he might hear how he proceeded-and learning he was a professional man, requested the lady of the mansion to return him his fee."

"Ay," said the alderman, "that was just like John Abernethy. I remember when he tapped poor Mrs. Marigold for the dropsy, he was not very tender, to be sure, but he soon put her out of her tortures. And when on his last visit I offered him a second twenty pound note for a fee, I thought he would have knocked me down; asked me if I was the fool that gave him such a sum on a former occasion; threw it back again with indignation, and said he did not rob people in that manner." No professional man does more generous actions than John Abernethy; only it must be after his own fashion.

“Come, gentlemen, the bottle stands still," said Mr. Pendragon, "while you are running through the merits of drinking. Does not Rabelais contend that good wine is the best physic? 'because there are more old tipplers than old physicians.' Custom is every thing; only get well seasoned at the first start, and all the rest of life is a summer's scene. Snymdiris the Sybarite never once saw the sun rise or set during a course of twenty years; yet he lived to a good old age, drank like a centaur, and never went to bed sober."

And when his glass was out, he fell
Like some ripe kernel from its shell.

"I was once an anti-gastronomist and a rigid antisaccharinite; sugar and milk were banished from my breakfast-table, vegetables and puddings my only diet, until I almost ceased to vegetate, and my cranium was considered as soft as a custard; and curst hard it was to cast off all culinary pleasures, sweet reminiscences of my infancy, commencing with our first spoonful of pap, for all young protestants are papists; to this day my heart (like Wordsworth's) over

flows at the sight of a pap-boat-the boat a child first mans; to speak naughty-cally, as a nurse would say, how many a row is there in the pap-boat-how many squalls attend it when first it comes into contact with the skull! But I am now grown corpulent; in those days I was a lighter-man, and I believe I should have continued to live (exist) upon herbs and roots; but Dr. Kitchener rooted up all my prejudices, and overturned the whole system of my theory by practical illustrations.

"Thus he that's wealthy, if he's wise,
Commands an earthly paradise;
That happy station nowhere found,
But where the glass goes freely round.
Then give us wine, to drown the cares
Of life in our declining years,

That we may gain, if Heav'n think fitting,

By drinking, what was lost by eating:
For though mankind for that offence
Were doom'd to labour ever since,
Yet Mercy has the grape impower'd
To sweeten what the apple sour'd."

To this good-humoured sally of Pendragon succeeded a long dissertation on meats, which it is not meet I should relate, being for the most part idle conceits of Mr. Galen Cornaro, who carried about him a long list of those prescribed eatables, which engender bile, breed the incubus, and produce spleen, until, according to his bill of fare, he had left himself nothing to subsist upon in this land of plenty but a muttonchop, or a beef-steak. What pleased me most was, that with every fresh bottle the two disciples of Pythagoras and Abernethy became still more vehement in maintaining the necessity for a strict adherence to the theory of water and vegetable economy; while their zeal had so far blinded their recollection, that when the ladies returned from their walk to join us at tea, they were both “bacchi plenis," as Colman has it, something inclining from

a right line, and approaching in its motion to serpentine sinuosities. A few more puns from Mr. Pendragon, and another story from the alderman, about his friend, young Tattersall, employing Scroggins the bruiser, disguised as a countryman to beat an impudent Highgate toll-keeper, who had grossly insulted him, finished the amusements of the day, which Mrs. Marigold and Miss Biddy declared had been spent most delightfully, so rural and entertaining, and withal so economical, that the alderman was induced to promise he would not dine at home again of a Sunday for the rest of the summer. To me, at least, it afforded the charm of novelty; and if to my readers it communicates something of character, blended with pleasure in the perusal, I shall not regret my Sunday trip with the Marigold family and first visit to the

THE STOCK EXCHANGE.

HAVE you ever seen Donnybrook fair?
Or in a caveau spent the night?
On Waterloo's plains did you dare
To engage in the terrific fight?

Has your penchant for life ever led
You to visit the Finish or Slums,
At the risk of your pockets and head?
Or in Banco been fixed by the bums?

In a smash at the hells have you been,

When pigeons were pluck'd by the bone?

Or enjoy'd the magnificent scene

When our fourth George ascended his throne?

Have you ever heard Tierney or Canning

A Commons' division address?

Or when to the gallery ganging,

Been floor'd by a rush from the press?

Has your taste for the fine arts impell'd
You to visit a bull-bait or fight?

Or by rattles and charleys propell'd,

In a watch-house been lodged for the night?

In a morning at Bow-street made one

Of a group just to bother sage Birnie? Stood the racket, got fined, cut and run, Being fleeced by the watch and attorney?

Or say, have you dined in Guildhall

With the mayor and his corporate souls ? Or been squeezed at a grand civic ball, With dealers in tallow and coals?

Mere nothings are these, though the range
Through all we have noticed you've been,

When compared to the famed STOCK EXCHANGE,
That riotous gambling scene.

The unexpected Legacy-Bernard Blackmantle and Bob Transit visit Capel Court-Characters in the Stocks -Bulls, Bears and Bawds, Brokers, Jews and Jobbers-A new Acquaintance, Peter PrincipalHis Account of the Market-The Royal ExchangeTricks upon Travellers-Slating a Stranger-The Hebrew Star and his Satellites-Dividend Hunters and Paragraph Writers-The New Bubble Companies - Project Extraordinary - Prospectus in Rhyme of the Life, Death, Burial, and Resurrection Company-Lingual Localisms of the Stock Exchange explained-The Art and Mystery of Jobbing exposed-Anecdotes of the House and its Members-Flying a Tile-Billy Wright's Brown Pony-Selling a Twister-A Peep into Botany Bay -Flats and Flat-catchers-The Rotunda and the Transfer Men-How to work the TelegraphCreate a Rise-Put on the Pot-Bang down the Market-And waddle out a Lame Duck.

A BEQUEST of five hundred pounds by codicil from a rich old aunt had most unexpectedly fallen to my friend Transit, who, quite unprepared for such an overwhelming increase of good fortune, was pondering on the best means of applying this sudden acquisition of capital, when I accidentally paid him a visit in Half-moon Street. "Give me joy, Bernard," said Bob; "here's a windfall;" thrusting the official notice into my hand; "five hundred pounds from an old female miser, who during her lifetime was never known to dispense five farthings for any generous or charitable purpose; but being about to slip her wind and make a wind-up of her accounts, was kind enough to remember at parting that she had a poor relation, an