Old and gouty, we are confined to our chair; and occasionally, during an hour of rainless sunshine, are wheeled by female hands along the gravel-walks of our Policy, an unrepining and philosophical valetudinarian. Even the Crutch is laid up in ordinary, and is encircled with cobwebs. A monstrous spider has there set up his rest; and our still study ever and anon hearkens to the shrill buzz of some poor fly expiring between those formidable forceps--just as so many human ephemerals have breathed their last beneath the bite of his indulgent master. 'Tis pleasure to look at Domitian--so we love to call him--sallying from the centre against a wearied wasp, lying, like a silkworm, circumvoluted in the inextricable toils, and then seizing the sinner by the nape of the neck, like Christopher with a Cockney, to see the emperor haul him away into the charnel-house. But we have often less savage recreations--such as watching our bee-hives when about to send forth colonies--feeding our pigeons, a purple people that dazzle the daylight--gathering roses as they choke our small chariot-wheels with their golden orbs--eating grapes out of vine-leaf-draperied baskets, beautifying beneath the gentle fingers of the Gentle into fairy network graceful as the gossamer--drinking elder-flower frontignac from invisible glasses, so transparent in its yellowness seems the liquid radiance--at one moment eyeing a page of "Paradise Lost," and at another of "Paradise Regained;" for what else is the face of her who often visiteth our Eden, and whose coming and whose going is ever like a heavenly dream? Then laying back our head upon the cushion of our triumphal car, and with half-shut eyes, subsiding slowly into haunted sleep or slumber, with our fine features up to heaven, a saint-like image, such as Raphael loved to paint, or Flaxman to imbue with the soul of stillness in the life-hushed marble. Such, dearest reader, are some of our pastimes--and so do we contrive to close our ears to the sound of the scythe of Saturn, ceaselessly sweeping over the earth, and leaving, at every stride of the mower, a swathe more rueful than ever after a night of shipwreck did strew with ghastliness a lee sea-shore!