The editor of the Cornhill Magazine (no soft and yielding character like his predecessor, but a man of stern resolution) will only allow these harmless papers to run to a certain length.  But for this veto I should gladly have prattled over half a sheet more, and have discoursed on many heroes and heroines of novels whom fond memory brings back to me.  Of these books I have been a diligent student from those early days, which are recorded at the commencement of this little essay.  Oh, delightful novels, well remembered!  Oh, novels, sweet and delicious as the raspberry open-tarts of budding boyhood!  Do I forget one night after prayers (when we under-boys were sent to bed) lingering at my cupboard to read one little half-page more of my dear Walter Scott—­and down came the monitor’s dictionary upon my head!  Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, I have loved thee faithfully for forty years!  Thou wert twenty years old (say) and I but twelve, when I knew thee.  At sixty odd, love, most of the ladies of thy Orient race have lost the bloom of youth, and bulged beyond the line of beauty; but to me thou art ever young and fair, and I will do battle with any felon Templar who assails thy fair name.

ON A PEAR-TREE.

A gracious reader no doubt has remarked that these humble sermons have for subjects some little event which happens at the preacher’s own gate, or which falls under his peculiar cognizance.  Once, you may remember, we discoursed about a chalk-mark on the door.  This morning Betsy, the housemaid, comes with a frightened look, and says, “Law, mum! there’s three bricks taken out of the garden wall, and the branches broke, and all the pears taken off the pear-tree!” Poor peaceful suburban pear-tree!  Gaol-birds have hopped about thy branches, and robbed them of their smoky fruit.  But those bricks removed; that ladder evidently prepared, by which unknown marauders may enter and depart from my little Englishman’s castle; is not this a subject of thrilling interest, and may it not be continued in A future number?—­that is the terrible question.  Suppose, having escaladed the outer wall, the miscreants take a fancy to storm the castle?  Well—­well! we are armed; we are numerous; we are men of tremendous courage, who will defend our spoons with our lives; and there are barracks close by (thank goodness!) whence, at the noise of our shouts and firing, at least a thousand bayonets will bristle to our rescue.

What sound is yonder?  A church bell.  I might go myself, but how listen to the sermon?  I am thinking of those thieves who have made a ladder of my wall, and a prey of my pear-tree.  They may be walking to church at this moment, neatly shaved, in clean linen, with every outward appearance of virtue.  If I went, I know I should be watching the congregation, and thinking, “Is that one of the fellows who came over my wall?” If, after the reading of