mankind were green! Green, he said, was the primal colour of vegetable existence-the first raiment in which Nature leaped into existence; the colour on which the eye loved to repose; and, in the primeval state, the first quality that attracted man to man, and bound him up in the circles of those tender charities and affinities which kept the early societies of the race together.

Yet these eccentricities never derogated from the respect in which he was held, for the depth and diffusion of his knowledge; least of all, from the affection which was cherished for his virtues in every bosom worthy of a communion with his own. Taylor was the best of sons, the best of friends.

But Sayers! Sayers was the soul of this little Club; and when he died, its whim, its gaiety, all fell with him. After his death, a few persons entered the room—smoked a melancholy pipe or two-said little-looked wistfully at his empty chair-and came no more. He was a man of a natural and arch humour, with none of the offensive pretensions of a systematic wit. I re

member, at a meeting of the directors of the Norwich Public Library, when somebody proposed (it was during the fitful changes of the French Government, in the bad times of the revolution,) to order a copy of the last new French constitution, Sayers remarking, with great gravity, that they had established a rule not to admit any more periodical publications. A military fop called on him one day at his lodgings, and criticizing the smallness of his apartment, remarked, that there was not room in it to swing a cat. Why, then," said Sayers, "it is quite big enough for me, for I never swing cats!"

Sayers's disquisitions have been lately republished. They are written in a style at once simple and elegant, and exactly corresponding to the subjects on which he discourses.

III.

THE KING OF CLUBS.

THIS was a fanciful title given to a Club set on foot about the year 1801. Its founder was Bobus Smith (himself a Club), who gave it that whimsical designation. I am speaking of Robert Smith, the late Advocate-General of Calcutta, the friend and contemporary of Canning, at Eton, and his coadjutor in that promising specimen of school-boy talent-the Microcosm. The Club, at its first institution, consisted of a small knot of lawyers, whose clients were too few, or too civil to molest their after-dinner recreations; a few literary characters, and a small number of visitors, generally introduced by those who took the chief part in conversation, and seemingly selected for the faculty of being good listeners.

The King of Clubs sat on the Saturday of each month at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in the Strand, which, at that time, was a nest of boxes, each containing its Club, and affording excellent cheer, though lately desecrated by indifferent dinners and very questionable wine. The Club was a grand talk. Every one seemed anxious to bring his contribution of good sense, or good humour, and diffused himself over books and authors, and the prevalent topics of the day.

Politics were, by a salutary proviso, quite excluded. Sometimes the conversation rose to the higher moods of philosophical discussion; and there were one or two who found no end in wandering mazes lost," and made us yawn and betake ourselves to our rappee, whilst they discoursed highly of mind and matter, of first and secondary causation, of the systems of Empedocles, Lucretius, Cicero, and Galen.

I esteemed myself singularly fortunate in being one of its earliest members ;-for it was amongst the most restless aspirations of my youth, to enjoy the converse of older and wiser men. Of

those who frequented the Club, Bobus* in every respect, but that of wine, (for he was but a frigid. worshipper of Bacchus) was the most convivial. He has left in my mind the most vivid recollections of his infinite pleasantry; he had great humour, and a species of wit, that revelled amidst the strangest and most grotesque combinations. His manner was at that time somewhat of the bow-wow kind; and when he pounced upon a disputatious and dull blockhead, he made sad work of him. But he was the merriest man there, (for upon the whole it was somewhat of a grave concern) and that will sufficiently account for his having lived so long in my recollection.

Then there was Richard Sharpe, a partner of Boddington's West India House, and subsequently a Member of Parliament during Addington's and Percival's administrations. By constitutional temperament, and the peculiar quality of his understanding, he was a thinker, and a He was occasionally controversial; but he had an overflowing fund both of useful

reasoner.

* This was a nick-name given him at Eton, and it will adhere to him even after death.