ing to make it shorter? Yet I make no doubt there would be plenty of business, even of this kind, for such an office to transact. We know but little of human nature, if we do not know that whatever it may say about the shortness of life, most men are firmly convinced that life is ten times too long! Half our time is spent in devising methods of wasting it, and half the remaining half in putting them into execution. The only hours of life worth much, in the estimation of the giddy and thoughtless, are those spent in pleasures which they cannot cheaply and readily make for themselves, but which they must wait for time to bring them; they know not how to fill up the interval with pleasures of their own creating, and so can rarely wait with patience. The moment they see a lively pleasure in prospect,— be it an hour, a day, or a month hence, they think the interval between the present instant and its arrival as worse than useless, and would be glad to have it annihilated on any terms. Nothing would be more common, I dare say, if my imaginary office were in existence, than for a lover to sell whole weeks previous to the wedding, from the sheer impossibility of enduring the tedium ; while an alderman would gladly purchase a blissful oblivion for some hours before a turtle feast, to rid himself of the torment of expectation between the promise and the fulfilment. And as to Sundays, how many a young scapegrace would sell the whole fifty-two in a bundle,—except, perhaps, when Christmas Day falls on one of them! It is amusing, too, to think that, like all other markets, the time-market would have its fluctuations. There would be time when time would be a drug, and time when time would be dear-according to the season; as there are times for everything, so there would be times for "time" itself; for though one hour is as like another as one egg is like another, and intrinsically of equal value, the supply and the demand must chiefly determine their price. In a season of pressing business or public merry-making, how would hours be at a premium, while Sundays and fast days, I suspect, would go almost for nothing! Many a young rogue, I doubt, would mortgage his whole church-time up to fifty years of age; while during Lent in

Catholic countries, and the Ramadan in Mahometan, there would be an absolute glut, and the time-broker have more time on his hands than he would know what to do with.

So much the better, you may say, for those devout souls who .would know the true value of time; who might steal into the market to purchase an additional day or two for spiritual pleasures; or haggle for a score or two of cheap Sundays to enable them to get through a folio or two of sermons and homilies ! Such customers would be rare. No doubt, however, many would go with a long face, under the pretence of transacting such business, and employ the time which they got in a very different manner. A curious thing is the human heart; it likes to play the fool under the mask of wisdom, and to practise even vice, if possible, with the credit of virtue.

man

I had a droll example of human impatience in my dream. Methought a couple of demure looking persons, one a young -the other a young woman- came in, and reversed what, I fancy, would be the usual proposals. Instead of wishing to sell the Sunday and buy the week, they wished to pass the week in oblivion, and were impatient for the Sunday to come. I was almost betrayed into the folly of supposing it was out of sheer devotion. But it turned out that the banns of their marriage were to be published on that happy day for the last time !

"They are so," was the There is enough to do —

One other thing in my dream I must not forget. I asked if it was possible to sell the hours of sickness and sorrow: "Surely," said I, "they are burdensome enough." reply, "but none can part with them. to bear them with patience, and indeed they seldom last long enough to teach that lesson. It is only the hours which you would spend in yawning, in indolent vacuity, that it is permitted thus to barter away. Men will not part with their hours of pleasure they think them too precious for that; and with their hours of suffering, they cannot; for Providence justly deems these more precious still. But people often make mistakes, and come to offer what they cannot part with, or to get rid of it under false pretences." At this very moment there entered an

old fellow, about sixty, with a curious twist on his countenance, as though he were vainly trying to contort an expression of acute pain into a yawn of ennui. But just as he was saying that he had a fortnight of complete leisure to dispose of, a sharp twinge effectually banished his assumed expression of apathy, and extorted an exclamation by far too lively for ennui. “You, my friend," said the official at the counter, "have got quite enough to do for the present-you are in no condition to sell ;— let me rather recommend you to buy an additional day or two that you may con the lessons of fortitude and patience a little more effectually." The sexagenarian declined this proposal. Would not you and I do the same?

I have just had a mournful parting. The whole family of T- -W. - have gone to Australia. I saw them on board at Gravesend, and went a few miles down the river with them.

66

'England, with all thy faults," but I think I have seen that quoted once, if not twice, before. Never mind; the sentiment will be ever young and fresh in our hearts, however hackneyed the poet's line; just as there are some strains of music which not all the vilest street hurdygurdies in the world can make you hate, though you feel impatient enough with the poor vagabonds that so desecrate them. Not but what imagination is sometimes beaten, and the sentimental fairly yields to the ludicrous; as

when I heard a great rawboned Scotchman, six feet high, bagpiping the other day to "I'd be a butterfly." It was impossible for even Ovid to imagine such a metamorphosis. If it had been "I'd be a kangaroo," or "a long-tailed monkey," or any other forest beauty of that kind, it would have been natural. But to

return.

The whole

I did not envy the emigrants, and can scarcely imagine the stress of circumstances which would reconcile me to such a step. Yet they are happy in one point; they sail en masse. family is uprooted, and gone to make another home at the Antipodes. They leave no near relations behind them. Father, mother, brothers, sisters, everything they held dear, down to their favourite dog, all are gone; -all but the two loved ones that they leave alone in the old familiar churchyard! Ah! how often, I will answer for it,—how often already has the mother visited, in fancy, that lone spot, and heard the whisper of the tall dark trees which edge its border and the rustling of the grass over the graves, even above the long swell of the Atlantic!

I was with the voyagers in imagination almost all last evening, and entered so deeply into sympathy with them, that when I slept I was still dreaming that I was on board.

I know not how I could bear the trial, since (I am half ashamed to say it) the very thought of it dissolved me in tears. Even if one is not about to quit one's country for ever, there is something profoundly melancholy in all the sights and sounds which surround one when parting on a distant voyage. As the sun goes down behind the fading hills, and the solemn stars come out to watch, and the melancholy surge keeps up its monotonous music, and the land-breeze, with its faint smell of earth and flowers, wafts to us the last breath of home,-what a pensive hour is that! How eagerly does the eye watch the still twinkling lights on the shore, and the melancholy pencil of radiance from the lighthouse which streams fainter and fainter as the waves bear us on; how eagerly does the ear catch the sound even of a watch-dog on the hills! What, then, must be the feelings of those who thus gaze and listen for the last time;-as they lose the last twinkling lights,

and drink in the last dying fragrance of their native fields ! What a pang must they feel as vivid memory recalls the home of childhood, and the altars where their fathers worshipped! Methinks many a mother must feel a pang almost as of remorse and cruelty in leaving, in unvisited solitude, the ashes of those they have loved and lost.

"Pooh !" I fancy I hear you say, with your abominable practical sense, "I dare say these worthy folks were too busy with pressing cares to suffer half as much as you fancy. Very likely they were all sea-sick; and who was ever troubled with sentimental sorrows then ?"

Why, no; I suppose that would be a ready cure. Though I never felt it, I imagine, from what I have heard people say, that a man enduring that misery, would not care if his whole generation were hanged. However, the tranquillity of the night allowed poor W― and his family no such questionable antidote of sorrow. Neither do I wish them so ill as to hope that they escaped the pangs of parting: not to have felt them would argue them brutal, and such sorrows have a tendency "to make the heart better," and soothe us while they lacerate.

And they will, at best, be passing shadows. In a few daysay, in a few hours-the changing scenes, the novel sights, and sounds, and employments;—the returning morning light, and the more cheerful aspect of the ocean under its beams,-above all, the obliteration of the last visible traces of home;- even the necessities of the body,-nay, by Ceres! the vulgar thoughts of breakfast and the savoury steams from the caboose ;—well, well, it is strange but true. Man, that weeping, sighing, sorrowing, eating, drinking, laughing thing,—is a curious phenomenon; "that's a fact." In one little hour he shall shift his domicile from the head to the heart, and from the heart to the stomach, pass through all changes from agony and tears to smiles and mirth, and yet in all may be perfectly sincere.

W and his wife afford a noble proof of what a father's and a mother's love can do. They forswear civilisation-for They have looked the thing fairly

the sake of their young ones.