"But there's ruffians," says he, "that goes roaming the streets, And abusing all decent young women they meets,

More especially them as be virgins;

So the lady, I'll wager my head to that muff,

Has been ravish'd and murder'd and stript to the buff,
And her body's been sold to the surgeons."

Rash Pyramus, founding too stable belief
On a stable-boy's words, in a phrenzy of grief
From his pocket a small pistol popt out,

Which he aim'd at his noddle to finish his woes;
But his head that broke bricks was not doom'd to oppose
The lead ball,—for it luckily dropt out.

So he fell, rather wondering he wasn't quite dead,
As the flash had but stunn'd him and blister'd his head!
And his fate he continued to rave at,

Till the inn-folks came out, and supposing his brains
Had been partially spilt, to secure the remains
They bound up his head with a cravat.

By this time his Thisbe took courage enough
To return for her lover, her monkey, and muff-
In his arms Mister Pyramus lock'd her;
But the landord sent each to a separate bed,
And at morning, believing them wrong in the head,
Sent to Bedlam express for a doctor.

The physician, a snug little prig of a man,
Who believing two heads to be better than one
A gold head on his cane always carried,
Examined his patients with questions profound,
Rubb'd his nose, and by skill in nosology found
They were both going mad to be married.

So says he (for his heart was the kindest on earth
Towards people of fortune and fashion and birth)

"Let not Gretna your fancies enamour,
But keep here, and observe the prescriptions I've writ,
And they'll help you to marriage-bonds pleasanter knit
Than a Gretna-Green blacksmith could hammer."

To the youth 'twas enjoin'd he should foam in his speech,
And bite all who came near him excepting his leech,
Shamming hypochondriacal vapours;

Whilst the lady was loudly to smack with her lips,
Pirouette like a top-practice opera skips,

And alarm the whole house with her capers.

Ere long, in their coaches appear'd at the inn's
Gate old spectacled noses and nutcracker chins,

In whose looks you might see civil war lower;
'Twas relations in quest of the fugitive brace,
When the short physic man with a very long face
Made his bow in the Mulberry parlour.

"Well, Doctor, what news of the culprits?" He sigh'd.
"Let us see them."-" No, not for the world," he replied.-
"Then for God's sake explain what their plight is."-
"Oh, a dreadful disorder, whose symptoms consist
In a rage to dance, bite, and to kiss and be kiss'd,
We, the faculty, call it Smackitis.

"Even now (and the charge in your bill is to come)
The poor youth has just bit off the head-waiter's thumb,
So inveterately fierce his disease is;
And the Lady has fatal prognostics, I fear,
Of her dancing and chirruping fit being near,
Which will end in a Hyperuersis."

He had scarce spoke the words when above little Miss
Smack'd her lips,-ah! with none to return her the kiss;
Then away she went wheeling and jumping,
And she so figurante'd them out of their wits,
That her Aunty below lay a figure in fits,

While her father and mother sat glumping.

At last cried the crusty old carle, " Afore Gad,
She deserves to be smother'd, the gipsy-she 's mad!"
Quoth the doctor, "Sir, spare that infliction-
She may die in a trice, the poor dear rantipol,
Or the rest of her life be a mere dancing doll,
If you offer the least contradiction."

Oh, there's nought like a dance to make people change sides,
And a doctor may rule in a house that divides,

One did once in our own House of Commons;
So our leech having gain'd the majority's will,
Sat like Addington carrying the Medical bill,
And would bend his opinion to no man's.

The mother of Thisbe cried "Monster! and fool!
Talk of smothering my child in a manner as cool
As of smothering a rabbit in cookery!"
In a trice her poor helpmate grew meek as a lamb,
And sat twirling his thumbs-for he knew the old dam
Had a tongue that would bother a rookery.

Then said Pyramus' father, "Let's first, if you please,
Cure this smack-what d' ye call it—teetotum disease,
Ere we set to dispute with our spouses;

For to see one's own progeny bite like a bear,
Or go skipping like apes at a Bartemy fair,

Would assuredly grieve both our houses.

"Let the doctor restore the young folks if he can"Here the women supported him all to a man,

And the doctor, who solemn and budge meant, To a merry conclusion grave matters to bring, Look'd as wise as a kitten at play with a string, While they swore to abide by his judgment.

"As to smothering, with two featherbeds it is done,
But my clinical treatment requires only one,
And the help of a conjugal tether;

So I order a ring from the jeweller's shop,
And prescribe the afflicted young couple to hop
To the temple of Hymen together."

"Ha! a biting disease," cried the churls; "and we're bit!"
Their wives, though they long'd at each other to spit,
Saw their fate, and gave in-the curmudgeons

Sent for lawyers to town, order'd dinner at six,
And when ask'd by the landlord what fish they would fix,
Groan'd, and answer'd "A couple of gudgeons."

But I wish I were Homer to tell you how all

Dumps were cured by that wedding, and banquet, and ball,
How the codgers got glorious with claret,

How the lawyers punn'd glibby-the priest with loop'd hat,
Stuff'd his carcase, a pudding of orthodox fat,

While the doctor conversed like a parrot.

Thisbe's fame might have had, like her gable, a crack,
Had she single to babbling old Babylon gone back,
But a bride she defied every gazer;

So they march'd into town in the grand style of yore,
With the footmen in favours and fiddlers before,
Playing "God save King Nebuchadnezzar !"

THE MONTHS.-NO. I.

January.

THOSE "Cynthias of a minute," the Months, fleet past us so swiftly, that, though we never mistake them while they are present with us, yet, the moment any one of them is gone by, we begin to blend the recollection of its features with those of the one which preceded it, or that which has taken its place, and thus confuse them together till we know not "which is which." And then, to mend the matter, when the whole of them have danced their graceful round hand-in-hand before us, not being able to think of either separately, we unite them all together in our imagination, and call them the Past Year; as we gather flowers into a bunch and call them a boquet. Now this should not be. Each one of the sweet sisterhood has features sufficiently marked and distinct to entitle her to a place and a name; and if we mistake these features, and attribute those of any one to any other, it is because we look at them with a cold and uninterested, and therefore an inobservant regard. The lover of Julie could trace fifty minute particulars which were wanting in the portrait of his mistress; though to any one else it would have appeared a likeness: for to common observers "a likeness" means merely a something which is not so absolutely unlike but what it is capable of calling up the idea of the original to those who are intimately acquainted with it.

Now I have been, for a long while past, accustomed to feel towards the common portraits of The Months, of which so many are extant, what St. Preux did towards that of his mistress: all I could ever discover in them was the particulars in which they were not like. Still I had never ventured to ask the favour of either of them to sit to me for her picture; having seen that it was the very nature of them to be for ever changing, and that therefore to attempt to fix them would be to trace the outline of a sound or give the colour of a perfume. At length, however, my unwearied attendance on them in their yearly passage past me, and the assiduous court that I have always paid to each and all of their charms, has met with its reward for there is this especial difference between them and all other mistresses whatever, -that, so far from being jealous of each other, their sole ground of complaint against their lovers is, that they do not pay equal devotion to each in her turn: the blooming MAY and the blushing JUNE disdain the vows of those votaries who have not previously wept at the feet of the weeping APRIL, or sighed in unison with the sad breath of MARCH.

And it is the same with all the rest. They present a sweet emblem of the ideal of a happy and united human family-to each member of which the best proof you can offer that you are worthy of her love, is, that you have gained that of her sisters; and to whom the best evidence you can give of being able to love either worthily, is, that you love all. This, I say, has been the kind of court that I have paid to them-loving each in all, and all in each. And my reward, in addition to that of the love itself-which is a "virtue," and therefore "its own reward," has been that each has condescended to watch over and instruct me while I wrote down the particulars of her brief but immortal life-immortal, because ever renewed, and bearing the seeds of its renewal within itself. These instructions, however, were accompanied by certain conditions, without complying with which I am not permitted to make the results available to any one but myself. For my own private satisfaction I have liberty to personify the objects of my admiration under any form I please; but if I speak of them to others, they insist on being treated merely as portions or periods of their beautiful parent THE YEAR-as she is a portion of TIME, the great parent of all things; and that the facts and events I may have to refer to shall not be essentially connected with them, but merely be considered as taking place during the period of their sojourn on the earth respectively. I confess that this condition seems to savour a little of the fastidious-not to say the affected. And, what is still more certain, it cuts me off from a most fertile source of the poetical and the picturesque. I will frankly add, however, that I am not without my suspicions that this latter may have been the very reason why the condition was imposed upon me; for I am by no means certain that, if I had been left to myself, I should not have substituted cold abstractions and unintelligible fictions (or what would have seemed such to others) in the place of that simple information which it is my object to convey.

The only other condition imposed on me, with which the reader has any concern, is, that I shall communicate what I have learnt, through the medium of the New Monthly Magazine-that being the favourite godchild of the aforenamed sisterhood, and the one on which they bestow their especial countenance and protection.

Laying aside then, if I can, all ornamental figures of speech, I shall proceed to place before the reader, in plain prose, the principal events which happen, in the two worlds of Nature and of Art, during the life and reign of each month; beginning with the nominal beginning of the dynasty, and continuing to present, on the birthday of each member of it, a record of the beauties which she brings in her train, and the good deeds which she either inspires or performs.

Hail! then-hail to thee, JANUARY! all hail! cold and wintry as thou art-if it be but in virtue of thy first day—THE day, as the French call it, par excellence-" Le jour de l'an." Come about me, all ye little school-boys that have escaped from the unnatural thraldom of your task work, come crowding about me, with your untamed hearts shouting in your unmodulated voices, and your happy spirits dancing an untaught measure in your eyes-come and help me to speak the praises of New Year's Day-your day-one of the three which have of late become your's almost exclusively, and which have bettered you and been bettered themselves by the change: Christmas-day-which was; New Year's Day-which is; and Twelfth-day-which is to be; let

us compel them all three into our presence-with a whisk of our imaginative wand convert them into one, as the conjurer does his three glittering balls-and then enjoy them all together,—with their dressings, and coachings, and visitings, and greetings, and gifts, and "many happy returns!" with their plumb-puddings, and mince-pies, and twelfthcakes and neguses! with their forfeits and fortune-tellings and blindman's buff's and snap-dragons and sittings up to supper! with their pantomimes and panoramas and new penknives and pastry-cooks shops! in short, with their endless round of ever new nothings, the absence of a relish for which is but ill supplied in after-life by that feverish hungering and thirsting after excitement which usurp without filling their place. Oh! that I might enjoy those nothings once again in fact, as I can in fancy!-But I fear the wish is worse than an idle one; for it not only may not be, but it ought not to be. "We cannot have our cake and eat it too," as the vulgar somewhat vulgarly but not the less shrewdly express it: And this is as it should be, for if we could, it would neither be worth the eating nor the having.

If the reader complains that this is not the sober style which I just now promised to maintain, I cannot help it. Besides, it was my subject that spoke then, not myself; and it spoke to those who are too happy to be wise, and to whom, therefore, if it were to speak wisely, it might as well not speak at all. Let them alone for awhile, and they will grow too wise to be happy; and then they may be disposed and at leisure to listen to reason.

In sober sadness, then, if the reader so wills it, and after the approved manner of modern moral discourses, the subject before us may be regarded under three distinct points of view; namely, January in London January in the Country-and January in general. And first of the first.

January in London.

Now-but before I proceed further let me bespeak the reader's indulgence at least, if not his favour, towards this everlasting monosyllable, Now, to which my betters have from time to time been so much indebted, and on which I shall be compelled to place so much dependance in this my present undertaking. It is the pass-word, the "open sesame," that must remove from before me all lets and impedimentsit is the charm that will alternately put to silence my imagination when it may be disposed to infringe on the office of my memory, and awaken my memory when it is inclined to sleep-in fact it is a monosyllable of infinite avail, and for which, on this as on many other occasions, no substitute can be found in our own or any other language: and if I approve above all other proverbs that which says "there's nothing like the time present," it is partly because "the time present" is but a periphrasis for Now!

66

Now, then, the cloudy canopy of sea-coal smoke that hangs over London, and crowns her queen of capitals, floats thick and threefold— for fires and feastings are rife, and every body is either "out" or at home" every night.-Now schoolboys don't know what to do with themselves till dinner-time-for the good old days of frost and snow, and fairs on the Thames, and furred gloves, and skaiting on the canals, and sliding on the kennels, are gone by; and for any thing in the shape of winter, one might as well live in Italy at once!-Now, (on the evening of twelfth-day) mischievous maid-servants pin elderly people