impolitic conduct; but all in vain.  It is curious, however, to reflect that what the people of a country town about ten years ago thought a curse to their roads should now be adopted in many of the principal London Streets.  The last we heard of our bookseller’s hobbies, was that he had bought the lease of a house for the sake of the large garden attached to it, and here, like Evelyn in his Elysium Britannicum, he passes his days in the primitive occupation of gardening.

Our bookseller is a self-educated man, and in some pamphlets on the charitable institution to which we have alluded, are many of the errors of style peculiar to self-educated writers.  Among his acquaintance we remember an attorney who practised in London, but had a small house in the town.  He had been editor and proprietor of four or five morning and evening newspapers, and furnished our bookseller with all the news off ’Change and about town.  This friend and the journals were his oracles, and their influence he digested in morsels of political economy, so introduced into his pamphlets as not to offend the landed gentry of the neighbourhood.  To them, it should be mentioned, he was a most useful personage, and his aid and auspices, were almost necessary to the success of any project for the interest of the town.  The trades-people looked up to him; they would agree if Mr. ——­ did, or they would wait his opinion.

We have heard that he has been a gallant in his time; and more than once he has told little stories of dances and harvest homes, and merry meetings at the wealthy farmers’ in the neighbourhood, of the moonlight walk home, and of his companions counting their won guineas on their return from an evening party—­all of which throw into shade the social amusements of our artificial times.  We have said that he kept a good table; for presents of game poured in from the gentlemen’s bailiffs in the neighbourhood, fish from town to be repaid by summer visits, and if the fishmonger of the place was overstocked, the first person he sent to was our bookseller.  Again, he would take a post-chaise, or the White Hart barouche, for a party of pleasure, when his neighbours would have been happy with a gig.  He did not join, or allow his daughters to mix with them at the tradesman’s ball, but they staid moping at home, because there was none between the gentry and trade.  Yet the professional and little-fortune people cried ——­ trade, and thus our bookseller belonged to neither class.  The people of the place know not whether he is rich; he has been “making money” all his life-time say they, but he has “lived away.”  It is, however, to be regretted that they cannot settle the point, since they determine to a pound the income of every gentleman and lady in the neighbourhood, and, doff their hats according to the total.

To sum up his character, he is just and sometimes generous; hospitable but not unostentatious; dictatorial and circumlocutory to excess in his conversation, and of an inquisitive turn of mind, and considering his resources, he is well informed and even clever in matters of the world; in short, he is a perfect pattern of the gentleman tradesmen of the present day.