his castle! Our most particular friend has this moment rushed in," fiery red with speed" and indignation, to tell us that his dwelling was last night feloniously entered, forks, spoons, ancestral teapots, and primæval salvers, all borne off" at one fell swoop;" and his front door this morning surrounded by half the population of the place, killing themselves with laughter at reading thereon, engraved in large chalked characters, as if in ridicule of his mishap, "Chubb's Patent Safety Locks." Oh! Robert Warren, Robert Warren! you have much to answer for!

"Nil erit ulterius!" said a satirist of some notoriety, in an age which was considered an enlightened one by the short-sighted generation who had the misfortune to live in it. The poor soul's weak mind would have been somewhat astonished could it have been possible for him to rise and stroll arm in arm with us along Oxford Street one day (we forget the exact date) last season. We met -what think you, unsophisticated reader? The King of Siam (we didn't meet him, but we are going to make a short digression about him,) would not, some traveller has told us, believe that water could by any possibility become hard: what awful liars he would have thought us, had we been in that traveller's place, and told him the tale to which we are now going to treat the reader! We met then-not to keep him longer in suspensenot a man with a hat on, but a hat with a man in; a real, true, veritable hat, mounted on two wheels, and drawn by one horse, with a charioteer exercising his vocation through a hole in the front, and a gentleman with a key-bugle seated calmly on the crown, delighting the gazers, as he shot by, with the appropriate melody of "All round my hat." It was the incarnation of a Puff!! We supported ourselves against a lamp-post as

we best might: we had not received such a shock since our third wife presented us with three girls at a birth! We were sick at heart: we have a confused recollection of a crowd gathering round us,—of a pail of cold water,— and of being deposited by some good Samaritan in some kind of a carriage to convey us homewards. Alas! why did reason return at the very moment when we were being lifted out at the door of our hotel? why did we not lie in blissful ignorance yet a few seconds longer? why, oh! why did we turn our opening eyes involuntarily towards the vehicle which had transported us to our destination? There it stood,-we have had it in our mind's eye to this day,-a huge, lumbering, tilted cart,—a nasty, rattling, jolting-looking concern: this we could have borne, but its colour! blot the sight from our memory, ye kind gods! red body, red wheels, red shafts, red harness, a driver in a whole suit of the same flaming hue, a horse approximating as closely as possible to a similar tint,-on the roof a top-boot of enormous dimensions, in which the leg of a giant would inevitably have been scorched to a cinder, surrounded by a series of crimson letters, indicating to all whose natural acumen was too scanty to discover it for themselves, that the nuisance which they inclosed was denominated "The Red Boot!" It was but a moment's glance, but we saw every individual horror as distinctly as we have here enumerated them; and we kept our bed for six weeks from that day.

This accursed system of puffing is rapidly destroying our peace of mind. We have-alas! we had,-a friend whom we loved as our own soul. We deemed him, in our fondness, as strong as ourselves; but we were deceived; he was weak, and he fell! The system of puffing was too much for him. He began to use Warren's

Blacking. That, as we said before, we could bear, though we could have wished it otherwise; but he could not stop: his eye was caught by the effigy of a savage with hair hanging down to his heels, and he took straightway to "Rowland's Macassar:" he saw a view of the Falls of Niagara, garnished with rocks, rainbows, and Indians, attached to a puff of "Oldridge's Balm of Columbia," and he bought a bottle next day. We remonstrated, but in vain; and still we bore with him. Such a state of things, however, could not last. We happened to ask him one day what shoe-shop he patronized, and he replied with the utmost coolness, "Oh! the Red Boot, of course." We verily believe we should have kicked him out of the house on the instant, had he not added in the same breath, "Apropos des bottes, will you dine with me next Saturday?" We reflected for an instant, and we magnanimously determined on giving him one more trial. But Fate was against him. 66 Quem Deus vult perdere priùs dementat." He happened to be standing in his hall as we entered on the day appointed; and a new hat was hanging on a peg by his side. He took it down and asked our opinion of it. We praised it, as in duty bound, and carelessly inquired the price. We feel again, even at this moment, the shudder which ran through us as he replied, "Only four and ninepence; it came out of the Hat that drives down Oxford Street," Unhappy man! little did he know the misery he was preparing for himself; for we really believe he loved us. We controlled our feelings sufficiently to eat our dinner that day,—we even made ourselves peculiarly agreeable that he might feel the stroke more acutely; and we sent a note the next morning to say that our connexion was at an end. It is now just seven months since we cut

him: we meet him in our walks regularly every afternoon,—and his hat looks most provokingly well.

But we must be more calm. We have absolutely written ourselves into a state of excitement which may prove dangerous if unchecked. And yet who shall wonder that we feel it? We are conspired against, attacked, beset on all sides. Buildings of all kinds, vehicles of all kinds, placards of all kinds, and blackguards of all kinds, are against us. Twenty-seven wretches did we meet the other day, every one habited in green, à la Suisse, bearing as many huge notices of as many different hues, to inform the world that a New Omnibus Company was in existence. We read the police reports and the accidents carefully the next morning; and at the one office alone nearest to the spot where we met them, there were no less than twenty-seven cases of picking pockets; and in the immediate vicinity seven broken limbs, a dead horse (valuable), and a fractured skull! One sole ally we had, and that too has deserted us,-the press has gone over to the enemy! Once we could take up the newspaper without suspicion, passing over as a matter of course the one side of the sheet usually devoted to advertisements ;-once we could open our "Blackwood" and our "Fraser" without the fear of puffs before our eyes,—but we can do so no more! There is no escape. The physical tortures of the Inquisition were devised with much barbarous ingenuity,but the moral inflictions of the supporters of this execrable system beat them hollow. Every day we hope that human invention will exhaust itself in their production, and every day we are doomed only to become more and more convinced that its powers are inexhaustible. We begin perusing a most interesting ac

count of Her Majesty's latest ball,-glide imperceptibly into a description of the thrilling sensation produced by the raven-tresses of the young and beautiful Lady

linger for a moment to call up before our mind's eye the fair form of the maid of honour by whom we were so hopelessly smitten at the last Drawing Room, and turn back with a gentle sigh to the intelligence of "our own correspondent," only to find ourselves, in the last line but one, inextricably stuck in a mass of "Atkinson's Genuine Bear's Grease," at heaven only knows how much per pot. Our attention is arrested by a paragraph headed "Distressing Shipwreck." We read how on the 24th of May she (that is, her crew,) left St. Katherine's Docks in high health and spirits,-learn with breathless interest how her timbers gradually and unobservedly became more and more unsound, till on the 17th of December she suddenly sprang the fatal leak which consigned to a watery grave the whole of her crew, without one single exception: begin just at this point to marvel how the devil the intelligence ever got into the papers, and discover, to our extreme relief and indignation, that our sympathies have been excited for entirely fictitious sufferings, but that the occurrence of any real ones of a similar nature may be effectually prevented by the timely purchase of a sufficient quantity of "Kyan's Patent Anti-Dry Rot Composition." We very much doubt if even Job or St. Anthony, with all their patience and stoicism, could have read through a well-devised column of puffs without bestowing a hearty execration upon the atrocious fabricator.

And thou too, pure, glorious idol of our heart's inmost shrine! hast thou too, oh heaven-born Poesy, forsaken us? Alas! "this was the unkindest cut of all!" We have compiled a volume,-we are in doubt whether