The inroads of dissipation and disease on his personal appearance were great, and he was too vain a man not to feel such disfigurement acutely. To a few intimates he tried to jest about the change which had robbed him of a graceful figure, sunny locks, and a peculiarly pleasant face, and substituted for them a pot-belly, flabby cheeks, and a bald crown ; but in public he was got up with laborious attention to effect, he was laced, and bandaged, and padded, so that by candle-light he still had the bearing of an exquisite,' and when his eye twinkled, as the champagne passed and his bon-mots followed it, old friends were reminded of the Theodore Hook of five-and-twenty years before.

At the opening and early part of the season of 1841 Theodore was in the active performance of his social duties, but soon after it ended, he was no more. In the diary of that year there is the following entry-" Sunday, June 20th --To-day ill-but in to dinner to Lord Harrington's to meet the Duke of Wellington. There D. and Duchess of Bedford, Lord and Lady Southampton, Lord Londonderry, Lord Canterbury, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Redesdale, Lord Charleville, Lord Strangford, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, Count D'Orsay, Lord Chesterfield, and Fitzroy Stanhope. I and Lord Canterbury away early-go for five minutes to Carlton." He had not many more Sundays left him to spend in such society.

On the 14th of July he dined at the house of Major Shadwell Clerke, in Brompton Grove. The dinner was nearly over when he appeared. He ate nothing but fruit, and drank several large glasses of brandy and champagne, mixed in equal proportions, into which draughts he threw some effervescing powder which he called his fizzick. Once more he tried to be gay, but he could not succeed ;--the power had gone from out that poor broken man of laughter. As he stood in the drawing-room, shortly afterwards with his coffee in his hand, he surveyed himself in a mirror, and with

affecting gravity said, “Ay, I see I look as I am--done up in purse, in mind, and in body too at last." He never went again into society.

His gay life had for long been a sad one. His biographers building on a few passages of his diary have tried to prove him the victim of an unfortunate attachment. Our estimate of Hook's character will not allow us to think him ever capable of true, earnest, chivalric love. But, be this as as it may, he had, without the anguish of wronged affection, enough sources of misery-in the distressing harass for money he continually laboured under, in the consideration of his children unprovided for, and in that 'little grain of conscience' which was ever reminding him of his degradation.

He had now to leave this world. Towards the middle of August, in 1841, he sent for his friend, the Reverend G. R. Gleig, the chaplain of Chelsea Hospital, and now Chaplain General of the Army. Mr. Gleig, who, strange to say, had never been in Hook's house, though he was his old acquaintance, obeyed the summons, and was abruptly admitted to the dying man. Hook was up, but had not finished his toilet, and for a few minutes he showed signs of vexation at being discovered as he really was. With an effort, however, he recovered himself, and said to his clerical visitor, "Well, you see me as I am at last-all the bucklings, and paddings, and washings, and brushings, dropt for ever-a poor old grey-haired man, with my belly about my knees." He was too much exhausted for serious conversation, and the important business which had induced him to send for his friend was not touched upon.

On hearing of the condition of his distinguished neighbour, the Bishop of London called, and wrote to offer his spiritual services, but the delirium precedent on death had seized the doomed man before the arrival of the episcopal letter. Theodore Edward Hook died on the 24th instant,

during the evening, having not quite completed his 53rd year.

His debts were very great-much more so than his friends anticipated. His effects sold for £2,500, which sum was of course paid into the hands of the Tory Lords of the Treasury, whose zealous servant he had been; and his wretched paramour, and five children (two girls and three boys) were left without a penny. On hearing of their calamitous position a few, but only a few, of Hook's friends subscribed an amount somewhat under £3,000 for them. Of this sum the King of Hanover gave £500,-" a good deed" which, in the surrounding iniquity of his Majesty's life, certainly shines out brightly on a naughty world. With the exception of this liberal donation the subscription was mostly made by men of small means and of Hook's own rank in life. More than a few wealthy nobles declined on moral grounds to give their mite to the support of 'such a woman' and 'the offspring of such a union!' of the conduct of these high-born censors there can be but one opinion;---for when are moral scruples to be respected, if they are to be lightly esteemed when they stand forth to keep guard over our money?

We are aware that the tone we have adopted in this memoir of Hook will displease many, and that we have laid ourselves open to the reproach of forgetting the artist in our anxiety to pass judgment on the man. There are cases in which such a reproof would be to a certain extent just. We are ready to admit that the critic of Byron should confine his remarks to that poet's works, and not rest long on his domestic squabbles and the foolish debaucheries for which he was punished with premature old age. When discussing Coleridge we can dwell on his writings and philosophy, and forget the poor unstable rogue who left his wife and children to be nurtured by others, while he went about borrowing money to supply himself with opium. But Hook, though a novelist, did nothing for his art; if he influenced it at all

his influence was an unhealthy one. As we said at the commencement of this sketch, his peculiar art, to which he adhered with fidelity, was that of shining in society. Literature was to him only a means of 'getting money.' He was emphatically "the man of the world,” “the man of pleasure ❞—and as such we have considered him!

CHAPTER VIII.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.

ONE day towards the end of the last century in the crowd that hurried with equal speed and noise, along one of the busiest thoroughfares in London, might have been seen (in the language of historical romances) wending a leisurely way, a handsome, portly gentleman, approaching the middle

who led by the hand a delicate little girl-his daughter and only child. In his eye there was a merry mischievous light indicative of high animal spirits, and in his fine features were unmistakeable signs, that he loved pleasure and partook of it at times-perchance to excess whenever he had an opportunity of doing so. But ever and anon as he looked down on the little damsel, who stepped lightly by his side, an expression of fatherly tenderness came over his countenance, that spoke emphatically of the amiability of his disposition.

Diverging from the main street, the two turned down a dark and narrow lane that was less obstructed with traffic, and entered a close dingy office, into and out of which people with anxious and excited faces passed rapidly.

A strange business, as it seemed to the child's observant mind, was carried on there. It was a place for the buying and selling of little bits of card-paper with numbers stamped on them. In short it was a lottery-ticket office. We have grown a moral people since then, and can speak of such things as we walk down Pall-Mall without blushing.

"Mary," said the father to his tiny companion, "you are ten years old to-day, and I am going to give you a birthday present,"