een at races; in demonstrating
that justice is a higher virtue than generosity; and in proving that
the avaricious are the true benefactors of society. But even as he
confesses the failure of his new magazine, he seems determined to show
the public what sort of writer this is, whom as yet they have not
regarded too favourably. It is in No. IV. of the _Bee_ that the famous
_City Night Piece_ occurs. No doubt that strange little fragment of
description was the result of some sudden and aimless fancy, striking
the occupant of the lonely garret in the middle of the night. The
present tense, which he seldom used--and the abuse of which is one of
the detestable vices of modern literature--adds to the mysterious
solemnity of the recital:--

"The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in
the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the laborious
and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt,
revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying
bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his
guilty arm against his own sacred person.

"Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity or the
sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where
Vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me--where
she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed
with her own importunities.

"What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow
gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant
watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten; an hour like
this may well display the emptiness of human vanity.

"There will come a time, when this temporary solitude may be made
continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and
leave a desert in its room.

"What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in existence, had
their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded; and, with
short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity
can hardly trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveller
wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, he learns
wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession.

"'Here,' he cries, 'stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds;
there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile;
temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished h