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assuredly it did so. Never could the typhus fever have found out that wild hill side, or have lurked under that broken roof. The free touch of the air would have chased the dæmon. Alas, poor Tom! warmth, and snugness, and comfort, whole windows, and an entire ceiling, were the death of him. Alas, poor Tom!

AN OLD BACHELOR.

THERE is no effect of the subtle operation of the association of ideas more universal and more curious than the manner in which the most trivial circumstances recall particular persons to our memory. Sometimes these glances of recollection are purely pleasurable. Thus I have a double liking for May-day, as being the birth-day of a dear friend whose fair idea bursts upon me with the first sunbeam of that glad morning; and I can never hear certain airs of Mozart and Handel without seeming to catch an echo of that sweetest voice in which I first learnt to love them. Pretty often, however, the point of association is less elegant, and occasionally it is tolerably ludicrous. We happened to-day to have for dinner a couple of wild-ducks, the first of the season; and as the master of the house, who is so little of an epicure that I am sure he would never while he lived, out of its feathers, know a wild-duck from a tame,—whilst he, with a little affectation of science, was squeezing the lemon and mixing Cayenne pepper with the gravy, two

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of us exclaimed in a breath, "Poor Mr. Sidney!"

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Aye," rejoined the squeezer of lemons, "poor Sidney! I think he would have allowed that these ducks were done even to half a turn." And then he told the story more elaborately to a young visitor, to whom Mr. Sidney was unknown;-how, after eating the best parts of a couple of wild-ducks, which all the company pronounced to be the finest and the best dressed wildducks ever brought to table, that judicious critic in the gastronomic art limited the too-sweeping praise by gravely asserting, that the birds were certainly excellent, and that the cookery would have been excellent also, had they not been roasted half a turn too much. Mr. Sidney has been dead these fifteen years; but no wild-ducks have ever appeared on our homely board without recalling that observation. It is his memorable saying; his one good thing.

Mr. Sidney was, as might be conjectured, an epicure; he was also an old bachelor, a clergyman, and senior fellow of ** College, a post which he had long filled, being, although only a second son, so well provided for that he could afford to reject living after living in expectation of one favourite rectory, to which he had taken an early fancy from the pleasantness of the situation and the imputed salubrity of the air. Of the latter quality, indeed, he used to give an instance, which, however satisfactory as confirming his pre

possession, could hardly have been quite agreeable, as preventing him from gratifying it ;-namely, the extraordinary and provoking longevity of the incumbent, who at upwards of ninety gave no sign of decay, and bade fair to emulate the age of old Parr.

Whilst waiting for the expected living, Mr. Sidney, who disliked a college residence, built himself a very pretty house in our neighbourhood, which he called his home; and where he lived, as much as a love of Bath and Brighton and London and lords would let him. He counted many noble families amongst his near connexions, and passed a good deal of his time at their country seats-a life for which he was by character and habit peculiarly fitted.

In person he was a tall stout gentlemanly man, "about fifty, or by 'r lady inclining to threescore," with fine features, a composed gravity of countenance and demeanour, a bald head most accurately powdered, and a very graceful bow-quite the pattern of an elderly man of fashion. His conversation was in excellent keeping with the calm imperturbability of his countenance and the sedate gravity of his manner,-smooth, dull, common-place, exceedingly safe, and somewhat imposing. He spoke so little, that people really fell into the mistake of imagining that he thought; and the tone of decision with which he would advance some second-hand opinion, was well calculated to confirm the

mistake. Gravity was certainly his chief characteristic, and yet it was not a clerical gravity either. He had none of the generic marks of his profession. Although perfectly decorous in life and word and thought, no stranger ever took Mr. Sidney for a clergyman. He never did any duty any where, that ever I heard of, except the agreeable duty of saying grace before dinner; and even that was often performed by some lay host, in pure forgetfulness of his guest's ordination. Indeed, but for the direction of his letters, and an eye to *** Rectory, I am persuaded that the circumstance might have slipped out of his own recollection.

His quality of old bachelor was more perceptible. There lurked under all his polish, well covered but not concealed, the quiet selfishness, the little whims, the precise habits, the primness and priggishness of that disconsolate condition. His man Andrews, for instance, valet, groom, and body-servant abroad; butler, cook, caterer, and major domo at home; tall, portly, powdered and black-coated as his master, and like him in all things but the knowing pig-tail which stuck out horizontally above his shirt-collar, giving a ludicrous dignity to his appearance ;-Andrews, who, constant as the dial pointed nine, carried up his chocolate and shaving water, and regular as "the chimes at midnight," prepared his white-wine whey; who never forgot his gouty shoe in travelling, (once for two days he

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