By the side of this fair one, arm in arm with a well-known bookseller, you may perceive Harriette Kochforte, alias Wilson, who, according to her own account, has had as many amours as the Grand Seignor can boast wives, and with just as little of affection in the _affaires de cour_ as his sublime highness, only with something more of publicity. Harriette gives the honour of her introduction into the mysteries of Cytherea to the Earl of Craven; but it is well known that a certain dashing solicitor's clerk then living in the neighbourhood of Chelsea, and near her amiable mamma's residence, first engrossed, her attention, and by whom she exhibited increasing symptoms of affection, which being properly engrafted on the person of the fair stockinger, in due time required a release from a practitioner of another profession; an innocent affair that now lies buried deep in an odd corner at the old churchyard at Chelsea, without a monumental stone or epitaph to point out the early virtues of the fair Cytherean. To this limb of the law succeeded the Honourable Be—1—y C———n, who was then too volatile and capricious to pay his devotions at any particular shrine for more than a week together. It was this cold neglect of the honourable's that has, perhaps, secured him from mention in her Memoirs; since Harriette never speaks of her beaux without giving the reader to suppose they were desperately in love with herself: then there was more of the dignified in an affair with an earl, and Madame Harriette has a great notion of preserving her consequence, although, it must be confessed, she has latterly shown the most perfect indifference to the preservation of character. The the cyprian's ball ~49~~circumstance which first gave Miss Wilson her great notoriety was the affair with the young Marquis of Worcester, then just _come out_, and a willing captive to her artful wiles. So successfully did she inveigle her noble swain, and so completely environ his heart, that in the fulness of his boyish adoration of the fair Cytherean, he executed in her favour a certain promise in writing, not a promise to pay, for that might have been of no consequence, nor a promise of settlement, nor a promise to protect, nothing so unsettled,—nothing less did the fair intriguante obtain than a full, clear, and definite promise of marriage, with a sufficient penalty thereunto attached to make the matter alarming and complete, with every appearance on his part to ratify the contract. In this state of things, information reached his Grace of B—f—t of his noble heir's intention, who not much relishing the intended honour, or perhaps doubting the permanency of his son's passion (for to question the purity of the lady was impossible), entered into a negotiation with Harriette, by which, on condition of her resigning the promise and pledging herself never to see the Marquis more on familiar terms, this disinterested woman was to receive eight hundred pounds per annum—so anxious was his grace to prevent a mes-alliance in his family. But, alas for Harriette! jealousy for once got the better of her love of gain; her pride was wounded to see a sister flirting with her affianced lord, and in a moment of irritation, she in a most unequivocal manner publicly asserted her right to his person: the gallant yielded, the bond was _null and void, the _promise burnt_, his grace relieved from the payment of eight hundred pounds per annum, and his son the Marquis, profiting by past experience, not so green as to renew the former obligation.

"My intention is not to pirate the lady's memoirs, and so rob her of the fair gain of her professional 50~experience," said Crony, when I mentioned these circumstances to him afterwards; "I only mean to supply certain trifling omissions in the biography of Harriette and her family, which the fair narrator has very modestly suppressed. It is but a few months since, that passing accidentally into Warwick-court, Holborn, to call upon an old friend, a navy lieutenant on half-pay, I thought I recognised the well-known superlative wig of the dandy Rochforte, thrust longitudinally forward from beneath the sash of a two pair of stairs window.—Can it be possible? thought I: and then again, I asked myself, why not? for the last time I saw him he was rusticating in Surrey, beating the balls about in Banco Regis; from which black place he did not escape without a little white-washing: however, he's a full Colonel of some unknown corps of South American Independents for all that, and was once in his life, although for a very short time, a full Cornet, in Lincoln Stanhope's regiment, the 17th dragoons, I think it was, and has never clipped his mustachios since, one would imagine, by their length and ferocious appearance. To be brief, I had scarcely placed my glass into the orifice before my imperfect vision, when Harriette appeared at the adjoining window, and instantly recognizing an old acquaintance, invited me up stairs. 'Times are a little changed,' said she, 'Mr. Crony, since last we met:' 'True, madam,' I responded; and then to cheer the belle a little, I added, 'but not persons, I perceive, for you are looking as young and as attractive as ever.' The compliment did not seem to please the Colonel in the wig, who turned round, looked frowningly, and then twirled the dexter side of his lip wing into a perfect circle. It is not possible that this thing can affect jealousy of such a woman as Harriette? thought I: so proceeded with our conversation: and he shortly resumed his polite amusement of spitting upon the children who were ~51~~playing marbles beneath his window. 'I am really married to that monster, yonder,' said she, in an under tone: 'How do you like my choice?' 'I am not old enough in the gentleman's acquaintance to hazard an opinion on his merits,' quoth I; 'but you are a woman of experience, belle Harriette, and should be a good judge of male bipeds, although I cannot say much in favour of your military taste.' 'And you was always a quiz, Crony,' retorted belle Harriette: 'remember my sister Mary, who is now Mrs. Bochsa,{3} how you used to annoy her about her gaudy style of dressing, when we used to foot it at Chelsea:—but I 3 There were in all eight sisters of the Debouchettes, and three brothers; but only one of the latter is living. Of the girls, Amy is now Mrs. Bochsa; Mary, married to a nephew of Sir Richard Bo****hs, a great Irish contractor; Harriette, actually married to Cornet Rochforte; Fanny expired in the holy keeping of the present Marquis of H——-; Sophia has been raised to the peerage, by the style and title of Lady B——-k, and by her subsequent conduct well deserves her elevation; Julia, an affectionate girl, clung to the house of Coventry through poor Tom's days of adversity, and died early, leaving some unprotected orphans; Charlotte and Louisa, younger sisters, the first now about eighteen and very beautiful, although a little lame, have been educated and brought up by their elder sister, the Baroness, and are by her intended for the church—vestals for Hymen's altar: at any rate, I hope they will escape the sacrifices of Cytherea. Harriette is now about forty years of age: she was, when at her zenith, always celebrated rather for her tact in love affairs, and her talent at invention, than the soft engaging qualifications of the frail fair, which fascinate the eye and lead the heart captive with delight: her conversational powers were admirable; but her temper was outrageous, with a natural inclination to the satirical:—to sum up her merits at once, she was what a connoisseur would have called a bold fine woman, rather than an engaging handsome one—more of the English Bellona than the Venus de Medici. Crony's account of the Round Room and belle Harriette's first views of publishing are, I have since learned, strictly correct. There is not a person mentioned in her Memoirs, or scarcely one of any note in the Court-guide, of whom she has at any time had the slightest knowledge, that have not been applied to repeatedly within the last three years, and received threats of exposure to compel them to submit to extortion. 52~want your assistance.' Egad, I dare say, I looked rather comical at this moment, for in truth I was somewhat alarmed at the last phrase. Harriette burst into a loud fit of laughter; the Colonel drew in his elegant wig, and deigned a smile; while I, involuntarily forcing my hand into the pocket of my inexpressibles, carefully drove the few sovereigns I had up into one corner, fearing the belle Harriette had a mighty notion of laying strong siege to them: in this, however, I was agreeably disappointed; for recovering herself, she acknowledged she had perceived my embarrassment, but assured me I need be under no alarm on this occasion, as, at present, she only wanted to borrow a few—ideas: what a relief the last short word afforded! 'I have been writing some sketches of my life,' said she, 'and am going to publish: give me your opinion, Crony, upon its merits;' and without more ceremony, she thrust a little packet of papers into my hand, headed 'Sketches in the Round Room at the Opera House;' in which all the characters of the Opera frequenters were tolerably well drawn, nor was the dialogue deficient in spirit; but the titles were all fictitious—such as my Lord Red Head, for the Marquess of H——-d, Lord Pensiveham, for P———m, and so on to the end of the chapter. Having glanced through the contents, I recommended her to Colburn, as the universal speculator in paper and print; but his highness is playing magnifico, a la Murray, in his new mansion, it would seem; for he, as I have since learned, refused to publish. At length, after trying Allman and others, belle Harriette hit upon Stockdale, who having made some bad hits in his time, thought a little courtesanish scandal could not make bad worse. Under his superintendence real names were substituted for the fictitious; and it is said, that the choice notes of the lady are interwoven and extended, connected and illustrated, by the same elegant Apollo who used to write love letters for Mary Ann, and ~58~~love epistles to half a thousand, including Bang and the Bantum, in the dark refectory of the celebrated mother Wood, the Lady of the Priory, or Lisle-street Convent." "If such is the case, 'how are the mighty fallen!'" said I.———But let us return to the ball-room. As the night advanced, a few more stars made their appearance in the firmament of beauty; among these, Crony pointed out some of the demirespectables, attracted thither either by curiosity or the force of old habit: among these was Charles Wy—h—m's bit of rue, that herb of grace, the once beautiful Mrs. Ho—g—s, since closely connected with the whiskered Lord P——-, to whose brother, the Honourable F———g, her daughter, the elegant Miss W————n, had the good fortune to be early married. In the same group appeared another star of no mean attraction, the Honourable Mrs. L——-g, whose present husband underwent the ordeal of a crim. con. trial to obtain her person. 'Par nobile fratum,' the world may well say of the brothers, P——— and L——-g; while F————y, with all his eccentricities, has the credit of being a very good husband. Three little affected mortals, the Misses St—ts, Crony introduced by the name of the pretenders, from the assumed modesty and great secrecy with which they carry on their amours. 'Pas a pas on va bien loin,' says the old French proverb, and rightly too," remarked our ancient; "for if you boys had not brought me here, I should never have known the extent of my experience, or have attempted to calculate the number of my female acquaintances." In the supper-room, which opened at four o'clock in the morning, Waud had spread forth a banquet every way worthy the occasion: a profuse display of the choicest viands of the season and delicacies of the most costly character graced the splendid board, where the rich juice of the grape, and the inviting ripeness of the dessert, were only equalled by the voluptuous votaries who 54~surrounded the repast. It was now that ceremony and the cold restraint of well regulated society were banished, by the free circulation of the glass. The eye of love shot forth the electric flash which animates the heart of young desire, lip met lip, and the soft cheek of violet beauty pressed the stubble down of manliness. Then, while the snowy orbs of nature undisguised heaved like old ocean with a circling swell, the amorous lover palmed the melting fair, and led her forth to where shame-faced Aurora, with her virgin gray, the blue-eyed herald of the golden morn, might hope in vain to draw aside the curtain and penetrate the mysteries of Cytherea. And now, gentle reader, be ye of the hardy sex, who dare the glories of the healthful chase and haunt the peopled stream of gay delight—or of that lovely race, from which alone man's earthly joys arise, the soft-skinned conquerors of hearts—be ye prudes or stoics, chaste as virgin gold, or cold as alpine snow—confess that I have strictly kept my promise here, nor strayed aside in all my wanderings among the daughters of pleasure, to give pain to worthy bosoms or offend the ear of nicest modesty. Pity for the unfortunate, and respect for the feelings of the relatives of the vicious and the dissolute, has prevented the insertion of many anecdotes, with which Crony illustrated his sketches of character. Enough, it is presumed, has been done to show vice in all its native deformity, without wounding the ear by one immoral or indelicate expression. For the unhappy fair ones who form the principal portraits, it should be remembered they have been selected from those only who are notorious, as belles of the first order, stars of fashion, and if not something indebted to fortune they would have escaped enrolment here. When beauty and poverty are allied, it must too often fall a victim to the eager eye of roving lust; for, even to the titled ~55~~profligate, beauty, when arrayed in a simple garb of spotless chastity, seems

"——Fairer she In innocence and homespun vestments spread, Than if cerulean sapphires at her ears Shone pendent, or a precious diamond cross Heaved gently on her panting bosom white.

But let the frail remember, that the allurements of wealth and the blandishments of equipage fall off with possession and satiety; to the force of novelty succeeds the baseness of desertion. For a short time, the fallen one is fed like the silk-worm upon the fragrant mulberry leaf, and when she has spun her yellow web of silken attraction, sinks into decay, a common chrysalis, shakes her trembling and emaciated wings in hopeless agony, and then flutters and droops, till death steps in and relieves her from an accumulation of miseries, ere yet the transient summer of youth has passed over her devoted head.

Bernard Blackmantle.



THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAUGHTER;

OR, MR PUNCH IN ALL HIS GLORY.

Thoughts on the Philosophy of Laughter—Bernard Blackmantle in Search of a Wife—First Visit to the Marigold Family— Sketches of the Alderman, his Lady, and Daughter—Anecdote of John Liston, and the Citizen's Dinner Party—Of the Immortal Mr. Punch—Some Account of the Great Actor—A Street Scene, sketched from the Life—The Wooden Drama—The True Sublime.



~56~~

You may sing of old Thespis, who first in a cart, To the jolly god Bacchus enacted a part; Miss Thalia, or Mrs. Melpomene praise, Or to light-heel'd Terpsichore offer your lays. But pray what are these, bind them all in a bunch, Compared to the acting of Signor Punch? Of Garrick, or Palmer, or Kemble, or Cooke, Your moderns may whine, or on each write a book; Or Mathews, or Munden, or Fawcett, suppose They could once lead the town as they pleased by the nose; A fig for such actors! tied all in a bunch, Mere mortals compared to old deified Punch. Not Chester can charm us, nor Foote with her smile, Like the first blush of summer, our bosoms beguile, Half so well, or so merrily drive caro away, As old Punch with his Judy in amorous play. Kean, Young, and Macready, though thought very good, Have heads, it is true, but then they're not of wood.

~57~~

Be ye ever so dull, full of spleen or ennui, Mighty Punch can enliven your spirits with glee. Not honest Jack Harley, or Liston's rum mug Can produce half the fun of his juggity-jug: For a right hearty laugh, tie thorn all in a bunch, Not an actor among them like Signor Punch.

—Bernard Blackmantle.

It was the advice of the prophet Tiresias to Menippus, who had travelled over the terrestrial globe fend descended into the infernal regions in search of content, to be merry and wise;

"To laugh at all the busy farce of state, Employ the vacant hour in mirth and jest."

"The merrier the heart the longer the life," says Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy. Mirth is the principal of the three Salernitan doctors, Dr. Merryman, Dr. Diet, and Dr. Quiet. The nepenthes of Homer, the bowl of Retenus, and the girdle of Venus, are only the ancient types of liveliness and mirth, by the free use of which the mind is dispossessed of dulness, and the cankerworm of care destroyed. Seneca calls the happiness of wealth bracteata felicitas, tinfoiled happiness, and infelix felicitas, an unhappy felicity. A poor man drinks out of a wooden dish, and eats his hearty meal with a wooden spoon; while the rich man, with a languid appetite, picks his dainties with a silver fork from plates of gold—but, in auro bibitur venenum; the one rinds health and happiness in his pottered jug, while the other sips disease and poison from his jewelled cup. A good laugh is worth a guinea, (to him who can afford to pay for it) at any time; but it is best enjoyed when it comes gratuitously and unexpectedly, and breaks in upon us like the radiant beams of a summer sun forcing its way through the misty veil of an inland fog.

I had been paying a morning visit to a wealthy ~58~~citizen, Mr. Alderman Marigold, and family, at the express desire of my father, who had previously introduced me for the purpose of fixing my—affection —tush—no, my attention, to the very weighty merits of Miss Biddy Marigold, spinster; a spoiled child, without personal, but with very powerful attractions to a poor Colebs. Two hours' hard fighting with the alderman had just enabled me to retreat from the persecution of being compelled to give an opinion upon the numerous bubble companies of the time, without understanding more than the title of either; to this succeeded the tiresome pertinacity of Mrs. Marigold's questions relative to the movements, ondits, and fashionable frivolities westward, until, fairly wearied out and disgusted, I sat down a lion exhausted, in the window seat, heartily wishing myself like Liston{1} safe out of purgatory; when the sound

1 John Liston, the comedian, is in private life not less conspicuous for finished pleasantry and superior manners than he is on the stage for broad humour; but nothing can offend the actor more than an invitation given merely in the expectation of his displaying at table some of his professional excellences. John had, on one occasion, accepted an invitation to dine with a wealthy citizen en famille; the repast over—the wine had circulated—a snug friend proposed the health of Mr. Liston; and John returned thanks with as much dignity as a minister of state eating white bait at Blackwall with the worshipful company of fishmongers. Then came the amiable civilities of the lady of the mansion, evidently intended to ingratiate herself with the actor, the better to secure his assent to her request, but not a muscle of the comedian gave the least encouragement. The little citizens, who were huddled round their mamma, and had been staring at the actor in anxious expectation, were growing very impatient. The eldest boy had already recited young Norval's speech to Lady Douglas, by way of prologue; but the actor still continued mute, never for a moment unbending to the smirking encourage-ment of his hostess, or the jolly laugh-exciting reminiscences of his ruby-faced host; as, for instance, "Lord, Mr. Liston, what a funny figure you looked t'other night in Moll Flaggon!" or, "How you made thorn laugh in Tony Lumpkin! and then what a fright you was in Mrs. Cheshire. Couldn't you give us a touch just now?" "Ay, do, Mr. Liston, pray do," vociferated a dozen tongues at once, including mamma, the little misses and mastery. "The children have been kept up two hours later than usual on purpose," said the lady mother. "Ay, come, my good fellow," reiterated the cit, "take another glass, and then give us some-thing funny to amuse the young ones." This was the finishing blow to Liston's offended dignity—to be invited to dinner by a fat fleshmonger, merely to amuse his uncultivated cubs, was too much for the nervous system of the comedian to bear; but how to retreat?" I have it," thought John, "by the cut direct;" rising and bowing, therefore, to the company, as if intending to yield to their entreaties, he begged permission to retire to make some little arrangement in his dress, to personate Vanish; when, leaving them in the most anxious expectation for more than half an hour, on ringing the bell, they learned from the servant that Mr. Liston had suddenly Vanished by the street- door, and was, of course, never seen in that direction more.

59~of a cracked trumpet in the street arrested my attention. "I vonder vat that ere hinstrument can mean, my dear!" said Mrs. Alderman Marigold, (advancing to the window with eager curiosity). "It's wery likely some fire company's men marching to a bean-feast, or a freemason's funeral obscenities," replied the alderman. When another blast greeted our ears with a few notes of "See the Conquering Hero comes," "La, mamma," whined out Miss Biddy Marigold, "I declare, it's that filthy fellow Punch coming afore our vindow vith his imperence; I prognosticated how it voud be, ven the alderman patronised him last veek by throwing avay a whole shilling upon his fooleries." "You've no taste for fun, Biddy," replied the alderman; at the same time making his daughter and myself a substitute for crutches, by resting a hand upon each shoulder. "I never laid out a shilling better in the whole course of my life. A good laugh beats all the French medicine, and drives the gout out at the great toe. I mean to pension Mr. Punch at a shilling a veek to squeak before my vindow of a Saturday, in preference to paying six guineas for a ~60~~box to hear all that outlandish squeaking at the hopera." "La, pa, how ungenteel!" said Miss Biddy; "I declare you're bringing quite a new-sense to all the square, vat vith your hurdy-gurdy vonien, French true-baw-dears, and barrel organ-grinders, nobody has no peace not at all in the neighbourhood." During this elegant colloquy, the immortal Mr. Punch had reared his chequered theatre upon the pavement opposite, the confederate showman had concealed himself beneath the woollen drapery, and the Italian comedian had just commenced his merry note of preparation by squeaking some of those little snatches of tunes, which act with talismanic power upon the locomotive faculties of all the peripatetics within hearing, attracting everybody to the travelling stage, young and old, gentle and simple; all the crowd seem as if magic chained them to the spot, and each face exhibits as much anxiety, and the mind, no doubt, anticipates as much or more delight, than if they were assembled to see Charles Kemble, Young, and Macready, all three acting in one fine tragedy. There is something so indescribably odd and ridiculous about the whole paraphernalia of Mr. Punch, that we are irresistibly compelled to acknowledge the superiority of the lignum vito Roscius over the histrionic corps of mere flesh and blood. The eccentricity of this immortal personage, his foreign, funny dialogue, the whim and strange conceit exhibited in his wooden drama, the gratuitous display, and the unrestricted laugh he affords—all combine to make Mr. Punch the most popular performer in the world. Of Italian origin, he has been so long domiciled in England, that he may now be considered naturalized by common consent. Indeed, I much question, if a greater misfortune could befall the country, than the removal or suppression of Mr. Punch and his laugh-provoking drolleries:—it would be considered a national calamity; but Mirth protect 61~us from such a terrible mishap! Another sound from an old cracked trumpet, something resembling a few notes of "Arm, Arm, ye Brave," and an accompaniment by the great actor himself of a few more "tut, tut, tutura, lura, lu's," in his own original style, have now raised excitement to the highest pitch of expectation. The half inflated lungs of the alderman expand by anticipation, and his full foggy breathings upon the window-glass have already compelled me more than once to use my handkerchief to clear away the mist. The assembled group waiting the commencement of his adventures, now demands my notice. What a scene for my friend Transit! I shall endeavour to depict it for him. The steady looking old gentleman in the fire-shovel clerical castor, how sagaciously he leers round about him to see if he is likely to be recognised! not a countenance to whom he is known; he smiles with self-complacency at the treat he is about to enjoy; plants himself in a respectable doorway, for three reasons; first, the advantage from the rise of the step increasing his altitude; second, the security of his pockets from attacks behind; and third, the pretence, should any Goth to whom he is known, observe him enjoying the scene, that he is just about to enter the house, and has merely been detained there by accident. Excellent apologist!—how ridiculous!—Excessive delicacy, avaunt! give me a glorious laugh, and "throw (affectation) to the dogs; I'll have none of it." Now the farce begins: up starts the immortal hero himself, and makes his bow; a simultaneous display of "broad grins" welcomes his felicitous entree; and for a few seconds the scene resembles the appearance of a popular election candidate, Sir Francis Burdett, or his colleague, little Cam Hobhouse, on the hustings in Covent Garden; nothing is heard but one deafening shout of clamorous approbation. Observe the butcher's boy has stopped his ~62~~horse to witness the fun, spite of the despairing cook who waits the promised joint; and the jolly lamp-lighter, laughing hysterically on the top of his ladder, is pouring the oil from his can down the backs and into the pockets of the passengers beneath, instead of recruiting the parish-lamp, while the sufferers are too much interested in the exhibition to feel the trickling of the greasy fluid. The baker, careless of the expectant owner's hot dinner, laughs away the time until the pie is quite cold; and the blushing little servant-maid is exercising two faculties at once, enjoying the frolics of Signor Punch, and inventing some plausible excuse for her delay upon an expeditious errand. How closely the weather-beaten tar yonder clasps his girl's waist! every amorous joke of Signor Punch tells admirably with him; till, between laughing and pressing, Poll is at last compelled to cry out for breath, when Jack only squeezes her the closer, and with a roaring laugh vociferates, "My toplights! what the devil will that fellow Punch do next, Poll?" The milkman grins unheedful of the cur who is helping himself from out his pail; and even the heavy-laden porter, sweating under a load of merchandise, heaves up his shoulders with laughter, until the ponderous bale of goods shakes in the air like a rocking-stone. (See Plate.) Inimitable actor! glorious Signor Punch! show me among the whole of the dramatis persona in the patent or provincial theatres, a single performer who can compete with the mighty wooden Roscius.



The alderman's eulogium on Mr. Punch was superlatively good. "I love a comedy, Mr. Blackmantle," said he, "better than a tragedy, because it makes one laugh; and next to good eating, a hearty laugh is most desirable. Then I love a farce still better than a comedy, because that is more provokingly merry, or broader as the critics have it; then, sir, a pantomime beats both comedy and ~63~~farce hollow; there's such lots of fun and shouts of laughter to be enjoyed in that from the beginning to the end. But, sir, there's one performance that eclipses all these, tragedy, comedy, farce, and pantomime put together, and that is Mister Punch—for a right-down, jolly, split-my-side burst of laughter, he's the fellow; name me any actor or author that can excite the risibilities of the multitude, or please all ages, orders, and conditions, like the squeaking pipe and mad waggeries of that immortal, merry-faced itinerant. If any man will tell me that he possesses genius, or the mellow affections, and that he can pass Punch,

'Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind;'

then, I say, that man's made of 'impenetrable stuff;' and, being too wise for whimsicality, is too phlegmatic for genius, and too crabbed for mellowness." Mark, what a set of merry open-faced rogues surround Punch, who peeps down at them as cunningly as "a magpie peeping into a marrow bone; "—how luxuriantly they laugh, or stand with their eyes and mouths equally distended, staring at the minikin effigy of fun and phantasy; thinking, no doubt,

"He bin the greatest wight on earth."

And, certainly, he has not his equal, as a positive, dogmatic, knock-me-down argument-monger; a dare devil; an embodied phantasmagoria, or frisky infatuation. I have often thought that Punch might be converted to profitable use, by being made a speaking Pasquin; and, properly instructed, might hold up his restless quarter staff, in terrorem, over the heads of all public outragers of decency; and by opening the eyes of the million, who flock to his orations, enlighten them, at least, as much as many greater folks, who make more noise than he, and who, ~64~~like him, often get laughed at, without being conscious that they are the subjects of merriment. The very name of our old friend Punch inspires us in our social moments. What other actor has been commemorated by the potential cup? is not the sacred bowl of friendship dedicated to the wooden hero? would you forget the world, its cares, vexations, and anxieties, sip of the mantling, mirth-inspiring cordial, and all within is jollity and gay delight.

"For Punch cures the gout, the cholic, and the phthisic, And it is to every man the very best of physic."

Honest, kind-hearted Punch! I could write a volume in thy praise, and then, I fear, I should leave half thy merits untold. Thou art worth a hundred of the fashionable kickshaws that are daily palmed upon us to be admired; and thy good-humoured efforts to please at the expense of a broken pate can never be sufficiently praised.

But now the curtain rises, and Mr. Punch steals from behind his two-foot drapery: the very tip of his arched nose is the prologue to a merry play; he makes his bow to the multitude, and salutes them with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance. What a glorious reception does he meet with from an admiring audience! And now his adventures commence—his "dear Judy," the partner of his life, by turns experiences all the capricious effects of love and war. What a true picture of the storms of life!—how admirable an essay on matrimonial felicity! Then his alternate uxoriousness to the lady, and his fondlings of that pretty "kretur" with the family countenance; his chivalrous exploits on horseback, and mimic capering round the lists of his chequered tilt-yard; his unhappy differences with the partner of his bosom, and her lamentable catastrophe; the fracas with the sheriff's substitute; and his interview with that incomprehensible personage, 65~the knight of the sable countenance, who salutes him with the portentous address of "schalabala! schalabala! schalabala!" his successive perils and encounters with the ghost of the martyred Judy; and, after his combat with the great enemy of mankind, the devil himself, "propria Marte" his temporary triumph; and, finally, his defeat by a greater man than old Lucifer, the renowned Mr. John Ketch. Talk of modern dramas, indeed!—show me any of your Dimonds, Reynolds, Dibdins, or Crolys that can compare with Punchiana, in the unities of time, place, costume, and action, intricate and interesting plot, situations provokingly comical and effective, and a catastrophe the most appallingly surprising and agreeable. Then his combats aux batons are superior even to Bradley and Blanchard; but the ne plus ultra of his exploits, the cream of all his comicalities, the grand event, is the ingenious trick by which Mr. Punch, when about to suffer on the scaffold, disposes of the executioner, and frees himself from purgatory, by persuading the unsuspecting hangman, merely for the sake of instruction to an uninitiated culprit, to try his own head in the noose: Punch, of course, seizes the perilous moment—runs him up to the top of the fatal beam—Mr. John Ketch hangs suspended in the air—Punch shouts a glorious triumph—all the world backs him in his conquest—the old cracked trumpet sounds to victory—the showman's hat has made the transit of the circle, and returns half-filled with the voluntary copper contributions of the happy audience. The alderman drops his tributary shilling, while his fat sides shake with laughter; even Mrs. Marigold and the amiable Miss Biddy have become victims to the vulgar inspiration, and are laughing as heartily as if they were enjoying the grimaces of the first of buffos, Signor Ambrogetti. And now the curtain falls, and the busy group disperse their several ways, chuckling with delight over the ~66~~recollections of the mad waggeries of immortal Mr. Punch.

All hail! thou first great mimic chief, Physician to the mind's relief; Thrice hail! most potent Punch. Not Momus' self, should he appear, Could dim the lustre of thy sphere; So hail! all hail! great Punch.

Bernard Blackmantle.



THE WESTMINSTER SCHOLAR.

Reminiscences of former Times—Lamentations of Old Crony— Ancient Sports and Sprees—Modern Im-provements—Hints to Builders and Buyers—Some Account of the School and its Worthies—Recollections of old Schoolfellows—Sketches of Character—The Living and the Dead.

"Fast by, an old but noble fabric stands, No vulgar work, but raised by princely hands; Which, grateful to Eliza's memory, pays, In living monuments, an endless praise."

From a poem by a Westminster Scholar, written during Dr. Friend's Mastership, in 1699.

~67~~



"What say you to a stroll through Thorney Island,{1} this morning?" said old Crony, with whom I had been taking a dejeune a la fourchette; "you have indulged your readers with all the whims and eccentricities of Eton and of Oxford, and, in common justice, you must not pass by the Westminster blacks."{2} Crony had, I learned, been a foundation scholar during the mastership of Dr. Samuel Smith; when the poet Churchill, Robert Lloyd, (the son of the under-master) Bonnel Thornton, George Colman the elder, Richard Cumberland, and a host of other highly-gifted names, were associated within the precincts of the abbey cloisters. Our way towards

1 The abbey ground, so called by the monkish writers; but, since Busby's time, more significantly designated by the scholars Birch Island.—Vide Tidier.

2 Black———s from Westminster; ruff—s from Winchester; and gentlemen from Eton.—Old Cambridge Proverb.

68~Westminster from the Surrey side of Vauxhall bridge, where Crony had taken up his abode, lay through the scene of his earliest recollections; and, not even Crockery himself could have been more pathetic in his lamentations over the improvements of modern times. "Here," said Crony, placing himself upon the rising ground which commands an uninterrupted view of the bank, right and left, and fronts the new road to Chelsea, and, the Grosvenor property; "here, in my boyish days, used the Westminster scholars to congregate for sports and sprees. Many a juvenile frolic have I been engaged in beneath the shadowy willows that then o'ercanopied the margin of old father Thames; but they are almost all destroyed, and with them disappears the fondest recollections of my youth. Upwards, near yonder frail tenement which is now fast mouldering into decay, lived the beautiful gardener's daughter, the flower of Millbank, whose charms for a long time excited the admiration of many a noble name, ay, and inspired many a noble strain too, and produced a chivalrous rivalry among the young and generous hearts who were then of Westminster. Close to that spot all matches on the water were determined; and beneath yon penthouse, many a jovial cup have I partook of with the contending parties, when the aquatic sports were over, in the evening's cool retirement, or seated on the benches which then filled up the space between the trees in front of Watermans' Hall, as the little public house then used to be called. About half a mile above was the favourite bathing-place; and just over the water below Lambeth palace, yet may be seen Doo's house, where, from time immemorial, the Westminster boys had been supplied with funnies, skiffs, wherries, and sailing-boats. The old mill which formerly stood on the right-hand of the river, and from which the place derived its name, has now entirely disappeared; and in lieu of the ~69~~green fields and pleasant walks with which this part of the suburbs abounded, we have now a number of square brick-dust tubs, miscalled cottages ornee, and a strange-looking Turkish sort of a prison called a Penitentiary, which from being judiciously placed in a swamp is rendered completely uninhabitable. Cumberland-gardens, on the opposite side, was, in former times, in great vogue; here the cits used to rusticate on a summer's evening, coming up the water in shoals to show their dexterity in rowing, and daring the dangers of the watery element to blow a cloud in the fresh air, and ruralise upon the 'margin of old father Thames.'



But where can the Westminster boys of the present day look for amusements? there's no snug spot now for a dog-tight or a badger-bait. Earl Grosvenor has converted all the green lanes into Macadamised roads, and covered the turf with new brick tenements. No taking a pleasant toodle with a friend now along the sequestered banks, or shooting a few sparrows or fieldfares in the neighbourhood of the five chimnies{3} not a space to be found free from the encroachments of modern speculators, or big enough for a bowling alley or a cricket match. Tothill-fields have altogether disappeared; and the wand of old Merlin would appear to have waved over and dispersed the most trifling vestiges and recollections of the past. A truce with your improvements!" said Crony, combating my attempt to harmonise his feelings; "tell me what increases the lover's boldness and the maiden's tenderness more than the fresh and fragrant air, the green herbage, and the quiet privacy of retired spots, where all nature yields a delightful inspiration to the mind. There where the lovers find delight, the student finds repose, secluded from the busy haunts of men, and yet able, by a few strides, to mingle again at pleasure with the world, the man of

3 Since called the Five-fields, Chelsea; and a favourite resort of the Westminster scholars of that time, but now built upon.

~70~~contemplation turns aside to consult his favourite theme, and having run out his present stock of thoughtful meditation, wheels him round, and finds himself one of the busy group again.{4} As we advance

4 The Rogent's-park, formerly called Marylebone, is an improve-ment of this nature. It was originally a park, and had a royal palace in it, where, I believe, Queen Elizabeth occasionally resided. It was disbarked by Oliver Cromwell, who settled it on Colonel Thomas Harrison's regiment of dragoons for their pay; but at the restoration of Charles II. it passed into the hands of other possessors; from which time it has descended through different proprietors, till, at length, it has reverted to the Crown, by whose public spirit a magnificent park is secured to the inhabitants of London. The expense of its planting, &c. must have been enormous; but money cannot be better laid out than on purposes of this lasting benefit and national ornament.

The plan and size of the park is in every respect worthy of the nation. It is larger than Hyde-park, St. James's, and the Greenpark together; and the trees planted in it about twelve years ago have already become umbrageous. The water is very extensive. As you are rowed on it, the variety of views you come upon is admirable: sometimes you are in a narrow stream, closely overhung by the branches of trees; presently you open upon a wide sheet of water, like a lake, with swans sunning themselves on its bosom; by and by your boat floats near the edge of a smooth lawn fronting one of the villas; and then again you catch the perspective of a range of superb edifices, the elevation of which is contrived to have the effect of one palace. The park, in fact, is now belted with groups of these mansions, entirely excluding all sight of the streets. Those that are finished, give a satisfactory earnest of the splendid spirit in which the whole is to be accomplished. There will be nothing like it in Europe. The villas in the interior of the park are planted out from the view of each other, so that the inhabitant of each seems, in his prospect, to be the sole lord of the surround-ing picturesque scenery.

In the centre of the park there is a circular plantation of im-mense circumference, and in the interior of this you are in a perfect Arcadia. The mind cannot conceive any thing more hushed, more sylvan, more entirely removed from the slightest evidence of proximity to a town. Nothing is audible there except the songs of birds and the rustling of leaves. Kensington gardens, beautiful as they are, have no seclusion so perfect as this.

71~in life we cling still closer to the recollections of our infancy; the cheerful man loves to dwell over the scenes and frolics of his boyish days; and we are stricken to the very heart by the removal or change of these pleasant localities; the loss of an old servant, an old building, or an old tree, is felt like the loss of an old friend. The paths, and fields, and rambles of our infancy are endeared to us by the fondest and the purest feelings of the mind; we lose sight of our increasing infirmities, as we retrace the joyous mementos of the past, and gain new vigour as we recall the fleeting fancies and pleasant vagaries of our earliest days. I am one of those," continued Crony, "who am doomed to deplore the destructive advances of what generally goes by the name of improvement; and yet, I am not insensible to the great and praiseworthy efforts of the sovereign to increase the splendour of the capital westward; but leave me a few of the green fields and hedgerow walks which used to encircle the metropolis, or, in a short space, the first stage from home will only be half-way out of London. A humorous writer of the day observes, that 'the rage for building fills every pleasant outlet with bricks, mortar,rubbish,and eternal scaffold-poles, which, whether you walk east, west, north, or south, seem to be running after you. I heard a gentleman say, the other day, that he was sure a resident of the suburbs could scarcely lie down after dinner, and take a nap, without finding, when he awoke, that a new row of buildings had started up since he closed his eyes. It is certainly astonishing: one would think the builders used magic, or steam at least, and it would be curious to ask those gentlemen in what part of the neighbouring counties they intend London should end. Not content with separate streets, squares, and rows, they are actually the founders of new towns, which in the space of a few months become finished and inhabited. The precincts of London have more the appearance of a newly-discovered colony than ~72~~the suburbs of an ancient city.{5} And what, sir, will be the pleasant consequences of all this to posterity? Instead of having houses built to encumber the earth for a century or two, it is ten to one but they disencumber the mortgagee, by falling down with a terrible crash during the first half life, and, perhaps, burying a host of persons in their ruins. Mere paste-board palaces are the structures of the present times, composed of lath and plaster, and Parker's cement, a few coloured bricks, a fanciful viranda, and a balcony, embellished within by the decorateur, and stuccoed or whitewashed without, to give them a light appearance, and hide the defects of an ignorant architect or an unskilful builder; while a very few years introduces the occupant to all the delightful sensations of cracked walls, swagged floors, bulged fronts, sinking roofs, leaking gutters, inadequate drains, and other innumerable ills, the effects of an originally bad constitution, which dispels any thing like the hopes of a reversionary interest, and clearly proves that without a renovation equal to resurrection, both the building and the occupant are very likely to fall victims to a rapid consumption." In this way did Crony contrive to beguile the time, until we found ourselves entering the arena in front of the Dean's house, Westminster. "Here, alone," said my old friend, "the hand of the innovator has not been permitted to intrude; this spot remains unpolluted; but, for the neighbourhood, alas!" sighed Crony, "that is changed indeed. The tavern in Union-street,

5 For instance: in what a very short time back were the Bays-water-fields, there is now a populous district, called by the inhabitants "Moscow;" and at the foot of Primrose- hill we are amazed by coming upon a large complication of streets, &c. under the name of "Portland Town." The rustic and primaeval meadows of Kilburn are also filling with raw buildings and incipient roads; to say nothing of the charming neighbourhood of St. John's Wood Farm, and other spots nearer town.

~73~~where Charles Churchill, and Lloyd, and Bonnel Thornton used to meet and mix wit, and whim, and strong potation, has sunk into a common pot-house, and is wholly neglected by the scholars of the present time: not that they are a whit more moral than their predecessors, but, professing to be more refined, they are now to be found at the Tavistock, or the Hummums, at Long's, or Steven's; more polished in their pleasures, but more expensive in their pursuits."



As we approached the centre of Dean's-yard, Crony's visage evidently grew more sentimental; the curved lips of the cynic straightened to an expression of kindlier feeling, and ere we had arrived at the school-door, the old eccentric had mellowed down into a generous contemplatist. "Ay," said Crony, "on this spot, Mr. Black mantle, half a century ago, was I, a light-hearted child of whim, as you are now, associated with some of the greatest names that have since figured in the history of our times, many of whom are now sleeping in their tombs beneath a weight of worldly honours, while some few have left a nobler and a surer monument to exalt them with posterity, the well-earned tribute of a nation's gratitude, the never-fading fame which attaches itself to good works and great actions. Among the few families of my time who might be styled ''magni nominis' in college, were the Finches, the Drummonds, (arch-bishop's sons), and the Markhams. Tom Steele{6} was on the foundation also, and had much fame in playing Davus. The Hothams{7} were considered among the lucky hits of Westminster; the Byngs{8} thought not as lucky as they should have been. Mr. Drake{9}

6 A descendant of the celebrated Sir Richard Steele, the associate of Addison in the Spectator, Tatler, Crisis, &c.

7 Sir Henry and Sir William Hotham, admirals in the British navy.

8 Viscount Torrington, a rear-admiral of the blue.

9 Thomas Tyrwhitt Drake, Esq., (I believe) member for Agmondesham, Bucks.

~74~~of Amersham was one of the best scholars of his time; for a particular act of beneficence, two guineas given out of his private pocket-money to a poor sufferer by a fire, Dr. Smith gave him a public reward of some books. Lord Carmarthen{10} here came to the title, on the death of his eldest brother. Here too he found the Jacksons, and what was more, the Jacksons{11} found him. Lord Foley had, during his stay here, two narrow escapes for his life, once being nearly drowned in the Thames, and secondly, by a hack-horse running away with him: the last incident was truly ominous of the noble lord's favourite, but unfortunate pursuits{12}. Sir John St. Aubyn is here said to have formed his attachments with several established characters in the commercial world, as Mr. Beckett, and others; which afterwards proved of the highest consequence to his pursuits and success in life. Lord Bulkley had the credit of being one of the handsomest and best-humoured boys of his time, and so he continued through life. Michael Angelo Taylor{13} was remarkable for his close application, under his tutor Hume, and the tutor as remarkable for application to him.

Hatton, junior. Lawyers, if not always good scholars, generally are something better; with much strong practical sense, and a variety of all that "makes a ready man; "Hatton was all this, both as to scholarship, and the pertinent application of it. Though a nephew of Lord Mansfield, and bred up under his auspices, he was not more remarkable than his brother George for the love of bullion. His abilities were great, and they would have been greatly thought of, had he been personally less locomotive. "Ah, ah," said his uncle, "you'll never prosper till you learn to stay in a place." He replied, "O never fear, sir, do but get me a place; and I'll learn of you to stay in it."

10 The present Duke of Leeds.

11 Dr. Cyril Jackson, afterwards sub-preceptor to his Majesty, George the Fourth, and since canon of Christ Church, Oxford. He refused the primacy of Ireland; was an excellent governor of his college, and died universally respected at Fulpham, in Sussex, in 1819. Dr. William Jackson, his brother, who was Bishop of Oxford, was also Regius Professor of Greek to that university; he died in 1815.

12 His lordship's attachment to the turf is as notorious as his undeviating practice of the purest principles of honour. It will not excite surprise, that such conduct has not been in such pursuits successful.

13 The member for Durham.

~75~~Lord Deerhurst (now Earl of Coventry) had then, as now, very quick parts, and early insight into beautiful composition. Whatever good thing he met with, he was always ready with an immediate parallel; Latin, Greek, or from honesty into English, nothing came amiss to him. He had a quick sense of the ridiculous; and could scout a character at all absurd and suspicious, with as much pleasant scurrility as a gentleman need have.

Banks always made his own exercises, as his exercises have since made him. He was a diligent and good boy; and though an early arithmetician, and fond of numbers, he was as soon distinguished for very honourable indifference to number one.

Douglas (now, I believe, Marquis of Queensberry) was remarkable for the worst penmanship in the school, and the economy of last moments; till then he seldom thought of an exercise. His favourite exercise was in Tothill-fields; from whence returning once very late, he instantly conceived and executed some verses, that were the best of his day. On another day, he was as prompt, and thought to have been more lucky than before; when, lo, the next morning he was flogged! for the exercise was so ill written, that it was not legible even by himself.

Lord Maiden was remarkable for his powers of engaging, and he then, as since, made some engagements, which might as well have been let alone. He made an early promise of all he has since performed. He was very fond of dramatic entertainments, and he enacted much; was accounted a good actor; so was his crony, Jack Wilson, so well known at Mrs. Hobart's, &c., for his fal de ral tit and for his duets with Lady Craven, Lady A. Foley, &c, &c.

Lord MANSFIELD, then William Murray, here began his career. When at school, he was not remarkable for personal courage, or for mental bravery; though one of the stoutest boys of his standing, he was often beat by boys a year or two below him; and though then acute and voluble, his opinions were suppressed and retracted before minds less powerful but more intrepid than his own. Of his money allowance he was always so good a manager, ~70~~that he could lend to him who was in need. The famous exercise which Nicois made such a rout about, was in praise of abundance: an English theme on this thesis, from Horace—

"Dulce est de magno tollore acervo. "

He was in college; and no man on earth could conjecture that in his own acervo there would ever be aggrandizement, such as it has since occurred.

Lord Stormont at school began his knack of oral imitations, and when a child, could speak quite as well as afterwards; after his uncle, the disgusting pronunciation of the letter o then too infected his language; he made it come to the ear like an a. Humorously glancing at this affectation, Onslow or Stanhope said "Murray's horse is an ass."

Markham, the Archbishop of York, made an early display of classical taste, and the diligent cultivation of it. Some of his school exercises are extant, and show more than a promise of that refinement and exactness, which afterwards distinguished his performances at Christ Church. The Latin version of the fragment of Simonides, as beautiful as any thing in the whole range of poetical imitation, though published in the Oxford Lachrymo as Mr. Bournes, is known to be written by Mr. Markham.

At school, too, Markham's conversation had a particularity known to distinguish it. War was his favourite topic, and caught, perhaps, from the worthy major, his father, and from his crony Webb, afterwards the general. It was apparent upon all occasions; when he was to choose his reading as a private study, in the sixth form, Caesar was his first book; and so continuing through most of his leisure time addicted to this sort of inquiry, the archbishop was afterwards able to talk war with any soldier in England. But, indeed, what is there he could not talk equal to any competitor? To the Archbishop Markham, and through him to Westminster, attach the credit of the good scholarship of the present king. This is little less than a credit to the country.

The Marquis of Stafford had fame for his English exercises; and after saying this of his Wednesday nights' themes, let it also be noted, that he had fame for other exercises of old England. He could ride, run, row, and bat better than most of his comtemporaries; in his potations, too, he was rather deep; but though deep, yet clear; and though gentle, yet not dull. At once a most jolly fellow, and the most magnificent of his time,—and so "ab incepto processerit."

The Duke of Dorset, then Sackville, (since dead) was good-humoured, manly, frank, and passionately fond of various school ~77~~exercises; as billiards, at the alehouse in Union-street, (then perhaps a tavern) and double-fives between the two walls at the school-door. For Tothill-fields fame as to cricket, he was yet more renowned: there he was the champion of the town-boys against those in college; and in the great annual match, he had an innings that might have lasted till the time Baccelli run him out, had not the other side given up the game.

As to the school itself, there it was easy to catch him out; though such was his address, that he was seldom caught out. When he was in school, really few boys were there to better purpose; he made several good prose exercises both in English and Latin; and, what is rare for a boy of rank, with but small aid from the tutor.

At school, he shot and rowed pretty well; and as he could not always pay for his boat in specie, somebody proposed a barter of Tothill-fields game; but he had a soul above it, and what was more, at his elbow another soul, saying, Carpamus dulcia, and of my dressing. That friend was

Lord Edward Bentinck, whose culinary fame began on the sparrows and fieldfares knocked down about the Five Chimnies and Jenny's whim. At a bill of fare, and the science how dinner should be put before him, he was then, as since, unrivalled; yet more to his good memorial, he knew how a dinner should be put before other people. For one day, as he was beginning to revel in a surreptitious banquet in the Bowling-alley, his share of the mess Lord Edward gave to the relief of want, which then happened to be wandering by the window.—"This praise shall last."

Old Elwes, the late member for Berks, may occur, on the mention of want wandering by, though, notwithstanding appearance, he suffered nobody about him to be in such wants as himself. Penurious, perhaps, on small objects; in those which are greater, he was certainly liberal almost to prodigality. The hoarding principle might be strong in him, but in the conduct of it he was often generous, always easy. No man in England probably lost more money in large sums, for want of asking for it: for small money, as in farthings to street beggary, few men probably have lost less. What he had not sufficiently cultivated, was the habit of letting money easily go. So far, he was the reverse of Charles the Second; for on greater occasions, again I say it, he seemed to own the act under the ennobling impulse of systematic generosity, expanding equally in self-denial, and in social sympathy. He was among the most dispassionate and tender-tempered men alive; and, considering ~78~~all things, it might be reasonable to allot him the meed of meekness upon earth, and of that virtue which seeketh not her own reward.

His ruling passion was the love of ease.

The beginnings of all this were more or less discernible at school, where Lord Mansfield gave him the nick-name of Jack Meggot.

His other little particularities were the best running and walking in the school, and the commencement of his fame for riding, which, in the well-known trials in the Swiss Academy, outdid all competition. Worsley, of the Board of Works, alone divided the palm; he rode more gracefully. Elwes was by far the boldest rider.

The Duke of Portland (who died in 1809) was among the delicciae of each form at Westminster, in all that appertained to temper, the tenderness and warmth of feeling, suavity of approach, and the whole passive power of pleasing. Thus much internal worth, tempered with but little of those showy powers which dazzle and seduce, gave early promise that he would escape all intriguing politics, and never degrade himself by the projects of party; for a party-man must always be comparatively mean, even on a scale of vicious dignity; in violence, subordinate to the ruffian; in chicane, below a common town-sharper.

He had, happily, no talents for party; he was better used by nature. He seemed formed for the kindliest offices of life; to appreciate the worth, and establish the dignity of domestic duties; to exemplify the hardest tasks of friendship and affinity; to display each hospitable charm.

All that he afterwards did for Chace Price, and Lord Eduard, appeared as a flower in its bud, in Dean's-yard and Tothill-fields, with the fruit-woman under the Gateway, and the coffee-house then opposite.

In his school-exercises, fame is not remembered to have followed any but his Wednesday evening themes: some of them were incomparably the best of the standing. In the rest of the school business, said the master to him one day, "you just keep on this side whipping."

His smaller habits were none remarkable, except that his diet was rather more blameable in the article of wine. A little too early; a little too much.

This, probably, more than any hereditary taint, made him, in immediate manhood, a martyr to the gout.

Against this, his ancestor's nostrum was tried in vain; the disease would not yield, till it was overborne by abstinence, which, to the praise of the duke's temper, he began and continued, with a splendour of resolution not any where exceeded.

~79~~The duke had been long estranged from all animal food but fish, and every fermented liquor. According to the old Latin distich, the poetry of a water-drinker is said to be short-lived, and not fit to live: was this proverbial doom extended to what was not poetry, it might be checked by the prose of the Duke of Portland. Most of his common letters were among the models of epistolary correspondence.

The Duke of Beaufort{14} exhibited at school more of the rudiments of a country gentleman, than the rudiments of Busby; he knew a horse practically, while other boys took it only from description in Virgil.

Stare loco nescit, was however his motto; and through all the demesnes adjacent to his little reign, on the water, and in the water, he was well; on horseback he was yet better; and to ride, or tie, on foot, or on horseback, no boy of his time was more ready at every good turn. He loved his friend; and, such were the engaging powers of his very frank and pleasant manner, his friends all loved him.

Some encumbrances, solito de more of all boys, with the coffee-house, for jellies, fruit, &c, left when he left school, he afterwards discharged with singular eclat.

In regard to scholarship, he was by no means wanting; though it must be owned, he wanted always to be better strangers with them. Like many other boys, he knew much more than he was aware of; for he had as much aversion to the Greek Epigrams, as the best critic could have; and in Terence, as he could find nothing to laugh, Lloyd often raised an opposite emotion. Lloyd, had he lived to this time, would have taken Terence as a main ingredient in his enjoyments. So benevolent is nature to fit the feelings of man to his destiny.

M'Donald, afterwards Solicitor General, was in college, and had then about him much that was remarkable for good value.

The different ranks in college are rather arduous trials of temper; and he that can escape without imputation through them, and be, as it is called, a junior without meanness, and a senior without obduracy, exhibits much early promise, both as to talents and virtue.

This early promise was M 'Donald's. He was well-respected in either rank, and he deserved it; for he obeyed the time, without being time-serving; he commanded, as one not forgetting what it was to obey.

Par negotiis, neque supra, characterised his scholarship.

14 Died in 1803.

~80~~He had in every form sufficiency, and sometimes eminence. He had more facility in Greek than most boys; his English exercises were conspicuous for language and neatness of turn.

He was a very uncorrupt boy, and his manners were rather elevated; yet it is not remembered that he lost popularity even with the worst boys in the school; the whole secret of which was specie minus quam vi. He was better than he seemed. There was no pride, no offending wish at seclusion.

Though not so remarkable for book knowledge as his brother Sir James, who thus, indeed, was nothing less than a prodigy, yet was M'Donald extremely well and very variously read. In miscellaneous information, far more accomplished than any boy of his time.

Markham, the master, had a high opinion of him; and once, in the midst of strong and favourable prognostics, said, "There was nothing against him but what was for him; rank and connections, and the too probable event of thence advancing into life too forward and too early."

Markham spoke with much sagacity. The rosa sera is the thing, for safe and spreading efflorescence. Well as the wreath might be about M'Donald's brow, it had probably been better, if gathered less eagerly, if put on later.

Cock Langford was the son of the auctioneer—

And there never was an inheritance of qualities like it. He would have made as good an auctioneer as his father; a better could not bo.

Cock Langford, so called, from the other auctioneer Cock, very early in the school discovered great talents for ways and means; and, by private contract, could do business as much and as well as his father.

His exercises were not noted for any excess of merit, or the want of it. He certainly had parts, if they had been put in their proper direction: that was trade. In that he might have been conspicuously useful.

As he was in college, and nothing loath in any occasion that led to notice, in spite of a lisp in his speech, he played Davus in the Phormio; which he opened with singidar absurdity, as the four first words terminate in the letter s, which he, from the imperfection in his speech, could not help mangling.

From the patronage of Lord Orford, Mr. Langford had one of the best livings in Norfolk, L1000 a year; and afterwards, I understand, very well exemplified the useful and honourable duties of a clergyman resident on his benefice.

Hamilton. Every thing is the creature of accident; as that ~81~~works upon time and place, so are the vicissitudes which follow; vicissitudes that reach through the whole allotment of man, even to the charm of character, and the qualities which produce it.

Physically speaking, human nature can redress itself of climate, can generate warmth in high latitudes, and cold at the equator; but in respect to mind and manners, from the law of latitude there is no appeal. Man, like the plants that grow for him, has a proper sky and soil: with them to flourish, without them to fade; through either kingdom, vegetable and moral, in situations that are aquatic, the alpine nature cannot live.

All this applies to Hamilton wasting himself at Westminster. "Wild nature's vigour working at his root;"

his situation should have been accordingly; where he might have spread wide and struck deep.

With more than boyish aptitudes and abilities, he should not thus have been lost among boys. His incessant intrepidity, his restless curiosity, his undertaking spirit, all indicated early maturity; all should have led to pursuits, if not better, at least of more pith and moment than the mere mechanism of dead language!

This by Hamilton (disdaining as a business what as an amusement perhaps might have delighted him) was deemed a dead letter, and as such, neglected; while he bestowed himself on other mechanism, presenting more material objects to the mind.



Exercises out of school took place of exercises within. Not that like Sackville or Hawkins, he had a ball at every leisure moment in his hand; but, preferably to fives or cricket, he would amuse himself in mechanical pursuits; little in themselves, but great as to what they might have been convertible.

In the fourth form, he produced a red shoe of his own making. And though he never made a pocket watch, and probably might mar many, yet all the interior machinery he knew and could name. The whole movement he took to pieces, and replaced.

The man who is to find out the longitude, cannot have beginnings; better than these. Count Bruhl, since Madge's death, the best watch-maker of his time, did not raise more early wonder.

Besides this, Hamilton was to be found in every daring oddity. Lords Burlington and Kent, in all their rage for porticos, were nothing to him in a rage for pediments.

For often has the morning caught him scaling the high pediments of the school-door, and at peril of Ins life clambering down, opening the door within, before the boy who kept the gate could come with the key. His evenings set upon no less perils; in pranks with gunpowder; in leaping from unusual heights into the ~82~~Thames. As a practical geographer of London, and Heaven only knows how many miles round it, omniscient Jackson himself could not know more.

All this, surely, was intrinsically right, wrong only in its direction. Had he been sent to Woolwich, he might have come out, if not a rival of the Duke of Richmond, then master of the ordnance, at least a first-rate engineer. In economical arts and improvements, nothing less than national, he might have been the Duke of Bridgewater of Ireland. Had the sea been his profession, Lord Mulgrave might have been less alone in the rare union of science and enterprise.

But all this capability of usefulness and fair fame, was brought to nought by the obstinate absurdity of the people about him; nothing could wean them from Westminster. His grandfather Roan, or Rohan, an old man who saved much money in Rathbone-place, and spent but little of it every evening at Slaughter's coffee-house, holding out large promise to property, so became absolute; and absolute nonsense was his conduct to his grandson. He persevered in the school; where, if a boy disaffects book-knowledge, his books are only bought and sold. And after Westminster, when the old man died, as if solicitous that every thing about his grave, but poppy and mandragora, should grow downwards, his will declared his grandson the heir, but not to inherit till he graduated at Cambridge.

To Cambridge therefore he went; where having pursued his studies, as it is called, in a ratio inverse and descending, he might have gone on from bad to worse; and so, as many do, putting a grave face upon it, he might have had his degree. But his animal spirits, and love of bustle, could not go off thus undistinguished; and so, after coolly attempting to throw a tutor into the Cam—after shaking all Cambridge from its propriety by a night's frolic, in which he climbed the sign-posts, and changed the principal signs, he was rusticated; till the good-humour of the university returning, he was re-admitted, and enabled to satisfy his grandfather's will!

After that, he behaved with much gallantry in America; and with good address in that very disagreeable affair, the contested marriage of his sister with Mr. Beresford the clergyman.

Indeed, through the intercourse of private life he was very amiable. The same suavity of speech, courteous attentions, and general good-nature, he had when a boy, continued and improved: good qualities the more to be prized, as the less probable, from his bold and eager temper, from the turbulence of his wishes, and the hurry of his pursuits.

~83~~Jekyl had in part, when a boy, the same happy qualities which afterwards distinguished him so entirely: in his economy of time, in his arts of arranging life, and distributing it exactly, between what was pleasant and what was grave.

With vigorous powers and fair pursuits, the doing one thing at a time is the mode to do every thing. Had Jekyl no other excellence than this, I could not be surprised when he became attorney-general.

"When you got into the place of your ancestor, Sir Joseph," said the tutor of Jekyl to him, "let this be your motto:

Et properare loco, et Cesare."

"Jekyl," said Mrs. Hobart one day, struck with the same address and exactness, "do you know, if you were a painter, Poussin would be nothing to you in the balance of a scene."

Several of his English exercises, and his verses, will not easily be forgotten. And it will be remembered also, in a laughable way, that he was as mischievous as a gentleman need be; the mobbing a vulgar, the hoaxing a quiz, all the dialect of the Thames below Chelsea-reach, and the whole reach of every thing, pleasant but wrong, which the school statutes put out of reach, but what are the practice of the wits, and of every gentleman who would live by the statutes. All these were among Jekyl's early peculiarities, and raised his fame very high for spirit and cleverness.

"So sweet and voluble was his discourse."

He was very popular among all the boys of his time. And he had a knack yet more gratifying, of recommending himself to the sisters and cousins of the boys he visited.

And he well held up in theory what he afterwards exemplified in fact. For in one of the best themes of the time on this subject,

"Non formosus erat, sod erat facundus Ulysses,"

he was much distinguished.

~84~~"But the grave has closed upon most of the gay spirits of my earlier time," said Crony; "and I alone remain the sad historian. Yonder porch leads to the dormitory and school-room.{15}

'There Busby's awful picture decks the place, Shining where once he shone a living grace.'

15 This school was founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1560, for the education of forty boys, denominated king's scholars from the royalty of their founders; besides which, the nobility and gentry send their sons thither for instruction, so that this establishment vies with Eton in celebrity and respectability. The school is not endowed with lands and possessions specifically appropriated to its own maintenance, but is attached to the general foundation of the collegiate church of Westminster, as far as relates to the support of the king's scholars. It is under the care of the dean and chapter of Westminster, conjointly with the dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and the master of Trinity, Cambridge, respect-ing the election of scholars to their respective colleges. The foundation scholars sleep in the dormitory, a building erected from the design and under the superintendence of the celebrated Earl of Burlington, in the reign of George the First; and in this place the annual theatrical exhibitions take place; the scenery and arrangements having been contrived under the direction of Mr. Garrick, were presented by Archbishop Markham, the former master of the school. The king's scholars are distin- guished from the town-boys, or independents, by a gown, cap, and college waistcoat; they have their dinner in the hall, but seldom take any other meal in college; they pay for education and accommodation as the town-boys; eight of them are generally elected at the end of the fourth year to the colleges above-named; they have studentships at Oxford, and scholarships at Cambridge; the former worth from forty to sixty pounds per annum, but the latter of small beneficial consideration. The scholars propose themselves for the foundation by challenge, and contend with each other in Latin and Greek every day for eight weeks successively, when the eight at the head of the number are chosen according to vacancies. This contest occasions the king's scholarships to be much sought after, as it becomes the ground-work of reputation, and incites desire to excel. There are four boys who are called Bishop's boys, from their being established by Williams, Bishop of Lincoln; they have a gratuitous education, and a small allowance which is suffered to accumulate till the period of their admission into St. John's College, Cambridge; they are distinguished by wearing a purple gown, and are nominated by the dean and head- master.

What a cloud of recollections, studded with bright and variegated lights, passes before my inward vision! Stars of eminence in every branch of learning, science, and public duties, who received their education within those walls; old Westminsters, whose fame will last as long as old England's records, and who shall doubt ~85~~that will be to the end of time? Here grew into manhood and renown the Lord Burleigh, King, Bishop of London, the poet Cowley, the great Dryden, Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, Dr. South, Matthew Prior, the tragedian Rowe, Bishop Hooper, Kennet, Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Friend, the physician, King, Archbishop of Dublin, the philosopher Locke, Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, Bourne, the Latin poet, Hawkins Browne, Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, Carteret, Earl of Granville, Charles Churchill, the English satirist, Frank Nicholls, the anatomist, Gibbon, the historian, George Colman, Bonnel Thornton, the great Earl of Mansfield, Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Richard Cumberland, the poet Cowper. These are only a few of the great names which occur to me at this moment; but here is enough to immortalize the memory of the old Westminsters."



ON FEASTERS AND FEASTING.

On the Attachment of the Moderns to Good Eating and Drinking—Its Consequences and Operation upon Society— Different Description of Dinner Parties—Royal—Noble— Parliamentary—Clerical—Methodistical—Charitable— Theatrical—Legal—Parochial—Literary—Commercial and Civil Gourmands—Sketches at a Side-table, by Bernard Blackmantle.

~86~~

"There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust." —Armstrong.

In such esteem is good eating held by the moderns, that the only way in which Englishmen think they can celebrate any important event, or effect any charitable purpose, is by a good dinner. From the palace to the pot-house, the same affection for good eating and drinking pervades all classes of mankind. The sovereign, when he would graciously condescend to bestow on any individual some mark of his special favour, invites him to the royal banquet, seats him tete-a-tete with the most polished prince in Europe; by this act of royal notice exalts him in the public eye, and by the suavity and elegance of his manners rivets his affections and secures his zeal for the remainder of his life. The ministers too have their state dinners, where all important questions are considered before they are submitted to the grand council of the nation. The bishops dine in holy 87~conclave to benefit Christianity, and moralize over Champagne on the immorality of mankind. The judges dine with the lord chancellor on the first day of term, and try their powers of mastication before they proceed to try the merits of their fellow citizens' causes. A lawyer must eat his way to the bar, labouring most voraciously through his commons dinners in the Temple or Lincoln's Inn Halls, before he has any chance of success in common law, common pleas, or common causes in the court of King's Bench or Chancery. The Speaker's parliamentary dinners are splendid spreads for poor senators; but sometimes the feast is infested with rats, whom his majesty's royal rat-catcher immediately cages, and contrives, by the aid of a blue or red ribband, to render extremely useful and docile. Your orthodox ministers dine on tithes, turtle, and Easter offerings, until they become as sleek as their own velvet cushions, and eke from charity to mankind almost as red in the face from the ruby tint of red port, and the sorrowful recollections of sin and death. The methodist and sectarians have their pious love feasts—bachelor's fare, bread and butter and kisses, with a dram of comfort at parting, I suppose. The deaf, the dumb, the lame, the blind, all have their annual charitable dinnerings; and even the Actor's Fund is almost entirely dependent on the fund of amusement they contrive to offer to their friends at their annual fund dinner. The church-wardens dine upon a child, and the overseers too often upon the mite extorted from the poor. Even modern literature is held in thraldom by the banquetings of modern booksellers and publishers, who by this method contrive to cram the critics with their crudities, and direct the operation of their servile pens in the cutting up of poor authors. At the Publisher's Club, held at the Albion, Dr. Kitchener and Will Jerdau rule the roast; here these worthies may be heard commenting with ~88~~profound critical consistency on culinaries and the classics, gurgling down heavy potations of black strap, and making still heavier remarks upon black letter bibliomania, until all the party are found labouring "Dare pondus idonea fumo," or, in the language of Cicero, it may be justly said of them, "Damnant quod non intelligent." The magnifico Murray has his merry meetings, where new books are made palatable to certain tastes by sumptuous feastings, and a choice supply of old wines. Colburn brings his books into notice by first bringing his dinner coteries into close conclave; and Longman's monthly melange of authors and critics is a literary statute dinner, where every guest is looking out for a liberal engagement.



Even the booksellers themselves feast one another before they buy and sell; and a trade sale, without a trade dinner to precede it, would be a very poor concern indeed. Fire companies and water companies, bubble companies and banking companies, all must be united and consolidated by a good dinner company. Your fat citizen, with a paunch that will scarce allow him to pass through the side avenue of Temple Bar, marks his feast days upon his sheet almanack, as a lawyer marks his term list with a double dash, thus =, and shakes in his easy chair like a sack of blubber as lie recapitulates the names of all the glorious good things of which he has partaken at the annual civic banquet at Fishmonger's Hall, or the Bible Association dinner at the City of London Tavern: at the mention of white bait, his lips smack together with joy, and he lisps out instinctively Blackwall: talk of a rump steak and Dolly's, his eyes grow wild with delight; and just hint at the fine green fat of a fresh killed turtle dressed at Birch's, and his whole soul's in arms for a corporation dinner. Reader, I have been led into this strain of thinking by an excursion I am about to make with Alderman Marigold and family, ~89~~to enjoy the pleasures of a Sunday ordinary in the suburbs of the metropolis; an old fashioned custom that is now fast giving way to modern notions of refinement, and is therefore the more worthy of characteristic record.

Bernard Blackmantle.



A SUNDAY RAMBLE TO HIGHGATE,

OR, THE CITS ORDINARY.

Bernard Blackmantle's first Excursion with the Marigold Family—Lucubrations of the Alderman on the Alterations of the Times—Sketches and Recollections on the Road—The Past and the Present—Arrival at the Gate House, Highgate—The Cit's Ordinary—Traits of Character—The Water Drinker, the Vegetable Eater, and the Punster—Tom Cornish, the Gourmand—Anecdote of old Tattersall and his Beef Eater— Young Tat. and the Turnpike Man.

~90~~"May I never be merry more," said the alderman, "if we don't go a Maying on Sunday next, and you must accompany us, Master Blackmantle: I always make a country excursion once a year, to wit, on the first Sunday in May, when we join a very jolly party at the Gate House, Highgate, and partake of an excellent ordinary."

"I thought, Pa, you would have given up that vulgar custom when we removed westward, and you were elected alderman of the ward of Cheap."

"Ay," said Mrs. Marigold, "if you wish to act politely to your wife and daughter write to the Star and Garter at Richmond, or the Toy at Hampton Court, and order a choice dinner beforehand for a select party; then we should be thought something of, and be able to dine in comfort, without being ~91~~scrowged up in a corner by a Leadenhall landlady, or elbowed out of every mouthful by a Smithfield salesman."

"There it is, Mr. Blackmantle, that's the evil of a man having a few pounds more in his purse than his neighbours—it makes him miserable with his family at home, and prevents him associating with old friends abroad. If you marry my Biddy, make these conditions with her—to dispense with all Mrs. Marigold's maxims on modern manners, and be at liberty to smoke your pipe where, and with whom you please."

"I declare, Pa, one would imagine you wished Mr. Blackmantle to lose all his manners directly after marriage, and all respect for his intended bride beforehand."

"Nothing of the sort, Miss Sharpwit; but, ever since I made the last fortunate contract, you and your mother have contracted a most determined dislike to every thing social and comfortable—haven't I cut the Coger's Society in Bride Lane, and the Glee Club at the Ram in Smithfield? don't I restrain myself to one visit a week to the Jolly Old Scugs{1} Society in Abchurch Lane? haven't I declined the chair of the Free and Easy Johns, and given up my command in the Lumber Troop?—are these no sacrifices? is it nothing to have converted my ancestors' large estate in Thames Street into warehouses, and emigrated westward to be confined in one of your kickshaw cages in Tavistock Square? Don't I keep a chariot and a chaise for your comfort, and consent to be crammed up in a corner at a concert party to hear some foreign stuff I don't understand? Plague take your drives in Hyde Park and promenades in Kensington Gardens! give me the society where I can eat, drink, laugh, joke, and smoke

1 Blue coat boys. The others are all well-known anacreontic meetings held in the city.

~92~~as I like, without being obliged to watch every word and action, as if my tongue was a traitor to my head, and my stomach a tyrant of self-destruction."

The alderman's remonstrance was delivered with so much energy and good temper, that there was no withstanding his argument; a hearty laugh, at the conclusion, from Miss Biddy and myself, accompanied by an ejaculation of "Poor man, how ill you are used!" from his lady, restored all to good-humour, and obtained the "quid pro quo," a consent on their parts to yield to old customs, and, for once in a way, to allow the alderman to have a day of his own. The next morning early an open barouche received our party, the coachman being particularly cautioned not to drive too fast, to afford the alderman an opportunity of luxuriating upon the reminiscences of olden time.

As the carriage rolled down the hill turning out of the New Road the alderman was particularly eloquent in pointing out and describing the once celebrated tea gardens, Bagnigge Wells.

"In my young days, sir, this place was the great resort of city elegance and fashion, and divided the town with Vauxhall. Here you might see on a Sunday afternoon, or other evenings, two thirds of the corporation promenading with their wives and daughters; then there was a fine organ in the splendid large room, which played for the entertainment of the company, and such crowds of beautiful women, and gay fellows in embroidered suits and lace ruffles, all powdered and perfumed like a nosegay, with elegant cocked hats and swords in their sides; then there were such rural walks to make love in, take tea or cyder, and smoke a pipe; you know, Mrs. Marigold, you and I have had many a pleasant hour in those gardens during our courting days, when the little naked Cupid used to sit astride of a swan, and the water spouted from its beak as high as the ~93~~monument; then the grotto was so delightful and natural as life, and the little bridge, and the gold fish hopping about underneath it, made it quite like a terrestrial paradise{2}; but about that time Dr. Whitfield and the Countess of Huntingdon undertook to save the souls of all the sinners, and erected a psalm-singing shop in Tottenham Court Road, where they assembled the pious, and made wry faces at the publicans and sinners, until they managed to turn the heads without turning the hearts of a great number of his majesty's liege subjects, and by the aid of cant and hypocrisy, caused the orthodox religion of the land to be nearly abandoned; but we are beginning to be more enlightened, Mr. Blackmantle, and Understand these trading missionaries and Bible merchants much better than they could wish us to have done. Then, sir, the Pantheon, in Spa Fields, was a favourite place of resort for the bucks and gay ladies of the time; and Sadler's Wells and Islington Spa were then in high repute for their mineral waters. At White Conduit House the Jews and Jewesses of the metropolis held their carnival, and city apprentices used to congregate at Dobney's bowling-green, afterwards named, in compliment to Garrick's Stratford procession, the Jubilee tea-gardens; those were the times to grow rich, Mr. Blackmantle, when half-a-crown would cover the day's expenditure of five persons, and behave liberally too."—In our way through Islington, the alderman pointed out to us the place as formerly celebrated for a weekly consumption of cakes and ale; and as we passed through Holloway, informed us that it was in former time equally notorious for its cheese-cakes, the fame of which attracted vast numbers on

2 Upon reference to an old print of Bagnigge Wells, I find the alderman's description of the place to be a very faithful portrait. The Pantheon is still standing, but converted into a methodist chapel.

~94~~the Sunday, who, having satiated themselves with pastry, would continue their rambles to the adjacent places of Hornsey Wood House, Colney Hatch, and Highgate, returning by the way of Hampstead to town.

The topographical reminiscences of the alderman were illustrated as we proceeded by the occasional sallies of Mrs. Marigold's satire: "she could not but regret the depravity of the times, that enabled low shop-keepers and servants to dress equal to their betters: it is now quite impossible to enjoy society and be comfortable in public, without being associated with your tallow-chandler, or your butcher, or take a pleasant drive out of town, without meeting your linen-draper, or your tailor, better mounted or in a more fashionable equipage than yourself."

"All for the good of trade," said the alderman: "it would be very hard indeed if those who enable others to cut a dash all the week could not make a splash themselves on a Sunday; besides, my dear, it's a matter of business now-a-days: many of your kickshaw tradesmen west of Temple Bar find it as necessary to consult appearances in the park and watch the new come outs, as I do to watch the stock market: if they find their customers there in good feather and high repute, they venture to cover another leaf in their ledger; but if, on the contrary, they appear shy, only show of a Sunday, and are cut by the nobs, why then they understand it's high time to close the account, and it's very well for them if they are ever able to strike a balance."

At the conclusion of this colloquy, we had arrived at the Gate House, Highgate, just in time to hear the landlord proclaim that dinner was that moment about to be served up: the civic rank of the alderman did not fail to obtain its due share of servile attention from Boniface, who undertook to escort our party into the room, and having announced the consequence ~95~~of his guests, placed the alderman and his family at the head of the table.

I have somewhere read, "there is as much valour expected in feasting as in fighting; "and if any one doubts the truth of the axiom, let him try with a hungry stomach to gratify the cravings of nature at a crowded ordinary—or imagine a well disposed group of twenty persons, all in high appetite and "eager for the fray" sitting down to a repast scantily prepared for just half the number, and crammed into a narrow room, where the waiters are of necessity obliged to wipe every dish against your back, or deposit a portion of gravy in your pocket, to say nothing of the sauce with which a remonstrance is sure to fill both your ears. Most of the company present upon this occasion appeared to have the organs of destructiveness to an extraordinary degree, and mine host of the Gate House, who is considered an excellent physiognomist, looked on with trembling and disastrous countenance, as he marked the eager anxiety of the expectant gourmands sharpening their knives, and spreading their napkins, at the shrine of Sensuality, exhibiting the most voracious symptoms of desire to commence the work of demolition.

A small tureen of mock turtle was half lost on its entrance, by being upset over the leg of a dancing-master, who capered about the room to double quick time, from the effects of a severe scalding; on which the alderman (with a wink) observed, that the gentleman had no doubt caused many a calf s head to dance about in his time, and now he had met with a rich return. "I'll bring an action against the landlord for the carelessness of his waiter." "You had better not," said the alderman. "Why not, sir?" replied the smarting son of Terpsichore. "Because you have only one leg to stand on." This sally produced a general laugh, and restored all to good humour. On the appearance of a fine cod's head and shoulders, the ~96~~rosy gills of Marigold seemed to extend with extatic delight; while a dozen voices assailed him at once with "I'll take fish, if you please." "Ay, but you don't take me for a fag: if you please, gentlemen, I shall help the ladies first, then myself and friend, and afterwards you may divide the omnium and scrip just as you please."