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ters," wherein we trace the same feelings which dictated a contributor's “ Reflections of an Incomplete Letter Writer." Some of Mr. Locker's verses we might have been proud to acknowledge; but, cockney though we may be in our view of things in general, we cannot go Mr. Locker's length of cockneyfying our expression; so, for the sake of that intramural poetry which may be tolerated, if not encouraged (on the principle that a box of mignonette, or a geranium planted in a cracked ewer, is not the worst possible foreground to a view from a garret window), we advise him to renounce all such rhymes as "Arthur" and "father," or, "fawner" and "scorner." This mating the close with the open sound may almost be said to be the only bad rhyme. Other false antiponents are simply no-rhymes, and their effect is immeasurably less horrible.

Dr. Doran's book about "Court Fools," is, as any book by Dr. Doran must be, immensely clever and entertaining. We are glad to see that this volume, which follows in the same series as "Monarchs retired from Business," includes the immortal story of King Charles the Simple's jester, who, being asked by his royal master, what was his objection to their changing places, and whether it was that he (the fool) feared that he should be unable to act the king, replied, No; but that he feared he should have to put up with such a very bad fool.

Eighteenth-century literature is, from the historical point of view, curiously instructive. Our first historian and our greatest littérateur have both felt it to be so, and have instinctively preferred it, the one as a source of political study, the other as a field rich in the materials of social science and of personal satire. We may, indeed, regret that Mr.. Thackeray should be won quite to the contemplation of those bag-wig times, so as altogether to abandon the times from which we can ill spare him. But we must acknowledge the greatness of the temptation, to one like him a picturesque humourist, with not a little love of intrigue. The eighth volume of "Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century," is now on our table, and completes the publication. Mr. John Bowyer Nichols, the editor of this copious and varied collection of memoirs and correspondence, has made many additions, and has ventured apologetically to include some illustrations of the early literary history of the present century. This final volume contains a Memoir of Mr. John Nichols, sometime editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. It has also a most valuable index to the whole work. Will anybody be so kind as to lend us the first seven volumes, just to read at our leisure?

Mr. Newman (of Punch) is a bold man; a very bold man. The little book which, under the title of " Shadows," helped so much to raise Mr. C. H. Bennett in the estimation of all lovers of artistic fancy, has been appropriated by Mr. Newman (of Punch) with a cool audacity which we believe to be unparalleled in plagiaristic annals. "Moveable shadows," Mr. Newman (of Punch) has the impudence to ticket his bundle of stolen goods; and that he has made a profitable mistake in treating Mr. Bennett's "shadows" as substance, and “ moving" them in his own peculiar manner, we can testify; inasmuch as not a few cases are known to us in which the celebrity of Mr. Bennett's little book has induced a purchase of the wares brought into the market by this piratical Mr. Newman, whom we will take the liberty of describing, by a little addition to his own orthography, as being, and as having been for a number of years past, "off Punch."

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WE are not, as a nation, intollerant of vice, but we like it to be respectable. We have no horror of whitened sepulchres-we rather like them and we can pass by, and even patronize any amount of impurity, if it is only careful enough not to offend the eye. The lamented Dugdale, of Holywell-street notoriety, is now in prison, undergoing a sentence-not for selling improper books-but for carrying on his business in a low street, that has been forced for years under the notice of the Society for the trimming of Vice. It is not difficult to perceive that the lamented Dugdale was a fool, incapable of discerning and accommodating himself to the altered tastes of the age in which he lived. If he had transferred his business to one of the elegant Arcades at the west-end, or had gone still further, into the neighbourhood of Knightsbridge or Pimlico, he might now have been a prosperous tradesman-perhaps a payer of church-rates-instead of a convicted felon. If he had judiciously covered the outward grossness of his trade, with a thin, transparent coating of pretended science, and had delivered to a pruriant public, highly coloured studies from nature, upon photographic slides, with a stereoscope to aid in their development, he might have been the medium for furnishing the subjects for those orders for "something spicy," which many large and respectable houses, connected with the publishing trade in India and the Colonies, receive every month without a blush, and proceed to execute faithfully without a twinge of conscience. But the lamented Dugdale was a fool, and was, therefore, selected to pacify for a time, the cries of outraged decency and virtuous indignation.

J. H.

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IIY don't I have chambers in the
Albany, instead of living at my
office here, in Lincoln's Inn
Fields?

"Fill your glass, Colonel, and pass the bottle. I daresay, when you parted from your boon companion some thirty years ago, to rejoin your regiment in India, you pictured to yourself his career in England-a continuance of madcap revelry for a certain time; then some affair of the heart,-marriage, and with it application to business, growing with family cares; or, failing marriage, the folly of youth, sobered by satiety into a sedate bachelorhood, the man of business united to the bon vivant, enjoying life to the utmost in a cosy fitting manner-a love of art filling the space once occupied by the roystering buoyancy of youth. I know you never expected to see nie wizen-faced, with the hard eye of business and bent head. You did not recognize me at first, though I remembered you, for all that Affghan scar, and those features bronzed by Indian sun.

"I'm rich, you will say-money enough for every possible luxury; why not cease from labour and enjoy?-but now labour itself has become enjoyment. I see you don't understand me-have you never read of old Bank clerks, who languished and died when removed from their sphere of labour, Threadneedle Street?-a man's pleasure in being transformed into an accurate calculating machine,-fascination in ponderous ledgers! It seems wonderful-doesn't it?-but so it is with me,my whole vitality is the routine of a lawyer's office-papers, dust, parchments, tape-my heart beats with the glorious uncertainties of law. "Come now, if you won't get tired with a longish yarn, I will tell how all this has been brought about.

you

"I often sit here for hours of an evening musing over the past; and, with a very vivid recollection of what I was years ago, I must confess,

VOL. V.

S

even I am surprised at the extraordinary change which has taken place in my character. Before you knew me 'about town,' I had been your schoolfellow; we were chums then, and 'went partners,' as the school phrase had it. Perhaps, you scarcely remember that time, it's so very long ago. I can recollect the afternoon I was sent for from schoolwe had made a dash at the Doctor's apples-a report got about the school that the Doctor had set spies, and was cognizant of all the culprits. I'll be bound you can remember what a cold-blooded wretch he was.. One or two of the boys had been summoned to that terrible study that torture-chamber—and then I was sent for, and went with an uncomfortable sense of a coming necessity for stubborn endurance.

"I skulked into the study and held down my head. The Doctor's hand was placed lightly on my brow; raising my eyes, I beheld his face, not glowing, as I expected, with the fierce expression of executive power, but filled with a kind of conventional benignancy from which, with the quick perception of childhood, I shrunk.

"There was a strange unprepossessing man sitting in the Doctor's own arm-chair, with cake and wine before him. He eyed me intently. "This is your Uncle Corley, who has come to fetch you home.'-I felt, in an instant, there was something wrong-the happy word 'home' fell joylessly on my ears. Uncle Corley I had never seen before, I knew he was at enmity with my father.

"This world is full of trials,' said the Doctor. 'Amen,' muttered my uncle. A vague sickening fear came over me. The Doctor went on moralizing in a pompous manner; at last he spoke of the uncertainty of life. I understood then what he meant. 'Who's dead, Sir?' I cried, trembling with fear.-My father had died suddenly. I lay on the carpet struggling with grief, and when the first sharp paroxysm was over, I heard the Doctor pouring forth cold words of would-be-comfort, to which my Uncle added some assenting amens betwixt his sips of wine.

"We went home together in the stage-my Uncle Corley and myself. We did not talk much-I was afraid of him, and disliked him, too, because he had hated my father. Presently he fell to reading various papers from a red tape bundle; and then I began thinking about my father, and as I remembered the periods of my life most marked by his kindness, I burst out into violent fits of crying. "You must be a

man now,' said my Uncle, whose attention was interrupted by my sobs. 'A man, Colonel; why, I had only just then completed my twelfth

year.

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"But it was my Uncle's fixed determination that I should be a man. The first month of mourning was scarcely finished when he called upon my mother and myself. I could not begin business too early, said he. What did I want with classics and all that sort of thing, to be a lawyer?—besides, there was my mother to support; my father had left nothing behind him but debts. I must work for my mother's maintenance; she, too, could assist; she should open a little stationer's shop; he would find the funds; she could learn to copy in a law stationer's hand; he would find us plenty of work;-and months before I was thirteen, I was a man.

"I worked at my Uncle's office the greater part of the day, and in the evening, I was usually engaged in the little back parlour of our shop, copying till late at night. My mother could not write much, she was in ill health, so I had to do her portion of work, and sometimes, even to attend to household affairs. We were forced to exercise the strictest economy; many a time I've puzzled my head how to spend a penny to the best advantage; for there was the rent to be got together, and we dreaded asking Uncle Corley for a shilling more than his small stated allowance. Once, when we were forced to beg a few pounds for the Doctor's bill, he made us pay interest for the money; yet Uncle Corley was a bachelor, with a fine legal practice, and I was his nearest relation, but, I'll tell you more of his character presently.

"All this responsibility weighed heavily on my youthful spirits, for I had been a lively boy at school, and loved play dearly. In hot summer afternoons, when work was slack, I used to sit in the office and forget those dreadful-looking deed boxes, all the dusty paraphernalia of business, and even the presence of my Uncle's trusty head-clerk, who was always busy; and then I thought of you, boys, bathing, and rowing, and cricket in that field near the river, even the Doctor's face wore a not unpleasant aspect of those sunny recollections.

"But I was obliged to arouse myself from those thoughts;-with a boys heart, I had to struggle as a man against the cares of the world— a household to provide for, business to manage, money to gain, forethought and consideration to exercise, and ever dinning in my ears were my Uncle's words, "work hard in youth, enjoy in old age.'

"My greatest enjoyment, when I had a spare hour or two in the afternoon, was to hurry away from the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn and Chancery-lane, with their thick atmosphere of harass, care, and labour, to the West-end. I loved to loiter about Bond-street, staring into the shop windows, and admiring, with envious eye, the people who came to buy. Another race of beings, those people seemed to me, belonging to another sphere-young men, with such fine faces, smiling and calm, not hurrying to and fro with eyes bent to the ground in anxious thought, but walking with a quiet stately pace, gazing carelessly about, and seeking amusement in every passing object;-the women too, dashing up in carriages from shop to shop, all the colours of the rainbow, beautiful faces, old faces too, but not wrinkled with cares of business-bows, and nods, and smiles, enjoyment, and amusement from morning to night. Might not I, if I worked hard, hope sometime to come and enjoy myself among this favored people ?—and my mother too, should she not have her carriage? So I would return to the little back parlour of the shop, and, keeping my hopes to myself, with double vigour, I would read dry law, and copy deeds, till my poor mother would anxiously pray of me to go to bed; and there I lay, half the night through, thinking or dreaming of the gay denizens of Bond street, and longing for the time when we might, both of us, hold a right of citizenship in that happy region.

He

"Uncle Corley would sometimes look in upon us of an evening. He would come quietly into the shop-we used so to dread his visits. would sit down in the little parlour and look over our accounts,

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