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doors, bar the windows, and keep dangerous objects or instruments out of the way; or a cord may be affixed to As a the bedpost and the arm of the sleep-walker. general rule, the somnambulist should be taken to bed before being waked.

THE COURSE OF LIFE.

[Translated from a beautiful Spanish poem by Jorge Manrique, on the death of his father, quoted in the thirty-ninth volume of the Edinburgh Review.]

OH! let the soul its slumber break,
Arouse its senses and awake,
To see how soon

Life, with its glories, glides away,
And the stern footstep of decay
Comes stealing on.

How pleasure, like the passing wind,
Blows by, and leaves us nought behind
But grief at last;

How still our present happiness
Seems, to the wayward fancy, less
Than what is past.

And while we eye the rolling tide,
Down which our flying minutes glide
Away so fast;

Let us the present hour employ,
And deem each future dream of joy
Already past.

Let no vain hope deceive the mind-
No happier let us hope to find

To-morrow than to-day.

Our golden dreams of yore were bright,
Like them, the present shall delight-
Like them, decay.

Our lives like hasting streams must be,
That into one engulfing sea

Are doomed to fall;

The Sea of Death, whose waves roll on,
O'er king and kingdom, crown and throne,
And swallow all.

Alike the river's lordly tide,
Alike the humble riv❜lets glide
To that sad wave;

Death levels poverty and pride,
And rich and poor sleep side by side
Within the grave.

Our birth is but a starting-place,
Life is the running of the race,
And death the goal:

There all our steps at last are brought,
That path alone, of all unsought,
Is found of all.

Long ere the damps of death can blight,
The cheek's pure glow of red and white
Hath passed away:

Youth smiled, and all was heavenly fair;
Age came, and laid his finger there,
And where are they?

Where are the strength that mocked decay,
The step that rose so light and gay,

The heart's blithe tone?

The strength is gone, the step is slow,
And joy grows weariness and wo,
When age comes on.

Say, then, how poor and little worth
Are all those glittering toys of earth
That lure us here;

Dreams of a sleep that death must break.
Alas! before it bids us wake,

Ye disappear.

LAST CENTURY ECCENTRICITIES.

BEAU NASH.

ONE of the most remarkable characters who flourished in England in the early part of the last century, was Richard Nash, better known by the title of Beau Nash. This man's life presents us with an interesting specimen of the strange mixture of ability and folly, virtue and vice, which we occasionally see jumbled together in a single individual. Beau Nash was the son of a poor gentleman in Wales, who endeavoured to give him a good education; but there was a natural spirit of recklessness in the boy, which rendered all his father's well-meant schemes unavailing. After being withdrawn from college, young Nash entered the army as an ensign; tired of this, he next devoted himself to the study of the law; and, at length, tired of this also, he was saved from positive misery, by an event as fortunate as it was unforeseen. Hitherto, having paid extraordinary attention to the cultivation of gentility and an air of extreme fashion, he was reckoned a person every way worthy of filling the situation of master of the ceremonies at Bath; a place whose wells were beginning to attract crowds of visitors. Nash thus, about the year 1704, became one of the first beaux of an age in which foppery may be said to have had a place among what are called the fine arts.

Behold Beau Nash now at the summit of his glorysuperintending the arrangements of balls and concertssquiring ladies at the pump-rooms-bowing, grimacing, simpering, leering, to all around-dressed in powdered wig, bag, and sword, with hands ruffled and ringed like a Versailles courtier. With all this flummery and nonsense, Nash was a useful wretch. Bath could not have gone on well without him. All such watering-places are liable to the visits of improper characters, whom it is the

business of the master of the ceremonies to discover, and prevent from intruding into respectable society. Nash was an extraordinary adept in this kind of employment. He might have been called a living and breathing directory to the Peerage and Commons of the empire. He made himself acquainted with the rank and quality of almost every family in the British dominions. By this means he prevented a vast deal of animosity, and what the last-century authors designate spleen;' for he regulated place and precedence with the utmost nicety, soothed ruffled vanity, arbitrated in disputes, and repressed irregularities, which, had they been looked over, might have ruined the reputation of the wells. Under his auspices, Bath became the scene of summer recreation for all people of fashion, who bowed to him as a sort of sovereign over the various amusements of the place. The magistrates of the city also found that he was neces sary and useful, and took every opportunity of paying the same respect to his fictitious royalty that is generally extorted by real power. His equipage was sumptuous, and he used to travel to Tunbridge in a post-chariot and six greys, with outriders, footmen, French horns, and every other appendage of expensive parade. He always wore a white hat, and, to apologise for this singularity, said he did it purely to secure it from being stolen; his dress was tawdry, though not perfectly genteel; he might be considered as a beau of several generations; and, in his appearance, he in some measure mixed the fashions of the last age with those of the present. He perfectly understood elegant expense, and generally passed his time in the very best company, if persons of the first distinction deserve that title.

But perhaps the reader may inquire, what finances were to support all this finery, or where the treasures that gave him such frequent opportunities of displaying his benevolence or his vanity? To answer this, we must now enter upon another part of his character-his talents as a gamester; for by gaming alone, at that period of which we speak, he kept up so very genteel an

appearance. Wherever people of fashion came, needy adventurers were generally found in waiting. With such Bath swarmed, and among this class Nash was certainly to be numbered in the beginning; only with this difference, that he wanted the corrupt heart, too commonly attending a life of expedients: for he was generous, humane, and honourable, even though by profession a gamester. But whatever skill Nash might have acquired by a long practice in play, he was not formed by nature for a successful gamester. He was constitutionally passionate and generous. While others made considerable fortunes at the gaming-table, he was ever in the power of chance; nor did even the intimacy with which he was received by the great, place him in a state of independence. This was certainly a horrid condition of life, and could not probably have been endured by any man of understanding or independent feeling. To render Nash's means of living still more precarious and discreditable, a law was passed

this was in the reign of George II.-to suppress public gaming-tables; and in future the arbiter of the elegances at Bath had to depend principally on what he could pick up at private parties.

Never was there a more striking instance of imprudent generosity than was exemplified by Beau Nash. He was the best-hearted creature in the world; his purse was ever open to the distressed. No matter what were his own exigencies, or the claims upon him by creditors, he would at any time have emptied his pockets to save applicants from a state of unhappiness. As for being just before being generous, that was what he had not the most distant conception of. On one occasion, overhearing a poor beggar-man on the street say to his wife: 'How happy should we be had we ten pounds! that sum would make us right for life,' instantly his hand was in his pocket, and pulling forth the sum in question, presented it to the man, saying: "There is what you wantgo, be happy!' and hastened off without waiting to be thanked. On another occasion, he, in the same manner, and for a similar reason, gave a gentleman who had been

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