Nor a ladys age in the parish register. We hope we have more delicacy than to do either: but some faces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries. And what if the beast, which my friend would force upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry Rozinante, a lean, ill-favoured jade, whom leman could think of setting up in his stables? Must I, rather than not be obliged to my friend, make her a panion to Eclipse ht-foot? A hiver, no more than a horse-seller, has a right to palm his spavined article upon us food ware. An equivalent is expected iher case; and, with my own good will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks, than out of my money. Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. Our friend Mitis carries this humour of never refusing a present, to the very point of absurdity -- if it were possible to couple the ridiculous with so much mistaken delicacy, and real good-nature. [p 262] Not an apartment in his fine house (and he has a true taste in household decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous print or mirror -- the worst adapted to his pahat at may he -- the presents of his friends that know his weakness; while his noble Vandykes are displaced, to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some wretched artist of his acquaintance, who, having had them returned upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds his at iowing them here gratis. The good creature has not the heart to mortify the pai the expense of an ho refusal. It is pleasant (if it did not vex o the same time) to see him sitting in his dining parlour, surrounded with obscure aunts and cousins to God knows whom, while the true Lady Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honourable family, in favour to these adopted frights, are sigo the staircase and the lumber-room. In like manner his goodly shelves are one by oript of his favourite old authors, to give place to a colle of presentation copies -- the flower and bran of moderry. A presentation copy, reader -- if haply you are yet i such favours -- is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours which does sell, iurn. eak to experience, having by us a tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a metaphor to death -- we are willing to aowledge, that in some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a friends library (where he has more than one copy of a rare author) is intelligible. There are favours, short of the peiary -- a thing not fit to be hi amolemen -- which fer as much -- grace upon the acceptor as the offerer; the kind, we fess, which is most to our palate, is of those little ciliatory missives, which for their vehicle generally choose a hamper -- little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine -- though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter that it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the try sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presehough a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, -- whose goodly aspect reflects to us his "plump corpusculum;" to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him aiding down ioast peculiar to the latter; to corporate him in a slice of terbury brawn. This is io have him within ourselves; -- to know him intimately: such participation is methinks u