are encompassed by a wall, and entered by a handsome gateway, from a design by Inigo

Jones.

In closing this sketch, we record with pleasure our obligations for the greater part of its materials to the "Beauties of England and Wales," (volume 12th, part 2nd,) written, with all his accustomed taste and antiquarian information, by Mr. J. N. Brewer.

MY TABLETS

FOR THE MONTH OF JANUARY.

JAN. 1ST. It is a seasonable morning,-perfectly home-keeping,-this First of January, of the Year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Twenty-four: and as I nestle down by my library fire-side, with all my writing apparatus on the table at my elbow, and my whole stock of book-learning neatly ranged along the shelves around me, I mentally exclaim "Let me begin the year hopefully!" -Well, then, to set about it." Let me see," say I again, and at the same time mechanically elevate my spectacles to my forehead, as if those sight-preservers, as the makers call them, were in reality sight impeders; "Let me seeTIME should be improved!"—an axiom at once so novel and so true, that, proud of its discovery, my spectacles are replaced, and forthwith it appears, entry the first for the current year, upon the virgin white of my Tablets.

"TIME should be improved!"-but how?-it is an important question, even with me, whose chief occupation it is to scribble as my mode

of using or of wasting it. "I will scribble to some purpose," I next ejaculate, with something of an important air; and to accomplish this, I resolve, since the suspicion has crossed me that my Tablets for past years might have derived improvement from rather more consultation of my books and less of my imagination, that I will this year occupy them in greater measure with selections, appropriate to the times and seasons, such as my reading may best afford me. Truly, I will select "apples of gold," if I can find such: would I could hope to set them in a "net-work of silver!" But, ecce signum!

NEW-YEAR'S DAY.

The lively French, (as I discover in all gravity from authorities now lying before me,) contrive to make of this day something more than our phlegmatic dispositions will permit us to make of it: that is to say, because it is the first, they ingeniously fancy it must of necessity be the happiest day of the whole year. They devote it therefore to a round of visitings, embracings, congratulations, good wishes, and the presenting on all hands of sweetmeats, or bonbons. O! the millions of cards, embossed with devices as tasteful as they are numberless, that on this day circulate in Paris! By these the senders signify to the parties receiving them,

how much they value, or how greatly they wish to cultivate their friendship. And then the bonbons!-relative to which, Mrs. Plumptre, in her "Residence in France," so pleasingly tells us: the shops of the confectioners are dressed up the day before with looking-glasses, intermixed with festoons of silk or muslin, and branches of ribbands or flowers. The counters are covered over with a nice table cloth, and set out with cakes, sweetmeats, dried fruits, and bonbons, made up into pyramids, castles, columns, or any forms which the taste of the decorator may suggest; and in the evening they are illuminated for the reception of company, who come to buy their bonbons for the next day. Endless are the devices for things in which they are to be enclosed: there are little boxes or baskets made of satin, ornamented with gold, silver, or foil: balloons,-books,-fruit, such as apples, pears oranges:-or vegetables, such as a cauliflower, a root of celery, an onion;any thing, in short, which can be made with a hollow within to hold the bonbons. In these things, the prices of which vary from one franc to fifty, the bonbons are presented by those who choose to be at the expence of them; and by those who do not they are only wrapped in a piece of paper; but bonbons in some way or other must be presented.'

Such elegant trifling is characteristic of Le Jour de l'An in Paris, and yet more particularly, perhaps in the south of France. Let us now see how it is greeted by our northern neighbours the Scotch; and in truth it should seem, that no people upon earth have been wont to welcome it with broader mirth, or more unrestrained hilarity. Still, by numbers among them, the vigil of this day is celebrated with the utmost festivity, divested of its joyaunce alone by the anxiety with which the hour of twelve is anticipated by the juniors of each merry party. For at that hour-his step upon the very threshhold of the new year, and every sorrow thrown back upon the "bye-gane" one-the first foot, or favoured youth of each expectant lassie, is privileged to enter, and pour all his ardours into the salute with which he half smothers the blushing fair one. Careful has been the swain to take post at the door long ere the last stroke o'twal-lest a rival should anticipate him-and now, the object of his wishes delighting equally with himself in happy converse, the "gude New-year" goes gaily round, and the het-pint, we may readily believe, not less gaily. At a former period, one half at least of the middling and lower ranks in Edinburgh were totally unaccustomed to think of bed upon the New-year's vigil; but, having prepared