had suddenly broken-his complaint declaring itself to be a decided organic affection of the heart, and he had suffered from violent palpitations and spasms in the chest. The doctors had ordered change of air and scene and about a fortnight before, he had gone into the country, somewhere in Sussex, where he was living in a cottage, that as she But alas! she was incorsignificantly added, was "all on one floor." rect in her statement. He was living nowhere; for that very morning he had gone to call on the clergyman of the parish, and after a flight— which made the footman believe that he had admitted a madman, dropped dead on the last top step of the drawing-room stairs!

POETRY might be stigmatized as the "Thief of Time," with as much justice as Procrastination. How many nights and days has it stolen of mine! Dr. Young alone has filched from me at various seasons, a choice little collection of valuable hours, to say nothing of sundry scraps of broken mornings, and little bits of intervals, not bigger than a minute, every now and then, lost in heedless quoting or inconsiderate reflection. Yet this same reverend poet-one of his two professions might have taught him better-must needs hold up to perpetual obloquy a quality quite as honest as his own poetical craft, merely because it can't keep its hand long out of Time's hour-glass, but picks it of a sand or two pretty often, as the old stroller pushes through the crowd.

Procrastination was always a pet quality of mine. I have kept it in sharp practice ever since that now distant hour, when the first of my school-lessons was pitilessly set me: and as men may come at length to feed pleasantly on poisons, and to enjoy, like the last of the brothers in Chillon's dungeon, companionship with mice and spiders, so may a bad quality, industriously exercised during half a lifetime, become an object of the most tender affection.

Moreover, there is one maxim upon which wise men always act, and it is this; when it is absolutely impossible to get rid of a vice, they comfort their consciences by arguing for it as a virtue.

Procrastination, be it vice or virtue, is not so common to all the world as all the world supposes. Few persons know how thoroughly to enjoy it. They only procrastinate with their business-they never dream of procrastinating with their pleasures; thus leaving unexercised the better half of the principle of procrastination. Any idler or

blockhead can with ease postpone a matter of business: but rightly to understand how to defer his pleasures, tasks the faculties of a philosopher.

Pleasures are always the sweeter for being put off, just as venison is the better for being kept. I like my pleasures high, as the gentleman did who got drunk on the Monument.

You may observe an epicure, how he wantons with a choice morsel before he devours it, shaping it tenderly with his knife, coaxing it as it were with his fork, humouring it with a multitude of little touches, all indicative, and at the same time provocative, of extreme relish-how gradually it becomes impregnated with the properties that "give delight and hurt not"-how he vivifies it with infinitesimal ministrations of salt two grains at a time-how, in short, he lingers in pleasing dalliance with a bit of green fat,

With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.

Behold, moreover, the true lover of wine: is he ruthlessly bent on

Tearing his pleasures with rough strife?

Does he spring upon his prey, like a tigress upon a planter? See him, how he pauses-how he tastes it with his eyes-how he inhales its fragrance, physically as well as spiritually-with what felicity he procrastinates, with what art he postpones his delight only to heighten it! No drop of that precious draught, subtle inspirer, touches his lips, until he is in a suitable frame of mind. The imagination, the gusto, the life of life must be awake, or you might as well pour the sparkling liquid over the palate of a sleeping man.

As in free countries a cat may look at a king, so may any king take lessons from a cat. Watch her with a mouse newly captured. How she prolongs her enjoyment by postponing its climax. How she lets her captive go, and then makes him prisoner again. How she resists the eager promptings of appetite, and devours not, though she mayplaying, humouring, in short, procrastinating-and at last administering the fatal coup de grace, with a reluctance that adds a zest to the treat. The lesson this teaches is, that even if we had nine lives, instead of one, pleasures are never plentiful enough to be wasted-to be snapped up all at once, in an instant-consumed extravagantly, in haste, and upon the spot instead of allowing them to remain within reach for a time, to ripen on the sunny side of the imagination-thus making the most of a rarity.

But there is an old saying, "You may play with your mouse till you lose it." True, procrastination overmuch is very apt to spoil plea. sure. No man is advised to let his haunch hang for a whole year, or to take a quart of brandy for a whet.

Be it known, however, that in any case, save that in which pleasure may happen to be concerned, procrastination in excess is as likely to prove beneficial, as in that one instance it is calculated to be injurious.

There is a class of duties that stand between what are properly called the pleasures of life and its regular business. Such for example is the duty of inditing suitable replies to friendly and family epistles

sheets-full of chit-chat from the seaside, or loving inquiries from kind old souls in odd nooks of the country. Now here let me own myself a good hater. If there be a detestable duty on earth, it is this one-and the penny postage presses it upon us all with peculiar severity. It is not only a duty hateful in itself, but it is more so by reason of the seeming absence of excuse for neglecting it. To think that the "letters Cadmus gave" should be employed to answer letters!

You have Luckily, of all tasks it is one of the easiest to postpone. only to sit down, with writing-desk at hand, taking care to do nothing, and the evil is at once avoided. Just sit down one of these fine days, and say quietly to yourself, "I ought to write to Mr. This, and also to Mrs. That," and you will find your morning slip away in soothing languor and a comfortable indolence. Next day another friendly [letter comes and then two more epistolary blessings-long ones, crossed-when procrastination at once becomes not a choice, but a necessity. It is clear that you cannot write off such an arrear, if you were to try-and yet try you certainly will-in the evening, or perhaps to-morrow. But by this time, the cause for procrastination, which was defer the strong before, has become stronger; and thus the longer you discharge of your duty, the more complete is your vindication.

Not that you are really neglecting your friends and relatives after all-for you are always thinking of them. By not answering their letters, you draw them yet closer to you-they haunt you hourly-they come rapping at the door of your memory every few minutes, presenting letters for answers, like bills for payment-they are with you as you walk, whispering their requests for your note of hand at a short date-they return home with you to remind you that you owe them a "duly-received" and a "truly-obliged"-they dun your conscience to death until they get it—and supernatural postmen are sent to give a hard double-knock at your head, ever and anon, in the night-time. It is impossible to neglect such excellent correspondents; for (by the way) by the strangest of contradictions, I have observed that those who write very frequently, and make their letters very long, are invariably regarded as "excellent correspondents." Now one would have thought, on the contrary-but this is a digression.

The beauty of it all is, that unless you grow impatient of postponement, and foolishly terminate your fit of procrastination a little too soon, you will find that these letters have either answered themselves in some way, or survived the necessity for any answer at all. Procrastination, therefore, on some occasions, not only effectually puts off the evil day, but actually blots it out of the calendar. He must be a fool, who, when sentenced to be hanged, would not get a reprieve if he could; because he might break out of prison, or cheat his prosecutor by dying a natural death—from indigestion, or the fatigue of receiving visiters.

There are cases, however, by hundreds, in which duty and pleasure are very often combined-such as in paying debts, and visits, and getting married. People procrastinate on these points; but it is the sense of postponing a duty that moves them; for, as it has been hinted before, an unmixed pleasure they know not how to defer. If the payment of a debt were a pure and simple act of enjoyment, like

eating ices in the dog-days, there are persons alive who would probably be more punctual; but it is held to be also a duty, as Mr. Weller conceives it to be the duty of bank-clerks to eat sandwiches, and accordingly they procrastinate.

They procrastinate likewise in the matter of paying visits, when they esteem the payment to be a duty; but then they postpone the conclusion of the visit, they defer the hour of their departure, on exactly the same grounds. They only procrastinate because they feel it to be their duty" their going might break up the party""it would be an offence to other visiters"-" it would be an ungrateful return for hospitality" and they considerately, in the most self-sacrificing manner, lengthen their stay, and procrastinate, out of a sense of duty, to the last.

As for marriage, the old bachelor may appear to some the pink of procrastinators-but it is not so; and for the selfsame reason that procrastination rarely defers its pleasures. The bachelor, in nine cases out. of ten, is one, and remains one, not because he has been procrastinating with marriage, and postponing the happy day until it can never arrive, but because he has been too eager in his efforts to cast off his bachelorship. He is a bachelor, not because he delayed his offers too long, but because he has made twenty that never were accepted.

Who does not perfectly well understand, that every bachelor of fifty has been judiciously refused at least five times! Instead of supposing that he never made an offer of his hand, suppose with great truth that he has made a goose of himself altogether.

He has seen a fascinator of seventeen, an enchantress of twenty, an angel of twenty-three, a goddess under thirty, and a divinity, fat, fair, and something else;-and to each has he opened his mouth, almost as soon as he opened his eyes. He modestly assumed, in every case, that there was a heart to let for a single gentleman, furnished; and of course he had a decided "No" from the lady's lips, which was equivalent to the door being slammed in his face, and a glance of scorn from a pair of eyes over which the fair lids immediately dropped in disdain, which was equivalent to the blinds being drawn down.

No, no; never conclude that the old bachelor has been a procrastinator. It were a culpable excess of charity to regard him as a waiter upon Providence, a hanger-on upon the skirts of life, a loiterer by the wayside, content to wait and be picked up by the compassionate.

Call him an offshoot of antiquity, a mateless nonentity, one of the odds-and-ends of humanity, the fossil remains of an animal happily extinct, part of a lot knocked down at the fall of Nineveh, a piece of mortal stuff thrown aside as of no use when mortality was fashioned, a scrap of waste clay set walking, a chip of the fag-end of the Ark ;— say all this, and in most instances it will be gross flattery.

Depend upon it, the case generally is, as it has just been stated. It is not that he has never had the courage to "pop" the question-it is, that he never had the mingled wit and modesty to "pop" it properly.

The man who really procrastinates in the affair of marriage, rarely dies a bachelor, although double-blessedness may visit him rather late in the day.

This is one of the few cases in which the procrastinator dallies with his pleasures, finding delight in their delay, enjoying their very postponement. But defer the critical occasion as he may, it will come; the offering must be made, the acceptance must be sealed. The ground on which he has entered is so beset with springes-so filled with surprises, persuasives, and allurements-with soothing coercion, and desire mixed with dread of captivity-that off his guard he must be caught at some time. He may fight shy, or feel reluctant, and fancy himself free as air-all this for years; but in a moment, when least expected, in the midst of his illusion, when his dream of liberty is most flattering-sweet, and substantial too,-lo! he finds himself seated, apparently on a down-pillowed settee, but really on the horns of a dilemma; seemingly on a daisied-bank, but virtually on thorns-encircled in a fairy-bower, yet driven into an awkward corner, with nature crying aloud through all her works in an imperious, yet insinuating voice, asking him, "What his intentions are?" No; procrastination may defer the capture, but it cannot provide the escape.

We must turn to the procrastinator in the affairs of business; and business includes lawsuits-but these would lead us into a lane that has no turning. Procrastination dies, of sheer inanition, before it comes to the end of it.

A grand mistake which men of business constantly commit, consists in their setting about it as a thing that cannot be postponed.

"Business that admits of no delay," is a description of every business they are engaged in. They would deliver procrastination bound hand and foot into the custody of the police, and transport the innocent for life. But how often might that Thief of Time have saved them from the consequences of dishonesty? In their horror of postponement, they pack up the goods and send them off-discovering, the next hour, that the customer, now in possession of the prize, is an arrant cheat. They hasten to bid in the public auction, and buy the wrong lot. They fly, lest the golden opportunity should be lost, and break their necks.

Such is their abhorrence of procrastination, that they run headlong, and without once stopping, into the gazette. The moral, that speaks volumes in favour of this much-abused principle, is heard continually in the exclamation, "It's done now, and can't be helped." But it might have been, had not promptitude put aside all precaution.

It is all very well to hit the iron while it's hot; but suppose the iron afterwards enters into your soul, is it any comfort to recollect that you hit it the instant it was out of the fire?

"Act in haste and repent at leisure," "They stumble who run fast," &c., are maxims well remembered in business, but seldom reserved for practical use. Any mischief, the result of undue speed, is forgiven, rather than the seemingly unnecessary delay, which may after all have shown the work itself to be needless, as well as the speed. Any habit but procrastination may obtain pardon; and yet this habit, if it have missed many opportunities of making a fortune, has saved many a fortune from being untimely swallowed up.

If these men of business could push their steam-engines on at a rate so rapid, that the boilers would not have time to explode, they