and into the best bedroom, that positively there is no enduring it. I think another six months of this house would fairly make an end of me. It's not a house for tender folk. You might sometimes as well sit in the open street as by the fireside. You burn your shins, and all the time your back is freezing. Upon my word, I think we should save all the difference between this and a front door in doctors' bills!! A front door is then determined upon; and you think you have at length, by a little stretch of your purse, reached the very perfection of comfort. But, alas! "fronti nulla fides," which is as much as to say, there is no reliance to be placed on a front door. It is true, you escape all the evils of your former habitation, and that nothing can match your back kitchen as a convenience to the servants. But then the family living above you has twice your number of children; and these imps seem to do nothing whatever the whole day long, from six in the morning till seven at night, but run pat, pat, pat, along the floors overhead, till they almost drive you mad. Even the charms of a back-green, or a superior scullery, will not stand against this; and so you determine at last to go to an upper flat in the same neighbourhood, where you may have the pleasure of tormenting some person below with your children, without the risk of being at the same time tormented yourself. The last selection is made upon moderate and prudent principles; but yet hope is also even here upon the wing. The house has no pretensions to style or external gentility, but the stair is remarkably spacious and well lighted. It is what I would call a genteel stair. The kitchen door has a nice hole at the lower corner for the cat; and what a delightful place there is by the side of the fire for the lamp, or where we could keep our salt dry in a box! As in the case of leaving a house every fault is exaggerated, and made the subject of congratulatory disgust, so in this, every fault is extenuated. "The ceilings are a little contracted, I see, by the roof." "Oh yes-a very small matter; these rooms are only intended for the children. We have some capital public rooms at the back, looking into the public gardens, and have a little peep of the sea in the distance." Upper flats," observes your Malagrowther friend, are very apt to 66 smoke." "Oh! not at all, I assure you. But I have been assured that Dr Bonnyman cured this house entirely some years ago, and since then there has never been a single puff of smoke." "Your nursery is in the garret; don't you think the children will feel it rather cold?" "Oh! the most comfortable nursery in the world; and see, only see, what a nice door there is at the top of the garret stair, to prevent the children from tumbling down!" I am sorry, however, to see a dealer in greens established so close beneath the door, at the bottom of your common stair.” Oh, sir, but consider the convenience of the greens." In fact, there is no peculiarity about the house, however trifling, but, in the eyes of a new tenant, it will seem a beauty, as in those of a departing one it will constitute a disgrace. And this is just the philosophy of the question, and the real cause why there is so much useless tossing and tumbling of old furniture on each 25th of May. 66 THE BABY'S DEBUT.-From Rejected Addresses. [Supposed to be spoken at the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre after its destruction by fire. The speaker is in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of age, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter. The piece is a harmless burlesque on the style in which some of the familiar poems of Wordsworth are written.] My brother Jack was nine in May, Jack's in the pouts, and this it is— So to my drawer he goes, Takes out the doll, and, O, my stars! Quite cross, a bit of string. I beg, And bang, with might and main, Its head against the parlour-door; This made him cry with rage and spite: If he's to melt, all scalding hot, Aunt Hannah heard the window break, Well, after many a sad reproach, And trotted down the street. I saw them go: one horse was blind, I wiped the dust from off the top, My father's walls are made of brick, As these; and, goodness me! 1 What a large floor! 'tis like a town! They keep them on the ground. "You've only got to curtsy, whisp- But while I'm speaking, where's papa? And now, good gentlefolks, I go I curtsy, like a pretty miss, I'll blow a kiss to you. [Blows a kiss, and exit. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT.-H. G. Bell. They're stepping off, the friends I knew, They're taking wives to tame their lives- I can't get one old crony now They've all grown grave domestic men; I hate to see them sober'd down- I care not for their married cheer, And though their wife perchance may have Conduct herself with grace I hate the prim reserve that reigns, How strange! they go to bed at ten, Nor open a romance. They talk, indeed, of politics, And very quietly, with their wives, And then they all have children too, |