and over again attested by their enemies' blood.

With what emotions must they not behold the grey cliffs of Albion rise from the lap of her ocean mother, and her subject-with what subdued yet intense exultation do they not regard the "guardian giants that prowl around her coast"-with what rapture do they not behold returning from afar the long-remembered faces of countrymen and friends!

On our way to Chester fair, Mr Crick, who had dropped the patronymic of Horseman, the daughter of Phosphorus, and myself, had occasion to bait, gin and water, and bread and cheese, at the small, but not unroman.. tic village of Guttlebelly West, where the daughter of Phosphorus excited, in the stable-yard of the Fighting Cocks, no little attention from several gentlemen in the coaching line, who were then and there assembled to assist at an auction of "fast machiners" advertised for that very day.

The fast machiners having been auctioned off, as high as the moon, to my thinking, the anxiety to see the daughter of Phosphorus was so loudly and generally expressed, that Mr Crick, like Lord John Russell, did not feel himself at liberty to refuse his assent to the unequivocal expression of the wishes of the House, and the daughter of Phosphorus was unclothed and led out into the stable-yard accordingly.

Loud and general was the expression of approbation among the assembled coach proprietors of the points of the bay mare,-such bone, sinew, and shape-so much strength combined with so much symmetry,-nothing now remained but to form an accurate conception of her action, and for this purpose, the assembled coach-owners requested Mr Crick, as a favour, to run her up a little. This that gentleman peremptorily declined, - the mare had been shown to the gentlemen, and praised by the gentlemen, which he (Mr Crick) was grateful to behold; he would do any thing to oblige so many gentlemen what was there assembled, but the thing was unpossible, Lord Jersey's second head groom being, no doubt, by this time in waiting at Chester, with the "tin" to pay for the daughter of Phosphorus;-run her up, therefore, he would not, and run her up, therefore, he could

not. Upon this, one or two of the coach-owners, nettled at the preference which Timothy appeared inclined to bestow upon the noble Lord, hazarded a not altogether unreasonable assertion, that their "money might be as good as my Lord's;" at which Mr Crick incontinently pricked up his ears, declaring, for his part, that if he could get his price at Guttlebelly West, he would save himself a journey to Chester; and he dared to say that his master, the Earl of Clangallaher, did not care a damn whether the daughter of Phosphorus was disposed of to the Pope, the devil, or the pretender. This manly declaration of Mr Crick, tickled the assembled coach-owners mightily, who thereupon repeated their wish to have an opportunity of seeing how the daughter of Phosphorus could go. The faithful Timothy having discovered a lane well strewed with litter, leading from the stable-yard to the farm, assented to the wishes of the assembled coach-owners, and ran the daughter of Phosphorus cautiously up and down, where he well knew the slight "thrush," under which that noble animal had the misfortune to labour, could in no wise be perceptible. When the bay mare poked down her head, the usual preliminary to the emission of her constitutional cough, I observed an agony of perspiration breaking over Timothy's brow, when she raised her head without coughing, he wiped off the sweat with the cuff of his stable-jacket, like a man reprieved.

"Will she take a five-foot gate?" enquired one of the assembled coachowners?

"Will a duck swim?"-replied the unblushing Timothy.

"Is she sound?"-was the enquiry of another of the assembled coachowners.

"Sound in every respect-wind and limb," was the prompt rejoinder. "Gentle?" demanded a third assembled coach-owner.

"Gentle!" ejaculated Mr Crick, in that undefinable, but very characteristic tone of voice, in which one gentleman may be supposed to express his opinion of the absurd question put by another.

"Gentle!-a infant at the breast may ride her-gentle !" for the third and last time, ejaculated Crick, dismount

ing and caressing, with the tenderest affection, before the assembled coachowners, the invaluable daughter of Phosphorus, beginning at her head, and ending, to show his unsuspecting confidence in her temper, by stooping directly behind the heels of the infernal beast, who, lifting her accursed hoof, which Crick was gently stroking, struck the poor unfortunate fellow right in the umbilical region with such vindictive emphasis, that he went spinning, heels over head, against the kitchen door of the Fighting Cocks, where he lay doubled up like a wet sack. Recovering somewhat, he raised himself with difficulty, on his feet, and holding one hand on his injured abdomen, he walked in the attitude of a man suffering under a wind colic, over to the perfidious daughter of Phosphorus, when, gently stroking her neck before the assembled coachowners, as if nothing unpleasant had ever passed between them, he faintly articulated, oh! you playful rogue!

The assembled coach-owners turned away, heartily sick of the daughter of Phosphorus, and taking no pains to conceal their indignation; while the faithful Timothy sneaked to the hay-loft, where I soon after attended upon him.

"Pat, I'm a dead dog!" piteously ejaculated the poor fellow.

"Don't say so, Timothy," said I; for I was rather green at the time, and could not behold the death even of a horse-jockey without emotion. "I'm cat's meat," added the dying man, pathetically.

"I'll go for a doctor, Timothy dear!" said I, wringing the hands of the expiring horse-jockey.

"I won't be hurried," said Tim, with an attempt at a wink, which plainly indicated his words as a cut at the faculty.

"Pat," said my poor friend, faintly. "What is it, my poor fellow?" said I, squeezing his hand, as the tears hailed off my face.

"Promise me this one thing." "I will," replied I; "so help me"

"Tell Bodkin I did my best." "I-will-Tim," sobbing, I replied. "And, Pat," continued Timothy, in a whisper, "don't-let-them-try the-mare'

Here I raised him in my arms, for the death-rattle began to gurgle in his throat

"She's a roarer!" he faintly ejaculated, and expired.

The funeral obsequies of the late lamented Mr Timothy Crick were not finally completed without much intestine agitation among the constituted authorities of Guttlebelly West, regretting, as they must, the loss of so amiable a man, and consigning to ten thousand devils, as they unsparingly did, the impudent horse-jockey who died at their door, when, as one of the overseers pitifully remarked, the blasted beggar might just as well have kicked the bucket ten thousand miles off!

It was seriously proposed, among these parochial worthies, to pickle the deceased Mr Crick, and to return him to the place from whence he came, as the justices say, for interment. This course, most probably, would have

O.-E.

been adopted, but for a suggestion of the parish surgeon, that the pickle and carriage would be more costly than the usual interment "in forma pauperis." Secondly, it was gravely suggested that the parish should impound the bay mare, to the credit of all costs to be incurred respecting the fatal blow she had cruelly and wantonly inflicted upon the horse-jockey; and this suggestion might have been acted on as well, had not the landlord of the Fighting Cocks been earlier in the field, and impounded the bay mare upon his own account. I would have disputed this matter with the landlord, looking at the bay mare in the light of a ward in Chancery, of whom, in the absence of Mr Bodkin, I considered myself the next friend and lawful

guardian, but desisted, when I reflected that the landlord was acting on his own responsibility, and that, before I could have replevined the bay mare, she would have committed suicide-in the only way in which that noble animal, the horse, has been known to terminate so ingloriously his earthly calamities; that is to say, by eating his own head off!

It was next proposed that I should be sent to the House of Correction as a vagrant, or rather as security for the funeral costs and charges of Mr Crick, which I had been invited to disburse; to which invitation (for I was piqued at the parochial brutality of these cheesemunchers) I replied, with as much confidence as if I had had the money in my pocket-that I would see them all condemned first! Dame Nature at last, however, kindly stepped in to settle the argument, by instituting the putrefactive process, which, appealing directly to the noses of the parish officers of Guttlebelly West, convinced their worships that it would be safer for the public health to lay the mortal remains of the late Timothy Crick in his mother earth, cost what it might, without any further exhibition of their ale-inspired rhetoric; and, accordingly, poor Timothy was "earthed," as he would have said himself, with a haste as indecent as the indecency of the precedent delay.

For my own part, judging of the tone and manner of the humane authorities of Guttlebelly West, I entertain not a doubt but that, if Timothy had not begun to stink, he would have lain unburied, without note or comment, until the carrion crows had picked the bones of his carcase as clean as a whistle.

It was a few days before Christmas that I shook the inhospitable dust of Guttlebelly West from my shoes, and set out on my long-wished-for journey towards that London, whose vaunted magnificence it was then my utmost ambition to behold, but which bitter experience has long since taught me to look upon as I look upon literature itself as a capital staff, but a confounded crutch. My wardrobe, luggage, and incumbrances generally, consisted of one cotton chemise, fine Irish front, for dress; one sailor's striped ditto for night wear; one and a half pairs of mixed cotton socks, one ditto, of lambs wool stockings presented me by Mrs Rafferty, the bil

liard-marker's kind-hearted wife, one tooth brush, one nail ditto, and Crick's favourite curry-comb, all tied up promiscuously in a blue and white bandana, and suspended over my left shoulder-I hope the precise critic recollects that I am left-handed-from the bone handle of Timothy's hunting whip, the lash whereof I had carefully coiled up in my breeches' pocket for future occasions.

It was a genial and a cheerful season-vegetation took her winter nap, and the glebe fattened under the influences of a kindly frost-the air was of that keen and bracing sort that gave tone to every nerve, and elasticity to every step-the calm sky reposed in cerulean cloudlessness; and, what was of more importance to a gentleman of fortune [youth and health] like myself, privileged to strut unscathed through every turnpike in the kingdom, the roads were in prime pedestrian order. Nor did animated nature present a spectacle less pleasing to the mind than the amenity of the wintry landscape exhibited to the eye. The little birds, it is true, had ceased their individual song, but they had collected into a commonwealth among the bushes at the rise of the hill, and chirruped an irregular ode in praise of society; that impudent, delightful, familiar, little monster in the olive-brown uniform with red facings, Captain Cock Robin, accompanied me on my route, scrutinizing me intently with his large round black eye, and almost

not quite-accepting the sweepings of my pocket, as I usually eat my oysters, when I can get them, out of hand.

I have said it was the advent of that high and holy season, when the message of God's pardon and love came to the children of sin, from the first feeble cry of the God made Manwhen a morality began to be preached to the nations, which the vaunted scribes of Hebrew theology answered with revilings and blows-a morality that reposes confidently upon the mercy of God and the free-offering of his Son, that stifles within our miserrable bosoms the blind fury of unlicensed passion, and deposits in the all-reaching hand of God's providence our avenges and our wrongs. It was verging towards that gracious day, whose bare commemoration opens the fountains of every heart, and sheds

balm over every soul-draws together from the ends of the earth the longsundered family, and lets fall upon the paternal hearth the tender, the mingled tear of brotherly and sisterly affection!

Groups of happy and innocent children carolled the glad tidings of our Saviour's coming on his errand of fallen man's redemption. Oh! it was delicious music, for the voice was from the heart, and the heart was pure.

"All in a stable He was born
When He to save us came :
Hallowed be that holy morn,
Hallowed be His name."

I lifted up my voice, and would have carolled with the children, but the song died away upon my tongue-the heart was out of tune-I paused and wept-wept that I was no longer innocent, no longer happy!

Oh, days of childhood!-dear departed days! When to be vacant was to know enough-when to be careless, was perfect joy-when the unsuspect ing heart lives upon the laughing lip, and love, pity, and devotion, commingle in the pure unmeditating eye.

Knowledge! Fame! Ambition! Fashion! London !-what can you offer to efface the memory of days like these?

As I journeyed from town to town, scenes of joyous preparation obtruded themselves every where upon my view. I lingered in the fat market, where the poor widow, basket in hand, was making thrifty entertainment for the fatherless babes that toddled at her knee. I followed, with longing, lingering eyes, the truck that conveyed away a plain yet plentiful dinner to the work-house, and wished myself, for that day only, a pauper.

The alehouses along the road were verdantly tricked out in festoonings of ivy, with his pimple-nosed jolly companion, the famous old holly-and peeping into the kitchens, I had more than one opportunity of observing the maids busily engaged in the clandestine putting up of the formidable misletoe bough.

The road was alive with cheerful faces-stagecoaches stopping every five minutes to gin and water; guards perpetually jerking down parcels, and even the coachman himself relaxing to something like a grin at the uncommon

funniness of the outsides. How I do love a stagecoach! Let me live on the box, die beside the guard, and be buried in the front boot! How I do love spanking along at ten miles an hour, including stoppages, in a clear cold winter day, or under the glorious light of a harvest moon! Then comes a long hill, and at the top, quite promiscuous, as a body may say, is the Red Lion standing on his hind legs, inviting us all in to gin and water. I help the young woman in the cotton wrapper down with the most sedulous attention" Care of your petticoats on the lamp iron"-" lend me your foot, Miss"" my eye, what an ankle" -"this is the step"-" now, turn round and jump into my arms"-" all right"-" there you are"- "fie, for shame". "don't mention it!" "Take a drop of any thing" "don't say no, if you'd rather not.' "Now, gentlemen, if you please," "give me your hand"-" care of the wheel"-“ Ï your garter"-" Oh! you wretch""there you are,"—" all right behind"

and away we go again!

see

A fig for your cheap and nasty railway, smelling like a cookshop-a fig for the great kettle of hot water that pulls it along-a fig for the filthy policemen prowling about in green frocks and glazed hats, taking people into custody, as if they were Mounseers or Frenchmen-and a fig for the prison vans, in which poor devils of passengers are hurried from town to town, without as much as a drop of any thing short to take the director's dirt out of their whistles!

Railways!-to the devil I pitch you with sixpence, and hope you'll enjoy the money and company!

Thank God! there were no cheap and nasty railways when I made my first journey towards London-there, clattered away a yellow post-chaise packed with children, their noses flattened up against the windows-and there spanked along-Lord, how beautiful!—a dashing barouche and foura lady and gentleman inside enveloped in sables, with the tips of their noses peeping out. What a tidy farmer's cart, and such a devilish nice girl going to spend her Christmas-and talk of the devil, here he comes-poh ! only a provincial sweep careering along upon his donkey.

As evening comes on, I enter a town, and pass alehouse after ale

house, where the blazing tap room fire streams through the well-cleaned window, and exhibits within a semicircle of elderly gentlemen with pipes and pots, engaged in settling the affairs of the nation-groups of rosy laughing girls gather for mutual protection at the corner, and wo betide the hapless bumpkin who draws down upon his numbskull the concentrated artillery of their tongues. You see a knot of young artizans flitting about the opposite corner, but, Lord bless you! sooner than attack that bevy of virgins, as they stand, the poor fellows would jump into a lime-kiln! The markets are sumptuous to behold, and every thing is promised feasting and anticipated revelry.

"Do you suppose, because I trudged along, poor, hungry and friendless, that I observed all these indica

tions of

"How good the God of seasons was to them,"

with emotions correspondent to the bitterness of my lot? if so, you suppose ignorantly. I thank my God, my heart warmed, glowed, expanded, under the influence of the hospitable atmosphere around me. I forgot for the moment, my individual desolation in the contemplation of surrounding plenty, and feasted in imagination upon the prospective feastings of my fellow-creatures! You, born and nursed in the lap of luxury, whose associations of this holy season are made up of the recollections of hospitable interchanges of social courtesies -who wander abroad with your relatives hanging upon your arm, and return home loaded with presents for your little brothers and sisters-to whom, at this time of year, the old and faithful servant of your house is as a father, and your great dog Neptune a familiar friend-you, fallen from your better fortunes, and trudging along without a dinner, or money to buy one, might, in the bitterness of your heart, be tempted to curse the hospitality which you alone were not to be permitted to share. But the case was altogether different with me-desolate from my birth-flung friendless upon the wide world, days as bad as a man could see and live, had already gone over my head; it was a luxury to me to see poor people happy, and the mere aspect of com

fort and unostentatious plenty was a feast, stranger though I was, and penniless in the land!

It was on a Christmas eve that I entered a small town in one of the midland counties, weary, hungry, and without a penny in my pocket. I had tried some ballads along the road, in my very best style, such as I used to turn to very good account in the maritime purlieus of Dublin;-and here let me pause to observe, that I have ever found sailors just landed from a trip the very best judges of lyrical poetry

their criticism is contributed in copper, a coin very superior indeed to the reviewers' brass-in short, there is no comparison. I sung over and over again, till my larynx felt as rough as a file

"Come, listen awhile, and you soon shall

hear

By the rolling sea lived a maiden fair, Her father he followed the smuggling trade,

Like a warlike hero

Like a warlike hero that never was afraid.

"In seaman's clothes young Jane did go, Dressed like a sailor from top to toe; Her father he was become old and poor,

Like a warlike hero

Like a warlike hero, as I told you before." And so on, but sing as I might, I got never a penny. This led me to reflect a little; if I had had money in my pocket, no doubt I would have gone through Swillingham, for that was the name of the place, with sovereign contempt for their "cruel taste in music,' as the cow facetiously observed after she had eaten the bag pipes; but money I had none, and therefore I began to consider whether a village in the midland counties was just the sphere in which a nautical ballad, like the Female Smuggler, was likely to be properly appreciated.

After hearing arguments pro and con, I concluded it was not; and this literary failure I put on record for the benefit of all those scribblers who may not be aware of the importance of attending to the time and manner of bringing out a work; from the ingenuous hidalgo who pumped The Great Metropolis upon the town, down, down, down to-let me see how low I can go down to Lord Mulgrave, the unreadable novel-twister, or his equally great camarado, Lord Morpeth, the Keepsake poet!