wholesome learning, the solid sirloin of the historian, the homely batter-pudding of Mrs. Trimmer and Mrs. Chapone. Above all, the impertinent celerity which these placarders of literature send flying all abroad news of the birth of every chef-d'œuvre, and the suicides of rash authorship, is enough to distract one.-Five-and-twenty years ago, people took a couple of months to decide whether it were worth while to send to Hookham's for the new-novel; and six weeks after the publication of Southey's last epic, used to be asking each other whether that strange man, who wrote Espriella's Letters, had not been attempting something new?-Now, while Bulwer's youngest is still damp from the press, not a linendraper's apprentice in Regent's Street but is competent to inform the errand-boy that "it ben't by no manner of means hequal to Huge and Harem."-The march of intellect makes its way into every hole and corner, in more than double-quick time. I have long perceived that my little trips of discovery to Paris, for the importation of "novelties of the season," are of no more use than if I marched up Highgate Hill and down again. Nothing nearer than Constantinople is in the slightest degree available. Between steamnavigation and yachting, the Mediterranean is grown as vulgar as the Nore. Could the ghost of Captain Cook arise to inquire why it has never been laid in Westminster Abbey, how immensely astonished it would be to find people steaming it over the Red Sea, as easily as they used to row, in his time, over Chelsea Reach; and the name of Polynesia as familiar in their mouths as that of Polly Peachum!-For my part, I am thinking of a tour for next autumn (if the untimely decease scheme do not fructify as I anticipate,) and cannot for the soul of me hit upon anything sufficiently exclusive to give a fillip to public curiosity, or pretend to being written up by the Quarterly. The only spot of earth concerning which St. James's Street and Belgrave Square know nothing, is the City of London. I have a vast mind to try, "TRAVELS TO THE EAST; WITH SKETCHES OF SMITHFIELD AND THE BARBICAN; by one of the opera-tive class," or some such taking title. One might furbish up famous antiquarianisms out of the Gentleman's Magazine, about Crosby Hall and Winchester House, and bring in a host of savoury little compliments to the various companies, and different aldermen, certain to bring down coveys of dinners! -I smell turtle and venison in the very promise !-The Albion-Bleaden-Birch!-august names!-Cornhill, promiseth corn in Egypt;Smithfield, marrow and fatness;-Warwick Lane, manna.-' -The city must necessarily abound in byres and cellars,-fat beeves, and strong beer. Fish ought never to be eaten westward of Temple Bar; and albeit, the Bank and Stock-Exchange make their turtle soup, like their twenty per cent, out of calves' heads, there are capital little fricots tossed up in the Poultry.-Yes,-decidedly, if a supposititious demise do not mend my fare, I will try the Eastern circuit.— I wonder whether anybody will start anything new this season?—The town is wretchedly in want of a startle-to make it open its eyes. Society is miserably drowsy. The great deficiency of the English mind is invention. The country is full of originals; yet collectively, we are the most jog-trot nation in Europe. I must not quarrel with the fault, but for which, the vocation of diner-out would be extinguished. The Pique assiette of the French was a fellow who arrived with couplets in his pocket, to enliven the dessert, and administer to their love of gaiety. The diner-out of the English, is a man who brings news to stir up the stagnancy of the unimaginative natives of Great Britain. To-morrow, being Sunday, I will drop in at the Marquis's, and ascertain what "novelties he has in preparation," as the theatres say. Everything that is cleverest, throws off at Bexfield House, and should there be anything worth talking of in rehearsal, it were fatal not to be behind the curtain. Where will the next volcano start up?-Canada is burnt out, and Syria subsiding,-nobody cares about Circassia, except the perfumers. I wish they would push the thing a little in China. When that hare was started, I pumped a monstrous deal out of Henry Ellis; and have got notes embellished with names, polysyllabic enough to stretch from the first course to the second, which I could make deliciously available. -Souchong and pekoe exhale from every syllable !-Besides, I once received a note from Lord Jocelyn, (declining a dinner invitation,) which entitles me to hint, in a careless manner, that I am in correspondence with his lordship. Nous verrons. A CLASSICAL ODE WITH A "FREE TRANSLATION." AD POETAM. QUÆ te sub tenerâ rapuerunt, Pœta, juventâ, Ut linquam terras, invisaque lumina solis, TO PADDY. Ah! Paddy, my darlin'! thin what has become o' ye? Ochone! now ye 're gone, see how dreadful my fate is, Yes, I'll follow ye, Pat, though ye have got the start o' me, But don't drink of Lethe, or any sich stuff, my boy, Gus. 293 MESSRS. LEACH, BATTYE, AND SLUG'S MANAGING CHANCERY CLERK. Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home! Julius Cæsar. MR. CORNELIUS MABBY lived rather high up, in a house leading out of Milford Lane by zigzagonal (if I may use such an expression) windings, between Essex Street and Arundel Street,-two streets notorious for a superabundance of coal-merchants, lawyers, and lodging-house keepers. With the exceptions, I believe, of one baker, one plumber, two chandlers' shops, and one law-stationer, there is hardly a variety from the trades or professions which I have set down. In a court(for history disdains mystery)-in a court, in fact, and up four pair of stairs, lived Mr. Mabby. He was head clerk in the firm of Messrs. Leach, Battye, and Slugs, eminent Chancery lawyers, in some blind street, antlering itself out of the Strand. He was much occupied ; but it must be confessed that it was his pleasure to wear the collar of occupation. History is never so agreeable and becoming as when it takes the air of biography; and as I happen to know (having been present) that Mr. Mabby divulged himself on the evening of the day after last Michaelmas term, to two of the junior old gentlemen in Messrs. Leach and Co.'s employment, over or after a hot heel supper, at the close of the office, say about eleven o'clock,-I shall, after describing the lofty yet comfortable locality of Mr. Mabby, commit to the conversation of him and his two co-labourers the developement of the clerkly converse. Up, therefore, four pair of stairs lived Mr. Mabby. The house was a sort of human receiving-house for what may be denominated pennypost families. Fathers, mothers, and children dropped into a one-pair back, or a three-pair front, as casually as letters; and at the door, the bell-handles had all the harmonious appearance of organ stops, "each under each, as tuneable" as the Shakspearian hounds, and each vied with the other in requesting you would have the pleasure to ring it. Mabby, it must be owned, had to go up four flights of stairs, and flights they were to the airy spirit, which rose like the eagle from the scene of its prey to its own nest,-a little, however, it must be admitted, after sunset. He had (besides a closet for the children) one room, -not the eagle, but Mr. Mabby,-and this he protested, in his airy way, that he had for many reasons, one or two of which he condescended to enumerate, namely, that he preferred clear air, which came softened through the chimney-tops from the Thames (this he called ventilating the bleakness), for the sake of his five children; he preferred it for the sake of his own exercise in going home; and above all, he put a high estimate on it, because his wife, Mrs. Mabby, was satisfied that the things dried better (and she spent her life in washing), and that Mabby, her dear Mabby, looked whiter in the eyes of the Chancellor, from the atmosphere in which his collars were dried. The room was one which Crabbe would have delighted to paint; the mantelpiece was out of the reach of every human being of the family, except by means of a stool; and yet on this mantelpiece, by a sort of indescribable compromise between use and ornament, the pepper-box shone as something almost German-silvery and attractive; the nutmeg grater seemed to discard its roughness, and put on a sort of polished character; in short, the common tin needments of the kitchen, like the lower human orders in life, flared up into a sort of tin Chartism, and asserted rights which neither their usual position in society nor their metal entitled them to maintain. The fender was low, and weak in the back, and with difficulty supported the weight of a shovel with a net-work scoop, a pair of tongs with a diseased joint, and a poker with a starvation tongue. There was one easy-chair without a bottom, and the flock coming out at intervals at the back; two or three other seats, which might be considered as regulars, if their being broken in would qualify them, furnished the room; and moreover the eye fell upon one table, with an anti-Spanish mahogany top, and a spavined leg; one three-post bedstead, with a wooden box doing the duty of the fourth leg and a clothes-press at the same time, very solidly; no valance, no curtains, but a decided iron bar going round a portion of the top, asserting the right to them at pleasure. I do not wish to be parti cular in my description, and shall therefore not hunt the dear Mr. and Mrs. Mabby into their cupboards and coal-cellar, though as to the latter, I will do her the justice to say, that no one more availed herself of the variations of the market than she did; as the eldest child, to avoid a cumbrous stock being laid in at a bad price, invariably fetched in the article fresh and fresh in a hat-box. I have been perhaps a little too particular in my description of this domicile; but when can a reader so well realise to himself or herself the interest of the characters described, as when the scene of action is faithfully brought before them. A word or two as to Mrs. Mabby, and I will proceed with my narration. Were it not that in all that concerned her husband she would interfere with her attenuated observations, I should certainly pass her by as something that ought to be spared to the reader. But she was a characterless character. She would be doing when she had nothing to do; she would be saying when she had nothing to say; she never by the remotest chance spoke of anything but her own family; she was no wiser than the youngest child in it. Being near-sighted, in eye as well as mind, she declared she saw everything that was going on in that family. She saw Mabby looking ill, when she could not see him at all; she zealously washed, when she could not tell a dirty thing from a clean one; she broiled a steak for what she called her dear M. when she didn't know whether the fire was in or out. Her life was a life of suds and solitude, and utter near-sightedness of eye and mind. I now am enabled to return to the day after term,-a day on which my respected Chancery-clerk, Mr. Mabby, not only obtained liberty to leave at ten, but in the plenitude of his pleasure prevailed upon two young old gentlemen, with peaked pointed noses, and small shiny rims to their hats, appetites set razor-fashion, narrow shoulders, and inde fatigable application, to enjoy a supper upon the heels aforesaid, washed and cooked with admirable industry by Mrs. Mabby, and superintended by the dipping of five pair of hungry little fore-fingers, and the same number of insatiable juvenile eyes, into the saucepan in which they were dressed. It must now be concluded that the office of Messrs. Leach and Co. is closed; that the common-law clerk has packed up all his razorsports (as writs are facetiously termed); that the pike of a master has ceased to glare out from the weeds of his office; that the three dull coals are raked out of the common office-fire; that the poor cashier has balanced his little embezzlement-book; that the solicitor himself has accomplished his legacy and his residue case; and that Mr. Mabby retires up four pair of stairs to the bosom of his family. On this night it is quite clear that he has asked two of his fellow clerks to sup with him; and to that supper, as illustrative of character, I now beg to introduce the reader. The organ-stop, four from the bottom, had been drawn out and let go with a smart snap from the released fore-finger and thumb of Mr. Mabby, as he stood on the door-step attended by his two meagre and hungry associates, and the rush of one to the pit from the upper regions was distinctly heard from landing to landing. The door was opened by the eldest daughter, who with a recently washed face (distinctly defined by a shady rim which went high up round the forehead, and retired behind the ears to the nape of the neck), and a frock in very melancholy imitation of white, received her parent with a newly-lit dip, and that peculiar shiny chuckle which marks the face of a child labouring under a hope or a promise of "setting up to supper." Mabby stepped in first, a mode of civility peculiar to a lodger. A housekeeper may pause, bow, and usher in his friends to his home, following them like a vassal, because, once over the threshold, all is "home, sweet home;" but the lodger in the house has to pick his home out of a packet,-to show the way to his little honeyed cellular department in the busy hive. And therefore Mabby stepped in, and begged his friends to follow. Up went the white frock and the dip first, a little too quick for the uninitiated travellers of the irregular staircase. Mabby then "opened as leader," with all the pomposity, near-sightedness, and twistings of a Chancery silk gown, supported by his two juniors, who "followed on the same side,"—that is, unwound the selfsame tortuous course, and trod in the same steps as their leader. After the usual difficulties, the party got into what Mrs. Mabby in her pleasanter moments called "The Master's Office;" that is the one room we have already described; and the heels on the fire, the candle on the mantelpiece, Mrs. Mabby dressed as if it was Sunday, and her little family, separate reports in the way of children, filed regularly, seemed to bespeak a most cozy evening. Mabby confirmed all his said little reports by distinct pats on the head; and then, probably with reference to the unoccupied space in his own, and the room's interior, opened with that direction with which Lady Macbeth concludes, by uttering, like a judgment, "To bed-to bed-to bed-to bed!" There were then the invariable five supplicatory looks at the mother, the five shrugs of the little skinny naked shoulders,-the five audible snuffles of cold and disappointment, then the crawling, dangling submission, -then a monotonous distribution of kisses to all (not even letting the two invitees escape), — and then, "last stage of all," the accomplishment of the bottle conjuror's trick, the introduction of the whole of this fine young family into a closet, which it would have puzzled even the |