two, with whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence.  These are James and Bridget Elia.  They are older than myself by twelve, and ten, years; and neither of them seems disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers.  May they continue still in the same mind; and when they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treating me in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling, or younger brother!

James is an inexplicable cousin.  Nature hath her unities, which not every critic can penetrate; or, if we feel, we cannot explain them.  The pen of Yorick, and of none since his, could have drawn J.E. entire—­those fine Shandian lights and shades, which make up his story.  I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grace and talent.  J.E. then—­to the eye of a common observer at least—­seemeth made up of contradictory principles.—­The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence—­the phlegm of my cousin’s doctrine is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high sanguine.  With always some fire-new project in his brain, J.E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier down of every thing that has not stood the test of age and experiment.  With a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic in others; and, determined by his own sense in every thing, commends you to the guidance of common sense on all occasions.—­With a touch of the eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not commit yourself by doing any thing absurd or singular.  On my once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so—­for the world would think me mad.  He disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the pretext of buying only to sell again—­that his enthusiasm may give no encouragement to yours.  Yet, if it were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral Dominichino hang still by his wall?—­is the ball of his sight much more dear to him?—­or what picture-dealer can talk like him?

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual humours, his theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition to his constitution.  He is courageous as Charles of Sweden, upon instinct; chary of his person, upon principle, as a travelling Quaker.—­He has been preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great—­the necessity of forms, and manner, to a man’s getting on in the world.  He himself never aims at either, that I can discover,—­and has a spirit, that would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of