I'd have pictures and statues, with taste-- Such as ladies unblushing might view-- In my drawing and dining-rooms placed, With many a gem of virtu. My study should be an affair The heart of a book-worm to cheer-- All compact, with its easy spring chair, If I had a thousand a-year. A cellar I'd have quite complete With wines, so _recherche_, well stored; And jovial guests often should meet Round my social and well-garnish'd board. But I would have a favourite few, To my heart and my friendship _more_ dear; And I'd marry--I mustn't tell who-- If I had a thousand a-year. With comforts so many, what more Could I ask of kind Fortune to grant? Humph! a few olive branches--say four-- As pets for my old maiden aunt. Then, with health, there'd be nought to append. To perfect my happiness here; For the _utile et duloc_ would blend. If I had a thousand a-year. * * * * * MY UNCLE BUCKET. The Buckets are a large family! I am one of them--my uncle Job Bucket is another. We, the Buckets, are atoms of creation; yet we, the Buckets, are living types of the immensity of the world's inhabitants. We illustrate their ups and downs--their fulness and their emptiness--their risings and their falling--and all the several goods and ills, the world's denizens in general, and Buckets in particular, are undoubted heirs to. It hath ever been the fate of the fulness of one Bucket to guarantee the emptiness of another; and (mark the moral!) the rising Bucket is the richly-stored one; its sinking brother's attributes, like Gratiano's wit, being "an infinite deal of nothing." Hence the adoption of our name for the wooden utensils that have so aptly fished up this fact from the deep well of truth.