absolutely taken off their hinges. The space was filled up by an old japanned cornice, and the scarlet festoons of a window-curtain, and a green baize