row," Old Rose and burn the bellows,' 'Blow high, blow low,' Three Tooley Street Tailors,' 'By the deep nine, I know a bank,' and 'You must not sham Abraham Newland,'—all of which he sang to the same tune, Jim Crow' being the musical bed of torture to which he elongated or curtailed them. As an accompaniment to this odd medley, the decanters and tumblers flew about in all directions, some escaping out at window, others irradiating the floor with their glittering particles. Colonel Frolick, brandishing a poker, stood before the last half inch of a once resplendent mirror, contemplating his handiwork and mustaches, and ready to begin upon the gold frame. Every square of crown glass having been beaten out, and every hat's crown beaten in, Lord Larkinton politely asked the Rev. Nehemiah Nosebags to crown all with a song. The chaplain, looking as melancholy as the last bumper in a bottle before it's buzzed, snuffled in a Tabernacle twang,

'The-e bir-ird that si-ings in yo-on-der ca-age.'

'Make your bird sing a little more lively,' shouted my Lord, 'or we shan't get out of the cage to-night!'

Many a true word spoken in jest; for mine host, thinking his Lordship's next joke might be to unroof, batter down, or set fire to the Owl and Ivy Bush, rushed into the room marshalling a posse of the police, when a battle royal ensued, and sconces and truncheons, scraping acquaintance with each other, made a ghostly rattle.' Disappointed of Mr. Nosebag's stave, and having no relish for those of the constables, we stole away, leaving Colonel Frolick beating a tattoo on some dozen of oil-skin hats; Lord Larkinton and Sir Frederick Fitzfun pushing forward the affrighted Bopeep and his brethren to bear the brunt of the fray; an intolerable din of screaming, shouting servants, ostlers and helpers; and the barking of a kennel of curs, as if the dogs of three parishes' had been congregated and let loose to swell the turmoil.

The sons of care are always sons of night.' Those to whom the world's beauteous garden is a cheerless desert hide their sorrows in its friendly obscurity. If in one quarter the shout of revelry is heard, as the sensualist reels from his bacchanalian banquet,-in another, the low moan of destitution and misery startles night's deep silence, as they retire to some bulk or doorway to seek that repose which seldom lights but on lids unsullied with a tear.' We had parted with our merry companions, and were hastening homeward, when, passing by one of those unsightly pauper prison-houses that shame and deface our land, we beheld a solitary light flickering before a high narrow casement, the grated bars of which told a mournful tale, that the following plaintive melody, sang with heart-searching pathos, too truly confirmed :

A wand'rer, tho' houseless and friendless I roam,
Ah! stranger, I once knew the sweets of a home;
The world promised fair, and its prospects were bright,
My pillow was peace, and I woke to delight.

Do you know what it is from loved kindred to part?

The sting of the scorpion to feel in your heart?

To hear the deep groan of an agonized sire?
To see, broken-hearted, a mother expire?

To hear bitter mockings an answer to prayer?
Scorn pointing behind, and before thee despair!-
To hunger a prey, and to passion a slave,-
No home but the outcast's, no rest but the grave!

To feel your brain wander, as reason's faint beam
Illumines the dark, frenzied, sorrowful dream;

The present and past-See the moon she rides higher
In mild tranquil beauty, and shoots sparks of fire!

The music ceased, the pauper-prison door opened, and a gentle tremulous voice, addressing another, was heard to say, Tend her kindly-my purse shall be yours, and, what is of far higher import, though less valued here, God's holiest blessing. Every inmate of these gloomy walls, where, like the infernal regions, hope never enters, has a claim upon your sympathy; but this hapless being demands the most watchful solicitude. She is a bruised reed bowed down by the tempest, a heart betrayed and bleeding, a brow scathed by the lightning of heaven! I entered upon this irksome duty but to mitigate the cruel hardships that insolent authority imposes upon the desolate and oppressed. With my associates in office I wage an unequal warfare; but my humble efforts aided by yours, may do much to alleviate sufferings that we cannot entirely remove. She has lucid intervals, when the dreadful truth flashes upon her mind. Smoothe then, the pillow for her burning brow, bind up her broken heart, and the gracious Power that inflicts this just but awful retribution, will welcome you as an angel of mercy, when mercy, and mercy only, shall be your passport to his presence! Good night.'

The door closed, and the speaker-unseeing, but not unseen-hurried away. It was Uncle Timothy!

Bulky as a walrus, and as brutal, out-frogging the frog in the fable, an over-fed, stolid, pudding-crammed libel upon humanity, sailing behind his double chin, and with difficulty preserving his equilibrium, though propped up by the brawny arm of Catspaw Crushem, Mr. Poor Law Guardian Pinch-a hiccup anticipating an oath-commanded us to move on.'

6

Addressing his relieving officer, he stammered out, en passant, Hark'e, Catspaw, don't forget to report that crazy wagrant to the Board to-morrow. We'll try whether cold water, a dark crib, and a straight jacket won't spoil her caterwauling. The cretur grows quite obstroperous upon our gruel.' (!!!)

O England! merrie England!

Once nurse of thriving men;

I've learn'd to look on many things
With other eyes since then!

N the calm routine in which my life has passed, every succeeding morrow being the very counterpart of the preceding day, so few incidents and objects have occurred to mark the progress of time, that I still entertain but a very indistinct impression that I am an old man.

Transplanted from school to the counting-house, I have there taken root and (thank Heaven!) flourished; laid up, as it were, from the launch in smooth water, and never buffeted about by the 'pelting and pitiless storm' which thousands encounter in the troubled ocean of the world, and where, alas! some are early wrecked, and many shattered and disabled.

I am, indeed, like a new guinea, laid up in lavender' by some careful spinster, the date of its mintage indubitably proving the age, which its perfect impression and pristine brightness almost belie.

To the same non-circulation in the world do I attribute my vague feelings of youthfulness; for I have passed through life without experiencing any of its rubs;' and whatever years I may have numbered according to my baptismal register, I am only conscious of being an old boy.

My faith in these consolatory reflections was, however, rather rudely shaken by the receipt of a letter from my old acquaintance B--, (ten years my junior, Heaven save the mark!) wherein he

writes, "That old thief chronos treats me as an Eastern despot doth his slave, mercilessly pulling out my hairs by the roots, knocking out a tooth now and then for his amusement, and dimming my eyes! I am growing very aged,' &c. Now there was something impertinent, nay, personal in this effusion, and I was at once half resolved to refuse his invitation to a 'rump and dozen' at the Mitre, the result of a bet, or, as he termed it, 'the offspring of an abbreviated Elizabeth ;' and when I reflected for a moment upon the character of the cliques of tavern revellers with whom he consorted,-a jolly set who, like himself, had shortened their days by lengthening their nights.-I finally made up my mind to send an excuse, and escape a headach.

Poor B-! he was one of the wittiest, best-natured fellows I ever knew; but, as he confessed in his last illness, he had had many a bout with Bacchus; and, although he had always manfully tapped his claret, and stood up to him until his legs became groggy, the wine-god had succeeded in flooring him at last!' And he died.

But, notwithstanding the pleasing melancholy I experience in recording these early reminiscences, I fear the digressional garrulity into which they have imperceptibly tempted me to indulge will betray that very senility which I have been so sedulous to conceal both from myself and the reader,-should these pages hereafter, by any chance, be honoured by a perusal. I must likewise candidly confess, spite of my juvenile feelings, that Time hath not only thinned my flowing hair,' but mowed the summit of my head so close, that it presents the appearance of a monkish tonsure, or rather it resembles an ostrich egg adorned with a fringe of hair, slightly, very slightly tinged with an admixture of grey, which I attribute to the effects of a fever wherewith I was attacked some ten or twelve years ago! Small, however, as this capillary hedge is, it now and then requires pruning, and I had consequently commissioned Old Smith to summon the attendance of the operator. When he returned, I observed, although deeply engaged in my books, that he had some crotchet in his head which he longed to broach; for he was more than usually particular in his attention to the officefire, battering the round coals and stirring them up so frequently, and repeating his visits so often and unnecessarily, that it was but too evident he was watching for an interval in my labours to thrust in a word.

Well, Smith,' said I, laying down my pen, and taking off my glasses, have you seen the hair-dresser?'

'Yes, sir, I seed him,' replied Smith, emphatically, and he says he'll be partic'lar to his time. I never vos in his shop afore. Vot a place it is! all brass and glass, and gilt and finery. Vy, them 'ere vinders must ha' cost a sight o' money, and vot do you think, sir, if he ain't got a rale live bear a-maundering up and down in a wire cage. It's a werry little thing, howsomever, compared with the vun as I remember a-going about the streets with a monkey a-top of its back. As for hisself, I'm sure he's more like a hungry hover-grown gal than a man, with his vite wristbands turned over his cuffs, and his hair all greased and curled, and befrizzled, and his body screwed in as if he had tied his apron-string too tight and choked hisself."

'Fashion changes everything,' said I. The hair-dressers of the present day are indeed a very different race from the barbers I remember in my youth. They were fluttering and swarming about the whole city of a morning, Sundays and working-days too, like so

many butterflies, and their powder-besprinkled clothes made them appear almost as downy. Smith, why, you remember old Sam ?'

'To be sure, sir,' replied he, and a decent respectable body he vos.' 'Very,' said I; and he had fortunately acquired such an insight into the dispositions of his customers, that he knew when to talk and when to be silent. Poor Sam! I respected him very much.'

'I know'd as how you did, or I should not have taken the liberty of telling him to call,' said Smith.

Who?-what, Sam! Is he alive?' I exclaimed, in surprise.

'Alive, and that's all,' replied Smith; for he has had a paralatic, and has got a asthma.'

'Let me see,' said Smith, closing one eye, and inclining his head towards his left shoulder, let me see; it vos last Ve'n'sday vos a veek. It vos a'ter I shut up. I vos a-going into Honey-lane market, ven I seed a man a-holding on by vun o' the postes at the corner, and breathin' partic'lar hard. "Young man," says he, in as civil a woice as a Christian could speak,-" young man," says he, "vill you jist pick up my stick?" In course I did it in a jiffy. "Thank ye," says he; and then, looking in his face for the fust time, I says, says 1, "Vy, goodness gracious me! you 're Mr. Thorley's barber as vos. And sure as a gun it vos him. And then he axed a'ter you, sir; and begged me to present his dootiful respects, and told me as how he vos on the parish, and they allowed him four shillin' a week; and a great deal more, poor fellow!'

'Well?'

'And I told him to call, as I vos quite sure as you'd not forgotten him. "It's no disrespect," says he; "but I know beggars ain't welcome nowhere."

That's just like poor Sam,' said I. 'He is not one to thrust his troubles upon his friends. I hope he will come.'

On the evening of the third day after this communication, Smith opened the door of my room, and thrusting in his head and shoulders, inquired if I was 'at home.'

'Yes, to be sure,' I replied. 'Is the captain of the Miranda arrived?' for I had been hourly expecting him.

'Another guess person, sir,' said Smith, and then added in an under tone, 'It's the barber, sir, Old Sam.'

I ordered him to be admitted immediately. The old man entered. I had not seen him for many years. Having gently upbraided him for keeping me in ignorance of his misfortunes, I ordered him a glass of generous wine, and the old man, warming gradually into conversation, gave me the following narrative of his life.

THE BARBER'S TALE.

I had the misfortune to be born handsome, and during my apprenticeship the ladies would have no one to dress their hair but me. This was a mortal offence to my master, and a fatigue to me. How often have I, when rushing from pole to pole, come in violent contact with a brother strap, and, much to the amusement of the passers-by, raised a cloud of powder large enough for the ambition of Jupiter.