rring to it, till,
maddening with desire, (desire I cannot call it,) with wilfulness
rather,--without appetite, (against appetite, I may call it,) in an evil
hour I reached out my hand, and plucked it. Some few rain-drops just
then fell; the sky, from a bright day, became overcast; and I was a type
of our first parents, after eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself
naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit,
whose sight rather than savor had tempted me, dropped from my hand,
never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me
but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of Genesis, translated
apple, should be rendered peach. Only this way can I reconcile that
mysterious story.

Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and valuables, longing
to pluck, without an idea of enjoyment further. I cannot reason myself
out of these fears: I dare not laugh at them. I was tenderly and
lovingly brought up. What then? Who that in life's entrance had seen the
babe F----, from the lap stretching out his little fond mouth to catch
the maternal kiss, could have predicted, or as much as imagined, that
life's very different exit? The sight of my own fingers torments me,
they seem so admirably constructed for--pilfering. Then that jugular
vein, which I have in common----; in an emphatic sense may I say with
David, I am "fearfully made." All my mirth is poisoned by these unhappy
suggestions. If, to dissipate reflection, I hum a tune, it changes to
the "Lamentations of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake with
a shocking feeling of my hand in some pocket.

Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady. Tell me, do you
feel anything allied to it in yourself? Do you never feel an itching, as
it were,--a _dactylomania_,--or am I alone? You have my honest
confession. My next may appear from Bow Street.

SUSPENSURUS.

* * * * *

Delightful as the essays of Elia are, Lamb did not spend all the "riches
of his wit" in their production. His letters--so full are they of "the
salt and fineness of wit,"--so richly humorous and so deliciously
droll,--so rammed and crammed with the oddest conceits and the wildest
fancies, and the quaintest, queerest thoughts, ideas, and
speculations--are scarcely inferior to his essays. Indeed, some of the
best and most admired of the essays are but extended letter