rval of time which most old bachelors find heavy
on their hands. The theatre is a good occasional resource, especially if
Will Murray acts, or a bright star of eminence shines forth; but it
is distant, and so are one or two public societies to which I belong.
Besides, these evening walks are all incompatible with the elbow-chair
feeling, which desires some employment that may divert the mind without
fatiguing the body.

Under the influence of these impressions, I have sometimes thought of
this literary undertaking. I must have been the Bonassus himself to have
mistaken myself for a genius; yet I have leisure and reflections like
my neighbours. I am a borderer, also, between two generations, and can
point out more, perhaps, than others of those fading traces of antiquity
which are daily vanishing; and I know many a modern instance and many an
old tradition, and therefore I ask--

"What ails me, I may not as well as they
Rake up some threadbare tales, that mouldering lay
In chimney corners, wont by Christmas fires
To read and rock to sleep our ancient sires?
No man his threshold better knows, than I
Brute's first arrival and first victory,
Saint George's sorrel and his cross of blood,
Arthur's round board and Caledonian wood."

No shop is so easily set up as an antiquary's. Like those of the
lowest order of pawnbrokers, a commodity of rusty iron, a bay or two of
hobnails, a few odd shoe-buckles, cashiered kail-pots, and fire-irons
declared incapable of service, are quite sufficient to set him up. If
he add a sheaf or two of penny ballads and broadsides, he is a great
man--an extensive trader. And then, like the pawnbrokers aforesaid, if
the author understands a little legerdemain, he may, by dint of a little
picking and stealing, make the inside of his shop a great deal richer
than the out, and be able to show you things which cause those who do
not understand the antiquarian trick of clean conveyance to wonder how
the devil he came by them.

It may be said that antiquarian articles interest but few customers, and
that we may bawl ourselves as rusty as the wares we deal in without any
one asking; the price of our merchandise. But I do not rest my hopes
upon this department of my labours only. I propose also to have a
corresponding shop for Sentiment, and Dialogues, and Disquisition, which
may captivate the fancy of those who have no relish, as the established
phrase goes, for pure antiquity--a