"You go not, till I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you."

The most silly, and at the same time, the most obnoxious of all human beings that are permitted to exist in respectable society are those who move, and live, and have their being on the opinion of others. There are some men completely constituted by nature for little mental exertion, whose brain, after death, would exhibit as little organic character as that of a poll parrot. Like this garrulous bird thesubject of my present sketch, in many respects, bears a striking resemblance. Tattle is a species of this genus he is a puny imitator; but Echo is the most complete reflector of sound without sense, I ever yet met with. In the morning he delivers the budget he

has gorged his memory with over night; and in the evening with that which he has picked up through the day, to give place to a new load. The first time you happen to fall into the company of Echo you would be apt to take him for a mighty pleasant sort of fellow; but when you hear retailed every thing that you may have dropt for the gratification of your hearers, in his presence, you begin to find that your words are not mere evaporations in the "desert air,” but that they have a "local habitation and a name.' Sometimes, in fact, a second Echo has caught the sound, and you begin to find your own children under the care and parental tenderness of a father who can obtain none of his own. Disguised they are ; as gipsies' starvelings, but none who know the qualifications of Echo allow him the credit of his adopted offspring. Echo blunders in telling stories like the celebrated Goldsmith, who, when he was told the pleasant joke about taking pease that were not green to Hammersmith because that was the way to Turnham Green, must needs play his joke off at the expense of the waiter, where he and his friends dined, on the occasion of his being put in possession of, and so tickled with this piece of wit. The wags, his companions, assisted in the joke, by ordering brown instead of green pease, and when the dish was uncovered, the enraptured bard's fancy o'er-stepped his memory and absolutely told the waiter to "Take 'em to Turnham-green!"

What shall I do with them there, sir,' inquired the curious waiter.

"Because," said the bard, "that's the way to HammerHere he discovered he had fairly

spoilt the fun. he at last laboured out," for that is the way to Turnham Green." No man excels in every thing-it was thus with the ingenious Goldsmith: he had not the knack of telling a story-though he has written stories, which, for excellence of language and points of humour cannot be surpassed. But our friend Echo is a man of very different calibre. When Echo is so fortunate as to fall in with a great man, he does not fail to reiterate his sayings for the fortieth time. But when he passes other men's sayings for his own he sticks so closely to the original that he fathers their faults and prejudices as he would their prudence and wisdom. If a naughty fellow wished to give as much publicity to a scandal as he could by public advertisement, tell it to Echo: he is the best post-horn in the parish he is the Entelligencer's intelligencer: he does not speak worse English than Tattle writes, and he, Tattle, finds him very convenient in his way, especially as Echo is a sort of rambling itinerant,— Like mendicant, whose business 'tis to roam, Makes every other's but his own his home.

"Take 'em to Hammersmith, sir,'

Their

Half the inventions of the parish are manufactured by the old and experienced firm of Tattle and Co. who, like the Great Unknown, find it both prudent and convenient to say 'stat nominis umbra.' fictions are destitute of wit, and are therefore pure malice; and a fiction, destitute of both wit and fancy and not enlivened by the smallest scintillation of any kind, is dull and intolerable. "There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as religion," says the eloquent Junius; but, when you find a cool, calculating slanderer secretly poisoning the channels of

private life by insinuations that he dares not avow, one is apt to consider him as a demoniac, and scarcely one grade above the miscreants he employs to insult the public. Such are Tattle and Company's qualifications, and such the dangerous consequences of an Echo of men's opinions without discrimination.

Biography.

ECCENTRIC CHARACTER.

Mr. John Oliver, the eccentric miller, of Highdown-hill in Sussex, born in 1710, died lately at the age of 83 years. His remains were interred

near his mill, in a tomb he had caused to be erected there for that purpose near thirty years ago, the ground having been previously consecrated. His coffin, which he had for many years kept under his bed, was painted white; and the body was borne by eight men clothed in the same colour. A girl about twelve years old read the burial service, and afterwards on the tomb, delivered a sermon on the occasion, from Micah, chap. vii. ver. 8-9, before at least two thousand auditors, whom curiosity had led to this extraordinary funeral. The great concourse of people present occasioned some rioting, which but ill accorded with the solemn ceremony. The deceased, notwithstanding his eccentricity, was a man of good moral character, and a liberal benefactor to the poor in his neighbourhood. His tomb is covered with passages from Scripture, and hieroglyphical figures.

John Richards, á Blind Man.-As satirists of all ages, with writers of every description, who have much claim to a knowledge of human nature, have paid so much attention to the mendicant tribe, as frequently to attempt the delineation of their characters, and even to decypher their slang or lingo, in which Mr. Francis Grose has eminently succeeded, following their steps; especially as the person before

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us had some time since caught the attention of an artist; to aid the pencil with the pen, we probably need only to remind our readers, that, till within a very short period, they may have recollected the above figure very frequently about the street of the metropolis; his motion continually upon the see-saw, ballads in his hand, and his tones between high and low, the former resembling the braying of an ass, and the latter the grunting of a hog; his head was always in motion, and might have reminded one of Sir Archy Macsycophant's booing and booing: his feet, however, were so slow in their progress, that he would be sometimes nearly a day in pacing a street's length. The charity he had bestowed upon him, was certainly not given him as a retaining fee; but rather to get rid of a dissonance and a discord, which, together. with his own squalid figure, were as disgusting as can well be imagined. Like several of his fraternity, not a word he uttered was intelligible; but with all these disagreeable qualities, as he had a bag slung before him for alms, he had certainly established a walk, where he collected what has been called skran and brass knocker; a portion, or the whole of which, is generally disposed of on an evening, at the public houses used by the mendicant or begging tribe, to poor women, who came there for the purpose of purchasing, while these pretended objects of charity, order fowls, geese, &c.; and, at one time, frightened one of their betters, an Alderman and Brewer of London, who accidentally dropped into their company; by calling for an Alderman hung in chains, for their supper! viz. a turkey roasted with pork sausages! At these evening meetings, when all restraints, viz. lame legs, bandages, crutches, and plaisters are laid aside, and the pleasures of the bowl are sought, to drown the cares of the day, this John Richards, who was regarded by his competitors in the cringe, as a queer file, was nevertheless so far from a bad chaunt or singer, that he was frequently called upon from the chair to amuse the company.But he was not the only one, who, after being in the practice of a self-denying silence all day, rioted in a