his best for a few hours to shuffle, and evade, and stall-off the awful truth with discreet shrugs and simpers; but when the Messenger (how sorry I am to learn, on the authority of Mr. Commissioner Goulburn, that the salary of that ill-used functionary has been reduced to the paltry stipend of five hundred a year-a mere catchpole's wage)-when the Messenger, travelling westward, as well as the evil news, put in an appearance in Onyx Square, and laid his hand on all that the House of Mammon contained, it was time for Doctor Sardonix to speak out, and to express himself on a concern about which the whole polite world were talking as a Man and a physician. He comported himself, as usual, with exquisite discretion. He had nothing to say against the fallen man.

"The soul of liberality, my dear sir!" he repeated every where. "Just and upright in all his dealings, so far as your humble servant is concerned. Let us have some Christian charity. Let us not break the bruised reed. He erred, it may be,-erred from excess of energy and enterprise; but who is not liable to error? Humanum est errare."

This was the pleasing refrain of the physician's song. There is something to be got even out of toadying the unfortunate. The Doctor's present reward was to be called a good, kind soul; and to hear on every side rumours that, contrary to the usual exigent etiquette of the profession, he had allowed the Goldthorpe family to run in his debt for hundreds of fees. His hope of future guerdon lay, perhaps, in the bare possibility that, some day or another, some member of the Goldthorpe family might hold his head up again, and, by his bounty, recall the gladsome days when he scarcely ever met a Goldthorpe without having his smooth palm crossed with gold.

I am bound to admit that Doctor Sardonix refrained (purely through motives of delicacy) from leaving his card at the house of the ruined family; and that Zenobia his spouse "improved the occasion," as the diplomatists say, to make the 'Goldthorpe bankruptcy a frequent text for exhortations to her family and friends on the pomps and vanities of earthly things, and the sinfulness of a mere reliance on perishable dross. A good many of the neighbouring clergy, orthodox and heterodox, also "improved the occasion," as that other reverend gentleman had done at the EastEnd, even as they improved all other occasions,-wars, tumults, pestilences, famines, and railway-accidents, to suit the stops on their own particular barrel-organs. Bolsover, M.P., was neutral. He remarked that Goldthorpe might have played his cards better. This was in the lobby of the House. In the Park, hearing further details of the Smash, he opined that Sir Jasper had brought his pigs to a fine market; and after dinner, at the Club, between his rubbers, he observed that he didn't see how G. was to get out of the mess. But Bolsover was always a man of strong common sense, dealing in platitudes which every body could understand. He is sure to be a Lord of the Treasury some day.

The great West-End lawyers looked at the tragedy philosophically, and only regretted that they were not for the nonce East-End lawyers,

that they might have something to do with the case and the assignees. "There'll be pretty pickings on that estate, sir," Deedes (Deedes, Ferret, and Wax, Old Cavendish Street) remarked to Probate, of Bedford Row; in which the latter acquiesced, adding that if the case were in his hands, he would put half-a-dozen extra clerks on his establishment on the mere strength of it; and, quoth wicked old Mr. Jehoshaphat, of St. James's Place, that terrible, terrible limb of the law, who was reputed to have made a hundred and ten thousand pounds out of four bankruptcies, and to have patented a machine for the legal grinding of widows' and orphans' faces, -said this most redoubtable of solicitors, -a man who seemed to labour under a natural incapacity for being for you in a cause, and was always, and, as a matter of course, against you, suing you horribly, and selling you up at all hours of the day and night, in term and out of term,— "Since Bulgrummer's affair (the East Swindlesbury Bank and Universal Wind-winnowing Company), there hasn't been, within my recollection (and I'm sixty-nine, sir), a bankruptcy with more meat upon it."

Mr. Plumer Ravenbury-who may certainly be said to have belonged to the polite world, inasmuch as it was his function to conduct so many polite worldlings out of it-received the news with a soft sigh. He consulted his books, and found that the funeral of Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe had been paid for at the expiration of the customary year of grace, and that not one of the costly items had been disputed by the family. So he had nothing to say against Mammon. Besides, Plumer was a disciple of the school of Dr. Sardonix; and the two played into each other's hands much oftener than was imagined, although quite unconsciously, perhaps. Undertakers are hereditary retainers of the poor as well as the rich; and if you, or any of your ancestors, have ever paid them a good long bill without questioning any of the charges, they will go on burying you and your descendants until the crack of doom. But once let a tray of feathers be quibbled at, or a silken scarf objected to, and your undertaker repudiates you, and is of opinion that you or your representatives-yourself being out of court-had better go to some cheap Funeral Company or advertising person. Every man, to the meanest, has his Boswell, I have been told, and it is a very dreadful thing to think of his undertaker, also a sable little cherub who sits down below, and looks out for the death of poor Jack Pudding.

The Bosuns (Admiral Bosun), neighbours of Mammon in Onyx Square, had never known the Goldthorpes. They were glad and thankful now, yes, thankful, Admiral Bosun, that they had been spared the disgrace and contamination of contact with those unworthy people. And Miss Magdalen Hill was ruined too, was she? No good ever came out of such wicked, wicked pride as hers. The Bosuns were not to be appeased by what they termed the shameful backsliding of their neighbours. You will generally find that the people whom you have never offended will never forgive you. Old Mrs. Twizzle, from Maida Hill, was furious against the whole Goldthorpe race. She was a wealthy but not well

educated woman, and spoke of them, with more force than elegance, as "a pack of trumpery rubbage." That gloomy spinster Miss Ashtaroth, from the Harrow Road, moaned much over the abasement of pride, and the trampling under foot of the disdainful man. She made reference to Dives; she quoted Job; and if that patriarch had been afflicted with any female friends, Miss Ashtaroth, for a surety, would have been one of them. She too "improved the occasion," according to her lights; and being the authoress of that suggestive volume of poetry (privately printed) entitled "The Hatchment,"-there are some powerful verses, too, in “The Pall with the patched Lining," although that last-named work is still in Ms., she sat down to write some album-verses on the misfortunes of the people she had never met. I think she commenced one powerful apostrophe with "How are the mighty fallen!" but being reminded by "too partial friends" that somebody had given utterance to the same sentiments on a previous occasion, she began anew, "Mammon, Mammon! thou art not as thou hast been!" when, finding that she had unconsciously paraphrased a certain Felicia Hemans, and that, moreover, her first line wouldn't scan with her second, she abandoned poesy for the nonce, made a pilgrimage to Kensal Green, meditated some occasional lines on Hugh Jasper Goldthorpe's tomb, and, on her return, gave warning to her maid Vamter, and severely chastised her poodle for eating black sealing-wax-a refreshment to which that pampered animal was much addicted.

Hawksley, R.N., albeit devoted to the Bosuns, he has been engaged to all the girls in succession, and it is hoped may still make a good end of it when Mrs. Admiral becomes a widow,-behaved very well under the circumstances. He said that Goldthorpe didn't owe him any money, and that he used to give very capital dinners and very jolly parties; that the old woman, meaning Lady Goldthorpe, was a trump; and that if he wasn't a poor devil of a sea-captain on half-pay, he would lend him some money, he would. Chewke, late of Riga, instructed Chipp, his bodyservant, to purchase the Times for him every morning until the proceedings in Goldthorpe's bankruptcy were terminated. He could not wait for the City article and the Basinghall-Street record until it was time for him to take his noon tide walk to the Union Club. He read all about the choice of assignees, and the proof-of-debts meetings, over hot pigeonpie, on which he had lately taken to breakfasting in bed. Gryggor, the joker, was taciturn and morose on the whole subject. It is probable that he was nursing a store of facetiæ and conundrums against the unhappy Baronet's hanging himself, or Lady Goldthorpe's dying of a broken heart. Lord Groomporter drowned his grief in "braiorsoawarr," and, in the excess of exhilaration caused by that stimulant, made up his mind to offer marriage to Magdalen Hill. On taking plain soda-water the next morning, he thought better of his resolve, and instructed his man-servant to procure him devilled kidneys, with plenty of cayenne, for his breakfast at 2.30. Lord Carnation-the truth must be told-ran away. At least,

he found it convenient to pass over for a season to a cheap German Spa, where his chaplain wrote pamphlets in the morning, and played at trente et quarante in the evening, Lord Carnation cramming himself meanwhile from the German newspapers. In the Teutonic language his lordship was, I need not say, a proficient. He knew almost every word, and didn't understand half-a-dozen, in it. Why did Lord Carnation run away? The truth must again be told; and I am afraid that the Noble Childe departed this country in sore dismay, and extreme terror lest the Goldthorpes and their connections might want to borrow money, or seek some favour at his hands. "One can never tell what may happen, you know," he said candidly to his chaplain. "Old man may want to get into the Charterhouse, or old woman may turn begging-letter writer. There's that girl too. Fool she was to trust old man with her money! I wonder whether that little Mrs. Armytage lost any thing by him. Rather too knowing, I should think." From which it may be inferred that the Earl of Carnation, although intellectually a ninny, was not deficient in worldly wisdom.

And those ruined cast-out men and women,-where were they? In Onyx Square? No; the Messenger and his merry men were fast in possession there. At Goldthorpe Manor-that marvel of a place? No; there also the Messenger and his merry men were chiefs and suzerains over park and terrace, over woods and forests, over rosery and grapery, over vert and venison, over chamber and hall, wherein beards by no means merrily wagged, but rather men of broker-like aspect confabulated over their inevitable pewter measures of porter. We have all heard of the noble bard who awoke one morning to find himself famous. Edmond Malone, the critic, used to say that he went to bed in one street and woke the next day in another-the name of the thoroughfare in which he resided having been changed from Queen-Anne Street East to Foley Place. It is not agreeable to go to bed hale and hearty and to wake in a raging fever, or with your limbs shackled by sciatica. There may be pleasanter things than to find your morning pillow guarded by alguazils; or to read in the damp news-sheet that your last night's farce, which you were too nervous to witness in person, was signally damned; or to learn, through the same medium, that the Trans-Caucasian Railways, in which you have invested a few thousands, and which have been so long at a glowing premium, are down to three and an eighth discount; or that-a mere on dit this-a marriage is on the tapis between some wretch in the Guards and the peerless beauty with whom you were waltzing and flirting on the previous evening. These are the kicks which Fortune gives us as she passes; but the sorest, cruellest buffet that she can have in store for us is surely to retire to rest honoured and rich, and to rise up in the morning disgraced and a beggar.

So had it been with each and every one of the pampered children of Mammon. The Brazen Idol himself must have long foreseen the blowmust have felt his clay feet tottering and crumbling beneath him;—but

They! It was all over in a moment. Onyx Square, Goldthorpe Manor, treasures, honours, dignities, alliances, friendships, luxuries, whims and caprices,-all faded away "like the breath from off the mirror," and "like the foam from off the sea," and like the shadow of the shadow of smoke. Persian splendour and Assyrian magnificence speedily resolved themselves into a mean lodging in Praed Street, Paddington. They were still of Tyburnia, you see, even as the dwellers of Pimlico purlieus are close upon Belgravia; but what a gulf between Praed Street and the proud Square! The rent was, I think, five-and-twenty shillings a week: parlours, of course, poor people always choose parlours to live in,-with a landlady who had seen better days, and grumbled because there was nothing to steal. She had found out all about her guests before they had been six hours in her house; and looked sharply after her rent on the ensuing Saturday, you may be sure. In this narrow crib, with a lady professor of the pianoforte terms, one-and-sixpence an hour-over head; with a tailor, not too rarely inebriated, above that, and a pack of howling children perpetually executing gymnastic feats on the staircase, and settling their little differences in the passage,-were content to abide Sir Jasper and Lady Goldthorpe and Magdalen Hill. For the first time in her life, that young lady became acquainted with the price of potatoes, and learned what the tongue of a coarse, violent, ignorant, envious, and gossiping lodging-house keeper was like. For Captain William Goldthorpe, and on the very morrow of his father's bankruptcy, apartments of a more expensive, but of a less agreeable, nature had been found. That unhappy officer of cavalry was arrested at early morn at a friend's chambers, where he thought himself perfectly free from pursuit, and conveyed by Mr. Morris Hyams, officer to the Sheriff of Middlesex, assisted by Mr. Melphibosheth Hashbaz, his retainer and follower, to the lock-up of Mr. Nebuchadnezzar Barneywinkle, in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where, at the trifling outlay of a guinea a day, he was indulged in the luxury of a private room, well-nigh as dirty as a dog-kennel, and not much bigger than a bird-cage. The Captain was only "took," to use Mr. Hyams's locution, on four executions,-three bill-discounters' and a military tailor's; but ere he had been an hour in hold the detainers against him came pouring in like applications for the office of common hangman, when that post happens to be vacant (there were seventy-seven last time); and by two in the afternoon the Captain was "to the bad for two-andtwenty thou," as Mr. Barneywinkle cheerfully observed to Mr. Hyams, thereby meaning twenty-two thousand pounds. William Goldthorpe had plenty of squander-cash friends, who were only too happy to supply him with the necessary guineas for his rent, which, with admirable promptitude and punctuality, was always exacted in advance. He could have set up a cigar-shop with the stock of choice Regalias, and packets of Milo's honey-dew tobacco, which were daily forwarded to him by sympathising friends in the Household Brigade, the Line, and the Artillery. Hampers of wine were continually sent to the captive, much to the dis