PERSONS WHOM EVERYBODY HAS SEEN.

1. PERSONS WHO HAVE "GOT A SPIRIT."

It often happens that the man who has got a spirit, resembles the boy who has got his first shirt-collar; he is continually plucking it up. He thinks himself bound to display it; and it is of a quality so retiring, that if he should fail to pluck it up it never would be seen at all.

Life is hard work with him; for demands upon him to "show his spirit" are constantly occurring, and it has to be plucked up first. But his enjoyment is in proportion to his labour, for he is perfectly satisfied that he is ever and anon performing something heroic.

Thus after a long twelvemonth's toil at the forge or the desk; the poor man grinding his heart daily into sand for the old Hour-glass; pent-up, smoke-dried, choked, bent double; aching in every bone, and sick at the very soul; sentenced by the law of birth to perpetual imprisonment with hard labour; of a sudden a great resolution springs up in his mind, like the magic bean-stalk, in a single night-he conceives the great idea of a holiday, and going to Gravesend by steam! He plucks up a spirit, and puts down eighteenpence. Or worse still; perhaps the bitterest ingredient in the cup of destiny is that sweet creature, a wife. He loves, honours, and obeys her; he is allowed to drink nothing but tea, and that always with her; he never presumes to go out without permission, stating always where he is going, and when he shall be back; he never so much as looks at another woman, except by his wife's direction, to notice some ugliness of feature, awkwardness of manners, or heresy in dress, which he

invariably detects, whether it be observable by other eyes or not ;-when, in the very midst of the nag-nagging which is supposed to be sometimes the reward of such virtue, he starts up in open rebellion, seizes his hat at ten o'clock at night, darts out of doors, or windows, and returns home at dinner-time next day “much bemused with beer;" yet not so, for he had plucked up a "sperrit," as he calls it, and ordered strong ale.

Now and then, albeit he acknowledges some religious regulations which forbid it, he plucks up a spirit and sneaks to the play. He can only resent an insult by a like effort. He has been known to fling back an imputation upon his consistency or courage in very formidable language; and even went so far as to accept a challenge which was the consequence; happily, however, his spirit had not mounted high enough to present any obstacle to a peaceful arrangement upon moral grounds.

When reproached with subscribing a shabby one pound to a charity that had the strongest claims upon his extensive means, he resolved, after a fortnight's consideration, to increase his contribution to one guinea; because, as he said, he always liked to do things in a spirited manner.

It is not always, however, when he plucks up a spirit that he is helped forward by it even to this extent. The rich relation from whom he anticipates a fat legacy, one day screwed up the daily-affront-pipe to a pitch beyond mortal endurance.

"Now is the time," said outraged forbearance, "now is the time for me to pluck up a spirit!"

And forth he went, spirit and all, to buy a barrel of oysters to send to the fat legacy-leaver; with some capital H.B.'s, just out.

It is reported, moreover, that having always voted

upon one side in the borough he resides in, the other side at length offered him a bribe; upon which he immediately plucked up a spirit, and took it.

Flintz, the usurer, never plucked up a spirit but once in his life, and that was when he opened a bottle of wine, to treat a customer by whom he was making sixty per cent. But verily it was wine; rich, old, and cold as its owner! The customer remembered its rare quality eighteen months afterwards, when he called to negotiate another mortgage.

“Ah! Flintz, that was wine! Any more of it, eh?” "Yes," there was a remnant of the old stock still left; and Flintz, after some delay, handed to his visitor a glass, not "full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene;" on the contrary, it was the vilest, sourest; but Flintz insisted that it was some of the same, and the visitor with many wry faces, refuted the libellous assertion.

"So much," exclaimed Flintz, "for that most affected of all pretensions to judgment—judgment in wine. You are sure it's not the same! different quality, different vintage, different altogether! Now, sir, it happens to be the remains of the same bottle; and it has been here in my safe, under lock and key, exactly a year and a half."

The spirit that wants plucking up, is hardly worth having; but the spirit that is never down is a more troublesome incumbrance. Its owner had first shown his spirit at school, by bestowing upon a beggar, who was sure to make the good deed known, a half-crown which he purloined from another boy for that purpose. He next displayed it in a habit of thrashing his fellowapprentice (the junior one) as often as he himself might incur correction from his master.

When he started in life, he started with spirit; that

is to say, having no money, he borrowed a large sum, and speculated with it. When he lost it, there were plenty of people to come forward with supplies enabling him to renew the game, because he had speculated in such a spirited manner; and afterwards, when he failed, everybody said that he had failed with great spirit. He set up a phaëton and pair, because the man next door set up a horse and gig; for it was not in his spirit to be eclipsed by a next-door neighbour; and when his business fell off to nothing, he purchased the said next house without money, and two others next to that on the same terms, throwing them all into one, and decorating them at the expense of several obsequious and extremely grateful tradesmen, who always like to see things done with spirit.

He is not remarkable for that mild temper, which is a terrible inconvenience to persons who have to show their spirit constantly. He is exceedingly tyrannical; but it should be admitted in justice to him, that he is chiefly so upon small points. He will quarrel ten times a day, but then it is sure to be on grounds not worth contesting at all; and though the battle may involve broken heads, the dispute is about the ninety-ninth part of a hair. Indeed, the pettier the cause of quarrel, the prouder is that feeling of inveterate firmness with which he holds to his text and scorns compromise; for the plain reason that he then most shows his spirit.

The phrases most frequently in his mouth are, "Thank Heaven, I've got a spirit!" 'My spirit would never allow me to give way!" "That's just my spirit!" You may know him by either of these exclamations. The imp of the bottle had no such influence over its unlucky possessor, as this thing which he calls his spirit exercises over him. He is a slave, believing himself its master.

His favourite country is France; it is a nation that has got a spirit. He would be an excellent person to send out, as representative of one civilised country at the court of another. Civilised countries are fond of acting with extraordinary spirit.

If he should gamble away his children's bread, or steal the very wife out of his friend's bosom, he must not be denounced as the incarnation of treachery and wickedness. He has no hatred for his offspring, no love for the lady; but he moved in a certain society that required him to act with spirit.

When he shoots an acquaintance through the head instead of listening to reason, he is impelled by the same necessity. He must always drive very near the edge of the precipice, lest people should think he is afraid of driving over. However ill-mounted, he is bound to take the impracticable, neck-breaking leap in a steeple-chase, because the man with the better horse has just taken it with prodigious spirit.

Deduct from the huge sum-total of mischief and misery in the world the amount fairly chargeable to the principle of acting with "spirit," whether between nations, between classes, between man and man, or man and wife, and at the end of a single twelvemonth you would accumulate a stock of original sin and suffering, large enough to set up a new world twice the size of this.

2.-PERSONS WHO NEVER HAVE ENOUGH OF A GOOD THING.

NAPOLEON seemed to be of opinion, that, to deserve well of her country, a woman could not have too many children; and if all sovereigns were Napoleons, the opinion would be perfectly just. As it is, there happens to be considerable doubt upon the point, as well in