remonstrated with his profligate son on his reckless mode of poking the fire. No money could stand such an outlay for fuel.

66 Well, but father," said the spendthrift, "the weather is extremely cold, and what am I to do?"

"Do, sir! exclaimed the thrifty sire; "look here, sir, see what I do see what I endure to save fourpence." On which Mr. Skinpenny twitched the wristband of his shirt from below his cuff, and showed that the garment had been vigilantly guarded from the hands of the laundress for many a week. The pleasant part remains to be told the funeral of Skinpenny cost exactly one hundred pounds. We have only to add a wish, that, as his ghost seated itself in the boat of Charon, and after due chaffering paid its fare, the eternal waterman, ere he landed the thin shade, clapt into its hand the bill of Deathshead, Crossbones, and Company, for the burial of its flesh. To be doomed to read such a bill, and nothing but the bill, for a handful of ages, would, we conceive, be a very proper purgatory for the soul of a miser, who, shivering in rags whilst he lived, had been buried in fine linen and superfine black when a carcase.

There are some men, who, passing for dullards all their life, have had a joke at their funerals; they have, in anticipation, enjoyed their posthumous wit, and been content to live upon the humour of the future. It is only a short time since that we read of the funeral of an Italian wag, who gave it in strict charge, that certain torches, made under his own inspection, and carefully preserved for the ceremony, should be used in his funeral procession. The man died, the torches were lighted, the procession, composed of the sorrowing and the grave, was formed, and proceeded to the tomb. At a certain time, the torches having burned down to the combustibles, squibs, crackers, and other holiday fireworks, exploded from the funeral lights, to the fear and astonishment of the people. How often had the deceased, at the time a clod of clay, laughed and hugged himself at the explosion! How many times had he, in fact, enjoyed his own funeral! However, he must have died in good odour with the Church, or else, how easy for her cowled and bare-footed sons to have found in the squibs and crackers, a supernatural manifestation of the whereabout of the soul of the departed.

The Emperor Maximilian I. took, as we conceive, very unnecessary pains to show, when dead, the nothingness of human nature. He ordered his hair to be cut off, and his teeth to be ground to powder, and publicly burnt. He also ordered that his body, after due exposure, should be put into a sack of quicklime, covered with taffeta and white damask, laid in a coffin, and buried under the altar of St. George, in the church of the palace

of Neustadt; the head and heart of the Emperor being so situated that the officiating priest should tread upon them. This is the very trick of bigotry: the tyrant, during his life, walks over living heads and hearts, and thinks he makes all quit with heaven if he give his dust to be trod upon by Mother Church.

As we have dealt with melancholy, have written in the shade through several pages, we will wind up with a piece of humour which, were it generally followed, would, at least, have this good: --it would make needless funereal hypocrisy, and render burials ingenuous and truthful ceremonies. We quote from the "Choix des Testamens, Anciens et Modernes," this, the most wise and hearty last will of one Louis Cortusio, a doctor of Padua, dated 1418.

The testator forbids his friends to weep at his funeral on pain of being disinherited; and, on the contrary, appoints him who shall laugh the loudest his principal heir and universal legatee. Not a piece of black is to be seen in his house or in the church when he is to be buried; but both are to be strewn with flowers and green boughs on the day of his funeral. There is to be no tolling of bells; but his corpse is to be carried to church accompanied by fifty minstrels sounding their lutes, violins, flutes, hautboys, and trumpets; and "Hallelujah" is to be sung as at after Easter. The bier, covered with a shirt of different sparkling colours, is to be carried by twelve marriageable girls, clothed in green, and singing lively airs, to whom the testator leaves a dowry. Instead of torches, green boughs are to be carried by boys and girls wearing coronets of flowers, and singing in chorus. The clergy, with the monks and nuns (at least, those orders who do not wear black), to follow in procession. We have only to add (and we write it to the honour of the judicial powers of Padua), that the orders of the defunct were carried into effect. May the earth rest lightly on thee, Louis Cortusio!

We have but one quaint anecdote of an Undertaker: being, however, something in a kindred spirit to the humour of the doctor of Padua, it must be given. The Undertaker lost his wife. 'I wear black," quoth he, "for strangers; how shall I show my mourning for the partner of my bosom ?" A lucky thought fell upon the man of sables: he changed his garments of black for raiment of snowy white. From hat to shoes was the Undertaker clothed in candid array. We have heard of crows as white as whitest swans can they be crows that have lost their mates?

THE POSTMAN.

HERALD of joy-messenger of evil! Daily terror-hourly hope! Now, one deputed from the gods; and now, the envoy of pain, and poverty, and death. Each and all of these is the unconscious Postman. In the round of one morning he may stand at fifty thresholds, the welcome bringer of blessed news, the longhoped, long-prayed for carrier of good tidings, and the dismal tale-bearer, the ambassador of woe. The Postman deals his short, imperative knock, and the sound shall, like a fairy spell, as quickly call a face of hopeful gladness to the door: he passes to the next house, and his summons makes the anxious soul within quail and quake with apprehension. He is, indeed, a stout, a happy man, whose heart has never shrunk at the knock of the Postman.

We meet the Postman in his early walk: he is a familiar object, a social common-place, tramping through mud, and snow, and drenching rain, and withering cold, the drudge of all weathers; and we scarcely heed the value of his toil,-rarely consider the daily treasure of which he is the depository and the dealer forth. We speak of treasure in its highest meaning; eschewing all notice of bank notes, and bills, and cheques, wherewith the Postman is daily trusted: we confine ourselves to the more precious records of the heart; to the written communings of affection; the kind remembrances; the yearnings of the absent; the hopes of the happy; and the more sacred sorrows of the unfortunate. Look at that little bundle of letters grasped by the Postman. Who shall guess the histories that are there! -histories more deep, more touching, than many on the shelves of libraries; writing, albeit the authorship of the poor and ignorant, that in its homely truth shall shame the laboured periods of fashionable quill-cutters. Sally Robins writes home to say, that John Thomson is a very proper young man ; and that, if father and mother have no objection, she thinks she can persuade herself to become Mrs. Thomson. Give us that letter

P

for a piece of wholesome nature, a bit of simple feeling, before any set of three volumes by Lady Pickansteal, even with the illustration of her ladyship's portrait, built by Parris, with the hat, weeping willow, feather, bouquet, velvet and all to match. The Postman is the true publisher: his tales are verities; his romances, things of life: besides, in his case, though penned by right honourable ladies and gentlemen, the wares he deals in are delivered without any improvement by foreign hands to their readers. Thus considered, the Postman's diurnal budget is the history of much of human life; the written pictures of its hopes, wants, follies, virtues, crimes; of its pettiest and most fleeting ceremonies, as of its highest and most enduring aspirations. The Postman's packet is before us. In what close companionship are the lowly and the great! Here is a letter to his Grace, and over it a missive from Molly the scullion: look we immediately behind the duke, and we find the epistle of Dicky the groom. Try lower down: what have we here? The humble petition of an old constituent to a place-giving politician, backed by a letter from Epsom, penned by a professor of the thimble rig! What next? Alack, the profanation! Behind the pea-andthimble varlet, lies the pastoral note of the meek Bishop of Orangeton to a minister of state. In the rear of the bishop-oh, for a pound of civet!-lurks the agonising correspondence of a heart-stricken opera dancer. Here is a position-here a jumble ! Oh, for a peep at the contents of only two of the last three letters! That it should be felony to break a seal, and in spite of such provocation! Otherwise, what various views of life might we not enjoy from them? How beautifully should we find the trickery of the trading gambler relieved by the gentleness, virtues, and political piety of the senatorial bishop! True it is, that we have a sort of half-reverence for the professor of the pea-and-thimble, on account of the remoteness of his origin. It is not generally known (except perhaps, to losers,) that the pea-and-thimble man comes from the country of the crocodile, being, as proved by the learned Mr. Lane, descended from the sons of ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, their several letters opened, we know, we feel, that we should turn with disgust from the sharper of the race-course, to melt and glow with admiration at party episcopacy—at the lordly shepherd smelling of the imperial parliament.

But we have not time to go through all our Postman's bundle; we must not dwell among the lovers, lawyers, contrabandists, merchants, gossips, philosophers (for there shall, in so thick a budget, be one or two of such rare fowl), hucksters, sharpers, moralists, quacks and dupes, peaceably bound together by the Postman's string, and each and all waiting serenely for their

delivery. Looked upon as the emanations, the representatives of their separate writers, what a variety of purpose, what manycoloured means, and nearly all to arrive at the same common end! Could we have more curious reading, than by taking letter by letter, and so going through the whole Babel of contents? To light now upon the doating ravings of an absent swain, and now upon the peremptoriness of a vigilant attorney! Eternal love, and instant payment! Dim visions of Hymen and the turnkey; the wedding ring and the prison bolt! Next, to come upon the sinful secrets of the quiet, excellent, respectable man; the worthy soul, ever virtuous because never found out to unearth the hypocrite from folded paper, and see all his iniquity blackening in a white sheet! And then to fall upon a piece of simple goodness; a letter gushing from the heart: a beautiful, unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature ; a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth: a writing that, in the recollection that it leaves, shall be an amulet against the sickness of uncharitable thoughts, when judging man at his worst, remembering still the good of which he is capable. Yes, a most strange volume of real life is the daily packet of the Postman !

The letter-carrier himself may be said to be deficient of any very striking characteristic, any peculiar recommendation as a national portrait; in himself he is, indeed, a common-place; he is only for the time being elevated by our hopes and fears; only for the nonce the creature of our associations. We suffer the fever of anxiety for a letter, and the approaching Postman comes upon us a very different person from him who passed our window a week ago. In the intensity of our expectation, we almost make him a party to our gladness or our suffering: he has nothing for us, and inwardly we almost chide him for the disappointment; he seems leagued against us, and in our thoughts we reproach him for his unkindness. "Are you sure you have nothing?" we ask, as if almost petitioning his will to delight us; for a time, we seem to ourselves dependent upon his courtesy alone for a satisfying answer. We have a little story in illustration of the naturalness of this :

A late friend of ours had long expected a letter—it came not. Day after day, his handmaiden had seen the Postman pass the door. At length, the knock was heard that heart-awakening sound, when so desired-the Postman's knock! Betty flew to the door, and as she took the letter, with vehement reproach addressed the unoffending carrier :-" You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Betty; "you know you ought—a good-fornothing fellow ! "What's the matter?" asked the Postman,