was I not content to be a stone-breaker -why was I not born to be a factory boy?"

My eyes swam, my brain reeled, and for a few moments I fainted away. Recovering a little, I raised myself with difficulty against the wall of the church; strange faces peered at me as they passed; but if they had been summoned to earth from the silent repose of the grave to gaze upon me, their expression had been the same, for all of sympathy or friendliness that beamed from them on the perishing youth that lay helplessly there.

I gazed wistfully at a pile of oranges which was being studiously packed into a pyramidical shape by an old woman, in whose quadrangular figure, truncated nose, and hooded gray cloak, I thought I recognised one of the finest peasantry in the universe; I was convinced of her being a compatriot by the rich and mellow tones of the Cork brogue (all the Irish in London are, strange to tell, natives of Cork), in which she replied to the chaffering of three well-dressed little boys-little noblemen, I thought, from the comfort of every thing about them, they must be.

There was a brazier of lighted charcoal upon the old woman's stall, whereon simmered or broiled away what I took to be some small and delicate description of potatoe; and whose smell reached me as I lay, and made my stomach, I thought, deadly sick. It was to this delicacy, whatever it was, that the attention of the young noblemen who had been previously discussing what they had respectively enjoyed at home for dinner-appeared to be chiefly directed, and the first distinct remark that fell upon my ear was a reply of the proprietor of this to me forbidden fruit, to an enquiry from the most prominent of the young noblemen.

"Eight a penny-I tould yees before-ye small plagues of A-gypt," said the descendant of Milesius, in answer to the spokesman of the house of peers" eight a penny-four a hap-penny-but yees don't want to buy," concluded Oonach, testily.

"How many for a farden?" de. manded the young nobleman, briskly producing his coin, as if to convince the Irishwoman her last remark was personally offensive.

"Two for a farden, my sweet little gentleman," said the Milesian, tipping a little blarney with her Cork—“two, my little leprechaun.'

"I shall pick and choose, I s'pose?" said his little lordship, enquiringly.

"Ye may, and welkim, sir," responded the Emerald; "but don't burn yer dear little fingers-ye shall have the biggest."

"But there's three on us," observed the juvenile aristocrat, pointing to his compeers, and replacing the invaluable farthing in his breeches pocket, as if determined to make his own terms before he took it out again.

"Sorrow take yees three," rejoined the poor Irishwoman, "ye would skin the mother that bore yees for the hide and tallow !"

"Ve vont have none on your nuts, if you don't give us three"-said the speaker.

"Ve'll try a more accommodatin' shop"-said the second peer. "Werry right," added the junior Lord Cockney.

"And this," said I, with a deep groan-"this is munificent-this is, oh God!-this is splendid London!"

Whether it was that I groaned louder than before, I know not; but this I do know, that the poor orangewoman turned round, and seeing a youth lie against the pilaster of the church, exactly in the rear of her stall, came over, and putting down her head to my lips, asked me, in that tone of softened sympathy that none so well as a poor Irishwoman can throw into her voice,

"What is it that's a throubling you, my poor man?"

I would have spoken, but my parched lips refused their office. I opened my mouth, and pointing to it with my finger, fainted away once more.-—

When I came to my senses a second time, I found the poor Irishwoman pressing an orange to my lips, while her little daughter held in one hand a slice of bread and cheese, and half-a pint of porter in the other, brought from the next public-house; and five shillings, the donation of a drunken sailor, who was passing, the old woman told me, with two girls of the town, lay on the ground beside me. A curious crowd had gathered round, and all (for benevolence is contagious),

seemed anxious to afford the starving lad-such the poor Irishwoman had informed them was my state-their sympathies at least. One pressed me to ale- another soaked in it a bit of bread-a third recommended me to try the cheese-and a fourth, more active in his benevolence, ran to the public house, and returned with a brimming tumbler of hot brandy and water, which, he assured me, would set me up again. But my stomach rejected all these proffered hospitalities; a crumb would not lie upon it for a moment. The people-or, as vulgar welldressed ruffians, who know no more of them than they do of the man in the moon, choose to style them, the mob -carried me out of the thoroughfare into an alley close by, where they laid me down upon a cushion, which a benevolent waterman had borrowed for that purpose, from one of the coaches on his stand. The poor Irishwoman stood by me all the while, and kept her orange to my lips, and when business called her away to her stall, the little girl took her mother's place, and wiped my brow, and tended me with the affection of a sister.

"You shall come with us-home with my mother," said the little girl. "Where, my love," enquired I. "To our home," said the little girl " I will nurse you, and mother will make you some nice broth-you will soon be well."

"And where is your home, my dear little maid?" enquired I.

"Not far," replied the little girl"not very far-at our village."

Our village! I thought of the charming-the adorable Mary Russel Mitford. Our village !-there was nature, kindliness, and simple-hearted tenderness in the very sound.

"Alas!" said I, "and is this my fate? is hunger, misery, and distress my lot in munificent London? and is it in a village, and from villagers, that I am to receive hospitality and shelter ?"

"Let us go then, my love," said I, rising up-" let us hasten to leave this terrible place-this mighty tomb of all that is soft and meek, tender and compassionate, lowly and God-like in man

let us leave its splendours, its dissipations, its vice, and seek happiness and tranquillity in our village!'"

We love a horse we love an elephant-we love a mouse-we love -pshaw! you will save both yourself and us an immensity of trouble, gentle reader, by just walking into your library, taking down your Bewick, or your Goldsmith, or your Buffon, and reading over the table of contents from the beginning to the end;—and, if you have but half the average supply of penetration, you will make up your mind, before you have got half way through the first page thereof, that we are a personage of a most catholic affection-that we love every animal under the sun. Like an especial favourite of ours, the quaint old author of the Religio Medici, we cannot even "start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander-at the sight of a toad or a viper we find in us no desire to take up a stone to destroy them." But, above all the denizens of earth, and air, and ocean, do we esteem a dog

young or old, great or small, it matters nothing to us-be he

"Mastiff, Greyhound, Mongrel grim, Hound, or Spaniel, Brach, or Lym, Or bobtail tyke, or trundle-tail"we make no invidious distinction,we embrace in our affections the little dogs, and all,

"Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart;" ay, even though we be constrained with that heart-broken old man, "more sinned against than sinning," to cry "See! they bark at me!"

If we were but a legislator, and had a "tail," there should forthwith be a millennium for dogs !-much weeping and wailing should there be among the oppressors. Woe to the Westminster pit, and the owner of the famous dog Billy! Woe to the proprietors of dog trucks! and especial woe to them that ride therein! Woe unto Bell's Life in London, and its column on "Canine Fancy !"

eth his wife!

We thank our God that our lot was not cast in the days of the old Forest laws! We should infallibly have proved a premature Wat Tyler to the first miscreant Jack-in-office that ventured to lay hands upon the hound of our bosom,-and we should have been hanged, drawn, and quartered for our pains. The Fates that deferred the spinning of our thread to these latter days have been kind to us. We have often wished that we could conscientiously adopt the creed of the "poor Indian" who

"Thinks, admitted to an equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company;"

but, alas! he is of "the brutes that perish," and the wish is an idle, it may be, a murmuring one. But that a dog has nothing more than mere instinct that a dog doesn't think, we defy the most "learned" Theban that ever wrote or lectured to convince us. We do not mean to say that he is a philosopher, or a moralist, or a poet; but he feels and he reasons for all that, and he shames, or ought to shame, not a few of his very rational lords and masters. When we threw down our newspaper this morning after breakfast, and sauntered to the parlour window for the mere purpose, as an ordinary observer would have conjectured, of standing there with our hands in our breeches' pockets, our children didn't know it-the wife of our bosom didn't know it-we scarcely, even, knew it ourselves-but Rover, our dog, knew it; and he came frisking and bounding from his prescriptive corner of the hearth-rug, and looking up in our face, and bowwow-ing (for which we first thrashed him bodily, and then ourselves mentally, though, in truth, the cuff we gave him would hardly have sufficed to disturb the most superannuated flea of the tribe which made in him their dwelling), and running to the door, and scampering back again, and then jumping bolt upright as high as

would give his ears to say bow-wow once more-only he durst not-and so, as it was there ready at his tongue's end, easing it off gently through his teeth in the shape of a sort of pleasurable growl; and then lying down, yet peering up ever into our face with a kind of half-supplicating, half- reproachful expression, which said, as plainly as looks can say, "Well, I'm almost afraid it's of no use, but I won't give it up yet for all that,”—and then,- "Bless my soul! are we to be kept a whole month learning what this brute of yours did know?"

Had

Now, thank your gods, O reader! that we are of a placid and gentle disposition,-for, by that intemperate interruption of yours, you have cut short one of the faithfulest touches of description that we have penned for this many a day; and had we been "sudden and quick in quarrel," it might have cost you more than the loss of the picture you have so unceremoniously marred. But, alas! you feel it not, we say to you, as Sir Isaac said to his spaniel, "Ah! Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done!" we been in the knight's place on that most trying occasion, and had our footman, or our housemaid, or any man or maid on the face of the earth, destroyed at one fell swoop the labour of years, we verily believe the readers of next morning's Times would have been horrified by three entire columns of "awful murder and felo-de-se." But had it been thou, O Rover, our little, harmless, playful doggie, thou who didst never yet provoke one frown of anger upon our brow but one wag of thy tail dispelled it in a moment-had it been thou, we say, who hadst done the wrong, we should, with all the meekness of the immortal philosopher, have-" Zounds, sir!what did your dog know all this while ?"-Why, sir, he knew we were going out for a walk.

We hereby enter our protest against the degradation of the word puppy, as applied to certain irrational specimens of that genus which arrogates to itself the exclusive possession and enjoyment of reason. Your natural puppy is an especial favourite of ours. We have one before us at this moment-a little, ungainly, unwieldy cub, with a head

the tail, expressive half of doubt and fear, half of entreaty, that says "wont you let me through?-I would wag it so gratefully, if you would!" Quick! quick!-alas, too late! he hears the course-keeper's rapidly approaching gallop-away! he is speeding for the dear life, but the pursuer is too fleet for him he has overtaken himcrack! crack! did you hear that howl? -poor devil!-did we understand you rightly, sir?-did you say he was your dog? then would to God that lash had fallen on your own shoulders for bringing him to such a place as this!

We lay it down as our unalterable dictum, that he who possesses a dog never need want a friend. Byron, indeed, once went so far as to say he "never knew but one," and that one his dog Boatswain. But we incline to think there was a considerable sacrifice of truth to effect in the assertion, for he had many and true ones, though he loved to say, perhaps to think, he had none. He was, or affected to be, a misanthrope. Far be from us either the being or the affectation, though we may now and then unintentionally leave a peg for the censorious to hang an accusation upon. We sympathize most cordially with that jolly dog-loving old soul, who first trolled forth the time-honoured chorus of

"Under the ale-tap let me lie,

Cheek by jowl, my dog and I!

We would give something to have had an opportunity of "rousing the night with a catch" in the company of the malt and hops loving minstrel! Tell us not that his wish savours of the misanthropy we have condemned. His horror was only of "dem'd cold, moist, unpleasant bodies," and wormy charnel-houses; his "potations, pottledeep," were never discussed in solitary mopishness; he was wont to troul "the bonny brown bowl" to many a boon companion like himself; to "set the table in a roar" with many a merry jest, as it slowly voyaged round, minishing as it went, to welcome its first glass with a toast, to cheer its last with a song. Peace to his manes !

Our philocyny developed itself at the earliest possible period. We were even in a manner predestined to it.

Our great-grandfather kept hounds and was half ruined by them, and our grandfather went to the dogs

through continuing the practice. Our family crest was a talbot's head-our supporters a couple of bloodhounds— our motto "Love me, love my dog." How, then, could we help being what we are? The first intelligible syllable we uttered was "bow!" The only toy we really loved was a little white woolly ninepenny effigy of a spaniel, the gift of a kind-hearted housemaid, unconscious auxiliary to the dark designs of destiny. The story of Mother Hubbard and her dog was the favourite study of our childhood. Even now, as we call it to mind, do we feel once more the pang of disappointment we then endured at the discovery of the hopeless emptiness of the cupboard-the consternation at the death -the thrill of ecstasy at the resuscitation of the quadruped hero of that ancient romaunt. We never had our nativity cast, but it needs not; we can do without the assistance of a Sidrophel-we are as convinced as we are of the fact of our own existence that our natal star was Sirius. We were born in the dogdays! The scoldings we endured for our propensity to become sworn friends with every strange dog we met, were endless-the pence that we expended in dogsmeat innumerable. "Beware of the Dog!" was to us but as a dead letter. Though, like most children, we gradually grew older, we did not, however, like them,

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put away childish things." The first time we ever opened the Apocry pha, we fastened, as if by instinct, upon the story of Tobit and his Dog; the first drama we ever saw enacted was "The Dog of Montargis!" first classic that was put into our hands we could find nothing so interesting as the legend of the descent of Theseus to Hades,-and, oh! how we envied him his interview with Cerberus ! We read of the terrible Mauthe Doog

the Spectral Hound of the Isle of Man-but we read with curiosity, not with terror; and we vowed, in our yet superstitious soul, that we would some day take our journey thither for the express purpose of cultivating his acquaintance. Had we lived in the days of the ancient philosophy, we verily believe that, despite of our kindlier nature, we should have snapped and snarled with the bitterest cynic of the sect the name alone would have been sufficient to enlist us in the ranks.