Nearly two years were occupied before the building was roofed in. When that happy day arrived, Barnabas gave a dinner in the hall that was to be, to the committee of twelve, and a feast in the quadrangle to all the workmen and their wives and families.

Barnabas got particularly jovial, and not only exceeded himself, but was the cause of excess in others; but it was very excusable on such an occasion, as the committee of twelve allowed as they rattled home westward in their carriages.

On this eventful day, big with the fate of blue coats and of Barnabas, we must beg of our readers to accompany us to Finchley, where Mrs. Just is quietly sitting and working in the arbour with old Becky by her side, fondly fancying the joy of her husband, and the fun that was going on at the house-rearing in Cow Cross.

A bell rings loudly at the outer gate, and Becky hastens to answer its summons, wondering who it could be, who was fool enough not to know that her master was founding a school while she was confounding the bell and the ringer of it.

She returns in a few minutes to say that master's partner was in the parlour a wishing to speak to missus.

Poor Lucy, who fancies that the roof of the building, which, of course, was covered with blue slates, had fallen in upon her husband, and crushed himself and all his hopes of founding the school, hurries up the gravel-walk and enters the parlour in a great fidget.

The gloomy looks of the partner in the tally line confirm her suspicions, and she sinks into a chair, whispering out,

"Then he is dead!"

"Dead, marm," says the partner, "who?-that old fool, Barnabas. No, marm-I almost wish he was. He's ruined-that's all-and I am afraid I am not better off myself."

"Ruined-Barnabas Just ruined! impossible. He is known to be rich," says the lady.

"He was rich once, marm-he had upwards of 15,000l., besides his half of the tally trade; but it's all gone, every dump, and he has been raising money in all directions, and I've been fool enough to join. I'm in for 50001.-only found it out this afternoon-tried to get at him in his fine new building, but they would not let me in at the gateslooked as blue as blazes at me, and sent me away with a blue-bottle in my ear-I could not stop at home, so hurried up to tell you. Confound the little ass and his blue schools."

So saying, the partner throws his hat upon the ground, and jumps upon the crown of it, to spite Barnabas Just, and then rushes from the house with the crushed beaver in his hand like a madman as he

was.

Poor Lucy sat like one dreaming; Becky tried to rouse her from her lethargy, but could not. She well knew the cause of her mistress's sufferings, for she was not deaf though she was old, and the partner had spoken loudly enough to be heard through any keyhole in the world. She did not torment her with questions, therefore, but simply told her that she was sure that it was all a lie, and that master was as rich as ever.

Lucy shook her head, drew a shawl round her, and sat shivering

until the sound of carriage-wheels announced the return of the man of many charities.

He was carried into the hall and up to bed, overcome with wine and intense excitement. His wife sat up by his side, and heard him mutter about" the proudest moment of his life,"-" the spot on which future lord chancellors and archbishops were to start for the race of fame," the first step to gaining the honours of the blue garter,” and other phrases, which proved to her that he was repeating himself in his after-dinner speech.

Morning dawned, but Barnabas opened not his eyes; he tossed and tumbled about in his bed, talked unintelligibly, and laughed in a most unearthly manner.

Lucy was alarmed, and sent the coachman for the nearest medical man. He felt the patient's pulse, and pronounced him to be in a dangerous state of fever.

Barnabas did not recover: a few days sufficed to make Lucy a widow-a widow, and worse than penniless by some hundreds. The partner's account was quite true. Barnabas, had he lived, must have applied for support to some one of the numerous charities, which he had so freely but recklessly supported.

The Just's bluecoat school was sold to help to pay the creditors, and is now occupied by a respectable pewterer.

Poor Barnabas's ghost, if it walks, must be disgusted to see over the gateway of the building, an half-obliterated inscription, running thus ;

This fragment was all that remained of Barnabas Just and his many charities, except his widow, who was provided for at Mount Whistling.

A DRAMATIC CRITICISM.

We have seen an Actor play Hamlet, in the Ghost scene, with so little sense of propriety, as not only to draw his sword, according to the stage practice, but actually to threaten and make a lunge at the parental Apparition with the naked weapon. Nothing can be in worse taste. Marcellus, it is true, offers to strike at the Royal Phantom with his partizan, but the act, though somewhat disloyal, is not unfilial. But in Hamlet, the son of the shade,-the attempt at violence is unnatural and parricidal, and totally at variance with his character. He shrinks from bloodshed, though supernaturally enjoined, and remembers the ties of kindred. Witness his extreme reluctance to kill his uncle; whereas a man who tries to stab a ghost, will assuredly stick at nothing.

T. H.

ADVICE GRATIS.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ.

THE Advice which the author of L'Allegro describes-Advice" with scrupulous head"-springs from so very distant a branch of the family to which Advice "gratis" belongs, that there can hardly be said to be any actual relationship existing between them. Assuredly there is not the smallest personal resemblance.

Advice gratis wears a remarkably unscrupulous aspect. He has a long tongue which hangs half out of his mouth, a long sight which detects the approach of a victim before he has turned the corner, a long finger to twine round the button of a hapless listener, and a short memory which causes him to recommend two opposite remedies to the same patient, both wrong ones.

He is a creature wholly destitute of imagination, and although constantly found in the company of another, never yet saw anything out of himself. He substitutes self for the person he advises, and devoutly recommends as adapted to his fellow what is suited only to his own case. He never cares to consider whether you have a weak or a strong sight, so that you consent to wear his spectacles, with which you cannot see at all. He will set you dancing, but it must be in the tight boots or the crazy slippers he himself is wearing. In whatsoever you may seek his help, he offers what agrees with him, and not what agrees with you. In a pining atrophy he bids you adopt the system applicable to his own gout.

"Advice gratis" appears to be attended with one just principlethat it is always disposed of at its exact value; but this is an error-for seldom can we follow advice gratis, for nothing.

That the strongest and wisest, the best armed and the most knowing, often need advice, is not to be denied; the king's minister might have taken it profitably from the lips of the king's jester upon a thousand occasions. Great wits may sometimes get very needful help from very dull people; as we see an eclipse best by looking through smoked glass.

The bone-knife, there is no disputing the fact, was found, with its blunt edge, a better paper-cutter than the razor; but ever since the days of Swift-and before, even up to the birth of History-the boneknife has boasted of itself as decidedly the best instrument to shave with.

It is so with the clever people who press their service at all times and in all ways in the form of advice. Because they are not voted utterly useless, they must claim to be useful universally. Because you needed a few drops of advice once, you must be drenched with it. The physician might wait till he is called in; but he bursts upon us at all hours and places-insisting that we shall take the draught, because it would do him good. The advice-giver will compel us to have our new shoes made by his last.

At may be argued that the widely-prevailing habit of proffering ad

vice, unasked and unwanted, upon all subjects, is a token of philanthropic concern and charitable interest in the affairs of humanity. It does seem generous in idle people to bestow their wise thoughts and precious time upon us of their own free will, and as often as they are not solicited.

When our old acquaintance in story lost his horse, nobody gave him one in place of it; but when he lost his wife, every family in town offered him another. Thus it is, that this much-vilified human nature will give away a part of itself, its flesh and blood, its finest store of mental wealth, its scanty allowance even of invaluable and irrecoverable time, for the benefit of one who neither claims nor needs the gift.

But in answer to this, it must be urged, that the advice-giver does not actually make a sacrifice, on the score either of thought or time; for though he may put his tongue to some little trouble, it does not often happen that he troubles his brain about the business; and as for the intricate affairs over which you, who best know them, have pondered long-presto! he simplifies and cuts them short in half a second!

Before any of us doubt, let us call to mind how slowly men deliberate upon their own concerns, and in what an off-hand and summary way they decide upon the same points submitted for their judgment by

others.

When a step involving important but doubtful consequences is before us, we draw back, pause, advance, shrink again, ponder, look behind, try the ground with the foot, flinch, resolve finally, and yet are slow to take it; but in the case of a friend pausing at the very same step, we drag him back or push him on without much consultation. We look at the position from our point of view, not from his, and see few of the difficulties which would be palpable enough, if we were actor instead of adviser.

Were it, however, otherwise-if the giver of Advice gratis had bestowed both time and trouble upon the knotty point-pondering, weighing, and changing places with his victims, before he counselled them to stir-still must he be voted one of the most intrusive and selfsufficient personages that ever obtained toleration, age after age, in every country, on the plea of good nature and benevolence.

For what a height of conceit and impertinence must the giver of Advice gratis have attained to, before he can pretend to tell us that he has surveyed in an hour what it had taken us years to explore-unravelled in a day the threads of our long life-mastered our secrets and plucked out the heart of our mystery; that he knows our affairs better than we do-that he can judge, upon a slight acquaintance, more accurately of what falls in with our interest than we can who are familiar with whatsoever affects it-that he, a foreigner, can speak English better than ourselves-that, tyro as he is, he can beat us in that very study which we have most pursued-that he is infinitely our superior, a wiser, a more reflecting, a more practical man-as far above us as Nous the schoolmaster is above young Dolt or little Dog's-ear.

All this he plainly says to the understanding, though not to the ear. He bids you stand aside while he looks in the glass to show you your own image. The contradiction, that Coleridge's picture was more like

him than Coleridge was like himself, has no subtlety for the gratuitous adviser-it is perfectly clear. He would act your part more correctly, more like life, than you would. He comes to you as an amateur lunacy-commissioner, and assumes that you are incapable of managing your own affairs. Not only does he contend that the bystander must see most of the game, but he generally concludes that the players know nothing at all about it.

And

Does this in reality mean any thing less than the most intolerable assurance and conceit? What ground has the advice-giver for assuming that you are ignorant of what you ought most to know? even if he had reason to esteem himself better informed than yourself on a given point, what degree of decency does he observe when he thrusts himself forward to tell you of the fact? Superior, either in the power of forming an opinion, in dispassionate observation, in a sense of justice, in decision of conduct, or in dexterity of management, he manifestly conceives himself to be-and indeed boasts of being-when he steps up with his patronizing piece of counsel.

Be by your friends advised,

is his morning and evening song-but what is the moral of it? And why are your friends, without evidence produced of their qualifications, to be constituted your law-makers?

If you are translating an ode of Horace, you must adopt his reading, though he never got further with his verbs than the second conjugation, Moneo, I advise. If you determine, after a long and patient watching of character and inclination, upon making your son a shipwright, he bids you take his advice and make the boy a dancing-master, or you will repent it to the longest day you have to live; and if you were a fox, he would earnestly advise you to cut off your tail, because he had left his in a trap.

In defiance of the proverb, it is wise and right to look a gift horse in the mouth. Serve gift-advice in the same way, for sometimes it has teeth that bite sharply.

The best excuse that offers for the freedom and pertinacity evinced by volunteer advice-givers is, that they never by any accident have reason to presume that their counsel will be followed. There is to be sure something in this that acquits them of all criminal design, and leaves them convicted only of impudent vanity, and vexatious interference. Of the myriads to whom such phrases as

"If I might presume to advise-"

"If you would but take my advice-"

Now, pray, without another word, be advised by me—”

With fifty variations of the same note of superior wisdom and voluntary patronage-of the myriads to whom this phraseology is common, not one in a thousand expects, while using it, that it will ever penetrate beyond the ear of the listener. Not one of them all, so much as dreams that the listener will really act upon the advice, bestowed as it was with every manifestation of anxiety and fervour.

They all know pretty well, that, practically, there is something in the very nature of advice which gives it rather a repelling than an attracting character. When it does move us, the movement is usually contrary to the tendency of the counsel; and upon this principle, advice