had passed. Half an hour had scarcely elapsed before he fell again under the influence of the drug. On this occasion the vision was more complicated and more extraordinary. In the air there were millions of butterflies, confusedly luminous, shaking their wings like fans. Gigantic flowers with chalices of crystal, large peonies upon beds of gold and silver, rose and surrounded him with the crackling sound that accompanies the explosion in the air of fireworks. His hearing acquired new power: it was enormously developed. He heard the noise of colours. Green, red, blue, yellow sounds reached him in waves. A glass thrown down, the creaking of a sofa, a word pronounced low, vibrated and rolled within him like peals of thunder. His own voice sounded so loud that he feared to speak, lest he should knock down the walls, or explode like a rocket. More than five hundred clocks struck the hour with fleeting, silvery voice; and every object touched gave a note like the harmonica or the Eolian harp. He swam in an ocean of sound, where floated, like isles of light, some of the airs of Lucia di Lammermuir,' and the Barber of Seville.' Never did similar bliss overwhelm him with its waves: he was lost in a wilderness of sweets; he was not himself; he was relieved from consciousness, that feeling which always pervades the mind; and for the first time he comprehended what might be the state of existence of elementary beings, of angels, of souls separated from the body: all his system seemed infected with the fantastic colouring in which he was plunged. Sounds, perfume, light, reached him only by minute rays, in the midst of which he heard magnetic currents whistling along. According to his calculation, this state lasted about three hundred years; for the sensations were so numerous and so hurried, one upon the other, that a real appreciation of time was impossible. The paroxysm over, he was aware that it had only lasted a quarter of an hour. A case, taken down in notes immediately after its occurrence, may be relied on as perfectly authentic, and as giving a notion of the varied nature of the influence of hashish. The individual, aware of its effects, not by experience, but by what he had heard, having swallowed some of the drug, sat down to the dinnertable; and beginning the dinner in a true French style, ate some oysters, and then suddenly burst into a loud fit of laughter, which soon ceased. He was calm again until the dessert was placed on the table, when he suddenly seized a large spoon, to defend himself against a preserve of fruits, which he fancied was going to fight à duel with him, and then, with a shout of laughter, he rushed from the dining-room. He seated himself in the saloon at the pianoforte, and commenced an air, which was suddenly put a stop to by a horrible vision. The portrait of his brother, which hung over the instrument, became animated, and presented him a threepronged staff, terminated by three lanterns-one red, one green, and one white. This apparition returned frequently in the course of the evening. Whilst seated on the sofa, he exclaimed suddenly, Why bind my limbs? I feel that I become lead! Oh, how heavy I am!' He was taken by the hands to lift him, when he fell upon the ground upon his knees, as if about to pray. Being lifted up, a sudden change came over him. He took the shovel from the fireplace to dance the Polka; he imitated the voice and the gestures of the actors he had lately seen. He fancied himself at the Opera; the people, the noise, the lights, elevated his spirits to their highest pitch. He gesticulated, made a thousand incoherent speeches, and rushed into the next room, which was not lighted up. Something frightful then came over him: he fell into an immense well; it was unfathomable; he tried to lay hold of the stones that projected on the sides of the well, but they fell with him into the abyss. The sensation was painful, but of short duration, and again the scene of the Opera appeared. He spoke of persons whom he had not seen for years; spoke of a dinner at which he had been present five years before, although he was conscious that he was at home, and that all he then saw had passed a long time before, yet he saw before him two persons whom he had then met. But a bliss that could not be described was the sight of an infant in a sky of blue and silver, with white wings bordered by roses: he smiled, and showed two beautiful teeth. He was surrounded by children with wings, and flying in a blue sky, but they were not equally lovely. These all rapidly vanished, after being a source of infinite delight; and suddenly the hashish called up the land of lanterns. There were people, houses, trees, formed of lanterns, in parallel rows; these lanterns marched, danced, and jumped about; in the midst of them appeared the three lanterns which belonged to his brother's fork. One brilliant light seemed superior to all; this was evidently produced by a piece of coal in the fireplace, for when it was extinguished, the light disappeared with it. On drinking a glass of lemonade, the baths of the Seine rose up in view, where with difficulty he was saved from drowning. A thousand fantastic visions floated across the mind during the three hours of its influence, and there was a mixture of sensations such as only are felt in a dream. Scarcely two people feel the same effects from hashish. Upon some it scarcely acts at all; and there appears to be a power to resist within, which can at pleasure be called into force. It generally has a striking action upon females, sometimes producing a most extraordinary state of excitement; but there seems to be no indication by which the intensity of its power can be anticipated. There is something very analogous to the state of dreaming throughout the whole progress of a paroxysm caused by it. A train of apparently unconnected ideas rush across the imagination, and in their transition are so rapid, that no chain that links them can be seized by investigation. The ordinary physical effects of hashish are the feeling of a slight compression of the temporal bones and the upper parts of the head. The respiration is gentle; the pulse is slightly accelerated; a gentle heat, such as is felt on going in winter into a warm bath of a tempe rature of about 98 degrees, is felt all over the surface of the body; there is some sense of weight about the fore part of the arms, and there is an occasional slight involuntary motion, as if to seek relief from it. There are certain indefinable sensations of discomfort about the lower extremities; they do not amount to much, but are sufficient to render the body uneasy. If the dose, however, have been too large, it is not uncommon for several disagreeable symptoms to show themselves. Flashes of heat seem to ascend to the head, and even a boiling sensation in the brain has been felt; a sensation which not unusually creates considerable alarm. Sing ing in the ears is complained of; then comes on a state of anxiety, almost of anguish, with a sense of constrietion about the chest. Towards the epigastrium most of the untoward symptoms are referred. The indivi dual fancies that he hears the beating of his heart with unaccustomed loudness, but on placing the hand on the region of the heart, it will be ascertained that its action is perfectly normal. Throughout the whole period it is the nervous system that is affected, no other part of the body being acted upon; hashish thus materially differing from opium, whose power is marked upon the muscular and digestive system, retarding the action of the organs, and leaving them in a complete state of inaction. Under the influence of hashish, the ear lends itself more to the illusion than any other sense. It has been observed by those who devote their attention to the aberrations of intellect, that hallucinations of hearing are much more frequent than those of the eye or the other senses: for one diseased person who sees visions, there are three that are deceived by the ear; and the more intellectual are the more generally the prey to this affection. Luther held long conversations with a demon, and Tasso with an angel. The hashish gives to this sense an extreme delicacy and susceptibility: it is felt within the whole system; the sound seems to reach the heart; it vibrates in the chest, and gradu- dreams and phantoms which exhilarate and delight. ally awakens remembrances and associations of ideas, The mind tries to understand what is the cause of the and imparts a feeling of increased sensibility. There is new delight, but it is in vain. It seems to know that a species of ecstasy, a state of exaltation produced, that there is no reality. The positive sensation of unidefies all explanation. The sight is seldom so much af-versal contentment is the marked feature of the state: fected; there is rarely anything in the shape of a vision it pervades every fibre, and leaves nothing to desire. conjured up, but objects that are present are conveyed The narrative of the monarch, so admirably told in to the brain in a false view. Sometimes the face of a the Spectator,' who, though plunging his head for an friend is multiplied, or an object of no striking character instant only in water, lived during that short time is converted into a beautiful figure-is metamorphosed several years in another existence, and went through in a thousand different forms: thus an old servant of numerous vicissitudes, seems realised. On one occaseventy-one years of age, in spite of his wrinkles and sion, when Dr Moreau, previously to his going into the gray hair, appeared before Dr Moreau in the form of a Opera-house, had taken his accustomed dose, he fancied lovely girl adorned with a thousand graces; a glass of that he was nearly three hours passing through the lemonade in the hands of a friend became a utensil full lobby before reaching to the boxes. This phenomenon of burning charcoal; a hat and a coat placed upon a attends equally upon opium-eating centuries seem to table were transformed into a rickety little dwarf, hav- elapse, during which long trains of visions stalk in ending the characteristic appearance of one of those hideous less line before the sight. Mr De Quincey has furpersons formerly employed to amuse the great, but not nished us, in his Confessions of an Opium-Eater,' with possessing the symmetry either of Sir Jeffry Hudson or some most singular illustrations of this fact. our inimitable Tom Thumb: the touch is occasionally It is not with impunity that the brain becomes dismodified, sometimes being endowed with a high degree ordered with frequent indulgence in the delicious poison; of sensibility. The most singular hallucinations were at last it becomes weakened, and incapable of separating those produced by the hashish in some cases of plague, the true from the false; the intoxication too frequently in which it was employed to alleviate suffering by Dr repeated leads to an occasional state of delirium, but Auber: a young artist imagined his body endowed with this is manifested in a manner almost as singular as the such elasticity, that he fancied that he could enter into effects just narrated. It must be remarked that, during a bottle and remain there at his ease; one individual the dream of joy, there is a consciousness that all is fancied that he had become the piston of a steam-en- illusion; there is at no period a belief that anything gine; another felt himself growing into a balloon, ready that dances before the senses, or plays upon the imagito float upon the air. Some of the young Europeans nation, is real; and when the mind returns to its wonted at Cairo, on their way home after a feast of hashish, state it acknowledges its illusions, and_only_wonders thought that the dark and dismal streets of the city at the marvels that have been excited. But after these had been suddenly illuminated; they persuaded each fantasies have too frequently presented themselves, other that there was a magnificent fête going on, that there arises a permanent morbidity of mind, having the balconies of the houses were filled with crowds for its manifestation a fixed idea-that of seeing beings dressed in gala habits, and making loud noises, there belonging to an invisible world under various shapes. being no real foundation for the supposition beyond the The Orientalists, and more especially the Arabians and return home of some persons attended by Arabs carry- the people of Egypt, believe, as is well known, in the ing coloured lanterns. existence of ginn or genii, a class of spirits forming an intermediate link between angels and man. There are in Egypt many persons who firmly believe that they have seen and held intercourse with these beings, nor can any attempt at reasoning persuade them that they have been deceived. The eaters of hashish are subject to such hallucinations. When Dr Moreau was in Egypt, the dragoman, who was a man of superior sense, having been selected by Champollion as his interpreter, the captain of the vessel in which he went up the Nile, and several of the sailors, had seen genii. The captain had seen one under the form of a sheep, that had lost itself, and bleating very loudly; he took him home with the intention of shearing him, and making the wool into a garment, and then eating him, when suddenly he rose up in the form of a man to the height of twenty feet, and with a voice of thunder spoke to him, telling him he was a genius, and then disappeared. His dragoman had met an ass in the neighbourhood of Cairo that he wished to lay hold of; it ran with the speed of lightning, announcing itself a genius with loud shouts of laughter. On another occasion he had been at the funeral of two holy men, Santons. He saw, and others saw very clearly with him, the coffins of the deceased lift themselves in the air, and place themselves on the height of Mokatam, a mountain near Cairo, in the mausoleum which had been destined for their reception. The individuals of whom Dr Moreau speaks passed three months in his service, during which they were in the complete possession of their senses; but such was the state to which they were reduced by this drug, that they would upon any trifling occurrence be affected with these illusions, and neither ridicule nor reasoning could shake their belief. The limited use of the hashish in France has as yet led to no derangement of this kind; but the knowledge that such consequences result from it is of the greatest importance, as it acts as a check to an indulgence in that which would soon become a vice. It may Three persons had formed a party to try the hashish -an architect, who had travelled in Egypt and Nubia, Dr Aubert Roche, and Dr Moreau. At first the latter gentleman thought that his companions were less influenced by the drug than himself; then, as the effect increased upon him, he fancied that the person who had brought him the dose had given him some of more active quality. This he thought to himself was an imprudence, and then he involuntarily reflected that he might be poisoned; the idea became fixed; he called out loudly to Dr Roche- You are an assassin; you have poisoned me!' This was received with shouts of laughter, and his lamentations excited mirth. He struggled for some time against the thought; but the greater his efforts were, the more completely did it overcome him, till at last it took full possession of his mind: then a new illusion, the consequence of the first, drove all other thoughts from him. The extravagant conviction was uppermost that he was dead; that he was upon the point of being buried; his soul had left his body in a few minutes he had gone through all the stages of delirium. These fixed ideas and erroneous convictions are apt to be produced; but they are very evanescent, they last but a few seconds: it is only when there is any actual physical disorder that they remain for any length of time. The ordinary effect of this marvellous drug, however, is an ideal existence, so delicious that there is no wish to shake it off. The Orientalist, when he indulges in it, retires into the depths of the harem; no one is then admitted who cannot contribute to his enjoyment. He surrounds himself with the almehs or dancing-girls, who perform their graceful evolutions before him to the sound of music; gradually a new condition of the brain allows a series of illusions, arising from the external senses, to present themselves. Everything wears a fantastic garb. The mind is overpowered by the brilliancy of gorgeous visions; discrimination, comparison, reason, yield up their throne to : be emphatically said that none of nature's laws can be violated with impunity, nor can that reason which renders man pre-eminent be misapplied without a punishment. COUSIN TOM. I BELIEVE it to be a generally acknowledged truth, that cousins, unless indeed they be poor ones, are a very agreeable sort of relations; that is to say, a certain prestige or favourable anticipation runs to their advantage in our minds, before we know them to be, if possible, actually odious. Unless it be so, by a kind of mythological principle, I don't know why it is that I always to this very day fancy two families of unseen cousins I have to be delightful society: the youths merry, good natured, amusing fellows-the girls pretty and attractive: nor how it came to pass that with cousins I did see, I have spent hours and hours in doing nothing at all which I can name, but which seems to me to have been so very pleasant, profitable, and wortliy of trying to remember, that I can attribute the idea to no other origin than simply cousinship. As for girl-cousins, the tie is fascinating, if only from its easiness: you can slide in and out of it, break it and mend it again, like a chain of flowers: if you have called them Kate and Bessy, you can call them Catherine and Elizabeth again; you can walk by moonlight with them in youth, and talk coolly to them by daytime in manhood, and nobody will reproach you. This abstract view of things does not, however, strengthen the case of my Cousin Tom, who stands upon his own footing. I have always been accustomed to regard him as a unique-a sort of hero-relative, separate from the common herd of cousins. Ned, my dear!" she would say for I shall take the same liberty with my own baptism that I have done with my relation's birth-Ned, my dear, that's my Tom! That's your cousin! This is my son I was telling you about, Miss Wood; what do you think of it ?' I was then only eight; but to my taste the thing miniature painters, a strong feeling possessed me that was intolerable. Not knowing the imagination of even, although my cousin, this said Thomas Tytler must verge disagreeably near the limits of what is asinine. To the dressmaking damsel, however, this object was one of admiration, doubtless internal as well as expressed. I don't recollect whether, in process of this was just the sort of Tom to make impression upon familiarity with it, she sighed or not; but I am sure the fancy at least of such a person. The first time I saw this cousin of mine was shortly after, and it exhibited him all at once in a somewhat would go down to take tea with Aunt Tytler. Seeing strong and peculiar light, One evening I thought I her as I approached crossing the farm-house passage to the kitchen with the tea-kettle in her hand, I made myself at home by walking into the parlour. What flickering of the fire a strange gentleman seated in my was my astonishment there to see by the cheerful aunt's easy-chair, within something less than arm's length of Miss Jenny Wood, the pert little dress-maker, who was giggling in a remarkably pleased way. 'Hallo, who are you?' was roared out to me as I approached this free-and-easy personage. Was there ever such impertinence? I absolutely for a moment felt as if I did not know who or what I was, when such distinguished, could put the inquiry to me in my own an unaccountable odd-sort-of person, whom I scarcely aunt's parlour: all I could do was to falter out my name. 6 When we were boys in the country, our father's eldest sister, who had been twice married, and whose second widowhood rested finally under a name represented here by Tytler, came to reside for a time at a farm-house close Oh, you're my cousin!' said the stranger, getting beside us. She was a tall, dark, old lady, with black up and shaking hands with me. Never saw you be glittering eyes, of whom I stood in considerable awe, fore; all right, I daresay!' until she made a favourite of me, probably in sheer Here my aunt came back, and both the other parties competition with our old-maid aunt, her sister, whose appeared so gravely innocent by candlelight, that I pet was my younger brother, and who was cross to against my own notion, but for the slightest possible should have almost taken the gentleman's account everybody else. But our Aunt Tytler was all good na- approach to a wink in the eye next me, when he looked ture and patience, as might have been expected from at me afterwards. This, then, was my Cousin Tom; as one who had borne with two partners in succession, and to his picture, that was a complete libel on him; for was the mother of various cousins. She joked and although to the last smacking more or less of the 'gent.,' laughed with me when I was happy, consoled and and at present favouring a certain brightness of vest smoothed me when I was in disgrace, told me old stories, and cravat, my cousin was a fresh-looking, handsome, and gave me a piece of bread and currant-jelly every turned a little on one side, as if he had been accustomed tallish young fellow, with a nose rather hooked and time I came down to see her: my visits were consequently frequent. A sort of pleasant asylum for dis- roguish black eyes, as contained a world of mirth and to fight his way when a boy, and two such twinkling, tressed boyhood was my Aunt Tytler's parlour fireside, good-humour for the world of care outside of them. where she sat with her spectacles on, reading novels He was then town-traveller to an Edinburgh merchant and newspapers, settling the tea-things on her round of all-wares, whom he had gone to as a shopboy: he table, or talking to the village dressmaker who altered was now on a visit to his mother, having arrived only and made her gowns. My aunt herself was no needle-half an hour before; and next day, in consequence of his woman: she was both too stately and too indolent; but she had apparently a great deal of work to be done, since Jenny Wood, the good-looking, lively, young mantua-maker, was her most frequent visitor, next to myself. On such genial occasions the old lady would go to her bureau-a piece of furniture more ancient and quaintly-shining than herself-and take out a little oval portrait to show us. This was the picture of a dandy-looking youth, with glossy hair curled and parted, red cheeks and lips, and eyes as black as berries, in a purplish frock-coat and a bright waistcoat-just such a work of art as miniaturists do to maternal order. employer's sudden death, he was going to set off for situation or other, which he was merely determined to London, to throw himself there on the chance of some get. However, with all this before him, he was as merry as a boy, jumped up for the kettle, toasted bread, did all sorts of things, and in the meantime was keeping up such a jovial frolicsome flow of humour, as at last made the party almost uproarious; little Jenny Wood, the dressmaker included, whom he would have to stay to tea, and saw her home afterwards. to see his uncle and aunt, as well as to get me to help Next morning Cousin Tom just looked in at our house him in carrying his bag to the coach two miles off. On the way, however, without appearing gloomy or depressed, his manner was changed; he talked to me quite confidentially about his mother, her pride in him, and his fondness for her; about the world, which to him was only a world of business;' what I should be, and what he was going to do himself. As we stood waiting for the coach, 'Now,' said he, Ned, mind you and stick to your lessons while you're at them, and I'll make your fortune! Here's a shilling for you; give my love to my mother, and say you saw me off. There's the coach; good-by, and God bless you!' The coach rolled up, Tom handed his bag to the guard, climbed after it with an 'all right,' and I stood by myself looking after the cloud of dust, above which the hat of my Cousin Tom was conspicuous. A week or two after, Aunt Tytler showed me a letter from him: it was a dashing, beautifully sharp, and clear hand, which was always in my eyes the model of commercial penmanship-fine strokes and broad ones alternately; it doubt less was one source of his success in life, although how he had contrived to form it in the middle of his rough. ing' apprenticeship I don't know. This was the whole of the epistle, serving as an example of his private style of correspondence :— DEAR MOTHER-All's well. Got a good berth with pushing; but a lucky hit, as I think. Address to Dutton and Co., Upper Thames Street, and shall write you with particulars. Dear mother, yours affectionately-T. T.' He was now with a first-rate London house; but as postages were dear then, and as Aunt Tytler went away to live in Edinburgh, we neither heard nor saw any thing of our cousin, except that at intervals, just when one would have imagined him lost or dead, there would come a Times' newspaper with those significant initials added to the address. Sometimes a speech or an occurrence would be marked with a cross; or, more rarely, a little note could be picked out of an obscure paragraph, by putting together the scattered letters which Cousin Tom had underdotted, The London Times' was to him the greatest authority on all sub. jects, only less worthy of perusal than that book of which it was the faithful transcript-this busy world. He had no more imagination, Thomas Tytler, than a broomstick, or less, if witches' tales be true of broomsticks fancying themselves flying horses, and thus doing the duty of such cattle; accordingly, I recollect him afterwards trying in vain to read Oliver Twist' even, which he never got through to this day. But all of us had excessive delight in spelling out his newspaper epistles, that so wonderfully transmuted a harangue of Sir Robert Peel's, or a dry state of the money market, into his own characteristic news: if it were but the capitals of ten footmens' advertisements that composed the acrostic sentence which was a favourite of his'All's well.-T. T.' ་ During those years, however, many were the changes that took place: our own childish boyhood ran up to youth, poor Aunt Tytler was dead and buried, we had left the country to live in a town, and the printed missives of Cousin Thomas, by coming suddenly from all sorts of places-Newcastle, Canterbury, Bristol, Liverpool, Bath, or York, under the titles of Courier,' Herald,' 'Sun,' 'Intelligencer,' or 'Mercury'-were enough to indicate that he had taken to the great road. He was now a traveller on a large scale, with some wonderful salary; and the image of him, driving with his gig and mare 'Nanny' from town to town, known to every bagman as the model of their class, Travelling Tom Tytler, whose orders were oiled and whisked out of the most twisted heart by dint of his merry smileall this grew so palpably out upon us, even in the distance, that the idea of a commercial traveller has always a sort of romantic heroical association to my mind, which railways have only removed into a poetical atmosphere. Every now and then there was somebody turning up that knew Tom, or had met him, and had heard him talk with pride of my uncle,' and my old mother, poor woman:' of all cousins he was par excellence our cousin.' We could fancy we saw him at night drawing up beside the inn-door, throwing his reins to the ostlers, patronising the landlord, his black eye twinkling roguishly upon barmaids and chambermaids; dashing off his letters, reading the paper, and then enclosing it to signify his whereabouts to the remaining friends who thought about him; then the centre of a circle of jovial bagmen from all quarters, for all sorts of goods, who were enjoying themselves over their tumblers after a hard day's rhetoric. Then he would be Tom all over, from the slippers to the crown of his head, and nobody would think of calling him Mr Tytler who knew him: so many years, indeed, did he appear as mere Travelling Tom, that we felt as if he would never be anything else; a homeless, circulating kind of off-hand fellow, who would never be able to bear fixing down, and would sigh in a palace after the commercial roast-beef, with the pint of port, the gig-apron, and the trotting mare. No one understood till afterwards how Tom carried the serious idea in his head, a secret determination to make out of all that web of roads and calls a certain substantial result, and work up amidst the difficulties of wanting capital or patronage, to a position where his old mother, if she could have known it from her grave, would be prouder to own him. At length we heard that henceforth our cousin would include the north tour in his peregrinations, so that we should see him again. It was one frosty afternoon of Christmas-eve that my younger brother and I went down to meet him when the mail-coach should come in, for the occasion of his arrival had kept us quite excited for a week beforehand. In rattled the coach to the inn-door, the horses stood with their breath smoking in white clouds against the fog under the lamp, all sorts of wrapped-up passengers tumbled down and out amongst the bustle; but we were experienced enough to look up to the box-seat beside the driver, where we felt our cousin must be. A tall, stout gentleman, accordingly, was the first to jump off from it; he didn't much resemble my recollection of Cousin Tom in his mother's parlour; but the cock of his jaunty hat, and the black eyes visible over a mass of neckerchiefs and box-coats, convinced me it could be nobody else. Are you my Cousin Thomas?' I said, as he began to see coolly after his luggage, like a figure whose very outline induced respect in the group of guard, ostlers, and waiters. Eh! what?' said he, scarcely turning round. 'I don't know, but I believe I'm somebody's Cousin Thomas after all! I'll have a look at you presently, my boy.' There was his own carpet-bag, and the house's green baize one, and a travelling desk, and a hamper smacking of the season: out of which last emerged, when we got home, such a variety of ham, and salmon-kipper, and a goose, and other provisions, all for a present to my aunt,' but, besides, for a royal Christmas dinner, at which Tom would be the vital spirit. Then the firm, though selling almost everything, called itself a brushmaking one; so there was a brush for every one of us, from the head of the house down to little Bob in pinafores. Christmas was the centre of the year to our travelling relative, after the rest of it had whirled away in business and in rushing from place to place. In speech, manner, ideas, and outward man he had turned English all over-quick, bustling, matter-of-fact; hated the slow, cautious poking, canny ways of Scotland, where they keep a man soft-sawdering all day about a twopenny order, and said at the end, They would see about it !' What a connoisseur in good fare he seemed too! From his conversation at dinner, you would have thought eating and drinking one of the great businesses of this world, as well as Dutton and Co. themselves, for both of which he was apparently traveller; since he considered it one of the triumphs of art to get anybody to take a bit more, even if they were almost at the last gasp of repletion. He rubbed his hands and chuckled at seeing us youngsters eat; and it was rich for us to observe himself with a mouthful of my mother's unequalled plumpudding; how he smacked his lips, held his head to one side as if thinking of it, and made his black eyes twinkle! Most of this was talk and theory, the sole ideal field in which our Cousin Tom's imagination betrayed itself; still, what with treating refractory customers and refreshing in inns, he had grown stout and jolly-looking for the prime of life; his forehead bald; his complexion rubicund; his dark eyes full of fun, but knowing; a pair of rich black whiskers, which he had a trick of pulling and stroking; his nose as if it had been a little twisted: he was one of the handsomest and most dashing men of his kind. Nobody would have taken him externally for a Scotchman, unless one had known what a cool, cautious, long-headed perseverance he bore in him, had seen him humouring the points of a Scotch tradesman as none but a Scotchman could have done, or had been present when he relaxed after dinner over a bottle of wine, spoke broad Scotch in a contemptuous, laughable sort of way, and talked of his old mother, poor woman!' Then at the evening Christmas party of young folks, Cousin Tom was all alive, played at forfeits, came in dressed in a bonnet and shawl, twisting his features so that we scarcely knew him, and told stories of the road that made us all shriek with laughter, while he laughed himself till the tears ran over his face. Next day, however, he was all business, and off about his orders, which were so few in our town as to be merely a pretext for giving a half-yearly call to us. Before leaving, too, he gave a spice of what I may call his inner character to myself. How old are you, Ned, my boy?' said he. 'Fifteen.' 'Why, you ought to be keeping books by this time. Ain't you thought of being anything yet?-to do for yourself; eh? Don't you remember what I told you seven years ago and more?' 'I should like to go into the navy, Cousin Thomas,' replied I. The navy! Go into a horse-bucket and be kicked, you young fool,' said Cousin Tom, looking emphatic. Here, now, I'll tell you what I did. When my father died, I went, without asking anybody's leave, to old Bailie Jackson's in the Lawnmarket, and offered myself for a shopboy. I was a little fellow of ten, and the bailie wouldn't hear of me, because he didn't want any more boys; however I stuck about the place, doing everything I could, and coming back every morning for nothing, till the old man took a fancy to me, went to my mother, and bound me apprentice, though the poor woman thought it low, and wanted me to stay at school. Well, I had eight pounds for the first year, and there I kept close at it; went a mile to the shop at six in the morning, swept it out, lighted the fires, washed out bottles, and ran home to breakfast, then back again to go errands. Many a dirty job I had to do, and many a bloody nose I got, because I didn't like to do more than my own share of 'em, besides fighting in closes for my basket; but at last I came to keep books now and then, as I'd made up my mind to have a good hand, and went to a writing-master, and practised arithmetic in spare hours; then I was clerk; and at twentyone I was town-and-country traveller. Why, you don't know you're born yet, Ned! Well, when the old bailie dropped off, what did I do? I could have got on in the old way no doubt, but I had seen something, and I took it into my head to go to London. I knew nobody, I hadn't got any friends, and I went over twenty houses for no use. At last I came to a first-rate house, in a sort of business I was sure I could do something in, if I once got the chance: Dutton and Co's it was. I walked up straight to the old gentleman, looked him in the face, and told him what I wanted. "I don't want to choose my place," said I; "I'll do anything. I'll begin as a light-porter, if you like only try me!" The old gentleman looked at me again; perhaps he liked me; but he put me in the warehouse. There I worked up to be traveller, with three hundred and fifty a year, as I am just now: in a few years more it'll be five hundred; and then- But you don't know you're alive, Ned! I wish I had you, I'd make a man of you! I'd make you work like a trooper-clean shoes, do anything you were told without asking about it, and never rest while anybody else paid for you. That's my blessing to you now, my boy!' After all this, at the climax of which my cousin got somewhat excited, he soon smoothed down again. At the coach he gave me half-a-crown, and said, 'Now remember what I told you, Ned, till next time! If you don't, hang me but I'll give you a regular wallopping myself.' When his next two visits occurred, however, I was pretty far off, learning the same lessons Tom had tried to teach me, in a better way than he could have done-namely, in the manner suited to one's own character. But it was a peculiarity of his, that from his want of imagination he never could suppose or calculate for the differences in mental constitution. The first time I saw him again I was at college, and my younger brother, by his influence, had entered into that commercial sphere which, to our cousin's idea, included all real life and business, the rest being but fables or artifice. His half-yearly visit to the city we were in was regular, and, as formerly, an occasion looked forward to by us. We could count upon his arriving at the London Hotel to a day; the week it lasted was just a succession of suppers with Cousin Tom, who delighted in seeing his younger cousins happy at night, if they were busy by day. On the Sunday we went to church together; like the sovereign, he always went to the established church of the country he was in -the most out-and-out of conservatives was Thomas Tytler, gent.--and would have supported the constitution in Rome or Constantinople; for conservation was neces sary to 'business.' As for the theory of the matter, he had none, but preferred the Church of England for its not being Scotch; while the Scotch service, on the other hand, had a wonderful effect on the appetite. Sunday, indeed, was the day on which he enjoyed his dinner; the landlord and his head-waiter brought in the never-failing roast-beef; and how Cousin Toni would take the opportunity of peeping under the cover while they were absent for a moment about the other dishes! The commercial-room was for ever deserted by him now, as the gig and mare had long been, and the former for the very sufficient reason that our cousin had taken a wife; and still more remarkable on both parts, that she invariably travelled with him. This was of all things that which he might have been expected not to do; since how he could have contrived to cast off all the various flames of his dashing bachelor life, and never chuck a chambermaid under the chin again, it was difficult to imagine. Yet Tom had done it, the sober element in him prevailing over the more mercurial; while, at the same time, Mrs Tytler, on a first acquaintance, seemed one of the least likely women to have caught him at last. If he ever did marry, it was thought the lady would be some rich, smart, fine Londoner, English at anyrate, and far too fine to leave her drawing-room if she allowed her husband to travel: indeed the thing was unique on the road, and somewhat invidious. Mrs Tytler was quiet, gentle, very plain in her dress, not remarkably pretty, a Scotchwoman, and she had no money: but our cousin knew his card in this as in other things, and all we wondered at eventually was the sagacity of his choice. His wife appeared made for a relief to his own humour, spirits, and dashing manner; she had a sort of instinct as to his weak points, and exquisite tact in humouring them: while Cousin Thomas walked up and down the room in a passion, or was cross and fretful, she sat quiet, smiling, or saying something now and then till he came round again. He consulted her on all questions of moment: her advice, Tom said, was wonderful; she saw into a customer, and knew the firm better than himself. She had the theory and imagination he wanted, and meanwhile had the air of a |