A sketch:--the devouring of old country residences by the overgrown monster of a city. For instance, Mr. Beekman's ancestral residence was originally several miles from the city of New York; but the pavements kept creeping nearer and nearer, till now the house is removed, and a street runs directly through what was once its hall. * * * * * An essay on various kinds of death, together with the just before and just after. * * * * * The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after being seen, humble and cringing, in the streets of a city for many years, at length, by some means or other, gets admittance into a rich man's mansion, and there dies, assuming state and striking awe into the breasts of those who had looked down on him. * * * * * To write a dream, which shall resemble the real course of a dream, with all its inconsistency, its strange transformations, which are all taken as a matter of course, its eccentricities and aimlessness, with nevertheless a leading idea running through the whole. Up to this old age of the world, no such thing ever has been written. * * * * * To allegorize life with a masquerade, and represent mankind generally as masquers. Here and there a natural face may appear. * * * * * With an emblematical divining-rod, to seek for emblematic gold,--that is, for truth,--for what of Heaven is left on earth. * * * * * A task for a subjugated fiend:--to gather up all the fallen autumnal leaves of a forest, assort them, and affix each one to the twig where it originally grew. * * * * * A vision of Grub Street, forming an allegory of the literary world. * * * * * The emerging from their lurking-places of evil characters on some occasion suited to their action, they having been quite unknown to the world hitherto. For instance, the French Revolution brought out such wretches. * * * * * The advantage of a longer life than is now allotted to mortals,--the many things that might then be accomplished, to which one lifetime is inadequate, and for which the time spent seems therefore lost, a successor being unable to take up the task where we drop it. * * * * * George I. had promised the Duchess of Kendall, his mistress, that, if possible, he would pay her a visit after death. Accordingly, a large raven flew into the window of her villa at Isleworth. She believed it to be his soul, and treated it ever after with all respect and tenderness, till either she or the bird died. * * * * *