barn door, thickly studded with impaled polecats, weasels, stoats, and other destroyers of the game, showed the activity of the warfare carried on against those four-footed poachers; and a spacious warren stretching round the orchard at the back of the premises, attested that when nobler sport was not to be had, the Squire would condescend to shoot rabbits, or even hunt them with ferrets.

Leaving Goldingham for the present, alternately gazing at the house, or looking at his watch with an increased impatience which was not in any degree participated by the slow and imperturbable Timothy, we shall request the reader to enter the low hall, hung round with fowling-pieces, powder-belts, stags' horns, foxes' brushes, and other sportsman's trophies; to pass the shuffle-board table at one end-to traverse the parlour, furnished with high-backed, leather-bottomed chairs, and an antique oak cabinet in every corner-to ascend the stairs; then to go along a passage, and down three steps, and finally to let us pilot him into the drawing-room, where, before a long narrow

glass fixed in the pannel, Sir Harcourt Slingsby, a new guest at the Rookery, stood combing his periwig; a practice not a little inconsistent with modern notions of politeness, especially before ladies and a roomfull of visitants, although it was an established habit with the beaus and exquisites of that æra. Of these fashionable flutterers about the court and the circles of high life, Sir Harcourt, who had many imitators but no rival, was the avowed leader; a pre-eminence universally conceded to him not less on account of his fine figure and splendid fortune, than the tasteful modishness of his attire, and the polished urbanity of demeanour which shone through all the fopperies of his discourse and dress, preposterous as they sometimes were. "May I be freckled!" he exclaimed to some of the by-standers, while he insinuated his comb into the hair, passed it along the surface of his wig, and looked tenderly at it with his head on one side, "if it be not the prettiest periwig in Christendom. Chedreux! it will immortalize thee—it is thy chef-d'œuvre, and ought for ever to remain as it is now, unvisited

by the wind, and unprofaned by a hat. No flax was ever whiter; and what a beauty there is in a fair wig! How well it sets off my dark eye-brows! (by the by, I have brought them into fashion; nothing will go down this season but black brows,)—ah! how delicately a blonde peruque shows off against these dark curtains! May those in the dining-room be a shade deeper! though, after all, nothing can relieve it better than the chocolate colour which I have chosen for the lining of my new French calash. Ah, mon cher !" he continued as the Squire entered the room in a dress suit. I give you joy -I see you have published a new coat, and may I be pimpled if it be not of a passable device, and praiseworthy cut."

"Whoop! Sir Harcourt, why, you have never turned round to look at it yet."

"There's no occasion, mon cher, for I can see it in the glass, and still correct the eccentricities of these two or three truant hairs. Tell me, Squire, didst ever see a sweeter peruque? Not a curl in it-I have exploded them for ever, but every line softly flowing and waving

up and down like the undulations of a summer sea. There! it is finished and faultless, and now, mon cher, que je t'embrasse—let me kiss thee, for thy coat is jaunty and piquant."

Stretching out his head as far as possible so
as to avoid the smallest derangement of his sa-
cred peruke, he kissed the cheek of the Squire,
who exclaimed, “I don't know whether your
wig be of such a rare breed as you pretend,
but sink me! if I ever saw six such clean long-
tailed nags as you have got to your calash.
Fifty to twenty I match the peruque six times
over before you produce such another set of
horses in all England. Your off wheeler is un-
commonly like my black gelding Skyscraper.
Where the devil did you pick him up ?"

"May I be visited by the chicken rash! if
I can tell you. I merely order my people to
procure for me whatever is most rare and
unique, and not to trouble their heads about
the expense."

"You boast of your peruque," resumed the Squire, "but the newest fashion about you is your speech. When I left London you drawl

ed and stretched out the letter A as if you were loth to part with it, and talked as broad as a Scottish gardener."

"Run me through! Squire, if I could stick to it any longer after it came down to that sorry rogue Titus Oates. I was standing beside him when he said to my Lord North, Maay

66

Laird Chaife Jaistaice, whay this baisness of Baidlaw caims to naithaing," and I instantly forswore the North country drawl, and introduced the French lisp. This too being soon profaned by vulgar mouths, I abandoned it, and had actually some thoughts of speaking simply and naturally; but it was held to be too daring an innovation, too great an affectation of singularity, so that I am obliged to be somewhat foppish and fantastical in my oaths, for fear of being set down for a coxcomb.-Let me blood! Squire, if your cravat be not most villainously disposed; why entrust an affair of such importance to an Englishman? We have no native artists in this line. My man Guillioteaux was had over from Paris on purpose, and does nothing else."