orthodox, by quoting the well-known scoffing because his torch, like the wand of a benevo stanza: - "There's nought in the Heelands But nettles and leeks; When Mr. Quill and myself had rejoined the Dominie at our quarters in Furnival's inn, and were enjoying our glass after dinner, I naturally alluded to the extraordinary outpouring of slander which had been directed by the Cockney law-dispenser at Guildhall, against "the land of mountain and flood" lent magician, rescued his heart's delight from the envious obscurity of evening! Smile at this as you may, worthy gossip, you nathless would not deem honest Jeremiah's enthusiasm exorbitant, had you like him passed from the nothingness of a servitor into the everything of a dealer on your own account! His was the spasmodic elasticity of the butterfly newly disenthralled from the bondage of grubship-the exodus from murky Egyptian slavery into liberty and light! The stream of time rolled on, and every "The truth is," said Quinten in explana- dash of its chronological wave washed a stray tion, "that the worthy alderman is to be ex- copper into the treasury of the huxter of lumicused, in a great measure, for escapades similar naries, till, at the end of some sixteen years, to that of which he has been guilty to-day. he found that it took no small measure of the Destiny led him, some years ago, into the re- midnight oil, to enable him to sum up his bank gions where bagpipes and small-still whisky account. To make a long story short, he dis prevail, and the crooked luck which he there covered that he was "comfortable"-a term encountered has been sufficient to translate which, according to John Bull's mercantile his marrow into mustard! I am myself lexicon, implies a competency equal to the inhalf a Scotsman, my mother being a M'Mur- come of some half score "Princes of the emrich, but cognizant as I am of his antecedents, pire." In England, when a man is easy, he I can make great allowance for his misanthro- may sport his one-horse chay-when comfortpical outbreaks." able, he may rejoice with impunity in his coach-and-four. In Italy or Faderland the phrase would imply little more than sour kraut, or wine, thin as a Trappist monk in Lent, to your macaroni! Mr. Quill having thus excited the curiosity of the Dominie and myself, we requested him to enlighten us on the matter, and accordingly, his tumbler being freshly replenished, Quinten proceeded to narrate the following passages, which, at my special suit, Mr. Pawmie wrote down from his diction. THE MISADVENTURES OF ALDERMAN DIP. Master Dip set his affairs in order, disposed of the goodwill of his business, and turned his back for ever (as he thought) upon Threadneedle Street, with the world all before him. Having for a brief interludic season "hung loose upon society," fate at length dropped the ex-engenderer of candles into a compact Lilliputian box-villa on the banks of the Thames, resembling in no small degree those ingenious structures y'clept "fly-houses," which some years ago formed one of the most sterling and Ir is not every Cyrus who is blessed with Xenophon to register the memorabilia of his boyhood, and for lack of such a chronicler, posterity must be left to conceive the progress of Master Jeremiah Dip's sojourning in Old Lud, where he was dropped one fine day by the York stage waggon, sans sous, sans every-staple attractions of the toy-shop. In fact, had thing, save a tolerable inheritance of mother wit. At the end of the above-mentioned period, viz., when he had just turned of thirty, the first trace which we discover of him is a brace of carpenters affixing over the threshold of a small shop in Threadneedle Street, a wooden banner, vulgarly styled a sign, intimating to the universe, that candles dipped as well as mould, besides oils of every description, and cracklings for the sustentation of dogs, were vended on the easiest terms by the magister of the unctuous emporium. some lunatic Sir John Herschell brought the focus of his seven-foot telescope to bear upon the threshold of the foresaid snuggery, with its little pursy owner attired in his ample azure surtout, he would assuredly have "written him down" a gigantic species of the blue-bottle, guarding the penetralia of his temple from the meditated desecration of some cadaverous spider-the said spider having its counterpart in some long-legged tax-gatherer, a personage ever held in extra-devout aversion by the most loyal subject of the British crown! Our hero left his counter a dozen times in "Happiness," saith Lokman, or some other each hour to gaze, from the middle of the oriental sage, "happiness is the shadow in the causeway, upon the golden letters which con- stream, which vanisheth when a poor devil veyed the above-mentioned announcement. stoopeth to grasp it." Now, though we would He was never weary of contemplating the have strong scruples in making affidavit upon thrice-beloved sign! He looked at it in all oath, that a good dinner, with a genuine bottle lights, and in every conceivable shade. He of black-strap as a finish off, can be with any yawned during the night-watches for the ad-propriety termed a shadow, still stern truth vent of the sun, that he might dwell upon the much-cherished characters; and he regarded the greasy lamplighter with the eye of a friend, compelleth us to confess that with all this, and sundry other minor comforts, Master Jeremiah began to find out that he had not ex actly compassed what all life long he had been formed one of the staple dishes which the striving and panting to obtain. His great illustrious Mr. Newman was in the habit of dream and ambition had been to become his serving up from his intellectual cook shop. own master, but not many months had sped The Lathoms and Ann of Swansea, and other over his sconce till he discovered that he was ministering servants of the Minerva Press, apas far from this devoutly wished-for consum- peared to be thoroughly convinced of the truth mation as ever. He was, in fact, as much a of Dan Horace's maxim, "difficile est com servitor as on the day in which he subscribed munia proprie discere." Hence they generhis 'prentice indenture, and to a master, ally enlarged more upon castles than cottages, moreover, who keeps as sharp a look-out on and whatever be the literary defects of that his vassals as ever Falkland did on that pre-distinguished school of fiction, the reader who posterous spoon, Caleb Williams. In plain un- adventureth to dip into it is always certain to varnish ed Anglo-Saxon, he was the neck-andheels bondsman of Ennui ! worth half-a-crown extra to the author, and it went hard if a King did not fetch a sovereign over and above the stipulated price of the job! find himself in the very first society." In fact, we have been told that Mr. Newman, on Having exhausted every other conceivable no account whatever, would pay for a work in method of emancipating himself from this which there was not one Marquis, at the very merciless thraldom, he, as a last and desperate least, garnished with a due proportion of Barresource, bethought himself of a little circu-onets and Knights. A Prince Regent was lating library, situated near the gate of his Tusculum, and ere a week had absconded, he was immersed neck and crop in the multitudinous mysteries of the far-famed Minerva Press. Hurried as we are, and anxious to progress with our narrative, we must stop a moment to give a passing all-hail to this prolific fountain of the wild and wonderful! How many a time and oft, in our "green and salad days," have we wept and shuddered by turns over the legends spawned in this mare magnum of romance! Can we ever forget the delicious horror with which thy exhalations stiffened our juvenile hairs, causing them to stand stiff and stark on end, like quills upon the porcupine which Hamlet used to fret? What though we now are aware that the swans of Minerva are nothing better than geese-and that the gold of her knights is arrant tinfoil-what, we say, of all this? Not less entrancing were they in our uncritical and unsophisticated eyes-and the wisdom which has unmasked the gentle deceits has given us no delight half so appetizing as that which, in its confounded matter-of-fact prudery, it hath for ever and a day deprived us of! For the first time honest Dip began to feel a little squeamish at the thought that he was nothing more than a retired Cockney huxter. His very plum, which before invested him with so much consequence in the eyes of himself and of his neighbors, now actually soured upon his stomach. Right willingly would he have parted with a plethoric per centage thereof for an ancestor of the era (area he called it) of the Conqueror or Long Shanks, even though the only record history gave of him might be that the senex "died for the law," as our North British friends delicately render the words sus per col! The earliest decided intimation which the translated Jeremiah gave of his aristocratophobia was afforded one evening as he was "blowing a cloud" with Master Guy Cleaver, a worthy member of the Lumber Troop, whose reputation, like that of the doughty Earl of Warwick had been earned by smiting of cows. This said Guy, who had a profound veneration for every one who could set down four conThe ci-divant tallow-chandler now found secutive figures in a note of hand, and duly himself in a new world-a terra incognita retire the same when at maturity without that he had previously never so much as drawing upon the exchequer of King Eolus, dreamt of. Before this epoch the wildest happened en passant to mention one of the stretch of his literary excursions had never civic worthies of the day. "Pshaw!" interreached beyond the " Complete Letter Writ-jected Jeremiah knocking the ashes out of his er" or the "Young Man's Best Companion," pipe, with an air which might have become -saving and excepting always the leading Tory journal of the day (Conservatism, that indefinite half-way house, had then neither "a local habitation nor a name!") For be it known that Master Jeremiah was an out-and-out Church-and-King-man "all of the olden time," -who never retired to roost, in fair weather or foul, without draining a potent poculum to the eternal confusion of Pope, Diabolus, and Pretender! Had the big O then flourished, the trio would doubtless have been transformed into a quartett! the illustrous Ancient Pistol himself, "Pshaw! what is he after all! a mere man of yesterday whom nobody knows!" "Body o' me gossip, rejoined Guy with a start, “What do you mean! A man of yesterday! Sure you forget that he is the senior pardner of his house, and certain to be Lord Mayor of Lunnon next year!" Jeremiah had got hardened from the bad company which he had been keeping. "He may be Lord Mayor of Jericho, for that matter," was his profane response, "but you know well that his father was only a tailor, and his mother sold vegetables in Common Garden Now, as every peripatetic clerk, or well-read sentimental milliner, is aware, high birth market!" A mighty change had indeed come over the spirit of the candle maker's life and conversation. His former aspirations, amusements, and pursuits seemed "stale, flat, and unprofitable." Instead of green hides he "babbled of green fields" and the cents of the stocks gave place to the scents of the mountain and plain. Gradually he gave up his city haunts, discontinuing, even, his visits to the Free-andeasy in the Goat and Compasses, whence for a single night he had never been absent during twenty years, sickness and Sundays excepted. His principal out-door recreation was to note the coats of arms emblazoned on the lordly vehicles which whirled past his dwelling; and he began to scrape acquaintance with all the half-pay subalterns in his neighbourhood, having discovered from a memorandum in Steel's army list that such gentlemen though poor as the house-dog of a pauper, were all gentlemen ex officios! But destiny had higher things in store for our hero than such "small deer." At the expiry of some twelve months, or so, we find him a duly elected member of the "Exclusive Club," a dignified association which held its weekly sederunt at a consumptive looking, back going tavern, claiming the aristocratic title of hotel. We have made the most diligent endeavours to discover the means by which the aspiring Dip procured admittance to this social Eden, but, to the unutterable loss of posterity without success. That distinguished local antiquarian Sir Nicholas Harry Nicholas, to whom we applied by way of a forlorn hope for information, threw some dim light on the subject. He informed us there is a current tradition to the effect that Master Jeremiah was assisted over the Rubicon by a certain Major O Flash, a man of war, blessed with a profusion of muzzle hair, but cursed with an income at once slender and uncertain. To him the chandler had played the part of the good Samaritan when involved in the foul meshes of a bum-bailiff's net, and the Major, as a quid pro quo had proposed his benefactor as a mimber of the fraternity, and displayed somewhat ostentatiously the but-ends of two hair-triggers on the evening of election, as an earnest of the serious interest which he took in his mercantile protege! [Here a summons to Mr. Quill from Bouncer and Brass requiring his immediate attendance, constrained him to break off his narration. Ere leaving however, he covenanted to complete it on the following day.] AN EYE TO THE MAIN CHANCE.-A young stockbroker having married a fat old widow with £100,000, says it wasn't his wife's face that attracted him so much as the figure. A correspondent wishes to know whether the Bench of Bishops is one of the forms of the Church. MUTABILITY. THE flower that smiles to-day All that we wish to stay, Tempts and then flies. What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright. Virtue, how frail it is! Friendship too rare! Love, how it sells poor bliss For proud despair! But we, though soon they fall, Survive their joy and all Which ours we call. While skies are blue and bright, While flowers are gay, While eyes that change ere night Make glad the day; While yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou-and from thy sleep Then wake to weep. THE JINGLE. BY MISS MARGARET ORMSBY FITZGERALD. CHAPTER II. Relating to a Black Kettle and a Breakdown. IT was about ten o'clock in the morning that the jingle, of which we have given some description, was seen wending its way along the main street of the small but beautifully situated town of Killarney, Paddy's horn once more put in requisition, rang out loudly and invitingly, while he wielded his lash to the no small bodily discomfort of sundry pigs, who with their noses buried in the gutter, had not paid sufficient attention to his warning blast, and were now undergoing the punishment due to their audacity, as the swinish squeals that filled the air testified in a not very harmonious or agreeable manner. The jaded steeds raised their heads and shook the harness in the happy certainty of being soon freed from its trammels, and, which must ap pear stranger still when we consider that for the last four miles the whip had been unspar ingly applied to make them move at all, they raised their legs as if those members were were not quite lifeless, and made an attempt to trot on to the house, over whose door was inscribed in large letters the word "hotel." "The car stops here a quarter of an hour, to change horses and breakfast, Mam," said the driver as the widow lifted her little girl off the vehicle, then turning to the stout gentleman, as he handed him a carpet bag and hat box. "I thought you'd go on wid us, Mr. O'Shaughnessy." "Not to-day, McCarthy," replied the other, "but you will have me in all probability next week, as I must be in Cork for the assizes." "Anything else, Mam ?" inquired Paddy, addressing the tall, palefaced, and timid looking girl, who with a mingled exqression of shame and anxiety in her countenance, stood an inactive spectator of the driver's operations, as trunk, bag, and parcel were alternately exhumed from the unfathomable well. "Y-e-s," she replied hesitatingly, "there is a-a-another trunk there, Mam," he asked, as kneeling on the cushions, he prepared to dive down in search of it. "It is in the box under the seat," she whispered hurriedly, giving a quick glance round to see that no one was near, and speaking rapidly, as if afraid of being overheard, had the indicated place of stowage been anything like capable of containing the very smallest description of man, one would have expected, from her extreme distress, to see a smuggled lover, at the least, drawn out, but that was impossible, for the said box was barely two and a half cubic feet in dimensions. "Then the body is found," cried the magistrate. "Phil," he added, to a half-naked urchin who was standing beside his horse, “run off for the coroner at once, and," he shouted out, as the boy was running off with but half his message, "call at Dr. Finnerty's, on your way, and bid him come up to ho'd a post mortem." As he spoke he took a roll of paper from his pocket, and dismounting, can get pen and ink in your parlor, John," he said, addressing the innkeeper we "Yes, sir, and I think my sister has a testament.' "Very well; and now, my good man, follow me, and I will take your deposition about this person whom you affirm to have been murdered." "Person," cried Paddy, "'tis'nt a person at all, your honor, but a black child that she stuffed into the box, an' I sat on the body for four hours an' a half." "Then an inquest has been held, I see," interrupted the magistrate, in a tone of disap "A parcel I suppose," said Paddy, "oh, here it is," fishing up at the same time a seal-pointment. ed parcel covered with brown paper. "No," she almost gasped, while the blood mounted to her brow for a moment, and then retreating left her face even paler than before. Twice she opened her lips to speak, and twice the unspoken words died away in a faint murmuring. For a moment the driver stared at her in the utmost astonishment, he had heard of public vehicles, nay, even coaches carrying his Majesty's mail being temporarily converted into foundling hospitals, and as the horrid idea crossed his mind that he had been for the last some hours sitting upon a living child, he grasped the dashboard of the car to prevent his falling. It was a moment of sickening suspense, and in the quickened beatings of his pulse he fancied he could hear the gasping respirations of the smothering infant, but when in a low, sepulchral tone she slowly and with difficulty articulated "'tis black," he leaped up with a tiger like spring, and grasped her shoulder while he shouted, "murder! murder! murder!" in a tone that shortly brought not only the inmates of the hotel, but every one else within hearing, so that a large crowd was collected in a moment around them. "What's the matter! what's the matter!" cried fifty voices at once, but Paddy only kept on shouting "murder," louder than ever, until at length, completely exhausted by his exertions, he was obliged to draw breath. "I am a magistrate," called out a little man who, mounted on a grey horse, had been for the last five minutes endeavouring to make himself heard, "I am a magistrate, and will take your depositions, but you must be sworn." "I'll swear," cried the driver, who had by this time recovered the power of speech, "on the vartue of my oath, that I didn't know a word about it. I was as innocent as the babe unborn, till she tould me to take out the corp." "No inquest at all," replied Paddy, "but I sat upon the negro onknownst, for she rammed it into the box of the driving seat." "Take that woman into custody," cried the magistrate, as a party of police came up, while the crowd, horrified at the drivers's last revelation, fell back from the supposed depository of the murdered negro. "Here's the docther, here's the docther," cried half a dozen voices, as a tall, gentlemanly looking man cantered up the street on a handsome thorough-bred. "Make way for his honor there," and a lane was opened in the crowd, which closed again behind him as he advanced. "How do you do, doctor?" "Quite well, thank you, Mr. Cronin; hope Mrs. Cronin's influenza is better? Phil Connor met me on the road returning from M'Gilicuddy's, and said you sent him for me, something about a post mortem, I think." แ Yes, it is a bad business, and such a respectable, quiet-looking girl, too. You would never think she could be guilty of such a crime." "What! is it a murder?" "Yes, infanticide on a poor negro child, and she packed the body into a trunk or bandbox, I believe. She confessed it to the driver. As far as I have heard the facts of the case, any jury must bring in a verdict of wilful murder." "But will her own confession be sufficient to criminate her?" "Certainly not; but we have strong circumstantial evidence, that is, we have the body, and that reminds me that you must examine it before the inquest, and here comes the coroner. Ashley," he continued, addressing the police-sergeant, "exhume the negro, Ah, Mr. Mullins, a bad business this!" "Very bad, indeed," returned the coroner, "Bringing me in guilty," said the other; what do you mean?" "Why, Phil told me that you blew up a negro who had been smuggled." "Nonsense, the negro was smothered; but what is the matter, Ashley?" "I can't find the body, sir." "Can't find it; why, did you try in the box? In all probability it is covered up with something; search again, Ashley, for a small soft parcel." "No," cried the prisoner, "I said that I had a black-" "Do ye hear that, she confesses it," interrupted the other in an extacy. "Kettle!" screamed the lady. "An' why did'nt ye say that before, then ?" "Because," she replied, blushing deeply, "because-I was ashamed." "I suppose, sir, we may release the pri soner. "Why, I do not see that we have sufficient reason to detain her," replied the magistrate, coolly returning the roll of papers to his poc ket, at the same time giving it as his opinion that no jury could bring in a verdict of wilful murder upon a black kettle. Another shout of laughter announced the people's perfect satisfaction with the issue of the investigation-three persons present only leaving the spot with clouded brows, namely, Paddy, who raised a very good joke at his own expense, and the doctor and coroner, who had each lost a job. "I have it," shouted the serjeant, and a murmur of horror ran through the crowd, that pressed forward with straining eyes and beating hearts, while as each individual drew in his breath, it sounded like one mighty gasp "Mr. Mullins," cried a red-haired man, from when the policeman raised a large parcel from an upper window of the hotel, as the official the box, then in the breathless pause which suc- was preparing to turn his horse's head homeceeded could be heard the sound of the snap-wards, "I've caught the jury and locked them ping twine. He cut the string that hid the packet, and in another moment, and as a hundred eyes were fixed upon his movements, he threw off the cover and held up to their gaze an old pair of corduroy trousers, there was a universal start, and then a roar of laughter burst from the crowd. "Silence," cried the magistrate sternly, but he might as well have talked to the wind. "Bring forward the prisoner," he shouted. "D'ye hear, Serjeant Ashley," cried a voice from among the mob, “bring forard yer prisoner, his honor wants to exhume the breeches," and as fresh shouts of laughter from the crowd rewarded the sally, the girl and her accuser were brought before the magistrate. "Is there nothing else, Ashley?" called out the latter. แ Nothing, sir, but this," he replied, holding up to view a black kettle, from the top of which for it was without a cover-protruded an old brass knocker, a bunch of skewers, some iron spoons, and the remains-for the greater part of the handle had been broken off-of a very old and very dirty hearth brush. The accused had been completely bewildered by the assault of the driver, and frightened out of her wits at being arrested by the police, who, whenever she attempted an explanation, overwhelmed her with entreaties not to criminate herself, as they would be obliged to give her communications in evidence against her; but at the sight of this kettle, the hopes of extricating herself returned to her again and she cried aloud "that's it, that's it." "What's that ye say " screamed Paddy indignantly? "did'nt ye tell me that ye put a young negro into the box?" up, but they insist upon seeing the body befor the doctor finishes his post mortem." Five minutes after, the car was once more upon its way, having got rid of the negro and its owner, with the two gentlemen; in whose places it received an apothecary's apprentice, who was just out of his time, and going to Millstreet to practice on the peasantry, and two butter merchants' agents returning to Cork. "Fine day for travelling, ma'am," remarked one of the latter, breaking the silence that had remained uninterruptəd for the last half hour, and taking advantage of a cessation from jolting, occasioned by the leisurely descent of the vehicle down a steep hill that terminated in a ravine, over which was thrown a kind of bridge flanked by one dilapidated parapet, the other having been carried away by a mountain torrent. "Yes, very, " was the involuntarily uttered and sententious reply of the lady, who, occupied with her own thoughts-and sad ones they must have been, if the expression of her countenance was to be considered as a faithful index-evinced no desire to encourage the loquacity of her companion. "Cork is a thriving place," continued the gentleman returning to the attack, no way daunted by the cool reception which his ad vances met with, "a very thriving place; you're going up at a pleasant time, just be in for the assizes, there's a very interesting case to come on next week, many people are going up solely to hear the trial, Mr. O'Shaughnessey." "Mr. O'Shaughnessey," repeated the widow, to whom the name seemed familiar, "oh, I recollect that was the name of the gentle |