one vexation to another. Let them sail on what tack they please, they will make no way. The tide that bears onwards their competitors for fame or wealth, stagnates the moment they tempt it the gale slumbers, and their idle canvass shakes in

to tatters.

And a dismal voyage has it been to Gregory Hipkins the Unlucky. For ever has the current drifted him upon the unpropitious shoals and flats that lurked in his course, and at length left him in sorrow and seclusion, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," unless a kind friend or two, like the philosophical neighbours of Job that visited his dunghill to read him moral and economical lectures upon the misery, comes now and then to prove to me that I have brought it all on myself. Admirable judges of the game when the cards are down on the table! Has not Gregory Hipkins been invariably doomed to play in the losing seat? Oracles of retrospective wisdom, has not ILL-LUCK dogged him from his cradle-hounding him as the Fury did Orestes? The earliest memorials of his childhood, are they not of floggings vicariously inflicted for offences he was guiltless of sums extorted for broken windows on the mere presumption of being seen near the locus in quo pains and penalties suffered for plundering orchards, on no better proof than that of having passed close to the spot, or of an apple found in his pocket, however fairly purchased in market overt?

And in maturer life-what a serried phalanx of misadventures-minor calamities, petty mischances, you will perhaps tell me-but on that account, good sir, not the more tolerable. The greater ones may call up the fortitude that breasts the surge, and rides in triumph over it; but patience itself will sink under a prolonged struggle with the lesser but more importunate troubles that make up their want of power to crush, by their efficacy to sting and lacerate. Ridiculous it may seem to class them as grievances. Yet in the Manichæan conflict of man's life, it is by means of such auxiliaries, that the evil principle contrives to get the best of it. Repeatedly have I uttered the happiest impromptus,

which some trifling accident of proximity has stifled-sometimes at their birth, by the sudden flap of a door, or the instantaneous yell of a vociferous minstrel in the street-in one instance, by an old lady, who sneezed so inopportunely that the wittiest of bon-mots fell still-born from my lips. Never shall I forget

when dining with a party amongst whom I was particularly anxious to shine-a certain physician's making a forcible seizure of the best thing I ever said, and by mere jockeyship passing it off as his own-a fraud which the unlucky circumstance of his sitting next to me secured from. detection. In the meanwhile, I had the luxury of hearing the applause with which it was received, though placed to the Doctor's credit, the feelings of a gentleman forbidding me to put in a claim to it. At another time urged to dine at a public meeting by some charitable feeling little in unison with the state of my pocket, what was my chagrin, whilst I was detaching the half-guinea I had destined for my subscription from two guineas which I had grasped along with it, to see them, by reason of a sudden jerk from an awkward booby who sat next to me, all tumbling into the plate together, to the great delight of the collector, who carried about the unlucky recipient of my unintentional munificence! At other times, if allured by the less laudable motive of partaking in delicacies not often in my reach, I paid my guinea at the Albion, or at some other temple of good fare-the last fragment of the choicest delicacythe last spoonful of green peas in April for instance-was sure to vanish the instant I applied for it-or as I was disjointing "a gnarled and unwedgeable fowl," a duty which its accursed proximity forced upon me

my plate was sure to return from its bootless mission to the vol au vent, or the bécasse, for which I had kept it in abeyance.

By this time you will suspect, from my thus scoring the words of proximity, that there is some specific Hipkinean theory relative to LUCK, which I have mustered these incidents to illustrate. And so there is. Accurately speaking, perhaps, luck, good or bad, is not predicable of any human occurrence; every

change that happens to a thing, whether sentient or inanimate, being only explicable by the action of something external upon it. But the doctrine of the true church respecting luck is this-that your weal or woe depends on certain relative positions you hold involuntarily, or have chosen spontaneously, to that which is proximately the cause of that weal or woe. If, by your own free agency, your juxta-position to that which produces ill, has brought that ill upon you, you are the architect of your own misery. And of this, the world in its wonted tenderness to misfortune, will be sure to remind you. But if, wedged in by a coercive force of circumstances, which you could neither evade nor resist, you have been compelled into that disastrous proximity, you may call it, for want of a better term, ill

luck; it being the necessary disposition of things, to which your consent was never asked. And this is what, in all ages, mankind have understood by luck. It is the Fate of Homer, the din of the Greek Tragedy, the destiny that hunted down the house of Atreus-the necessity whose scythed chariot cuts down the hopes and prosperities of manthe irreversible decree, that went forth from the beginning, containing and controlling all things within its chain of adamant. This is the Hipkinean theory-nor has Hipkins the Unlucky found it without its uses. In sorrow, penury, the desertion of friends, and every circumstance of outward evil, he has called to mind the forced proximities of his lot, and derived comfort from the reflection.

In an evil hour, I chose the pursuit of the Bar. Without a friendly star, and guided only by the flickering taper of my own understanding, I scrambled over its rugged roads and through its deep sloughs-from practice to doctrine-from dry precedents and mishapen forms to some obscurely-perceived principle, that shot an uncertain ray on the chaos which they told me was the law of England. Happier circumstances would have given a happier direction, or at least more of system and regularity, to my studies. It is not true, oh ye assertors of general propositions, that poverty stimulates to exertion-it retards-it deadens exertion. It brings down the clear spirit from its ethereal aspirations to commune with gross and earthward cares. At length, however, I reach ed the Bar, the terminus a quo. Alas! the terminus in quem was dark and distant. The decease of the individual, two days after my call, who to that day had scantily supplied the indispensable expenses of my education from a stock which they had already exhausted, left me nearly in the condition that suggested Jaffier's bitter thanksgiving to heaven, that he had not a ducat. He was not my parent, nor did I ever know that I had one. The want, however, of

parental kindness I never felt, for he was in all other respects a parent, and all he had was expended upon my ill-starred ambition. On the 6th day of June, therefore, 1800, I awoke one fine morning in Trinity Term, with the sum of seven guineas in my pocket. It was a slender capital, but the last offices to my departed friend absorbed every reflection; nor was it till a week afterwards that I stared my actual situation in the face. In truth, it had a most repulsive look. I was drifting into deep water in a frail canoe, with scarce a pair of paddles to guide it; -no being who cared for me, and no" revenue but my good spirits to feed and clothe me."

This accursed profession too-requiring an outlay of money so far beyond my means, my dreams even, of obtaining;-but it was my choice

a boyish choice from which good advice might have diverted me. And here I cannot but recur to the first determination of my mind towards the Bar, partly because it shews what paltry accidents, at a given period of our existence, irretrievably dispose of the rest of it, and partly because it is illustrative of the aforesaid theory of CONTIGUITIES. Whilst yet a boy, I was on a visit to an old gentleman at Bedford, whose house

was closely, nay, inconveniently contiguous to the town-hall, the noise and clamour of the Assizes being heard distinctly in every apartment. This circumstance suggested to me, that I might as well hear the trial of a nisi-prius case, which had excited great expectation. I therefore squeezed myself in, and began to take some interest in the proceedings. One of the leaders of the Circuit was a prosy long-winded Sergeant, whose powers in addressing the Jury, and ease and impudence in puzzling and disconcerting an adverse witness, seemed, to my untutored apprehension, the perfection of forensic talent; and strange as it is, the voice and manner of this person retained their hold upon my judgment, long after it had become conversant with better models. I sate near enough to him, moreover, to discern the number of guineas marked on his brief. My youthful emulation was instantly in a blaze; and, Corregiolike, I said, I too will be a barrister! Thus I exclaimed in my foolishness --and thus my desires were blindly fixed upon the profession, that was the corner-stone of my evil fortunes. Yet though I began under all the discouragements of penury, I abated not one jot of heart or hope. I prided myself upon an excellent classical education, and upon this I had grafted a respectable stock of municipal lore. Nor was I a stranger to some internal convictions, that even with such unequal chances, I ought and therefore should, distance the greater number of my competitors. It was a most defective syllogism. For though my attendance in the Court was unremitted, term after term, I sat amongst the undistinguished occupants of the back row. Term after term, I answered the usual question of the Chief Justice"Any thing to move, sir ?" with "No, my Lord," and the usual bow. Term after term, I listened to the jests and playful allusions of my fellow-juniors, to our common want of success. Light of heart, and backed with the purses of friends and parents, they could afford to laugh. To me, it was the bitterest of ironies. I lived I knew not how, and was alike ignorant how I should live on the morrow. Westminster Hall, chilly sepulchre of the hopes

that blossomed in the paths of my early manhood! beneath thy cobwebbed roofs, how oft have breathed the sighs of plundered suitors-but oftener still, the subdued and stified sigh of the famished barrister pacing thy dreary pavement-the tear stealing down his cheek, as, with weariness of heart, he bethinks himself how he is to provide for the necessities of the day! Grave of my summer prospects, I have now left thee; but even now the pangs of that fevered state, half aspiration, half despair, (how much worse than fixed assured indigence,) still recur to me as the legend of some fearful dream!

One afternoon, (the morning had been consumed in one of those unrequited pilgrimages to Westminster Hall,) I was broiling my dinner at the homeless fire of my chambers, when a double rap interrupted my culinary labours. Having risen to answer it, with no great alacrity indeed, for I had few visitors but duns, imagine my surprise, when an attorney's clerk, walking into my room, laid a brief on my table, and a fee of six guineas, with the usual supernumerary half-crown for the clerk, and then hastily descended the staircase. Was it a dream, or, better late than never, had merit been discover. ed, or was it a mistake? The latter hypothesis was little to my mind, so I would not entertain it for a moment. I pretend not to describe what I felt. The returning springtide of hope and joy rushed through my frame. Ye, who endeavour to frame a conception of the feelings of a young barrister when his first brief greets his eyes,-abandon the task. They are not to be portrayed by any limner. Six guineas-precursors of hundreds more, hid in the prolific womb of the future-it was gladness even to ecstasy. My slenderness of purse had occasioned a long suspension of payment to my poor laun dress, she herself struggling with the ills of poverty, and a brood of little ones. I flew across the square of the Inner Temple to her humble abode, reckless of the pots of porter I overturned in my way, and too rapid in my flight to hear the execrations of those whose equilibrium I had unsettled. I threw into her lap four of the pieces so auspiciously vouchsafed to me, feasted upon the

gratitude with which she received them, and returned to my chambers to eat my meal, or rather to feed upon the folios of my brief, which I soon began to unfold, chinking at the same time the two remaining guineas, as they discoursed a music not the less eloquent to my feelings for the pleasing uses to which the four others had been applied. Treacherous satisfaction! xias vag. In about an hour, a brisk knocking announced an apparition I would gladly have exorcised into the Red Sea. It was the Attorney himself, to enquire about the brief which his elerk had delivered at my chambers, instead of the contiguous chambers, occupied by a barrister of some standing; but the youth had assured me he had been particularly directed to my chambers, and though there was no name of counsel on the back, it being no uncommon omission, I was satisfied that it had arrived at its right destination. When it was explained, however, by my new visitor, I made what I conceived every requisite apology, ingenuously avowing, as I placed the residue in his hand, the appropriation of four guineas, with a promise in a few days to repay him the deficiency. "Settle that matter," rejoined the churlish attorney," with Mr C. I shall

pay him the two guineas, and refer him to you for the rest.' I did not quarrel with the proposal, assured, that there was not a man of honourable feelings or decent manners at the English Bar who would think harshly of me for an innocent error. I was deceived. The English Bar contained many such persons, and no doubt does at this day. No sooner had the attorney left Mr C, than the latter rushed in, and, in no measured phrase, began abusing me for the "trick" I had played him. The word did not suit me, as he himself perceived by my instant application to the poker, which I intended making the arbiter of the dispute, had he not sullenly retired. His brutishness drove me to the expedient of pawning the only legacy of my deceased friend, a silver hunting watch, a resource of no mean use in the ways and means of one so unencumbered with wealth.

In itself the incident of the brief was insignificant, and so I considered it at the time. It proved afterwards a link in the chain of those inauspicious contiguities, which I call ILLLUCK. Their sinister influence on the fortunes of Gregory Hipkins, will not be denied even by those who reject his theory.

So far forth, ye impugners of the Hipkinean hypothesis, my conduct has not been my fate. Nor, perhaps, shall I be found more the accomplice of my own evil fortunes in the sequel. By some means hardly worth specifying, but chiefly through the kindness of one who himself wanted the little aid he imparted, I was enabled to join the Circuit. I arrived at Maidstone just as the Bar were sitting down to dinner, of course taking the lower end of the table, as became a decorous junior. To my infinite astonishment, however, my reception was a freezing one. No hand, as is usual on such occasions, was stretched out to greet me. It was clear I had incurred what might be called a professional proscription. How I had incurred it was a mystery. I ate my dinner notwithstanding, but no one, I observed, asked me to

join in a glass of wine, or addressed to me one syllable of discourse. This was perplexing, and I remained for some minutes in no very enviable state of feeling. Yet my own bosom knew no ill, and I shrunk not from the studied contempt of which I was the object. At last observing a barrister, whose looks I did not dislike, leaving the room, I followed him, trusting to find in him some sympathy for a young man, who had innocently fallen under condemnation, and besought him to explain the mystery.

"Mr Hipkins, is it possible," he said, "you should be unapprized of our determination after dinner to discuss your admissibility to the Circuit-table?"

"Admissibility! Is it called in question?"

"You will hear soon. It is the

awkward affair of a brief intended for the gentleman occupying the chambers next to your own, and the appropriation of the fee to your own

uses.

"Heavens! Am I accused of theft?"

"Whatever you are accused of, your defence will be heard; and if you are innocent, you have nothing to fear."

"Defence! Never will I make one," was my reply. "He who defends himself under such an imputation, half admits it to be just."

The barrister, not entering into my refinements, shrugged up his shoulders, and went his way. I retired also, with the twofold resolve to bid adieu to Bar and barristers, after I had obtained from the person, whose inauspicious proximity to my chambers had brought this persecution on my head, a written recantation of what he had said to my prejudice; it being clear that he must have spoken of me unfairly and untruly. Nor was it long before I obtained, in his own hand-writing, the attestation I demanded. In strength and size he was a Polyphemus, (as to manners, the Cyclops would have appeared a polished gentleman by his side,) and might have jerked me out of his window had he been so minded, but he quailed in every limb whilst he was writing and subscribing the document of his shame. This I instantly forwarded to the senior of the Circuit, by whom I was unanimously acquitted, and Mr C― severely stigmatized for his

baseness. Indeed, it was pure defecated malice on his part to throw so false a colouring upon an innocent mistake. The man died not long ago, unhonoured and undistinguished in his profession, and neither loved nor respected out of it.

And there is one, the gentlest of her kind, and sex, who having taken the liberty, which Alexander indulged to Parmenio, of peeping over my shoulder as I was recording this passage of my history, asks me in the tone of affectionate remonstrance, why I did not brave the enquiry with the pride and confidence of an innocent man? Friend of my later days prolonged by your cares-never may you know the ragged film out of which the world spins its judg ments! Dream on, dear creature, the dream that tells you they are swayed by justice and virtue. Other men, I admit, might have done so, and been acquitted, and taken a seat at the same board, stunned with congratulations on all sides from those whose hearts yearned to convict bim. Not so Gregory Hipkins, the Unlucky. His inward, his outward pride, the whole bundle of habits and opinions that make up his individuality-forbade it. He would have been an outcast from himself -a thousand times worse than exile from the whole herd of humanityhad he bowed to such a jurisdiction. Where moral infamy is the question, enquiry is conviction. Infinitely did I prefer having it supposed that I had done what I was accused of, than that I was capable of doing it.

FROM this time things went on with me indifferently. Days revolved, bringing on the usual changes in their round. The sterility of winter was succeeded by the second life of spring-but there was no second life to my black coat, which had arrived, through successive transmigrations of colour, at that dingy brown which is generally considered as its euthanasia. Was I to sink without an effort? I should not, indeed, have met with much interruption in so doing. The whole world was before me, and I might choose what hole or corner I liked to die

in. Indolence, for penury is naturally indolent and irresolute, came over me, or I might have tried my chance in the field of literary labour, which was not then overrun, as it is now, with half-pay officers and the literature of the quarterdeck. Yet I shrunk from the hemming and hawing of booksellers, editors, and critics, and gave up the notion.

To beguile unpleasant reflections, I occasionally heard the debates of the House of Commons, which, at that unreforming era were really worth listening to. Your ears were not then shocked with the coarse Lan