carries us back to the recollections of some country-town or village-group— ‘We see the children sporting on the shore, And hear the mighty waters roaring evermore.’ A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas gambols long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be of a former date; and the dry toast eats very much as it did—twenty years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet, after being stifled with tinctures and essences; and we enjoy the idea of a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid. But a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb’s favourite, the _Journey to Lisbon_; or the _Decameron_, if I could get it; but if a new one, let it be _Paul Clifford_. That book has the singular advantage of being written by a gentleman, and not about his own class. The characters he commemorates are every moment at fault between life and death, hunger and a _forced loan_ on the public; and therefore the interest they take in themselves, and which we take in them, has no cant or affectation in it, but is ‘lively, audible, and full of vent.’ A set of well-dressed gentlemen picking their teeth with a graceful air after dinner, endeavouring to keep their cravats from the slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid things in the most insipid manner, do not make a _scene_. Well, then, I have got the new paraphrase on the _Beggar’s Opera_, am fairly embarked on it; and at the end of the first volume, where I am galloping across the heath with the three highwaymen, while the moon is shining full upon them, feel my nerves so braced, and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am scarce sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work and the author—have quite forgot my _Sick Room_, and am more than half ready to recant the doctrine that a _Free Admission_ to the theatre is —‘The true pathos and sublime Of human life’:— for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of men and the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most home-felt, the most heartfelt of all our enjoyments. FOOTMEN _The New Monthly Magazine._] [_September, 1830._