"Mem. To beware of praising too much or too often: risked my character the other day by speaking well of B's poems. Must remember that it is more creditable to a person's taste to discover a fault than a beauty. Shenstone said, good taste and good nature were always united --meant fastidiousness.

"Mem. To appear at Monday's ball without a neckcloth; to order an amethyst-coloured waistcoat, wear my arm in a sling, and sport bad spirits. "Mem.-To fall in love without loss of time: deep blue downcast-looking eyes, not vulgarly happy,- fond faint smile,'-' brow of alabaster;' -must celebrate her under the name of Laura; my own (of course) Petrarch.

"Mem.-Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian,' vol. i. p. 173, contains a passage which may be turned into some touching stanzas.

"Mem. To get a 'Walker's Rhyming Dictionary;' no degradation :-Byron used one constantly. His 'Dream,' by the way, strikingly resembles my Vision,' received with so much applause at our 'Juvenile Literary Society,' myself in the chair.

"Mem.-Determined to send Blackwood no more articles, particularly as he has inserted none of the last six; and told Z it would be better to bind me to some good thriving trade. A trade! bind myself to some little, low, paltry, sordid, shilling-scraping, penny-saving occupation, which would be as a benumbing light upon all the powers of my mind. There is madness in the thought! Suppose Shakspeare had taken his relations' advice, and continued a wool-comber, where

had been the world's poets? No! fired by this glorious example, I will calmly and proudly pursue the bent of my genius and inclination : the morning sun, and the midnight lamp, shall find me at my studies! I will write, though none may read; I will print, though none may purchase; and if the world's neglect canker my young spirit, and studious days and sleepless nights sickly my brow with the pale cast of thought,' till, like Chatterton, the marvellous boy,' I sink into an early and untimely grave!— how small the sacrifice! How glorious the reward! when the world, for which I toiled, become sensible of its injustice! and the marbled monument and laurelled bust

"Mem.-Prevented from finishing the above peroration by the forcible entrance of two villanous duns—a tailor and a washerwoman. May, nevertheless, introduce it as a soliloquy in my tragedy; for it possesses much of the sweep and swell of Burke."

But trusting that the reader is more than satisfied with the foregoing specimens of folly and foppery, I here close the Young Author's Memorandum-Book.

ANONYMOUS.

WOUTER VAN TWILLER.

THE renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam; and who had comported them

selves with such singular wisdom and propriety, that they were never either heard or talked ofwhich, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition to all sage magistrates and rulers.

His surname of Twiller is said to be a corrup tion of the original Twijfler, which in English means doubter; a name admirably descriptive of his deliberative habits. For though he was a man shut up within himself like an oyster, and of such a profoundly reflective turn that he scarcely ever spoke except in monosyllables; yet did he never make up his mind on any doubtful point. This was clearly accounted for by his adherents, who affirmed that he always conceived every subject on so comprehensive a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it; so that he always remained in doubt, merely in consequence of the astonishing magnitude of his ideas!

There are two opposite ways by which some men get into notice-one by talking a vast deal and thinking a little, and the other by holding their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, many a vapouring superficial pretender acquires the reputation of a man of quick parts— by the other, many a vacant dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be complimented, by a discerning world, with all the attributes of wisdom. This, by the way, is a mere casual remark, which I would not for the universe have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. On the contrary, he was a very wise Dutchman, for he never said a foolish thing;

and of such invincible gravity that he was never known to laugh, or even to smile, through the course of a long and prosperous life. Certain, however, it is, there never was a matter proposed, however simple, and on which your common narrow minded mortals would rashly deter mine at the first glance, but what the renowned Wouter put on a mighty mysterious, vacant kind of look, shook his capacious head, and having smoked for five minutes with redoubled earnestness, sagely observed, that "he had his doubts about the matter: "-which, in process of time, gained him the character of a man slow of belief, and not easily imposed on.

The person of this illustrious old gentleman was as regularly formed, and nobly proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, far excelling in magnitude that of the great Pericles (who was thence waggishly called Schenoce phalus, or onion head)—indeed, of such stupendous dimensions was it, that dame Nature herself, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his back-bone, just between the shoulders; where it remained as snugly bedded as a ship of war in the mud of the Potowmac. His body was of an oblong form, particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse

to the idle labour of walking. His legs, though exceeding short, were sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a robustious beer barrel, standing on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse perfectly unfurrowed or deformed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of every thing that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple.

His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller-a true philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly settled below the cares and perplexities of this world. He had lived in it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun; and he had even watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of those numerous theories, by which a philosopher would have perplexed his brain, in accounting for its rising above the surrounding atmosphere.

In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a huge chair of solid