the promise that the former would favour him with his company at supper, which Mr. Clincher declared would be on the table at nine o'clock precisely, as Miss Clincher was particularly punctual in all that pertained to domestic regulations. Godfrey did not wish to disoblige a person from whom he was seeking a favour; but to tell the truth he would rather have been excused, and would even have preferred the disrespect at the Fleet Street coffee-house, to thus be brought into unnecessary contact with his legal adviser. The fact was, he could not dispel from his mind the humbling reflection that an individual sprung from the canaille had through vulgar assiduity and commonplace business pursuits, acquired an unpleasant influence over him; that he had, in fact, a power over his territorial possessions, which it were impossible at the present to shake off. His patrician blood rose to more than summer heat when he reflected on the disagreeable truth.

At the period now spoken of, the middle classes in London were plainer, less pre

sumptuous sort of folks. The influence of fashion did not then, as now, make middling kind of people ape their betters. There was not that mania for the West-end, that craving for suburban villas, and semi-rural retirement, which for half the twenty-four hours desolate the busiest haunts of commerce in the world, and make solitary porters inhabit the fine old mansions in Broad Street and Austin Friars. The thousands of omnibuses did not then carry their thickset loads to and fro, at "morn and even" to the the ample squares, elegant crescents, and splendid terraces of Tyburnia and Pimlico. The rich bankers, the merchant princes, and the great men on 'Change, had no aspirations for Westbourne mansions and Belgravian palaces; they were contented with the old-fashioned fire-sides where their fathers had sat, in the days when the shopocracy lived over their shops.

Gabriel, in communion with most of his professional brethren, was contented to live within the confines of the smoke, and

fog, and turmoil of the mighty metropolis; and deeming it expedient to reside at no very great distance from the scene of his vocation, he occupied a house of modest pretensions in the neighbourhood.

He had not been reared with any exalted notions of domestic comfort, and his wife, who was now dead, and whom he had selected perhaps, more from the fact of having a comfortable dowry, than other considerations, was a careful, methodic housewife, with nothing of the fine or accomplished lady. Their only child was Letitia, who had been brought up with more refinement than her mother, and she too regarded order and economy in domestic concerns, amongst the very virtues of her sex. Plainness and plenty was Gideon's motto, and he had a respect for gold that would have done honour to a Yankee.

His only aspirations were to lay house to house, and field to field; his ignoble soul never soared beyond this great ultimatum of every thought; he warmed not with the fires of patriotism; never yearned with

kindly sympathy towards the friendless and forsaken. He was one of those who live for self; an earthworm, to accumulate for accumulation's sake. His avarice grew with the increase of his substance, and his most exquisite moments consisted in the indulgence of day-dreams on what he possessed. Of the real objects of life, of the proper destiny of man, he had no correct conceptions. He had none of the amplified ideas which pointed as incumbent duties the works of charity and love; his name appeared to no institutions for his less fortunate fellows; and almsgiving was a word to him unknown. It was no just excuse to say that he had been cradled in storms and bred in the hardihood of a frigid and unfeeling world, and that such had created prejudices and established bad principles-it was an invalid plea to blame his stars rather than himself. In a rightly ordered moral constitution, years would have directed action aright, and the blessings of prosperity have prompted a generous hand.

Letitia, from her appearance, had scarcely seen her twentieth birthday.

She was a with good

thin, pale, lackadaisical girl; tempered but not intelligent countenance. Education and society had not conferred that graceful ease and dignified deportment which add so much to the fascinations of female charms. There lacked in her that naturalness and self-possession, ever ever so manifest in the genteelly bred. She appeared, in the presence of her superiors, painfully conscious of these defects. She was neither like Gideon in person, nor yet had inherited his energy and mental vigour. It was said she in all things was the facsimile of her deceased parent, docile and amiable, with a good heart and weak head.

Mrs. Clincher had been one of those utilitarian persons who hated elegant accomplishments, and nourished a veritable abhorrence for fine, finnicking occupations. Mrs. Clincher had wasted her young years in no such things, and she averred Letitia should not be spoilt by these follies. She