much more so, indeed, than most of his acquaintance desire. I dare say you will have thought me dreadfully tedious in these calumnious accounts, which so little concern me; so now, with your leave, I will introduce to you Mr. F. Golightly, in his proper dress and character, not forgetting his quizzing-glass, taking the place of a cousin fortunately absent; and, with his natural impudence, by a sort of self-invitation, proceeding in a royal cavalcade to the Pelican. And prithee, good Courtenay, do not disdainfully regard this Pelican. Take my word for it, it is a house of the very first respectability; renowned far and wide for every sort of excellence; and decorated, as all inns should be, with an effigy of its patron bird, remarkable for its size, its variety of plumage, and, in short, for its total defiance of any resemblance to nature. Here we arrived in very decent and fashionable time; that is to say, after everybody else: but scarce had I set my foot within the door, when I was surrounded by a multitude of harpies: one snatched away my hat, another my gloves, another my newlymounted shag-coat, and so on, till I really fancied myself beset by pickpockets, particularly after the terrible instances we have lately heard of their audacity. This, I afterwards understood, proceeded from Mr. Hudson's particular desire that everybody should be expressly attended to at his coming, and ushered into the drawingroom with proper ceremony and respect. I am sure we had no reason to complain of any neglect ;-two or three smart-looking fellows, in a sort of livery, escorted us up the stairs; and two more, standing like sentinels at the door, introduced us to the whole assemblage of company, not forgetting our names and titles. My uncle, who, of course, together with his family, was pretty well known to his neighbours, took the trouble to make apologies to the Host for my unexpected appearance, which, I assure you, were most graciously received; and he was pleased to express his happiness at having the honour of seeing

Mr. F. Golightly. What a fine thing it would be, thought I to myself, if I could but be a Lord just for a few hours: that little augment to my name would sound so well for an introduction, and carry off any kind of singularity; for what is impudence in a Commoner is nothing but condescension in a Nobleman. I did not continue in this fancy very long, but put up my glass, and took a regular, but rapid, reconnoitre; by which I discovered, to my great pleasure, that there were a vast number of people whom I knew nothing about; and I was still more gratified to see one person on the other side of the room, whom I determined, in half a minute, to make my oracle. This was a young man of the name of Brooke, who had been at Eton, and was just released from Oxford, and to whom I had taken a great fancy when I met him a few days before at my uncle's. I was by his side in less than a moment, although I was necessarily impeded by several bows and salutations which I was obliged to make in the course of my passing from one side of the apartment to the other. After we had both settled that we were as well as we possibly could be, I took the liberty to ask him the names of several people, both male and female, which will not interest you very particularly; for the greatest part of them were only remarkable for having long noses, high feathers, odd voices, or something particular either in dress or figure. You cannot imagine how much I missed my old Rawsdon Court Friend, Mr. Ormsby. My new substitute was but a very indifferent one, compared to him; for he could not, or would not, give me half the information I desired. In spite of my endeavours to keep him to the subject, he was continually flying off to know how we managed different things at Eton now: how the boats were manned; whether Collegers or Oppidans beat the last match at Football; and several other matters of equal importance: to all of which I had the patience to return becoming answers. I have

uniformly observed that old Etonians are very like old men, inasmuch as they always maintain the superiority of things as they existed in their time; and argue that every alteration must be for the worse, although frequently they know nothing about it. Pray do not suspect that I mean to impute any uncharitableness to our predecessors, for whom I entertain the greatest respect and veneration, as well as for all their institutions. It is really a natural sort of feeling which we ourselves begin to hold towards the rising generation in our "little World," which we suspect will be neither half so big, nor half so clever, as the one which went before it.

I had long wished to know the name of a little man, with piercing grey eyes, shaggy red eyebrows, and a cast of countenance altogether more strongly indicative of cunning than any I ever remember to have seen. After I had heard, with due fortitude, many very severe remarks upon our deficiency in divers points, about which, to tell you the truth, I cared not a farthing, such as having no bonfire on the 5th of November, being locked up in our houses at five o'clock instead of six, and several others which I cannot remember, I returned to the charge, and demanded some particulars of the above-mentioned gentleman, who was evidently smiling, to the best of his endeavours, and, in fact, playing the agreeable to a fat old lady' of a most portly presence, his next neighbour. "That," answered young Brooke, "is a lawyer of this place, the learned Mr. Jobson. He has the credit of having a great deal of money; but nobody pretends to say where it ever came from. In addition to this qualification, he has interest enough with his fellow-citizens to persuade them to elect for their Members whomsoever he likes best; and it is said that he always likes those best, who have no objection to fee their legal advisers handsomely. This, of course, is as much a secret as things of that sort generally are. However, he keeps a good table, and will give you a fine dinner,

without charging you 6s. 8d. for your entertainment. Somebody must pay; but it is not our business to inquire who are the victims. Our good host, Mr. Hudson, has, I dare say, tasted his good cheer pretty often." We were relapsing fast into a discourse about the merits of a neighbouring pack of hounds, when the master of the feast, who, by-the-by, had been running about the room the whole time, came up to a gentleman seated very near us, and said, loud enough to be plainly heard, "Mr. Bradshaw, will you do me the favour to sit next to me at dinner? I have got a haunch of venison there, I assure best that I could posthe you very sibly procure; and I am sadly afraid that, unless I profit a little by your good instruction, it will suffer much by my awkward carving." Certainly, Mr. Hudson," was the reply. Our host was quite satisfied; and, with frightened visage, bustled away to pay his attention to some highly-favoured person on the opposite side of the room. Strangely did I wish to learn the character and vocation of this Mr. Bradshaw; and I was afraid to ask, lest he should overhear our conversation. It was very evident that he had a great share of humour in his composition, for he kept all the company around him, ladies and gentlemen, in a perpetual titter.

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A most grotesque figure of a man made a very conspicuous appearance at some distance from us: his lips, his arms, in fact his whole body, moved about in unison with his words; so much so, that I began to suspect that he was some foreigner or other, for I never saw any of our cooler-blooded nation who used such extravagant action. If you, Courtenay, were to figure in such a way at the next election speeches, I positively think the audience would be thunderstruck: the experiment, perhaps, might be worth while. He had, too, a most particularly loud and silly kind of laugh, which uniformly followed every word of his own, though I could not perceive that any body else joined in it, which argued badly

for his powers of amusing. My companion perceived the object of my abstraction, and readily gave me a little account of them. "Pray," said he, "are you looking at that buffoon who is standing opposite to us?

He is

Mr. Wise; a man, I assure you, of vast notoriety in this neighbourhood; some absolutely think him agreeable; an opinion which I could never accede to: however, it is not his fault if he is not so, for he spares neither himself nor his hearers in accomplishing this worthy purpose. You cannot conceive a greater bore than finding yourself seated next to him at dinner, with the consciousness that you cannot possibly escape from him for a whole hour. Such a compound of bad puns, stale stories, and conceit, I really believe never existed. His mouth is always open, and always to utter something foolish; and even in spite of the better and readier occupation of eating and drinking, he would not cease five minutes together from dinning your ears with some account, carefully collected from the newest Book of Anecdotes; or with some of those miserable twists and perversions of words, such as you would never understand, unless he were to inform you by his laugh that he has cut, what we used to call at Eton in my time, a joke. This is a sufficient caution; do pray beware of getting near him." I assure you, my dear Courtenay, as I told you in my letter of condolence, I intend not to start a single pun after my arrival at the Club; and the example of this hero has fully confirmed me in my resolution.

If I were so disposed, I could tell you a number of torments to which a professed punster or self-named wit voluntarily submits himself; such as his disappointment when people don't choose to understand his efforts, or to laugh at them; the danger he incurs of displeasing people, and making himself ridiculous: but all this Essay will keep very well till my arrival. At present we must talk of Sir John Carter, who attracted my no