ce to his frank, free, hearty nature, where she says "his spirits
gave him raptures with his cook-maid, and cheerfulness when he was
starving in a garret, and his happy constitution made him forget every
thing when he was placed before a venison-pasty or over a flask of
champagne." She does not want shrewdness and spirit when her petulance
and conceit do not get the better of her, and she has done ample and
merited execution on Lord Bolingbroke. She is, however, very angry at
the freedoms taken with the Great; _smells a rat_ in this
indiscriminate scribbling, and the familiarity of writers with the
reading public; and inspired by her Turkish costume, foretells a
French or English revolution as the consequence of transferring the
patronage of letters from the _quality_ to the mob, and of supposing
that ordinary writers or readers can have any notions in common with
their superiors.]

The change, from the commencement to the close of life, appears like a
fable, after it has taken place; how should we treat it otherwise than
as a chimera before it has come to pass? There are some things that
happened so long ago, places or persons we have formerly seen, of
which such dim traces remain, we hardly know whether it was sleeping
or waking they occurred; they are like dreams within the dream of
life, a mist, a film before the eye of memory, which, as we try to
recall them more distinctly, elude our notice altogether. It is but
natural that the lone interval that we thus look back upon, should
have appeared long and endless in prospect. There are others so
distinct and fresh, they seem but of yesterday--their very vividness
might be deemed a pledge of their permanence. Then, however far back
our impressions may go, we find others still older (for our years are
multiplied in youth); descriptions of scenes that we had read, and
people before our time, Priam and the Trojan war; and even then,
Nestor was old and dwelt delighted on his youth, and spoke of the
race, of heroes that were no more;--what wonder that, seeing this long
line of being pictured in our minds, and reviving as it were in us, we
should give ourselves involuntary credit for an indeterminate period
of existence? In the Cathedral at Peterborough there is a monument to
Mary, Queen of Scots, at which I used to gaze when a boy, while the
events of the period, all that had happened since, passed in review
before me. If all this mass of feeling and imagination could be
cr