From the New Monthly Magazine. BUBBLES FROM BRUSSELS, WITH A PUFF FROM CALAIS "EN ROUTE." BY AN OLD LADY.* "Would you forget the dark world we are in, only taste of the bubble."-Moore. each new day a counterpart of that which went before it. I was told that at the play I should be sure to see all the elite of the place, so at seven o'clock I seated myself in the very small, but neat theatre. There was a good house, and being near a person who knew "who was who," I made a few enquiries, the answers to which were enough to make an elderly body like myself wish that the earth would open and swallow her. For instance:"That is a handsome woman in the stage-box, who is she?" "Oh! the celebrated Mrs. Pokey, who was, you know, divorced from her husband some years ago." "Indeed! and that gentleman who is talking "That is Colonel Finch, who lives with her at present." It was on the last day of July that I again seated myself in my elbow chair, after " my trip to the continent," (it is thus I always speak of my brief visit to Boulogne-sur-Mer), and having despatched the "Bubbles" which were its literary result, to Mr. Henry Colburn, I awaited his reply with an anxiety natural to one who for the first time ran a risk of being published! On the following day I received a letter, writ-to her?" ten in a most business-like hand; I put on my spectacles, and then ascertained beyond a doubt that "Bubbles" had produced a sum of money which not only sufficed to pay the expenses of my trip, but actually left a surplus sufficient to enable me to purchase a muff and tippet for winter's wear. I felt myself at once a literary character-a regu-son I first pointed out, "the one in the centre lar Trollope; and I longed, like that lady, to go tripping again, making (and at the same time earning) more notes. And why not do it, thought I to myself? Summer is certainly past, but do not all travellers rave about the tints of autumn? It is but the 3d of September, and in three days I'll be off. my Hem! Who is that pretty girl in blue, in the dress circle?" "The cher ami of that French officer." box ?" "I beg your pardon;-that is the notorious Lady Blank, who" I had heard quite enough of Lady Blank, and therefore hastily turned the conversation, determining at the same time to ask no more ques tions. The next morning I got into the Lille_diligence, and set off on my journey towards Brussels. Now some few of my English readers may possibly not know what a French diligence is like; I will endeavour to describe it. It is as unlike an English light safety-coach, licensed to carry four So again I packed up my two trunks and my bandbox, and left London in an early Dover coach. On British ground I of course profess to blow no bubbles, nor will I trouble the reader with the troubled waters I met with in my progress to the French coast; I proceed at once to the landing-place, and put my foot upon the lad-inside, as possible. I may be wrong, and, if so, der. I am open to conviction; but I do conscientiously A disembarkation at Calais is very dissimilar declare, that I believe the diligence in which I to that which I have attempted to describe at left Calais, was licensed to carry nineteen peoBoulogne. No beauty, no fashion attended to ple, not including the conducteur. It was a huge witness my arrival; the appearance of all about building, consisting internally of three apartme was thoroughly business-like, and though the ments: the front division held three people, and emissaries of the different hotels did certainly here most fortunately I obtained a seat; in the rather vociferously announce their respective centre of the vehicle was a large apartment holdclaims, and one in particular did (as Henry ing six, and behind that again an inferior chamLytton Bulwer says)" nearly scratch my nose with M. Meurice's card," still I must candidly acknowledge that when I first stepped upon the pier at Calais, I encountered less annoyance than might have been my lot on arriving per coach at the Gloucester Coffee-house, Piccadilly. Never did I see so triste a place as Calais. There were many well-dressed men about the streets, who had evidently seen better, and far more agreeable, days: they had about them a London look, but their raiment was seedy, and their countenances sad. ber, in which were stowed away six more living beings. Thus fifteen were imprisoned within the bowels of the machine; the others were on the roof, with a prodigious quantity of luggage, and when at last the lumbering vehicle was set in motion, the noise that it made exceeded all description. By my side sat a fat Englishwoman with her maid, who said she was going to Brussels to stay with a married sister. I never discovered the exact quality of my companion; but from her conversation I decided that she was something very The Grande Place seems to be the general re-low, aspiring amongst strangers to appear somesort of these forlorn ones; there they loitered and thing particularly high. lounged, and smoked, and yawned, and read pers, and talked, and longed for the hours to pass, though every hour was like its predecessor, and pa This and a previous article in the New Monthly Magazine, too long to be amusing, will readily be recog. nised as burlesques upon Mrs. Trollope's "Belgium," &c.-Ed. Museum. "For my part," said she, "these public vehicles will be the death of me; but posting alone, without a smattering of the lingo of the place, is very ill convenient." This I readily admitted; but added, that "lumbering and tedious as the diligences certainly were, the pleasure of traveling amply repaid me for entering them." 176 BUBBLES FROM BRUSSELS. don, at the same period, when no one that you Ay; so people says," she replied, "but for me, and the like, who has one's comforts at home, these numble-cumtumbles won't do; but travelWhat adds immensely to the sombre appearing's all the fashion now, and that's one reason I'm come. What sweet books they writes on the subject! pray, ma'am, have you seen the 'Diarrhyar ance of Brussels in the summer, is the near apof an Invalid? that's quite the true thing, I as-proximation of ruins to its most splendid palaces, sures ye; I shouldn't wonder, ma'am, if you were and most cheerful haunts. The royal palace is to make your little reminiscences, and all I begs beautiful, and next door to it is the late palace of is, that you won't go and put me into your book." Count Crockenberg, in a state of ruination; it I of course expressed my surprise that she having been knocked about his ears at the period should suppose an old woman like me had any of the revolution. The park, formerly surroundidea of printing my tour; and as to putting her, ed with gilded rails, is now hurdled in, like an mutilation happened three years ago, not one or any other indivídual into my book, the very extensive piggery; and though all this uproar and suspicion was an insult. blemish has been as yet repaired! The fortified towns in France and Belgium quite astonished me; every town of consequence was a fortified town, and we penetrated gateways, traversed ramparts, and crossed draw-bridges, until they became as familiar to me as milestones and turnpike-gates. At Gravelines, an exceedingly prettily situated town, we passed sentry-boxes, great guns, and fortifications; and rattled over the loose boards of bridges until I began to fancy myself in a besieged city; and here commenced the rigid examination of my passport. Many English families have left the town since that period of commotion, and we cannot wonder at their flight, as some friends of mine, who lived their marble chimney-piece forced by a cannonin the centre of the most disturbed quarter, had ball into the centre of their drawing-room, and they lived upon hashed mutton, cooked in the Those who delight in giving Boulogne a bad garret, during the whole disturbance. there appeared to me to be more notoriously bad name, call her the refuge for the destitute; but Nothing can be more annoying than this scru- English at Brussels: it seemed, indeed, to be the tiny at the end of every half-dozen or dozen miles; last refuge of the infamous on a grand scale. I was sure to have mislaid my little important These notorious personages would find Boulogne a chance of admission into good society, they document, and in my confused search after it, I much too quiet a place for them; and not having was always considering what would be the consequence if in the end it was not forthcoming. would have no public amusement to occupy their Dunkerque was our next resting-place; a hand-time. Boulogne has indeed her club, where, as I some, clean, busy town, where I am told they walked up the Grande Rue in summer time, I manufacture most excellent gin. From thence heard laughter and billiard balls, and saw men we journeyed along a lovely road, partly on the sitting without their coats, with the backs out of a harmless sort of tittle-tattle place, banks of a canal, and then between avenues of the drawing-room windows. But this club is, I fine trees, until we arrived at Cassel; and now I believe, am truly at a loss to give any idea of the loveli- where an old lady like myself might pass away ness of that spot on a bright summer's day. It is an hour talking over the demerits of her neighbuilt upon a hill, and the view equals, if not ex-bours, without seeing any thing to shock her eyes. ceeds, any inland prospect that I am acquainted within our own little island. I will not compare it with Richmond, for there "I did suit me all points like a man ;" a little snug play; but on the drawing-room floor, Up stairs, three stories high, I believe, they have billiards, newspapers, and gossip, form the indulgences of the subscribers. Now, this would never do for the notorious absentees of Brussels; something more exciting is required by these wellwhiskered, honourable gentlemen. I have before observed, that I have only seen Brussels out of season; and the new town consequently looked like a desert: of the old town, I can, however, give a different account; it is full and animation. of pretty shops, and exhibited sufficient bustle Some distinguée women were to be seen, but The men, indeed, appearTournay is a very fine fortified town, and Ath scarcely less formidable. Lille, celebrated for its very few smart men. manufactures, is a large, cheerful, dirty, Bristol-ed to be strangers in what they called "traveling like city; but its merchandise being silken sheen, dresses," blue blouses and cloth caps; looking more and not rums and sugars, the shop-windows are like butchers' boys than gentlemen. Oh for the clamation.)-Oh for the days when a gentleman particularly gay, full of shawls and scarfs, silks old school! (an old lady may be pardoned the exand satins. could be distinguished at a glance from a barber's 'prentice!-Oh for the days of embroidery and well as graver matters,) and then people left off ruffles! Alas! revolutions came, (in dress, as their ruffles, and took to cuffs!" At length we arrived at Brussels, and established ourselves, not at the nominally first hotel, the Belle Vue, but at the Hotel de l'Europe, its opposite neighbour in the Place Royale. I never saw a more deserted looking place, (it is in the month of September that I write.) Lon To Waterloo, of course, I went; and the guide as usual picked up from among the rubbish the bullet he had yesterday buried there: the crop of bullets is inexhaustible. military men, by even a few civilians; and for female characters, he had a regular school of young Portuguese or European half-castes, whom he contrived to rouge and whiten into something of female semblance. But it is of bubbles, not of bullets, that I write; and though I might expatiate by the hour toge-ment, I held the pen of Scarron, to paint the Roman CoBut Colonel Elisha Trapaud !-Oh that, for one mother respecting persons and things beyond my comprehension, yet there would be no novelty to the reader, so many travellers have trod the same path, and done the same thing. mique of which poor Trapaud,-usually termed in unkind derision Colonel Crapaud,-was the Ragotin. He had all the theatrical irritabilities of that entertaining personage, and, by coaxing his vanity, might be prevailed I know very little about pictures, and therefore upon to undertake any part, however unsuited to his I have never alluded to the various collections figure and person, which were almost caricatures of which (though in ignorance) I enjoyed at Brus humanity. Reader, if you had that exquisite work of sels and at Antwerp. But at the table d'hote at the most delightful of French authors on your table, I the latter place, I met my old companion of the might be spared the trouble of sketching this most exact diligence, who talked to me with much animation counterpart of him. But imagine a figure, somewhat about the shay drivers of Ruby's, and the speci- diminutive, yet protruding into all sorts of ungraceful mens of Dominie Sampsons. But autumnal angles, the whole outline being a kind of rhomboid:breezes began to roar very like the winds of win-imagine this figure, at the advanced age of fifty or fifty. ter, and the leaves were rapidly falling from the curls, and haunted with the happy consciousness of his five, surmounted with a youthful wig, luxuriant with trees it therefore became necessary for me at personal perfections, and no very limited notions of his once to pack up the two trunks and the bandbox, intellectual ones, for he was the Admirable Crichton of and hasten homewards, or else to take a lodging his own fancy. But, with all his conceit, he was a useand tarry the winter at Brussels. I soon seated ful actor, and though it was the fashion to laugh at him myself again in the diligence, once more made the moment he appeared on the stage, he set it down as my appearance at the long table at Roberts's the effect of some comic hit, that pleased the audience, hotel at Calais, and after bubbling rather uneasily without dreaming that he himself was the subject of it. across the channel, I landed at Dover, and ad-Upon one occasion, a wag, willing to amuse himself at vanced by easy stages to London. Next summer my bubbles from the crater of Vesuvius will astonish every body. At present I am comfortably established by my own fire-side, and wish during the winter months to think of no bubbles but those which emanate from the tea urn. From the Asiatic Journal. THE ANGLO-INDIAN THEATRE. his expense, actually persuaded him to write a comedy, and, unluckily, he set about in good earnest. Being an Mark could not refuse to act it, when it was completed. efficient member of Mark Rowarth's dramatic corps, Such a farrago of dulness and absurdity was never exhibited before, but he was proud of it, and took great pains in getting it up. The performers, to do them justice, did all they could for it; for Trapaud's vanities and irritabilities were harmless and amusing, and there was no wish to give him offence. But, as for persuading him that the piece would not do, it was out of the question. He would have seized by the throat any body, whoever he might be, that ventured to throw out the slightest criticism upon its faults. ed in undisputed truths and incontrovertible propositions:" a criticism (such is the omnivorous nature of vanity) which gave the colonel great satisfaction, for he was as proof against the shafts of ridicule or irony, as an alligator to a musket-ball. A line or two of it, I shall never forget. It began thus-and the house was in a roar, whilst Rowarth, with as much seriousness as he could force into his countenance, delivered or rather attempted to deliver it : At present the civil and military servants are the artificers of their own dramatic amusement, and I question whether much would be gained by having it sent out To this comedy, which he called the Merchant of ready-made. What a delightful bustle, what a stir of Smyrna, he wrote a prologue, and insisted upon Mark preparation, in getting up an amateur play! What shifts Rowarth speaking it. The critic of the Madras Gaand contrivances to supply defects! what laughable dis-zette, the next morning, observed of it, that "it aboundputes for the chief characters! what perplexities in casting the female parts and drilling them to feminine postures, and what exquisite farce to hear them, in their half-caste accent, mimicking the affected mince lisp of a lady of fashion! The green-room anecdotes of the Madras theatre would make an entertaining volume. It was, perhaps, the happiest model of a summer theatre that was ever constructed, and from the universality of its uses, probably (for I could never discover a more rational etymology),-being at one time an assemblyroom, at another a place for holding masonic lodges, and at others for a general meeting of the settlement,-received the name of Pantheon. However, it was a handsome building, and capable of holding, pit, boxes, and gallery, nearly seven hundred persons. When there was a ball, a temporary flooring was thrown over the pit, and it served the purpose of a spacious ball-room. The amusing periods of its history, like the amusing pe- I forget how it went on, but it was a most egregious riods of every thing else in India, are now departed. specimen of nonsense-and excited, of course, thunders The reductions of salary in both services, conjoined of mock applause. By dint, however, of cutting and with other causes, have thrown a gloom over the inno- slashing, this performer forgetting his part, and another cent and cheerful diversions that, in my time, enlivened substituting some equivocal nonsense of his own, it ar the place, and gave a life and spirit to those humble thea-rived at its termination; the poor author, all the while, trical experiments, which will long live in my memory. Mark Rowarth, the arbiter elegantiarum of the settlement, was the manager, with a liberal stipend, of the Madras theatre. His company was recruited by young FEB. 1835-23 VOL. XXVI. "To-night, my gentle friends, we act a play- But we swearing and stamping with rage at their spoiling his piece. But when it was over, there arose, by a preconcerted understanding amongst persons in different parts of the theatre, a call of" Author! author!" and a crown wreathed with flowers was thrown on the stage. Old Trapaud, in reality delighted, was with ill-affected reluc tance led on to be crowned between two of the performers. The crown, however, was too small to fit his head without taking off his wig, which his two supporters dashed unceremoniously on the floor. The joke, however, was too practical a one; for the crown had been made of leaves from a prickly hedge, and the thorny part scratched the bald part of his head, so that it streamed with blood, and he ran off the stage, swearing destruction to the contrivers of the insult. Never shall I forget,-for these are not unpleasing reminiscences, the getting up of Macbeth, and to say the truth, it was got up most respectably, and Matthew Locke's music was admirably performed, under the superintendence of Topping, who was an excellent musician. Lady Macbeth was undertaken by Anstey, son of the celebrated author of the Bath Guide. Every body knows how rapidly the beard grows in a hot climate. Anstey's was of the blackest tint, and it being a warm season of the year, before the fourth act it had grown so long, as to render it actually necessary for Lady Macbeth to shave before she appeared in the fifth. It was, however, so sultry behind the scenes, and there was so little air in the room appropriated to dressing, that Anstey ordered a table with a looking-glass and his shaving apparatus to be placed on the stage, where there was a stronger current. In malicious pleasantry, some one rang the prompter's bell, which was the constant signal for drawing up the curtain. It was most promptly obeyed, and, to the amazement of the whole assembled fashion of Madras, Tom Anstey was exhibited in the costume of Lady Macbeth, in that most unfeminine part of his toilette. The roar, the screams of sur rise and merriment that ensued, are beyond description. But anecdotes of the Anglo-Indian stage are rushing fast on my recollection, and may probably be continued in a future number. LONDON THEATRICALS. Reeve has come out in a new character at the Adelphi, in a little farce called My Own Ghost; and keeps the audience in a roar of laughter, without so much as a smile on his face. He personates Mr. Pearlbutton, a prosperous but unhappy tailor, whose wife has run away with his foreman, Shears-now his "cutter-out" in a double sense. He leaves the shop in a fit of despair, buys a hempen boa for as many pence as he gave guineas for a fur one for his faithless spouse, and rents a miserable haunted garret, where he resolves to leave the world as well as his shop-board. He is, however, comforted by the kindness of his hostess, and his resolution is shaken. He determines to "sleep on it ;" but he is scarcely in bed before he is startled by hammering, and presently two men enter the room through a sliding pannel, and he is horrified at the idea of being burked. He listens, and finds from their talk that they are coiners: so, wrapping the sheet round him, he frightens them out of the room, alarms the house, and sends for the police. In the mean time, one of the men brings him word of his wife's return: she had only gone into the country to answer an advertisement, and had taken Shears with her as her " man of business." The drollery all rested on Reeve's shoulders-which are broad enough to bear a much heavier burden. His disconsolate look and manner when he contemplates the halter, and thinks of his dear Mrs. P., and tumbles into his damp and hard bed, in a cold, comfortless room, missing the usual accompaniment of Mrs. P.'s tongue to scold him to sleep-and the ludicrous figure he cuts in his half undress, with his white cotton night-cap on -were quite enough to shake the sides of a more fastidious audience.-Examiner. From the London Metropolitan. JAPHET IN SEARCH OF A FATHER. After this affair of Miss Judd, I adhered steadily to my business, and profiting by the advice given me by that young person, improved rapidly in my profession, as well as in general knowledge; but my thoughts, as usual, were upon one subject-my parentage, and the mystery hanging over it. My eternal reveries became at last so painful, that I had recourse to reading to drive them away, and subscribing to a good circulating library, I was seldom without a book in my hand. By this time I had been nearly two years and a half with Mr. Cophagus, when an adventure occurred which I must attempt to describe with all the dignity with which it ought to be invested. This is a world of ambition, competition, and rivalry. Nation rivals nation, and flies to arms, cutting the throats of a few thousands on each side till one finds that it has the worst of it. Man rivals man, and hence detraction, duels, and individual death. Woman rivals woman, and hence loss of reputation, and position in high, and loss of hair, and fighting with pattens in low life. Are we then to be surprised that this universal passion, undeterred by the smell of drugs and poisonous compounds, should enter into apothecaries' shops? Certainly not. Let me proceed. But two streets-two very short streets from our own-was situated the singlefronted shop of Mr. Ebenezer Pleggit. Thank heaven, it was only single-fronted; there, at least, we had the ascendancy over them. Upon other points, our advantages were more equally balanced. Mr. Pleggit had two large coloured bottles in his windows more than we had; but then we had two horses, and he had only one. He tied over the corks of his bottles with red coloured paper; we covered up the lips of our vials with true blue. It cer tainly was the case-for though an enemy, I'll do him justice-that after Mr. Brookes had left us, Mr. Pleggit had two shopmen, and Mr. Cophagus only one; but then that one was Mr. Japhet Newland; besides, one of his assistants had only one eye, and the other squinted hor. ribly, so if we measured by eyes, I think the advantage was actually on our side; and as far as ornament went, most decidedly; for who would not prefer putting on his chimney-piece one handsome, elegant vase, than two damaged, ill-looking pieces of crockery? Mr. Pleggit had certainly a gilt mortar and pestle over his door, which Mr. Cophagus had omitted when he furnished his shop; but then the mortar had a great crack down the middle, and the pestle had lost its knob. And let me ask those who have been accustomed to handle it, what is a pestle without a knob? On the whole, I think, with the advantage of having two fronts, like Janus, we certainly had the best of the comparison; but I shall leave the impartial to decide. All I can say is, that the feuds of the rival houses were most bitter-the hate intense-the mutual scorn unmeasureable. Did Mr. Ebenezer Pleggit meet Mr. Phineas Cophagus in the street, the former immediately began to spit as if he had swallowed some of his own vile adulterated drugs; and in rejoinder, Mr. Cophagus immediately raised the cane from his nose high above his forehead in so threatening an attitude, as almost to warrant the other swearing the peace against him, muttering, "Ugly puppy-knows nothing-um-patients die-and so on." It may be well supposed that this spirit of enmity extended through the lower branches of the rival houses the assistants and I were at the deadly feud; and this feud was even more deadly between the boys who carried out the medicines, and whose baskets might, in some measure, have been looked upon as the rival ensigns of the parties, they themselves occupying the dangerous and honourable post of standard bearer. Timothy, although the kindest-hearted fellow in the world, was as good a hater | nable ring, yet of sufficient dimensions to avoid the as Dr. Johnson himself could have wished to meet with; missiles. "Go it, red-head!" "Bravo! white apron!" and when sometimes his basket was not so well filled as usual, he would fill up with empty bottles below, rather than the credit of the house should be suspected, and his deficiencies create a smile of scorn in the mouth of his red-haired antagonist, when they happened to meet going their rounds. As yet, no actual collision had taken place between either the principals or the subordinates of the hostile factions; but it was fated that this state of quiescence should no longer remain. resounded on every side. Draughts now met draughts in their passage through the circumambient air, and exploded like shells over a besieged town. Boluses were fired with the precision of cannon shot, pill-boxes were thrown with such force that they burst like grape and canister, while acids and alkalies hissed, as they neutralised each other's power, with all the venom of expiring snakes. "Bravo! white apron!" "Red-head for ever!" resounded on every side as the conflict continued with unabated vigour. The ammunition was fast expending on both sides, when Mr. Ebenezer Pleggit, hearing the noise, and perhaps smelling his own drugs, was so unfortunately rash, and so unwisely foolhardy, as to break through the sacred ring, advancing from behind with uplifted cane to fell the redoubtable Timothy, when a mixture of his own, hurled by his own red-haired champion, caught him in his open mouth, breaking against his only two remaining front teeth, extracting them as the discharged liquid ran down his throat, and turning him as sick as a dog. He fell, was taken away on a shutter, and it was some days before he was again to be seen in his shop dispensing those medicines which, on this fatal occasion, he would but too gladly have dispensed with. Reader, have you not elsewhere read in the mortal fray between knights, when the casque has been beaten off, the shield lost, and the sword shivered, how they have resorted to closer and more deadly strife with their daggers raised on high? Thus it was with Timothy : his means had failed, and disdaining any longer to wage a distant combat, he closed vigorously with his panting enemy, overthrew him in the first struggle, seizing from his basket the only weapons which remained, one single vial, and one single box of pills. As he sat upon his prostrate foe, first he forced the box of pills into his gasping mouth, and then with the lower end of the vial he drove it down his throat, as a gunner rams home the wad and shot into a thirty-two pound carronade. Choked with the box, the fallen knight held up his hands for quarter; but Timothy continued until the end of the vial, breaking out the top and bottom of the pasteboard receptacle, forty-and-eight of anti-bilious pills rolled in haste down red-head's throat. Timothy seized his basket, and amid the shouts of triumph walked away. His fallen-crested adversary coughed up the remnants of the pasteboard, once more breathed, and was led disconsolate to the neighbouring pump; while Timothy regained our shop with his blushing honours thick upon him. Homer has sung the battles of gods, demigods, and heroes; Milton the strife of angels. Swift has been great in his Battle of the Books; but I am not aware that the battle of the vials has as yet been sung; and it requires a greater genius than was to be found in those who portrayed the conflicts of heroes, demigods, gods, angels, or books, to do adequate justice to the mortal strife which took place between the lotions, potions, draughts, pills, and embrocations. I must tell the story as well as I can, leaving it as an outline for a future epic. Burning with all the hate which infuriated the breasts of the two houses of Capulet and Montague, hate each day increasing from years of "biting thumbs" at each other, and yet no excuse presenting itself for an affray, Timothy Oldmixon-for on such an occasion it would be a sin to omit his whole designation-Timothy Oldmison, I say, burning with hate and eager with haste, turning a corner of the street with his basket well filled with medicines hanging on his left arm, encountered equally eager in his haste, and equally burning in his hate, the red-haired Mercury of Mr. Ebenezer Pleggit. Great was the concussion of the opposing baskets, dire was the crash of many of the vials, and dreadful was the mingled odour of the abominations which escaped, and poured through the wicker interstices. Two ladies from Billingsgate, who were near, indulging their rhetorical powers, stopped short. Two tom cats, who were on an adjacent roof, just fixing their eyes of enmity, and about to fix their claws, turned their eyes to the scene below. Two political antagonists stopped their noisy arguments. Two dustmen ceased to ring their bells; and two little urchins eating cherries from the crowns of their hats, lost sight of their fruit, and stood aghast with fear. They met, and met with such violence, that they each rebounded many paces; but like stalwart knights, cach kept his basket and his feet. A few seconds to recover breath; one wither ing, fiery look from Timothy, returned by his antagonist, one flash of the memory in each to tell them that they each had the la on their side, and "Take that!" was roared by Timothy, planting a well-directed blow with But I must drop the vein heroical. Mr. Cophagus, his dexter and dexterous hand upon the sinister and sin- who was at home when Timothy returned, was at first isterous eye of his opponent. "Take that!" continued very much inclined to be wroth at the loss of so much he, as his adversary reeled back; "take that, and be medicine; but when he heard the story, and the finale, dd to you, for running against a gentleman.” he was so pleased at Tim's double victory over Mr. He of the rubicund hair had retreated, because so vio-Pleggit and his messenger, that he actually put his hand lent was the blow he could not help so doing, and we all in his pocket, and pulled out half-a-crown. must yield to fate. But it was not from fear. Seizing a vile potation that was labelled "To be taken immediately," and hurling it with demoniacal force right on the chops of the courageous Timothy, "Take that!" cried he with a rancorous yell. The missile, well directed as the spears of Homer's heroes, came full upon the bridge of Timothy's nose, and the fragile glass shivering, inflict- But with the exception of this fracas, which ended in ed divers wounds upon his physiognomy, and at the same the action not holding good, whereby the animosity was time poured forth a dark burnt-sienna-coloured balsam, increased, I have little to recount during the remainder to heal them, giving pain unutterable. Timothy, disdain- of the time I served under Mr. Cophagus. I had been ing to lament the agony of his wounds, followed the ex-more than three years with him when my confinement ample of his antagonist, and hastily seizing a similar bottle of much larger dimensions, threw it with such force that it split between the eyes of his opponent. Thus with these dreadful weapons did they commence the mortal strife. The lovers of good order, or at least of fair play, gathered round the combatants, forming an almost impreg. Mr. Pleggit, on the contrary, was any thing but pleased; he went to a lawyer, and commenced an action for assault and battery, and all the neighbourhood did nothing but talk about the affray which had taken place, and the action at law which it was said would take place in the ensuing term. became insupportable. I had but one idea, which performed an everlasting cycle in my brain. Who was my father? And I should have abandoned the profession to search the world in the hope of finding my progenitor, had it not been that I was without the means. Latterly I had hoarded up all I could collect; but the sum was |