isite grace, beauty, and polish of these delightful papers
were hardly appreciated by the readers of the "New Monthly.") And it was
for this publication that he undertook to write a novel. Although Elia
had but little fancy for novels himself, and in the writing of them
would not have done justice, perhaps, to his rare genius, yet,
nevertheless, I suspect that all admirers of "Rosamund Gray," if not all
readers of novels, regret that he did not complete the work of fiction
he began for the "New Monthly Magazine." Judging from the specimen that
was published, it would have been, had the author seen fit to finish it,
quite an original and very characteristic production. Here is the first
chapter of the story. Though advertised to be continued, this is all of
it that ever appeared.

* * * * *

REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ., OF BIRMINGHAM

I am the only son of a considerable brazier in Birmingham, who, dying in
1803, left me successor to the business, with no other incumbrance than
a sort of rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay out of it, of
ninety-three pounds sterling _per annum_, to his widow, my mother, and
which the improving state of the concern, I bless God, has hitherto
enabled me to discharge with punctuality. (I say, I am enjoined to pay
the said sum, but not strictly obligated: that is to say, as the will is
worded, I believe the law would relieve me from the payment of it; but
the wishes of a dying parent should in some sort have the effect of
law.) So that, though the annual profits of my business, on an average
of the last three or four years, would appear to an indifferent
observer, who should inspect my shop-books, to amount to the sum of one
thousand three hundred and three pounds, odd shillings, the real
proceeds in that time have fallen short of that sum to the amount of the
aforesaid payment of ninety-three pounds sterling annually.

I was always my father's favorite. He took a delight, to the very last,
in recounting the little sagacious tricks and innocent artifices of my
childhood. One manifestation thereof I never heard him repeat without
tears of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems, that, when I quitted
the parental roof, (August 27th, 1788,) being then six years and not
quite a month old, to proceed to the Free School at Warwick, where my
father was a sort of trustee, my mother--as mothers are usually
provident on these occasions--had stuffed the pocke