[1] This was the number of letters that passed through the Twopenny Post-Office on the 14th of February, 1821, in addition to the usual daily average.--See the official returns.
But good Bishop Valentine is a pluralist, and holds another see besides that of London:
"All the air is his diocese, And all the chirping choristers And other birds are his parishioners: He marries every year The lyrique lark, and the grave whispering dove; The sparrow, that neglects his life for love; The household bird with the red stomacher; He makes the blackbird speed as soon As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon."
Let us be off to the country without more ado; for who can stay in London in the face of such epithets as these, that seem to compel us, with their sweet magic, to go in search of the sounds and sights that they characterise? "The _lyric_ lark!" Why a modern poet might live for a whole season on that one epithet! Nay, there be those that _have_ lived on it for a longer time, perhaps without knowing that it did not belong to them!--"The sparrow that _neglects his life for love_!" "The _household_ bird, _with the red stomacher_!"--That a poet who could write in this manner, for pages together, should be almost entirely unknown to modern _readers_ (except to those of a late number of the Retrospective Review), would be somewhat astonishing, if it were not for the consideration that he is so well known to modern _writers_! It would be doing both parties justice if some one would point out a few of the _coincidences_ that occur between them. In the mean time, _we_ shall be doing better in looking abroad for ourselves into that nature to which _he_ looked, and seeing what she offers worthy of particular observation, in the course of this last month of winter in the Country, though it is the first in London. Not that we shall, as yet, find much to attract our attention in regard to the movements of the above-named "parishioners" of good Bishop Valentine; for though he gives them full authority to marry now as soon as they please, Frost forbids the bans for the present; and when there is no love going forward in the feathered world, there is little or no singing. On the contrary, even the pert sparrows still go moping and sulking about silently, or sit with ruffled plumes and drooping wings, upon the bare branches, watching all day long for their scanty dole of crums, and thinking of nothing else. The "lyric lark," indeed, may already be heard; the thrush and blackbird begin to practise their spring notes faintly; and the yellow-hammer, the chaffinch, and the wren, utter a single stanza or so, at long intervals: but all this can scarcely be called singing, but rather talking of it; for