The next morning he was carried rather than led before a magistrate. The charge against him was established; he had been detected chalking on walls and doors, and qualifying himself for the House of Correction. Thither he was about to be committed, when it occurred to the magisterial mind that the culprit might have been writing treason on the walls.

"I don't think it was treason," said one of the constables, "'cause he don't seem quite right in his mind. He complains of having lost his little gal; his granchild leastways."

The magistrates having observed that all respectable persons, when they lose their grandchildren, put themselves into decent mourning, instead of chalking walls;

"He don't mean dead," returned the constable ; "he's lost her; she's stolen or strayed."

The old man's feelings here overcame him; he sobbed as if he had been but the little weak-nerved creature he bewailed. His story was told in a few simple words.

The child's mother, his only daughter, had deserted him before she was seventeen years old. A vicious life ended in a miserable death; but in the midst of that vice and misery grew into being that delicate flower of humanity, which he had hoped, so long as he drew Heaven's breath, to guard from the rude storms of the world. More, far more than a daughter to him, was that hapless and innocent being. As the child of his child, she seemed to bear a double life, and to claim a double love. Scant even to extreme poverty were his means; he was too feeble to pursue his occupation as a day-labourer, yet her wants he contrived to supply. And one day lately, while he had been employed out of doors, the fair, prattling, sweet-tempered girl, who was to him not more a thing that he should protect with his life than an angel watching over and sanctifying it,

suddenly disappeared. The lodgers in the house had seen her playing in the sunshine at the door; then a neighbour observed her at the end of the court listening to "some musicians;" and another noticed her looking into a "picture-shop" two streets off: beyond this there was no intelligence. She might have wandered into the wilderness of streets, been kidnapped, or crushed under waggon-wheels.

The old man was too miserably poor to pay for the printing of handbills; and for three long nights had he paced the streets of the city, east and west, chalking on the walls the statement of his loss, the name of the little wanderer, and a description of her person. described the eyes and the hair of his beloved granddaughter:

He

"Lost, a little girl, name Mary Rose, six years old; had on a green spotted frock; blue eyes, and light soft hair, long, and curled on the neck; tall, and speaks quick, with a sweet voice. Wandered from her grandfather, Green-arbour-court," &c.

Such were the words, though not so spelt. I know not how the incident may affect others: it may seem very trifling: but to me it appeared not undeserving a place among those chronicles of real life that record what is most profound and beautiful in natural affection. What a heart of love had that old man! and how impotent such words "blue eyes," "soft curled hair," and "sweet voice"-to speak the sense of beauty that made part of its overflowing fondness! How impossible by such phrases to make the stranger see in the lost child, the image of loveliness on which his soul hung until the earthly became as something heavenly! What a lifetime of anxiety and dread must have been compressed into those three nights and days, so spent in threading the endless maze of London!

Everywhere but to his home he had gone; there he scarcely dared to go; the dark, silent, empty room looked like a grave that had been dug for him. And thither, as to a grave, when dismissed by the magistrate, he repaired; to find, that had he returned sooner, the past night would have been one of transport. The dove had flown back to the ark. The little creature had been awake all night long; but now she slept, unconscious of the loving, rapturous, half-blind eyes that dropped tears of joy as they watched beside her.

JACK GAY, ABROAD AND AT HOME.

WHO that had once met Jack Gay at dinner, where'er the feast of venison and the flow of port prevailed, ever forgot him? What lady, the luckiest of her sex, ever experienced his "delicate attentions" at a quiet evening party, a quiet concert, or a quiet dance, without speaking of him from that moment, not as the most charming of acquaintances, but as a very old friend; without feeling quite sure that she had known him all her life, though she had never seen him but that once?

What spirits he had! Other men had their jovial moods, but Jack was always jovial. To be lively by fits and starts, to be delightful when the humour sets in, to emulate the fair exquisite of Pope,

And make a lover happy-for a whim—

is within anybody's reach. But Jack had no fits and starts; the humour flowed in one unebbing course, and his whim consisted in making everybody as happy as he was at all seasons.

His joviality never depended upon the excellence of a dinner, the choice of wines, or any accident of the hour. His high spirits and invariable urbanity were wholly independent of the arrangements of the table, the selection of the guests, and the topics of conversation. He discovered pleasant things to hearken to, and found delightful themes to chat upon, even during the dreary twenty minutes before dinner. Yes, even that was a lively time to Jack. Whenever he went out it was to enjoy a pleasant evening, and he enjoyed it.

The fish was spoil'd, the soup was cold,
The meat was broil'd, the jokes were old,
The tarts were dumps, the wine not cool,
The guests were pumps, the host a fool.

But for all this Jack cared about as much as a flyingfish cares for a shower of rain. No combination of ill omens and perverse accidents ever proved a damper to him.

He is invited to meet (say) Johnson and Burke, and is greeted, on his entrance, with the well-known tidings that Johnson and Burke “could'nt come." Does Jack heave one sigh in compliment to the illustrious absentees, and in depreciation of the company who have assembled ? Not he. No momentary shade of disappointment dims his smiling face. He seems as delighted to meet the little parlour-full of dull people, as though the room were crammed with Crichtons. He has the honour of being presented to little Miss Symebody, from the country, who seems shy; and he takes the same pains to show his pleasure in the introduction, and to tempt the timid stranger to talk, that he would have exerted in an effort to interest Mrs. Siddons. He sits next to a solemn ignoramus, who is facetious in expounding the humours of Squire Bog, his neighbour, or didactic in developing the character of Dogsby, the great patriot

in his parish; and Jack listens as complacently as though his ear were being regaled with new-born bon-mots of Sheridan's, or anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham.

Jack, like some statesmen, was born to be out; and to him, as to some other statesmen, all parties were the same. The only preference he ever seemed to entertain was for the particular party that chanced at the particular moment to rejoice in his presence. He enjoyed everything that happened. Leigh Hunt, describing a servant-maid" at the play," observes, that every occurrence of the evening adds to her felicity; for she likes even the waiting between the acts, which is tiresome to others. So with Jack at a party. He enjoyed some dislocated experiments on the harp, by an astonishing child, aged only fifteen; and was the sole person in the room who encored with sincerity that little prodigy's convulsive edition of " Bid me discourse." He listened with laudable gravity to Master Henry's recitation of "Rolla's Address," and suggested the passages in which John Kemble was rather too closely followed. He enjoyed the glasses of warm wine handed round between the songs; he liked the long flat pauses, "when nobody said nothing to his neighbour;" and he liked the sudden burst of gabble in which at the termination of the pause, as if by preconcerted agreement, every creature eagerly joined.

He liked the persons he had never met before, and those whom he was in the habbit of meeting just seven times a week. He admired the piano that was always out of tune, and the lady who, kindly consenting to play, was always out of temper. He thought the persons to whom he had not been introduced very agreeable, and all the rest extremely entertaining. He was delighted with his evening, whether it exploded in a.