Sen. Thank you for the hint, Sir; the Library itself shall find us a subject: let us try whether lites rary enjoyments ought to rank at all higher than any of the preceding. I must inform you that, during the intervals between my late delightful visits, I have generally fled for refuge to the book, or the pen ; and if you have been at all in the practice of depending upon the same supports, and found them as miserably fallacious as I have, we shall have no difficulty in lengthening the list of our Groans, from this source.

Tes. None:-I never, yet, took up a book that I did not in five minutes afterwards, fling to the other end of the room; nor a pen that I did not split up to the feather against the table, before I had written two lines with it. Books, and Pens, then by all means, for our next theme; I defy the good old dame who vented her spite against reading and writing, for having brought her son to the gallows, to bear them more ill will than I do. Tomorrow morning, then, I beg we may talk over our studies, together, in my library aforesaid.

Sen. Well proposed:-you may expect me.

DIALOGUE THE EIGHTH.

MISERIES OF READING AND WRITING.

TESTY, SENIOR AND JUNIOR.-SENSITIVE.
(TESTY'S HOUSE AT HIGHGATE.)

Testy. [Throwing the book which he had been reading into the fire, as he sees Sensitive enter.]

GET you gone, and be burnt, for your pains! Here, Sensitive, take a misery warm from the heart, while I am still suffering under it ;-I will follow it with a cluster of others.

GROAN 1. (T.)

Reading over a passage in an author, for the hundredth time, without coming an inch nearer to the meaning of it at the last reading, than at the first;-then passing over it in despair, but without being able to enjoy the rest of the book, from the painful consciousness of your own real or supposed stupidity.

2. (T.)

As you are reading drowsily by the fire, letting your book fall into the ashes, so as to lose your place, rumple and grime the leaves, and throw out your papers of reference; then, on rousing and recollecting yourself, finding that you do not know a syllable of what you have been winking over for the last hour.

In reading a new and interesting book, being reduced to make a paper knife of your finger.

L

4. (T.)

Unfolding a very complicated map in a borrowed book of value, and notwithstanding all your care, enlarging the small rent you originally made in it, every time you open it.

Sen Apropos of maps :

5. (S.)

Hunting on a cold scent, in a map for a place-in a book for a a passage-in a variety of Dictionaries for a word :-clean thrown out at last.

6. (S.)

Reading a comedy aloud, " by particular desire," when you are half asleep, and quite stupid.

7. (T.)

In attempting, at a strange house, to take down a large book from a high, crowded shelf, bringing half the library upon your nose.

8. (S.)

Mining through a subject, or science, "invità (or rather erosá) Minerva,”-purely from the shame of ignorance.

9. (S.)

Receiving "from the author," a book equally heavy in the literal, and the figurative sense; accompanied with entreaties that you would candidly set down in writing, your detailed opinions of it in all its parts.

10. (S.)

Reading a borrowed book so terribly well bound, that you are obliged to peep your way through it, for fear of breaking the stitches, or the leather, if you fairly open it; and which, Consequently, shuts with a spring, if left a moment to itself.

11. (T.)

Yesor, after you have long been reading the said book close by the fire, (which is not quite so ceremonious, as you are about opening it,) attempting in vain to shut it, the covers

violently flapping back in a warped curve-in counteracting which, you crack the leather irreparably, in a dozen places.. 12. (S.)

On taking a general survey of your disordered library, for the purpose of re-arranging it—finding a variety of broken sets, and odd volumes, of valuable works, which you had supposed to be complete;—and then, after screwing up your brows upon it for an hour, finding yourself wholly unable to recollect to whom any one of the missing books has been lent, or even to guess what has become of them; and, at the same time, without having the smallest hope of ever being able to replace them.-Likewise,

13. (S.)

Your pamphlets, and loose printed sheets daily getting ahead, and running mountain high upon your shelves, before you have summoned courage to tame them, by sorting and send ing them to the binder.

14. (S.)

As an author-those moments during which you are relieved from the fatigues of composition by finding that your memory, your intellects, your imagination, your spirits and even the love of your subject, have all, as if with one consent, left you in the lurch.

15. (T.)

In coming to that paragraph of a newspaper, for the sake of which you have bought it, finding, in that only spot, the paper blurred, or left white, by the press; or slapped over with the sprawling red stamp.

16. (S.)

Reading newspaper poetry ;-which, by a sort of fatality which you can neither explain nor resist, you occasionally slave through, in the midst of the utmost repugnance and disgust. 17. (S.)

As you are eagerly taking up a newspaper, being yawningly told by one who has just laid it down, that" there is nothing

in it."-Or, the said paper sent for by the lender, at the mo

ment when you are beginning to read it.

Having your ears invaded all the morning long, close at your study window, by the quack of ducks, and the cackle of hens, with an occasional bass accompaniment by an ass.

Tes. So much for the joys of Reading ;-now for those of Writing; most of which, by the bye, I experienced in minuting down the very items I am going to read to you :----

19. (T.)

Writing a long letter, with a very hard pen, on very thin, and very greasy paper, with very pale ink, to one who you wish-I needn't say where.

the

Sen. Stay; I have another reading distress, of which I am reminded by seeing Mrs. Testy at her novel :-when I have finished it, I will give up writing miseries to you; for you seem to have prepared yourself under that article, and I have not.

20. (S.)

On arriving at that part of the last volume of an enchanting novel, in which the interest is wrought up to the highest pitch -suddenly finding the remaining leaves, catastrophe and all, torn out.

Tes. So much the better-novels, indeed!-besides, as the leaves of a novel are good for nothing that I can see but to set the reader a whimpering, why, the loss of them would answer the end just as well: for there you have a “ hiatus valdè deflendus.”—And sø now, with your leave, I will go back to my Writing.