Would I could have done so much for cats: as it is, I am compelled to confine myself to the slight protection I can individually afford them, and the shelter and subsistence consequent on a bachelor's fireside. Dogs too long have had their day, and been the objects of a blind spirit of favouritism. It is now surely high time that a balance should be struck between them and their more philo

it is said, for the manufacture of the celebrated Bologna sausages. The first victim which met his eyes, and the legs of which came dangling into the boat, produced a violent exclamation. I took no notice of it at the time, but perceiving him suddenly silent, I turned round, and found the tears rolling down his cheeks. His sensibility was destined to severer trials: every mile that we came nearer to the capital, the number of dead asses increased. He begged to be put on land,—his wishes were complied with: he walked to the next station, and arrived time enough to save one or two of these animals. The same interference had the same success a little lower down; and, before we could reach Venice, we had no less than four asses on board, all rescued from the knife of the executioner. We now landed, but had scarcely left our boat, when my uncle was asked how much he

sophic and unpretending rivals. And when, after the turmoils, and heart-burnings, and strifes, and jealousies of this long and bitter day of life, a man sits down by his nook in the evening, and his eye falls from the expiring firebrand and flickering flame, upon the concentrated and meditative air, the round and sleeky back, the velvety paws, gathered soberly within each other, and the eyes, now

would sell them for, by an aged butcher; who, imagining him an ass-merchant in the same Bologna trade as himself, and wishing to profit by the opportunity, thought such a question the most natural and civil in the world. My uncle's indignation was at its utmost, but it was not till long afterward that I heard it burst forth in all its anger. He then satisfied himself with turning suddenly, and exclaiming in a stifled tone-" And this is a country they call civilized!" Since that period, he transferred his affection, though slowly, to cats; and his maid informed me, on my arrival at Florence, that they formerly travelled in his company; but of late years, unwilling to harass his own unnecessarily, he seldom removed them from home, but hired, instead, one or two others in the neighbourhood as their substitutes, during his short excursions to Pisa, Sienna, &c.

shutting, and now opening, for thought and pleasure, and then listeneth to the purring, and all that its continued and slumberous music may lap about the heart;-when a man seeth, and heareth, and feeleth, these things, as a reasonable being ought, surely it is impossible for him not to exclaim, and that involuntarily, out of the mere spur and spirit of the moment-Here, indeed, it is, and all at once; all that the Stoics have desired, all that the Epicureans have imagined, the summum bonum, the To ayalov;-the totum teres atque rotundum of their philosophies, in tangible and visible shape and practice. Yes! Micietto! (for that is the name of my elder cat,)* I have learnt more content and resignation from thy unpreached and unwritten lessons, from the soft chiding of thy voice, and the gentle stoicism of thy unwrinkled and imperturbable visage, through evil and through good-through winter and summer

* Micietto was still at Florence on my arrival, but so old and doting, I was obliged, out of charity, to hang her up.

-by bad fires and good fires and no fires at all, than from all the dictamina of the ancient schools, or the pert indifferentism of the modern.

Next to my cats, I esteem my arm-chair, which once belonged to an octogenarian prelate of the family Corsi, and might have been as old as the Republic and Machiavelli. It was originally of red damask,—so covered, perhaps, from a vain expectation of the purple; but, like many other over-sanguine men, the expectant died hoping, and the prelate never rose higher than the prebendary and his stall. I thought the colour an evil omen, and changed it to yellow, which is grave, contented, and saturnine. My yellow armchair is now my better half; it hath been my inseparable, the constant companion of my griefs and joys, for twenty long years and more; it sympathizes without murmuring, consoles without exacting, and bears my burthens and sorrows without disturbing my pleasures, a praise, I much fear, which cannot be bestowed on half the companions,

male or female, going, not excepting my own Griselda. It is here I have lived, and here I hope to die,—and, in the last codicil to my will, (for I make a practice of revising or adding to it every year, a little before the spring equinox,) I have requested that it should be buried with me--if not in the same coffin, (which may be difficult,) at least in the same tomb. To this quiet suggester of my inspirations, I owe most of my opinions, comic and tragic, tragi-comic, pastoral, political, and politico-economical. It is my

best persuader to all good things, and requires no discount for what it lends me.

As to my place in the literary world, I am not a stickler for etiquette, and care not who goes before me, provided I sit down at the feast; well knowing, that he who humbleth himself shall be exalted, and that critics know as little the taste of the golden fruits of literature, as the dragons who guarded the gardens of the Hesperides.

My political opinions have changed thrice, but whose have not? The wigs of some people