whence we have such ridiculous inscriptions as "BOVILL and-127— Boys," which would lead us to suppose that the aforesaid Mr. Bovill's tailor's bill must be of alarming longitude, though perhaps less terrific than that of his opposite neighbour, who writes up-" THACKRAH and -219-SONS." Not less objectionable is the absurd practice of writing the name over the door, and the trade on either side, whence we have such incongruous combinations as- "Hat-CHILD-maker,"-" Cheese— HOARE--monger;" and a variety of others, of which the preceding will afford a sufficient sample. Among those inscriptions where the profession follows the name without any transposition, there are several that are perfectly appropriate, if not synonymous, such as, " BLIGHT & SON, Blind-makers :""Mangling done here," occasionally written under the address of a country surgeon :-"BREWER, Druggist,"-" WRENCH, Tooth-drawer," "SLOMAN, Wine-merchant,"-" WATERS, Milkman," &c. &c.—But on the contrary, there are many that involve a startling catachresis, such as, "WHETMAN, Drysalter,"-" ENGLISH, China-man," Rectifier of Spirits,""STEDFAST, Turner,"-"GoWING, Staymaker;" while among the colours there is the most lamentable confusion, as we have "WHITE, Blacksmith,"-" BLACK, Whitesmith,"-" BROWN & SCARLET, Green-grocers," and "GREY-Hairdresser," which would erroneously lead the passenger to suppose, that none but grizzled heads were admitted into the shop. While remedying these inconsistencies, the Society are entreated not to forget, that the Pavement now extends a full mile beyond what is still termed "The Stones' End" in the Borough; and that the inscription at Lower Edmonton, "When the water is above this board, please to take the upper road," can be of very little use, unless when the wash is perfectly pellucid, which it never is. On a shop-window in the Borough there still remains written, "New-laid eggs every day, by Mary Dobson," which the Society should order to be expunged as an imposition upon the public, unless they can clearly ascertain the veracity of the assertion. One of the declared objects of the Institution being the promotion of" loyalty in its genuine sense, not only of personal devotion to the sovereign, but of attachment to the laws and institutions of our country," I would point out to its indignant notice, the following inscription in High Holborn-" KING-Dyer," which is not only contrary to the received legal maxim that the King never dies, but altogether of a most dangerous and disloyal tendency." Parliament sold here," written up in large letters in the City-road, is also an obvious allusion to the imputed corruption of that body; and the gingerbread kings and queens at the same shop being all over guilt, suggest a most traitorous and offensive Paronomasia. I suspect the fellow who deals in these commodities to be a radical. Of the same nature is the indecorous inscriptions (which should have been noticed among those who place their names over the door), running thus, "Ironmongery-PARSONSTools of all sorts;" while in London-wall we see written up, "DEACON & PRIEST, Hackneymen." A Society, which among the twentyseven published names of its council and officers, contains one Bishop, two Archdeacons, and five Reverends, cannot, out of self-respect, suffer these indecent allusions to be any longer stuck up in the metropolis. 427 The French Academy having decided, that proper names should never have any plural, I would implore the Royal Literary Society to relieve the embarrassment of our footmen, by deciding whether they are authorized in announcing at our routs "Mr. & Mrs. Foor and the Miss FEET;" whether Mr. PEACOCK's family are to be severally designated as Mrs. PEAHEN and the Miss PEACHICKS; and also what would be the best substitution for Mr. & Mrs. MAN and the Miss MEN, which has a very awkward sound. Concluding, for the present, with the request that the other gold medal of fifty-guineas may not be appropriated until after the receipt of my second letter, I have the honour to be, &c. &c. &a H. STANZAS. UNREAD, and poor, and basely born, Why do I suffer your caress? Your hopes are high, your friends would scorn Why do you of a cottage talk? I know your wishes climb above Your fortune ;-they with whom I walk, Honest!-Ah no! I own, my mother Content, my maiden pride, and youth, Marry!-I do not wish you should, Wed you some richer girl, whose face "Twere best if we had never met ;- In mercy go, while all is well, Or well for one,-before you share No pledge I give, or ask :-each tree J. F. THE GOOD OLD TIMES. AMONG the unreasonable and ridiculous prejudices which many people imbibe from those who go before them, is an admiration for old customs and things, and a belief in their surpassing excellence. I do not mean that feeling of love for our early years, and the melancholy affection we cherish for scenes of recollection, but the absurd credit which we implicitly give to certain crude notions of the advantages of the by-gone over the present time, in respect to religion, virtue, honour, talent, and so forth. Nothing modern can be good. Every recent improvement is an unwarranted innovation upon the sacred system of the past. Every scheme projected for the public benefit, every new invention, is the butt of censure and the object of a sneer. Instead of examining the practical usefulness of a recent discovery, or the rationality of an argument per se, the one, it is alleged, cannot answer because it is unlike any thing that has preceded it, and the other is contrary to former opinion, and cannot therefore be right. It is almost ludicrous to listen to the eternal encomiums lavished upon what the present age can know nothing about but by hearsay and tradition. If we are to believe these allegations, we have had the misfortune to be born in the most unfortunate era of the world; when every thing relative to man has fallen to the lowest ebb. We are even a puny generation in stature, compared with our gigantic forefathers, whose longevity and strength at least doubled that of their ill-starred posterity. The moral depravity of the age is another theme of depressing comparison, echoed from the Rev. Mr. Irving's chapel to the hall of Westminster, and back again. We are gone deeper into the stream of turpitude than any preceding generation-we are altogether abandoned to crimes of which our forefathers never dreamed, and to opinions of which their sagacity would have instantly shewn the fallacy-which they would have contemplated with abhorrence. In short, we are on the very brink of perdition. In literature, also, we are in a state of retrocession. To sum up all, our condition is truly pitiable, and the blindness of too many to the immeasurable superiority of the old state of society, is operating to effect our irretrievable ruin. Such it is to take things for granted, to assent to received notions without examining them, to follow credulity instead of reason, and to be the incorrigible slaves of usage. This stays the ripening of many a useful discovery, protracting its perfection to a distant date; hinders the true policy of a nation from being followed up, and prevents legislation from keeping pace with the circumstances of the age. It is from the injurious prevalence of this folly that in our law courts, and even sometimes in the senate, we hear arguments maintained that are open to refutation by the humblest capacity that will give itself the trouble to analyze them. That agreeable fable of a poetic imagination, the "golden age," probably gave rise to this prejudice in favour of retrospective excellence. We so naturally feel an admiration for the good that is beyond our reach, and are so apt to invest it with fictitious splendour, that it is not wonderful a pleasant illusion should depreciate the value of present things below the brilliant visions of past excellence, which imagination colours so highly, and the dreams of future good, of which hope is for ever holding up to us the shadowy semblance. A dissatisfaction with the present, independent of any merits in the past, tends to attach to the latter no inconsiderable value, and is a latent cause of the disposition of which I complain. Reason, however, is the touchstone by which the truth must be elicited; and by having recourse to it we shall find that this prejudice is a senseless clamour, and that the same notion has been the burthen of complaint in every age of mankind. If there appear to have been some isolated advantages on the side of those who have gone before us, it should be recollected that we are obliged to credit their own story, that what they assert it is impossible we can controvert, when it relates to such a remote era, and that even the colouring of history is oftener laid on after the taste of the artist than with the correct pencil of truth. Still though we must judge by the accounts thus transmitted to us on the testimony of the interested party, even then I contend, that the charge is groundless, and that the moderns have, in almost every respect, the advantage. For some hundred years past there has been a progression in civilization, and human comforts have increased. I will not go beyond our own country, as it is more especially our forefathers who were so marvellously superior to their descendants; and I find, judging from the mass of evidence before us, that we have gained immeasurably upon what preceded us. Three wonderful inventions-gunpowder, printing, and the steam-engine, are alone sufficient to have thrown into the back-ground all of which our ancestors could boast. Of these, the press, in its modern state of freedom, is perhaps the most important, because it operates to prevent the world's retrocession in knowledge. Had the works of all the ancient writers been rendered eternal by this art, and been dispersed innumerably among the nations, the downfall of the Roman empire would never have been followed by the obscurity of the dark ages, as they are denominated. However the reins of empire might have been disposed of, the intellectual improvement of man would have increased. Enlightened nations, since the invention of printing, may suffer changes, and a temporary loss of liberty, but it will only be to arise out of their slumber, and, by shaking off the yoke, to become more free and powerful than before-to stand, like the aroused lion, invincible in their own strength. The time, however, which these changes may take in operating must depend upon contingencies; I only mean to assert what must be the ultimate effect, the final result. Away, then, with the foolish notion that we are retrograding from the superiority of some departed and undefined period. The present may not be the best of all possible times, but is infinitely better, as a whole, than any that have gone before it. There are a greater number arrived at a high pitch of mental culture. There may be fewer Bacons, Miltons, Shakspeares, and Newtons, to attract by their sole refulgence the dazzled eyes of the world, but the aggregate of knowledge is dispersed far wider than it was in their time. Thousands have approximated, of late years, nearer to the summit, distant as it may be, on which these immortal men stand, than could be found a hundred years ago. There are more who read and reflect now than ever; there are fewer now who will take the ipse dixit of another upon any subject of importance without thinking something about it themselves. Hence the diminution of credence in popular superstitions, ancient dogmas, and the absurd legends of priestcraft. In the "good old times" so much deplored, one Bible, after it was permitted to be read in the vernacular tongue, was chained to a desk lest it should be stolen, and served for the use of a whole parish. Before this period the book of the Christian's faith was not suffered to be read by the people, but was explained to them by artful ecclesiastics, who made it the means of rivetting the chains of temporal authority under the terrors of spiritual denunciation. Now it is placed in the hands of all without comment—a measure perfectly consistent with the object of a book which is designed to direct men to a better life by its own simple guidance. Let the political economist contrast the vast resources of the nation now with what they were a few centuries ago, when England had a population of two or three millions, and her revenue was not a quarter of one. Let him exhibit the state of agriculture and commerce, and compare it with what it was when our houses were built with mud and wattles, and the floors were of the bare earth strewed with rushes; few having chimneys to let out the smoke, or glass in the holes designed for windows. Let the feudal system and its barbarous customs be compared with the present horror of vassalage, and the contempt for pretensions grounded on the tawdry emblazonments of the Heralds' College,—with the manly spirit of freedom, which will brook no insult from fellow-man, let his rank be what it may, and which the supeiror in rank and fortune is, owing to the better spirit of the age, equally restrained from offering to an inferior. Let the Border-robbers be stripped of the gaudy colouring in which the deceptious charm of antiquity and the magic pencil of Scott have arrayed them, and what were they but lawless barbarians deeply dyed in blood, rioting in the plunder of the defenceless? Let the scanty population on the estates of these worse than Old Bailey villians, be contrasted with the flourishing fields and the healthy population that is now seen upon the borders of England and Scotland. Where are the chains and dungeons of the old baronial castles, for ever in a state of vigilance against the assaults of desultory warfare?" the very halls of the justices of the peace," too, as Aubrey says, "dreadful to behold; the screen garnished with corslets, and helmets gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberds, brown bills, and bucklers ?" Let the whole empire, which the narrow intellect of the "good old times" was unable to look upon, but in numerous petty divisions with an endless diversity of interests, he contrasted with the unity of object and easy working of the busy whole at present. Rivers, on which a wicker fishing-boat was now and then seen moving amid a scene of solitary desolation, are now loaded with vessels. The ocean is covered with the commerce of the nation, and to make the circuit of the world is a mere every-day occurrence. What were the cock-boats and light vessels of our ancestors to our men-of-war ?— and the clumsy arms and system of former warfare, to those which have given battles more decisive weapons, mitigated the severity, and abridged many of the calamities of that human curse? The comparative advantage of ancient and modern times, in these respects only, is of itself a subject which would engross no little space, and might be rendered highly interesting. One thing is certain, that no one who is not insane will deny, that in these respects at least, we have left our forefathers in the "good old times" sadly in the back-ground. I am aware there are some persons, who, with imaginations of no common levity, form to themselves pictures of the most romantic out |