The subdued master-mason felt the full force of this line, to which his son Guy's appropriate pronunciation and personal stare gave a new reading. Here the juvenile spouter finally broke down, upon which Mrs. Bumgarten took his voice under her patronage, and having prevailed upon him to try a song, the 'young idea' began in an excruciating wheeze, as if a pair of bellows had been invited to sing, the following morceau. 'More so,' said Mrs. Muff, encouragingly, because pa' (Nicholas Fubsy, familiarly denominated 'Old Nick') 'said it was almost good enough to be sung a Sundays after Tabernacle.'

There was a little bird,

His cage hung in the hall;

On Monday morning, May the third,
He couldn't sing at all.

And for this reason, mark,

Good people, great and small,
Because the pussey, for a lark,
Had eat him, bones and all.

None of

'Ah!' cried Aunt B. approvingly, that is a song! your frothy comic stuff that some folks (!!) is so fond of.' She now entertained Uncle Timothy with an account, full of bombast and brag, of some grand weddings that had recently been celebrated in the Fubsy family-the Candlerigs and Gropusses (gentlefolks, it occurred to the satirical-nosed gentleman, not by the grace of God, but the mopusses!) having condescended to adulterate the patrician blood of St. Giles's in the fields with the plebeian puddle of the City Gardens, the sometime suburban retreat of the Fubsys, where they farmed a magnificent château, which, like the great Westphalian Baron de Thunder-tan-trounck's, had a door and a window. It next came to the turn of several families, with whom Mrs. Bumgarten was acquainted, to be picked to pieces; which having been done, with a gusto peculiar to the Fubsys, she looked on the forlorn hope round the table and room for something to find fault with. Uncle Timothy filled up the pause, by calling on Mr. Brutus Muff for a song.

'I never heered Mr. Muff sing, Mr. Timwig,' chimed the sisters simultaneously.

'Indeed! Then, ladies, it will be the greater novelty. Come, my good sir; but first a glass of wine with you.'

'Oh dear, Mr. Timwiddy, you will make Mr. Muff quite topheavy! It must only be half a glass,' said Mrs. Muff, authoritatively.

'The top half.' And the middle-aged gentleman poured out the regal purple stream' till it kissed, without flowing over, the brim. Mr. Muff instantly brought the bumper to a level with his lips, and, as if half ashamed of what he was doing, put both halves out of sight!

Is the man mad?' cried the amazed Mrs. Muff.

'Has he lost his senses?' ejaculated the bewildered Mrs. Bumgarten.

'He has found them, rather,' whispered the satirical-nosed gentleman.

The bland looks and persuasive tones of Uncle Timothy, to say nothing of the last bumper, had wrought wonders on the mastermason. He looked Silenus-like and rosy, and glanced his little peering eyes across the table-Mrs. Muff having a voice too in the affair -for an assenting nod from the fierce black velvet spangled turban of his better and bigger half. But Mrs. Muff made no sign, and he paused irresolute, when another kind word and smile from the middle-aged gentleman encouraged him, at all hazards, to begin with,

'You sha'n't sing another line, that you sha'n't, Brutus!' vociferated Mrs. Muff. But the Cockney Roman, undaunted and vocal, went on singing,

Says Doctor Peter Pott, As I know vhat 's vhat,

My anti-bilious patent pill on Tib my rib I'll try;

If Mrs. P. vill svallow, if dissolution follow,

And she should kick the bucket, I'm sure I shan't cry!'

'Where could he have learned such a rubbishing song? I never know'd that he knew it! A man, too, after pa's own heart! I shall certainly go into hystericals,' sighed Mrs. Muff.

'If so be as you're so inclined, my love, have the purliteness just to vait till I've a-done singing.'

'Have

And vel the doctor knew that a leer par les deux yeux

Mrs. Pott vithstand could not, vhen shot from Peter's eye;

So presently plump at her he opes his organic battery.
And said the pill it vouldn't kill, no, not a little fly!

you no sort of compassion for my poor nerves?' remonstrated Mrs. Muff, pathetically.

'None vhatsumdever,' replied the stoical Brutus.

passion have you ever had for mine?'

'Besides,' said he, I swear, d'ye see,

By the goods and chattels of Doctor P.
By my vig and my cane,

Brass knocker and bell,

And the cab in vhich I cut sich a svell,
That a single pill (a pill, by the by,
Is a dose !) if Mrs. Pott vill try,

Of gout and phthisic she 'll newer complain,
And newer vant to take physic again.'

Down it slid,

And she newer did!

'Vhat com

(The Doctor vith laughing vas like to burst!)

For this werry good reason-it finish'd her first!

'I'll send,' cried Mrs. Bumgarten, furiously, for one of the L division.'

6

'You may send to the devil for one of the L division!' shouted the valiant Mr. Muff, aspirating with particular emphasis the letter L. 'Howsever, ladies, as you don't seem much to like Doctor Pott, suppose I favour you vith the Irishman's epitaph.

Here I lays, Teddy O'Blaize, (Singing)

And my body quite at its aise is;

Vith the tip of my nose and the tops of my toes
Turn'd up to the roots of the daisies!

And now, my inwaluable spouse, as I carn't conwenently sing you any more moral lessons, I'll just tipple you two or three!' And Mr. Muff, with admirable coolness and precision, filled himself a bumper. First and foremust, from this day henceforrer'd, I'm determined to be my own lord and master.'

'You shall never be mine!' said Mrs. Muff, bitterly.

'Imprimis and secondly, I don't choose to be the hen-pecked, hugger-mugger, collywoffling, snubbed, under-the-fear-of-his-vifeand-a broomstick Jerry Sneak and Pollycoddle, that old Nic Fubsy the Vhitechapel pin-maker vas! You shan't, my dear, like his loving Lizzy, curry.comb my precious vig, and smuggle my last vill!' 'Et tu Brute!' said Uncle Timothy, in a half whisper.

'He is a brute!' sobbed Mrs. Bumgarten, 'to speak so of poor dear pa! Mr. Muff, Mr. Muff! how I disgust you!

'Don't purwoke me, Mrs. Bumgarten, pray, don't purwoke me into 'fending and proving, or I shall let the cat out of the bag to Mr. Timvig, and the kittens into the bargain! By the Lord Harry, I'll peach, Mrs. Muff!'

Five full glasses of red port had removed the decent restraint that Mrs. Bumgarten sometimes imposed on her unruly member, which restraint may be likened unto the board that confines the odoriferous contents of a scavenger's cart, and she was about to pour upon the master-mason a fragrant flood of Fubsyean eloquence, when Prudence, the family guardian angel, took her by the tongue's tip, as St. Dunstan took a certain ebony gentleman by the nose. She telegraphed Mrs. Muff, and Mrs. Muff telegraphed the intelligent Guy. Just as Brutus was fetching breath for another ebullition, with his hand on the decanter for another bumper, he found himself half throttled in the Cornish hug of his affectionate and blubbering first-born! When a chimney caught fire, it was a custom in Merrie England to drop down it a live goose, in the quality of extinguisher! And no goose ever performed its office better than the living Guy. He opened the flood-gates of his gooseberry eyes, and played upon pa so effectually, ina and aunt sobbing and sighing in full chorus, that Mr. Muff's ire or fire was speedily put out; and when to prevent a coroner's inquest, the obedient child was motioned by the ladies to relax his filial embrace, the mollified master-mason began to sigh and sob too. The politic sisters now proposed to cut short their day's pleasure! a proposal not resisted by Mr. Muff, who was in a humour to comply with anything, and politely seconded by Uncle Timothy, to

whom it was some consolation, that while he had been sitting upon thorus, his tormentors too were a little nettled! Seeing bluff John Tomkins in the stable-yard grooming con amore one of Mr. Bosky's pet bloods, he called out,

'John! I'm afraid we were too many this morning for that shying left-wheeler. Now, if he should unfortunately take to kicking-'

Kicking! Mr. Timwiddy,' screamed Mrs. Bumgarten. 'Kicking! Mr. Timwig!' echoed Mrs. Muff.

Herodotus (who practised what he preached) said, 'When telling a lie will be profitable, let it be told!'-'He may lie,' said Plato, 'who knows how to do it in a suitable time.' So thought John Tomkins, who in all probability had never read either Herodotus or Plato, and thinking no time like the present, and hoping to frighten his unwelcome customers into an omnibus, and drive home Uncle Timothy in capital style, he so aggravated the possible kickings, plungings, takings fright, and runnings away of that terrible leftwheeler, that the good-natured and accommodating middle-aged gentleman was easily persuaded by the ladies to lighten the weight and diminish the danger, by returning to town by some other conveyance. And it was highly ludicrous to mark the glum looks and disappointment of John when he doggedly put the horses to, and how he mischievously laid his whip-cord into the sensitive flanks of the shying left-wheeler,' who honoured every draft on his fetlocks, and duly confirmed the terrifying anticipations and multiplications of the veracious John Tomkins!

'Song sweetens toil, however rude the sound,'-and John sweetened his by humming the following, in which he encored himself several times, as he drove Mrs. Bumgarten and family to town.

Dash along! splash along! hi, gee ho!
Four-and-twenty perriwigs all of a row!
Save me from a tough yarn twice over told-
Save me from a Jerry Sneak, and save me from a scold.

A horse is not a mare, and a cow is not a calf;

A woman that talks all day long has too much tongue by half,
To the music of the fiddle I like to figure in;

But off I cut a caper from the music of the chin!

When Madam's in her tantrums, and Madam 'gins to cry;
If you want to give her change, hold an ingun to your eye;
But if she shakes her pretty fist, and longs to come to blows,
You may slip through her fingers, if you only soap your nose!

Dash along! splash along! hi, gee ho!

No horse so fast can gallop as a woman's tongue can go.

"Needs must," I've heard my granny say, "when the devil drives." I wish he drove, instead of me, this brace of scolding wives!

ON GALATEA.

BY COTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING.

FOLKS say that Galatea dyes her hair;
"Twas black the day she bought it, I can swear.

HORE OFFLEANEÆ.

BY A MAN ABOUT TOWN.

I TURNED into Offley's the other night, when it was 'almost at odds with morning which was which.' It was accordingly, as Jack Falstaff feelingly describes it on being disturbed, the sweetest morsel of the night; and such have I often found it

'In my warm youth, when George the Fourth was King.'

Then it was that, flinging aside dull care, and bidding her try to kill another cat, instead of tormenting a Christian, I began to put in the remainder of the evening,'-an evening, by the way, of a pecu liar sort, for it always expired amidst the tears of the cup,' and generally in the broad blaze of sun-light. Many and many an evening of this sort have I spent at Offley's, and it was the memory of them that now guided my footsteps. The large and well proportioned room erected by old Offley as a temple to singing, smoking, supping, and so forth, was empty, save for the presence of the waiter, Reynolds, who was leaning upon his arms in the accustomed place over the back of the box near the door, gazing into the unpeopled space before him with a melancholy air, which would have sat appropriately upon the genius of the place. He started at my footsteps, and his face lit up as he recognized in me an old frequenter of the establishment in those days when he whom men called Offley, but the loftier spirits styled Frawley, presided over the gay and busy scene, and took his state as the patron of high solemnities. Time had made no perceptible change in Reynolds: I think the old scythebearer rarely does in waiters. They acquire prematurely in their youth the appearance of a 'certain age,' and for at least a genera. tion they look no older. You par-boil salmon to make it keep. The waiter seems to have undergone a similar process at the outset of his career, and in its course to exemplify the conservative effects. The French are right; the proper appellation for them from the knife-board to the grave is garçon! I ordered the staple commodi. ties of the house-a chop and a nip of Burton ale.

There was no such chop to be had in Christendom as that which old Frawley used to cook with his own hands for his favourite guests. But the mighty Mandarin of multitudinous chops is no more. No matter we must take things as we can best get them; and so, like an Homeric hero, I proceeded to remove my desire for meat and drink, and then, with a Broughamian glass of brandy. and-water, calidum cum by my side, and a real Havannah, I fell into a reflective mood. The feelings which swelled my bosom were similar to those which Cicero attributes to Atticus. Movemur enim nescio quo pacto locis ipsis, in quibus eorum quos diligimus ant admiramur adsunt vestigia. Me quidem ipsæ illæ nostræ Athenæ non tam operibus magnificis exquisitisque antiquorum artibus delectant, quàm recordatione summorum virorum, ubi quisque habitare, ubi sedere, ubi disputare sit solitus, studiosèque eorum etiam

Care killed a cat.-Old proverb.