room, where there was a dim gaslight burning, and a fire glimmering, and
here and there a streak of sunshine struggling through the drawn
curtains. Mr. G------ looked pale, and quite overcome with grief,--this,
I suppose, being his first sorrow,--and he has a young baby on his hands,
and no doubt, feels altogether forlorn in this foreign land. The
clergyman entered in his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession
into another room, where the coffin was placed.

Mr. G------ sat down and rested his head on the coffin: the clergyman
read the service; then knelt down, as did most of the company, and prayed
with great propriety of manner, but with no earnestness,--and we
separated.

Mr. G------ is a small, smooth, and pretty young man, not emphasized in
any way; but grief threw its awfulness about him to-day in a degree which
I should not have expected.


January 20th.--Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock Ferry, showed me this
morning a pencil-case formerly belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or
seven inches long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured of
iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now quite bare. Indeed, it
looks as rough as an article of kitchen furniture. The intaglio on the
end is a lion rampant. On the whole, it well became Dr. Johnson to have
used such a stalwart pencil-case. It had a six-inch measure on a part of
it, so that it must have been at least eight inches long. Mr. Steele
says he has seen a cracked earthen teapot, of large size, in which Miss
Williams used to make tea for Dr. Johnson.

God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short of