Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article--as the
wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads,
seems as though it read not,) never fails to consult the _quis
sculpsit_ in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a
Vivares, or a Woollet--methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, _Who is
Elia?_

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-forgotten
humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long
since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your
mind as one of the self-same college--a votary of the desk--a notched
and cropt scrivener--one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick
people are said to do, through a quill.

Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is my
humour, my fancy--in the forepart of the day, when the mind of your
man of letters requires some relaxation--(and none better than such
as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies)--to
while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos,
cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first
place ******* and then it sends you home with such increased appetite
to your books ***** not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste
wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally,
the impression of sonnets, epigrams, _essays_--so that the very
parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an
author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among
the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its
ease over the flowery carpet-ground of a midnight dissertation.--It
feels its promotion. ***** So that you see, upon the whole, the
literary dignity of _Elia_ is very little, if at all, compromised in
the condescension.

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities incidental
to the life of a public office, I would be thought blind to certain
flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's
vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret
the abolition, and doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory
interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four
seasons,--the _red-letter days_, now become, to all intents and
purposes, _dead-letter days_. There was Paul, and Stephen, and
Barnabas--

  Andrew and John, men famous in old times

--we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I was at
school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token,
in the old _Baskett_ Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy
posture--holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the
famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti.--I honoured them all, and could almost
have wept the defalcation of Iscariot--so much did we love to keep
holy memories sacred:--only methought I a little grudged at the
coalition of the _better Jude_ with Simon-clubbing (as it were) their
sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day between them--as an
economy unworthy of the dispensation.

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life--"far
off their coming shone."--I was as good as an almanac in those days.
I could have told you such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the
week after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity,
would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better
than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the wisdom
of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observation of
these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious.

Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses
the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded--but I am wading out
of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of civil and
ecclesiastical authority--I am plain Elia--no Selden, nor Archbishop
Usher--though at present in the thick of their books, here in the
heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley.

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such a one as
myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of
academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle
weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at
this time of the year, falls in so pat with _ours_. Here I can take
my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I
please. I seem admitted _ad eundem_. I fetch up past opportunities.
I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for _me_. In
moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock
vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I
proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike
that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and
bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely
mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which
favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can
be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor.