weakness;-an attentive man, who could not stand side by side with a duck in a shower, and not offer him the use of half his umbrella-was not the man to turn a deaf ear to the poor girl. He was touched by her story, and troubled by her distress, and spoke to the wretched woman so kindly and tenderly, that, unused of late to the sweet accents of compassion, her sorrow choked her utterance as she said—" It is not often that I am spoken to as you speak to me!" -My friend was silent; but "Silence was pleased.” If Mr. Hippisley had a failing, it was that he was, too frequently, without money to meet the exigencies of the moment. He was in that predicament now; he rummaged all his pockets; they were "to let, unfurnished.' "What was he to do?" He cast about

for a resource. A private house opposite was brilliantly lighted up: it was plain that a happy party were assembled in it for enjoyment. If the doors are shut on such cheerful occasions, the windows, winter though it be, are sometimes partly open, and, better still, sometimes, the hearts of those within. "Stand beside me, and stir not away," he said to the poor creature, who still clung to him. He then turned up the collar of his cloak, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and placed himself under the windows. The shivering wretch wondered what he meant to do, but she obeyed him. Hippy had a well-toned tenor voice, with much natural pathos in it, when he chose to put his heart into his song. He gave a loud "hem" to elear his throat of the fog, and immediately struck up Campbell's beautiful ballad "The Exile of Erin." There was an instantaneous hushing of the happy hubbub within. He sung it as he could sing it; and as he finished it, the door slowly opened, a liveried servant stepped out, and gave a beckon of the finger. Hippy approached him, concealing his face as much as he could, when the man slipped several shillings into his hand. Shadows of female forms were, at the

same moment, seen listening behind the window-curtains. "There, my poor girl, said he, "take this ;" and he put the money into her hand with a kind pressure of his gentle hands. The destitute creature was speechless with surprise, but her tears spoke eloquently enough. "I ought to give your friends another song for their money; but, bless their good hearts, if they knew how what they have given is applied, they would be well content, and think the ballad cheap," said he. And before the street wanderer could find words to thank him for this uncommon exertion of charity, he shot off, in a minute was out of sight, and, I have little doubt, went flying along with a chuckling laugh and a "Ho! ho! ho!" as was his habit when any thing particularly tickled him; the whole affair, in his eyes, a joke, a whim, a flight of fancy-something to narrate at club, as an amusing anecdote of somebody else for so, I dare swear, he afterwards related it, and not as an act of his own pure, though whimsical, self-forgetting benevolence. Glory be to the charitable, whatever moves them to be so, for it is still charity!

One anecdote more of his humanity. A friendnot "open as day to melting charity-" remonstrated, when walking with him one hard winter night, because he gave alms to a poor wretch who begged them with piteous tones. "How can you-a man of your discernment-be deceived by such impostors!" was the merciful reproof of his companion "Sir !" answered Hippy, "I have an unfailing ear in judging of these sounds: I knew the ring, Sir: it was no counterfeited coin: it was good, current, lawful misery, Sir!"-and he shook off the arm of his uncharitable friend, as St. Paul shook off the viper, and walked sullenly by his side till he made a handsome apology for a double affront to him-doubting his judgment, and interfering with him in a matter of feeling-the

minor offence; and shutting up his heart against his fellow-creature-the major offence.

This same friend met him next morning, but having taken his reproof to heart, which was somewhat harsh and angry, I allow, instead of pausing to have the usual good-humoured gossip with him, he uttered hastily a "How do you do?" and before Hippy could say how he did, he was gone. Hippy was not the man to be snubbed in this fashion: he immediately resolved on a humorous revenge-such a revenge as he knew would touch his twopence-loving crony to the quick. He walked into the first coffee-house he came to, and calling for the materials, wrote a long circumstantial letter in answer to his friend's short inquiry, giving him all the particulars of his health, and thus commencing:

"Dear Jack,

"As you were kind enough, this morning, to aŝk How I did?' but did not wait to hear how I did, I beg leave to inform you that"

And then he went into the details at length; and wound up all with this postscript:-"If you had given a penny to that poor wretch last night, there would have been no need for this expenditure of twopence to-day, postage-money, for we should have met as usual, and I, as I always do when I am asked. How I do?' should have made answer there and then," Jack took this reproof better than the first; he saw there was no use in quarrelling with Hippy, came to him at night, begged his pardon, promised to be a good boy, and was immediately forgiven.

"Elia" should have known him, for they were wags somewhat of a feather, though Hippy was the smallest bird. He loved Elia. He would have hugged him, I think, for walking up to a lamb in a madow, playfully sporting about its dam, as if dancing to delight her, and tenderly accosting it with "Hah! Charles!" Or if he had seen him that same

morning, at the mouth of Mr. Milton's mews-not he of Paradise, but Piccadilly-standing face to face with that worthy stable-keeper's she-goat, Nanny, his hand on his heart, looking like a pined lover in the presence of his mistress, and singing, with all the passion of Mr. Sinclair, that most fervent of vocallovers,

"Oh Nannie, wilt thou gang wi' me,

Nor sigh to leave the flaunting town?"

Elia would, or I know him not, have "aggravated his voice," and, Lamb-like, bleated, in simple accompaniment, till Nannie baaed an agreeable reply.

All kinds of animals, besides being objects of his tenderness (for he was womanly kind to them, and loathed the man who used them ill)-were especial favourites with his humorous fancy. He talked with them, and made them almost speak to him. How have I heard him bandying wit with an ass upon a common as to his preference of thistles to softer herbs the sage creature giving his reasons for his strange perversity of taste, and Hippy combatting them, and shewing him how wrong he was-how indefensible! How have I stood laughing by while he has held a long dialogue with some little wagging cur, in which, of course, nothing which Pincher said for himself was audible; but when you heard my friend's questions, you could have written down exactly what Pincher was supposed to have said, word for word, the question was so suggestive of the answer. this while Pincher has kept looking up at him with his sharp, bright, intellectual eyes, and wagging his expressive tail, which, as it was too large for his little body, kept it vibrating about in pleasing alternation from side to side. Both body and tail, however, seemed to express his lively thanks that he had rendered his poor thoughts into such decent English sen

All

tences. It was a humorous sight to see. A dog at his own door-upon which a dog will sometimes presume-perhaps barked at him as he "leisurely passed by," like one of Mr. Wordsworth's sleepy sheep: this sometimes vexed him when he was "not in the vein" to be barked at. As he was a friend to dogs, he did not like that one of them should dislike him. In general, however, when he was so mistaken, as he called it, it only provoked his fancy or his fun to saucy humours and short answers.

He made everything talk, animate or inanimate, no matter; they all found tongues, or an interpreter of their silence. Walking through one of the vegetable-growing plots of ground in the open parts of Battersea, he stopped before a small plant, just shooting up, which he could not make out, whether it was cabbage or lettuce, so he stooped and plucked it up by the roots to ascertain its pretensions: it was young lettuce. While he was examining it, and nipping its leaves, and smelling at it, I was startled at hearing the weakling vegetable expostulate with him thus: "So, because you are lamentably ignorant, and don't know a lettuce from a cabbage when you see one, I am to be put out in my growing, and perhaps deprived of my existence altogether! Is that right and proper?" "No," said Hippy, and he made a fresh hole in the earth with his finger, and planted it afresh. As we passed over the Common, six horses, drawing a lumbering waggon along the dusty road on a dry, dusty day, startled me with the following dialogue:

Captain to Ball. "Ball, my dear fellow, what do you think of a pail of water?"

Ball. "A pail of water, quotha? I don't know— ask Dobbin."

Dobbin. "I have my own thoughts of a pail of water. But what do you say, Draggle ?"