POOR relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, - a piece of impertinent correspondency, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, an unwelcome remembrancer, a perpetually recurring mortification, a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, a drawback upon success, a rebuke to your rising, a stain in your blood, a blot on your 'scutcheon, a rent in your garment, a death's-head at your banquet, Agathocles' pot, a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in your chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, the one thing not needful, the hail in harvest, the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.

He is known by his knock. Your heart

telleth you

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"That is Mr.

-"A rap, between familiarity and respect, that demands, and at the same time seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling, and embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about dinner-time, when the table is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have company, but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's two children are accommodated at a side-table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says with some complacency, My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop in today." He remembereth birthdays, and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small, yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port, yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think "they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his condition, and the most part take him to be-a tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With

of

half the familiarity he might pass for a casual dependant; with more boldness he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent; yet 't is odds, from his garb and demeanor, that your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist-table; refuses on the score of poverty, and resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather, and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote the family. ́ He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as "he is blessed in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth- favorable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture, and insults you with a special commendation of your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was something more comfortable about the old teakettle, which you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so; inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet, and did

not know till lately that such-and-such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable, his compliments perverse, his talk a trouble, his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances.

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is - - a female Poor Relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off tolerably well but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. "He is an old humorist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is one." But in the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. She is plainly related to the L-s, or what does she at their house?" She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be repressed sometimes, aliquando sufflaminandas erat, but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and

she begs to be helped after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the honor of taking wine with her; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former - because he does. She calls the servant Sir, and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The children's governess takes upon her to correct her when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsichord.

estate.

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with a great His stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman who persists in calling him "her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to recompense his indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant surface under which it had been her seeming business and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W- was of my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic and a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride, but its quality was inoffensive; it was not of that sort which hardens the