yourself to a woman of the world—a flirt, and a coquette,-if nothing worse; and see how she has treated you, and see the fatal consequences that have arisen." "But," said Langley, cr you not only advised the course I was to take, but even administered the dreadful dose. "You may yet be saved," said Mottingham, "and "Saved!" cried Langley, "there is nothing to save me from. When you left me I changed my mind, and resolved to die a lingering death of grief." "How d'ye mean?" said Mottingham. "Don't betray me," said Langley; "do not make me contemptible in the eyes of that dear affectionate girl. Mottingham-don't despise me -I did not take the poison." "Upon your life?" said Mottingham: "that is, indeed, most fortunate." "Yes," answered the disconsolate; "but it is quite impossible, now that I see how much Fanny is interested in my fate, to admit that I flinched from the trial-eh ?-she will laugh at me?" "Not a bit of it," said Mottingham; "she will be too happy to find you safe, and in the fair way of possessing such a prize as she is: however, you must take your own course." At this period of the dialogue, poor Fanny returned accompanied by sundry chamber-maids with hot water, an apothecary's 'prentice with a stomach-pump, much sweet oil, and the promise of numerous antidotes which Dr. Chiselhurst would bring over in five minutes. The women, stimulated in their exertions by the energetic appeal of Fanny, proceeded to seize hold of Langley, and the apothecary's 'prentice prepared the pump. Dr. Chiselhurst was actually at the door, and everything was in extremities, when, driven to the very last point of the affair, Langley, struggling with the women, and baffling the napkins and towels with which they were entangling him, screamed out in a voice of despair— "Leave me alone-for mercy's sake leave me alone!" No, no, no,” said Fanny," do no such thing-force must be used if necessary." And force was about to be used, when all on a sudden appeared in the room Mr. Stephens, Langley's servant, who had been despatched for his clothes, and the et ceteras, to the hotel which he had quitted. "Oh, Sir!" said Stephens, staring in amazement, at the position and circumstance in which he found his master, "such news, Sir such news!" "What?" exclaimed Langley, having obtained a minute's respite from the operation of the pump-" What is the news?" "Miss Featherstock, Sir” "Oh!" exclaimed Langley, "it is as I suspected herself." "Ha! ha! ha!" said Stephens, "not she." "Gone off with Colonel Longstraddle." "No, Sir," said Stephens; "you'll never guess." Speak out, Sir!" said Langley. "Do, Sir," said Doctor Chiselhurst, with the squirt in his hand; "there's no time to be lost-your master's life depends upon the promptitude of the application of the pump." "Out, Sir!" cried Stephens; "why, then, I'll tell you:-Miss Featherstock has run away with her father's gardener!" "Is that true ?" said Langley. "Is it possible?” "True as gospel, Sir," said Stephens; "I have it under her father's own hand, who heard how you took on about her, and has written a regular cerrywig of the circumstance for your satisfaction." "A what, Sir ?" said Mottingham. "A certificate he means," cried Langley.-" Stephens confounds the words :—and have you got the cerrywig, as you call it ?" "Havn't I?" said Stephens. And sure enough there it was, in the shape of a brief announcement of the fact to Langley, explaining the misery his daughter's conduct had entailed upon him, and handsomely expressing his hope that the circumstance would relieve his mind from the effects of a grief which he deeply regretted. "What do you think of that?" said Mottingham. "Why, that from the most miserable dog I am in an instant become the happiest man alive," said Langley. "Ah!" cried Fanny, "you repent your rashness; now then you will consent to be saved. Come, Dr. Chiselhurst, out with the pump." "Pump!" cried Langley, "take physic, pump'-I'll have none on't. Miss Leslie, hear the truth-hear the whole truth-I did not take the poison." The effect produced by this announcement upon Dr. Chiselhurst, and white-faced Jemmy his apprentice, and upon the waiters and the chamber-maids, was startling. Fanny burst into tears of joy-the doctor looked disdainful, and, having cast a contemptuous glance over the patient's countenance, cocked up his nose, and merely said-" Boy Jem, put up the pump, and come along"-the doctor being no more a doctor than the head-waiter, but an apothecary so dignified by courtesy, and away marched the whole body of attendants, all more or less disappointed at there being no probability of a fatal result. Fanny," said Langley, "this most important incident of my life has elicited a truth upon which my future happiness depends. Long as we have known each other, constant as has been our intercourse, and unreserved as has been our communication, I never believed that I had inspired you with a feeling beyond that of friendship and esteem; your conduct in this trying crisis convinces me that you are the being on earth to secure my earthly felicity.". Mottingham and his wife exchanged looks of mutual satisfaction, and Fanny, nothing loth, suffered her head, aching as it was from excitement, to fall upon Langley's shoulder-another word was needless. "Mottingham," said Langley, as he clasped the trembling girl to his heart, "I am sure you meant for the best when you counselled me to rid myself of my cares by quitting a world of woe, which now promises to be a world of comfort. Now, indeed, do I truly rejoice that I did not swallow the fatal draught." "So do I," said Mottingham; "because, by a strange combination of events, things have all turned out as we could have wished; but as to the poison, my dear fellow, you might have taken it with the most perfect safety; for, excepting a little remarkably well-powdered sugar, which I brought in my pocket, the dreadful potion was nothing but a little WINE and WATER! T. E. H. A parrot from the Spanish Main, Full young and early caged, came o'er The spicy groves where he had won For these he changed-the smoke of turf— But, petted in our climate cold, He lived and chatter'd many a day; His wings grew grey. At last, when blind and seeming dumb- To Mulla's shore. He hail'd the bird in Spanish speech; The bird in Spanish speech replied; Flapp'd round his cage with joyous screech, *This incident, so strongly illustrating the power of memory and association in the lower animals, is not a fiction. I heard it many years ago in the Island of Mull, from the family to whom the bird belonged. AN ILL-TREATED GENTLEMAN. « Φεῦ μοίρης τὲ κακῆς, καὶ πατρὸς ἁ θανάτου.”*Anthologia. Oter aux jeunes gens les plaisirs de la vie."-MOLIERE. I AM of the sect of the deipnosophists, or, in plain English, a professed diner out; and let pedants say what they please of their " gardens" and their "porches," the place for gathering wisdom is the board of an accomplished Amphitryon. Where, indeed, can a man meet with such eloquent lectures on religion or politics, where pick up such canons of criticism on the fine arts in general, or on Mr. Wyatt's statue in esse, on Mr. Wyatt's statue in posse,-on Mr. Turner's last portrait of a wellfilled palette in a state of " thaw and dissolution," or on Donizetti's last grand larceny committed on himself-in particular, as with his legs under a well frequented mahogany? It was at a dinner-party last Wednesday (the best of dining days, when it is holiday in the House of Commons), that I was present at a rather long discussion on the merits and demerits of the rights of primogeniture, in which a high Conservative (high in argument, I mean, and not in stature) took the defensive, against the attack of a Radical member who was present. I shall not take up the pages of the "New Monthly" with a recapitulation of the objections against entails and eldership, for I am no politician; and as for the hardships of younger brothers, that is no affair of mine. "Tre fratelli, tre castelli," say I. As long as I am not obliged to take my younger brothers out a shooting with me, which I should rather decline consenting to, I don't exactly see what I have to do with their means of existence. It must, I admit, be a bore to see oneself within the expectancy of a good estate, and yet be cut off by a chap who may, perhaps, have no more than a poor half hour's precedence of you in the world; and I have occasionally been tempted to think that there must have been some confusion of persons committed in translating the history of Cain and Abel. Still, in these anti-Malthusian times, a younger brother runs a pretty fair chance for the fortune; and this I know full well, that whatever may be his annoyances, his elder brother does not always find himself on a bed of roses. It is he only who wears the shoe, that knows where it pinches; and I, for one, can safely answer for it, that my whole life has been rendered a perpetual corn (or bunion rather) by the tightness of that precious piece of shoe leather-the heirship to a landed estate. It is to that point, therefore, that, at this present writing, I shall confine myself. I am the eldest son of one of the toughest old baronets in the United Kingdom. The old gentleman has lately attained to his eightieth year, rides after the hounds twice a week, walks through the turnips for a whole morning, and, with the help of the game-keeper, can still find his way over a dry ditch. I, for my part, am a trifle more than fifty, and *This Greek, translated, means that I had rather Have my estate, than trust it with my father. rarely pass a winter without a touch of the gout. Hinc illæ lacrymæ. "The Thane of Cawdor lives a prosperous gentleman ;" and young Hopeful, as the governor, in spite of chronology, continues to call me, has before him a reasonable prospect of being disinherited by his father's unconscionable longevity. Were I writing only for the landed interest, I should have said enough in this short and simple statement of fact to have made out a case; but the great body of readers is composed of men whose estates do not extend beyond the flower-pots on their window-stools; and of men, who, being habituated to live by their own labours, have no notion of the manifold hardships embraced under the head of what is called a good expectancy. I must crave leave, therefore, to condescend (as the Scotch lawyers say) to particulars, and to detail somewhat at large, the peculiar evils of that much envied, but very unenviable condition, an heirship at law. The misfortunes of an heir-at-law, "be it then known to all to whom these presents come greeting, commence from the hour of his birth. There is a period in married life when the olive branches begin to thicken, and then, indeed, a child may venture upon existence, without the fear of being killed with kindness for his trouble; but the birth of a son and heir is a very different matter. The arrival of a personage of such vast importance is an affair of so much joy, and kicks up so much confusion, that the whole family is in a conspiracy against him. The young gentleman is at once constituted a common centre, round which everything turns. In the drawing-room, in the nursery, and the servants' hall, there is such a stir made to welcome him into the world, that the long odds are decidedly against his completing his first year, much more against his arriving either at man's estate, or his father's. Every one must dandle him, at the risk of breaking his neck; and every one must feed, at the risk of choking him. From my earliest recollection to my tenth year, life was a rapid alternation of gorging and of physic; and between the cook and the apothe cary, it was a miracle how I escaped poison. My mother was never satisfied that I was in safety, and that, too, not without good reason; for I certainly was as sickly a brat as ever swallowed pill or powder, so that the physician was almost in daily attendance. While I was crammed at all hours of the day like a pincushion, because the young heir was to be refused nothing, I was nightly supersaturated with cakes, ices, fruit, and wine, at the family dinner-table-by my parents through fondness; by the guests, if not in sheer malice, at least to get rid of my troublesome importunities. Thus primed and loaded for indigestion, and sent to bed to sleep off the consequent fever as I best could, when I shrieked aloud under the horrors of a night-mare dream, the nurses gave me laudanum "to make the darling quiet ;" and the doctor followed as a matter of course in the morning, with his infernal black dose, to cure at once the disease, and the effects of the surreptitious sleeping-drops. So much for the physique: as to the morale, I was scarcely able to walk, before that was taken in hand by every dependant of the family. My first lesson was to make me understand and feel that I was monarch of all I survey," that my father was only my trustee, and that I had an unquestioned right to everything which I might please to think I wanted. Before I was seven years old, I was taught to comprehend the full difference which society had established between me and my Aug.-VOL. LIII. NO. CCXII. 2 G |