and went on to the romance of Heliodorus, Theagenes and Chariclea. This, as he affirmed, opens with a pastoral landscape equal to Claude, and in it the presiding deities of Love and Wine appear in all their pristine strength, youth and grace, crowned and worshipped as of yore. The night waned, but our glasses brightened, enriched with the pearls of Grecian story. Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like another Endymion, in the pale ray of an half-extinguished lamp, and starting up at a fresh summons for a farther supply, he swore it was too late, and was inexorable to entreaty. M— sat with his hat on and with a hectic flush in his face while any hope remained, but as soon as we rose to go, he darted out of the room as quick as lightning, determined not to be the last that went.—I said some time after to the waiter, that ‘Mr. M— was no flincher.’—‘Oh! Sir,’ says he, ‘you should have known him formerly, when Mr. H— and Mr. A— used to be here. Now he is quite another man: he seldom stays later than one or two.’—‘Why, did they keep it up much later then?’—Oh! yes; and used to sing catches and all sorts.’—‘What, did Mr. M— sing catches?’—‘He joined chorus, Sir, and was as merry as the best of them. He was always a pleasant gentleman!’—This H— and A— succumbed in the fight. A— was a dry Scotchman, H— a good-natured, hearty Englishman. I do not mean that the same character applies to all Scotchmen or to all Englishmen. H— was of the Pipe-Office (not unfitly appointed), and in his cheerfuller cups would delight to speak of a widow and a bowling-green, that ran in his head to the last. ‘What is the good of talking of those things now?’ said the man of utility. ‘I don’t know,’ replied the other, quaffing another glass of sparkling ale, and with a lambent fire playing in his eye and round his bald forehead—(he had a head that Sir Joshua would have made something bland and genial of)—‘I don’t know, but they were delightful to me at the time, and are still pleasant to talk and think of.’—_Such a one_, in Touchstone’s phrase, _is a natural philosopher_; and in nine cases out of ten that sort of philosophy is the best! I could enlarge this sketch, such as it is; but to prose on to the end of the chapter might prove less profitable than tedious.—