week") and disappointed a second time, inquires
for pen and paper as before: again the book is brought, and in the
line just above that in which he is about to print his second name
(his re-script)--his first name (scarce dry) looks out upon him
like another Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly encounter his
own duplicate!--The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good
resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he will not keep
them too rigorously.

For with G.D.--to be absent from the body, is sometimes (not to speak
it profanely) to be present with the Lord. At the very time when,
personally encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition--or,
being stopped, starts like a thing surprised--at that moment, reader,
he is on Mount Tabor--or Parnassus--or co-sphered with Plato--or, with
Harrington, framing "immortal commonwealths"--devising some plan of
amelioration to thy country, or thy species--peradventure meditating
some individual kindness or courtesy, to be done to _thee thyself_,
the returning consciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at
thy obtruded personal presence.

D. is delightful any where, but he is at the best in such places as
these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton,
at Scarborough, or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him "better
than all the waters of Damascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and
good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains; and when he
goes about with you to show you the halls and colleges, you think you
have with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful.

[Footnote 1: Januses of one face.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE.]

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO

In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I find a
magnificent eulogy on my old school,[1] such as it was, or now appears
to him to have been, between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens,
very oddly, that my own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding
with his; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the
cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring together whatever can be
said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument
most ingeniously.

I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he had some
peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not.
His friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the
privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he