the first growth; others, pointing at a kind of inferior bee, which
receives the name of _Foggie_ from its finding its nest among fog or
moss; and others uncivilly insinuating that the Latin _fucus_, a drone,
is the origin of the appellation.

While we protest against a supposed acquiescence in these more
derogatory etymologies, we feel that it would be improper and premature
at this stage to attempt the solution of so important a question as that
at which we have thus glanced, and of which the elaborate discussion may
form one of the earliest subjects for a prize essay to be proposed by
the Club, and will doubtless fill many a learned page of the Fogie
Transactions.

The character of the Fogie admits of less doubt than his etymology. It
belongs confessedly to one of the most amiable and interesting classes
of the species. It sets before us an individual, possessed at one time
at least of respectable talents, generally developed at an early period
of life, but of which the meridian splendour has now softened into the
more tolerable radiance of declining day. The light is nearly alike, but
the heat is considerably less. We still, perhaps, see in the Fogie the
same imposing features of the face, the same dignity of gesture and
attitude, and even a larger disc of body than before. The very voice
often is much what it was, and the manner is almost unchanged. But when
we carefully attend to the matter of what is said, we begin to perceive
a difference. A certain pleasing irrelevancy, an interesting tendency to
parenthesis, a longing, lingering look cast back on the events of former
times, in preference to the passing topics of the day, and a pardonable
increase in the use of the first person singular, become from time to
time progressively conspicuous. Nothing can be more instructive,
abstractly speaking, then the maxims which fall from the Fogie's lips;
but, somehow or other, they often appear as having less immediate
bearing on the matter in hand than we should have expected; and we
labour under occasional impressions of having met with some of them
before, either in Scripture, or in that valuable code of morality which
the writing-master proposes to youth as the pattern of their imitation.
"I have sometimes observed," he will say, "that vicious intercourse has
a tendency to undermine good morals;" and he illustrates his position by
the fate of an early friend, who went to the dogs from keeping bad
company. Or again, "I