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and a little pair of red, watery eyeballs float in the midst of them it seems as if the light which was once in those sickly green pupils had extravasated into the white part of the eye. If Pop's legs are not so firm and muscular as they used to be in those days when he took such leaps into White's buckskins, in revenge his waist is much larger. He wears a very good coat, however, and a waistband, which he lets out after dinner. Before ladies he blushes and is as silent as a schoolboy. He calls them "modest women." His society is chiefly among young lads belonging to his former profession. He knows the best wine to be had at each tavern or café, and the waiters treat him with much respectful familiarity. He knows the names of every one of them; and shouts out, "Send Markwell here!" or, "Tell Cuttriss to give us a bottle of the yellow seal!" or, "Dizzy voo, Monsure Borrel, noo donny shampang frappy," etc. He always makes the salad or the punch, and dines out three hundred days in the year: the other days you see him in a two-franc eating-house at Paris, or prowling about Rupert Street or St. Martin's Court, where you get a capital cut of meat for eightpence. He has decent lodgings and scrupulously clean linen; his animal functions are still tolerably well-preserved, his spiritual have evaporated long since; he sleeps well, has no conscience, believes himself to be a respectable fellow, and is tolerably happy on the days when he is asked out to dinner.

Poor Pop is not very high in the scale of created beings; but, if you fancy there is none lower, you are in egregious error. There was once a man who had a mysterious exhibition of an animal quite unknown to naturalists, called "the wusser." Those curious individuals who desired to see the wusser were introduced into an apartment where appeared before them nothing more than a little lean, shrivelled, hideous, blear-eyed, mangy pig. Every one cried out "Swindle!" and "Shame!" Patience, gentlemen, be heasy," said the showman: "look at that there hanimal; it's a perfect phenomaly of hugliness: I engage you never see such a pig." Nobody ever had seen. "Now, gentlemen," said he, "I'll keep my promise, has per bill; and bad as that there pig is, look at this here" (he showed another)."Look at this here, and you'll see at once that it's a wusser." In like manner the

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Popjoy breed is bad enough, but it serves only to show off the Galgenstein race; which is wusser.

Galgenstein had led a very gay life, as the saying is, for the last fifteen years; such a gay one, that he had lost all capacity of enjoyment by this time, and only possessed inclinations without powers of gratifying them. He had grown to be exquisitely curious and fastidious about meat and drink, for instance, and all that he wanted was an appetite. He carried about with him a French cook, who could not make him eat; a doctor, who could not make him well; a mistress, of whom he was heartily sick after two days; a priest, who had been a favourite of the exemplary Dubois, and by turns used to tickle him by the imposition of a penance, or by the repetition of a tale from the recueil of Nocé, or La Fare. All his appetites were wasted and worn; only some monstrosity would galvanize them into momentary action. He was in that effete state to which many noblemen of his time had arrived; who were ready to believe in ghost-raising or in gold-making, or to retire into monasteries and wear hair-shirts, or to dabble in conspiracies, or to die in love with little cook-maids of fifteen, or to pine for the smiles or at the frowns of a prince of the blood, or to go mad at the refusal of a chamberlain's key. The last gratification he remembered to have enjoyed was that of riding bare-headed in a soaking rain for three hours by the side of his Grand Duke's mistress's coach; taking the pas of Count Krähwinkel, who challenged him, and was run through the body for this very dispute. Galgenstein gained a rheumatic gout by it, which put him to tortures for many months; and was further gratified with the post of English Envoy. He had a fortune, he asked no salary, and could look the envoy very well. Father O'Flaherty did all the duties, and furthermore acted as a spy over the ambassador a sinecure post; for the man had no feelings, wishes, or opinions absolutely none.

"Upon my life, father," said this worthy man, "I care for nothing. You have been talking for an hour about the Regent's death, and the Duchess of Phalaris, and sly old Fleury, and what not; and I care just as much as if you told me that one of my Bauers at Galgenstein had killed a pig; or as if my lacquey, La Rose yonder, had made love to my mistress."

"He does!" said the reverend gentleman.

"Ah, Monsieur l'Abbé!" said La Rose, who was arranging his master's enormous court periwig, "you are, hélas! wrong. Monsieur le Comte will not be angry at my saying that I wish the accusation were true."

The Count did not take the slightest notice of La Rose's wit, but continued his own complaints.

"I tell you, Abbé, I care for nothing. I lost a thousand guineas t'other night at basset; I wish to my heart I could have been vexed about it. Egad! I remember the day when to lose a hundred made me half mad for a month.

Well,

next day I had my revenge at dice, and threw thirteen mains. There was some delay; a call for fresh bones, I think; and would you believe it? I fell asleep with the box in my hand!"

"A desperate case, indeed," said the Abbé.

"If it had not been for Krähwinkel I should have been a dead man, that's positive. That pinking him saved me." "I make no doubt of it," said the Abbé. "Had your Excellency not run him through, he, without a doubt, would have done the same for you."

"Psha! you mistake my words, Monsieur l'Abbé" (yawning). "I mean what cursed chocolate!-that I was dying for want of excitement. Not that I care for dying; no, d- — me, if I do!"

"When you do, your Excellency means," said the Abbé, a fat, gray-haired Irishman, from the Irlandois College at Paris.

His Excellency did not laugh, nor understand jokes of any kind; he was of an undeviating stupidity, and only replied, "Sir, I mean what I say. I don't care for living: no, nor for dying either; but I can speak as well as another, and I'll thank you not to be correcting my phrases as if I were one of your cursed schoolboys, and not a gentleman of fortune and blood."

Herewith the Count, who had uttered four sentences about himself (he never spoke of anything else), sunk back on his pillows again, quite exhausted by his eloquence. The Abbé, who had a seat and a table by the bedside, resumed the labours which had brought him into the room in the morning,

and busied himself with papers, which occasionally he handed over to his superior for approval.

Presently Monsieur La Rose appeared.

"Here is a person with clothes from Mr. Beinkleider's. Will your Excellency see him, or shall I bid him leave the clothes?"

The Count was very much fatigued by this time; he had signed three papers, and read the first half-dozen lines of a pair

of them.

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"Bid the fellow come in, La Rose; and, hark ye, give me my wig one must show one's self to be a gentleman before these scoundrels." And he therefore mounted a large chestnut-coloured, orange-scented pyramid of horse-hair, which was to awe the new-comer.

He was a lad of about seventeen, in a smart waistcoat and a blue riband: our friend Tom Billings, indeed. He carried under his arm the Count's destined breeches. He did not seem in the least awed, however, by his Excellency's appearance, but looked at him with a great degree of curiosity and boldness. In the same manner he surveyed the chaplain, and then nodded to him with a kind look of recognition.

"Where have I seen the lad?" said the father. "Oh, I have it! My good friend, you were at the hanging yesterday, I think?"

Mr. Billings gave a very significant nod with his head. "I never miss," said he.

"What a young Turk!

pleasure, or for business?"

And pray, sir, do you go for

"Business! what do you mean by business?"

“Oh, I did not know whether you might be brought up to the trade, or your relations be undergoing the operation.'

"My relations," said Mr. Billings, proudly, and staring the Count full in the face," was not made for no such thing. I'm a tailor now, but I'm a gentleman's son: as good a man, ay, as his lordship there: for you a'n't his lordship—you're the Popish priest, you are; and we were very near giving you a touch of a few Protestant stones, master."

The Count began to be a little amused; he was pleased to see the Abbé look alarmed, or even foolish.

"Egad, Abbé," said he, "you turn as white as a sheet."

"I don't fancy being murdered, my lord," said the Abbé, hastily; "and murdered for a good work. It was but to be useful to yonder poor Irishman, who saved me as a prisoner in Flanders, when Marlborough would have hung me up like poor Macshane himself was yesterday."

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"Ah!" said the Count, bursting out with some energy, I was thinking who the fellow could be, ever since he robbed me on the Heath. I recollect the scoundrel now he was a second in a duel I had here in the year '6."

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"Along with Major Wood, behind Montague House," said Mr. Billings. I've heard on it." And here he looked more knowing than ever.

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"You!” cried the Count, more and more surprised. "And pray who the devil are you?

"My name's Billings."

"Billings?" said the Count.

༈ ། །

"I come out of Warwickshire," said Mr. Billings. "Indeed!"

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"I was born at Birmingham town." "Were you, really!";.

"My mother's name was Hall," continued Billings, in a solemn voice. I was put out to nurse along with John Billings, a blacksmith; and my father ran away. Now do you know who I am?"

Why, upon honour, now," said the Count, who was amused," upon honour, Mr. Billings, I have not that advantage."

"Well, then, my lord, you're my father!?”

Mr. Billings, when he said this, came forward to the Count with a theatrical air; and, flinging down the breeches of which he was the bearer, held out his arms and stared, having very little doubt but that his lordship would forthwith spring out of bed and hug him to his heart. A similar piece of naïveté many fathers of families have, I have no doubt, remarked in their children; who, not caring for their parents a single doit, conceive, nevertheless, that the latter are bound to show all sorts of affection for them. His lordship did move, but backwards towards the wall, and began pulling at the bell-rope with an expression of the most intense alarm.

"Keep back, sirrah!-keep back! Suppose I am your