A SPRING GOSSIP. Yl 



" What ! Shall we be put into a beautiful garden, and turn up 

 our noses at it, and call it a ' vale of tears,' and all sorts of bad 

 names (helping thereby to make it so), and yet confidently reckon 

 that nature will never shut it up, and have done with it, or set about 

 forming a better stock of inhabitants ? KecoUect, we beseech you, 

 dear 'Lord Worldly Wiseman,' and you, 'Sir Having,' and my 

 ' Lady Greedy,' that there is reason for supposing that man was 

 not always an inhabitant of this very fashionable world, and some- 

 what larger globe ; and that perhaps the chief occupant before him 

 was only an inferior species to ourselves (odd as you may think it), 

 who could not be brought to know what a beautiful place he lived 

 in, and so had a different chance given him in a different shape. 

 Good heavens ! If there were none but mere ladies and gentlemen, 

 and city-men, and soldiers, upon earth, and no poets, readers, and 

 milkmaids, to remind us that there is such a thing as Nature, we 

 really should begm to tremble for Almacks and Change Alley (the 

 'upper ten' and Wall-street), about the 20th of next October." 



