Et cetera desunt, and indecent, for he went through the whole poem with the same extemporary profanity, making most beautiful nonsense of that most beautiful poem. The Germans did not laugh at this, and very much it redounded to their credit. So, as he did not like to lose the favourable impression he had made, he tried them next with a few new conundrums; and asked them, as they had visited the place, "Whether they did not think it a pity that such a lovely village as Kew should be entirely dedicated to growing cucumbers ?" The Germans stared, and begged to know how he made that out. 66 Why, when the Duke of Cumberland was in Kew, which he was till lately, it was surely Kew-Cumber-land ?" (Loud outcries of "Oh! Oh!" once more.) The Germans laughed again. Waggle then asked an Irish Gentleman" What insect Paddy Neale, his coachman, was like?" Mr. Macarthy gave it up. "Coachy-Neale (cochineal)" was the solution. "Och, murder!" cried Mr. Macarthy, and " drank his health in his absence"-of wit. Waggle was not to be put down, so he demanded to know" When an Irishman in India thinks most intensely of Donnybrook Fair?” "Och, then, sir, don't throuble me to answer ye!" cried Mr. Macarthy, impatiently. "When he is

alone in the middle of a Paddy-field, and it's of no use in the world laying about him with his shillelah," was the provoking answer. Mr. Macarthy jumped up from his chair, and walked to the window; and so did Waggle, to see whether he had offended the warm-headed, warm-hearted man. He had. Five twopenny postmen in blue coats and red collars were fortunately walking together past the house, their day's work being done, on their way home. "One, two, three, four, five-just tenpennyworth of twopenny-postmen!" cried Waggle, laughing and looking good-humouredly in the face of his Irish friend. "Give me your hand, Misther Waggle!" said he: "I won't be offended by ye! You're a merry devil -that's what ye are, bad 'cess to ye!"-and he shook his hand cordially, and sat down again.

The

Germans were pleased to see them friends, and so was I, and our chairman-a peace-loving man.

And now Waggle went to work-his workwhich was play-fun-nonsense anything that would keep care away, and heaviness of mind, and brooding over the inevitable ills of life, and no bad work' neither. I wish there were more Waggles in the world; for we might then dispense with rather more than half of our allowance of physicians, lawyers, soldiers, field-preachers, undertakers, &c., &c., do altogether without Greenacres, the demand for "new horrors" die away, and the call for more Grimaldis become loud and general, and not to be resisted. Long life, I say, to all the Waggles in the world -high and low, if not too low-intellectually rich and poor-one with another! And the sooner the dull dogs desert us, the sooner will this be "merry England," and "the world a mad world, my masters." "More Waggles, and less need for them," is my toast and sentiment. If you, Mr. Moribund, will not drink it, turn down your glass, discharge your reckoning, and go. Your chair is wanted, and your carriage stops the way."

During the course of that sitting, Mr. Waggle proved, to the satisfaction of all parties round the merry board, that the bills of Mr. Nugee, the fashionable tailor, were no Nuga-committing not only "short and long," as Milton objected to some of the unlearned learned of his day, but hard and soft, to have his joke out to the letter, or with the letter. He likewise proved that a lady's waist was the most tolerable piece of intolerable extravagance in the world:-That a Mr. Landor-one of the persons present, from whom no one could extract a word, he was so close and uncommunicative-was not "an open Landau:"-That a certain popular singer, who really has a voice, (which so few of your modern singers possess,) but wants that last finish of a good vocalist a shake, was "No great shake of a singer :" -That Jack-in-the-green, who was dancing under the window-it being May-day-was in a very preL*

carious state of health, and being asked "How 'so ?" made answer, "Because he exhibited symptoms of a decided tendency to gang-green"-a jest which mightily tickled the diaphragm of an Aberdeen follower of Abernethy. The worthy doctor having finished his narration of the particulars of a mad dog biting two men, his patients, Waggle next undertook to prove, and proved it, that the said mad dog should be a director of the new Asphalte company: "How so?" again: "Why, since he's bitumen, (bit two men,) he must be very capable of biting several more." (For the proper signification of biting, consult any candid Yorkshireman you can catch hold of; and if you will but shake a bridle for a few minutes in any public thoroughfare, a Yorkshireman is pretty certain, at least, to come up.) "By the by," he continued, "talking of new companies, I have just received half-a-dozen presentation shares from the managing man of The Professing to do Nothing at all but Sell the Shares and Pocket the Premium Company-Capital, Two or Three Millions of Flats' -(for the Statistical Society have not yet made up the Return)-Agent for New South Wales, Mr. William Soames'-a candid scheme, which I particularly commend to your notice, gentlemen; and I see, by the advertisements, that our friend Smith here is appointed one of the Managing Committee of The Grand Junction Consolidated Set the Thames on Fire, Cheap Steam-producing, Broiled Bargemen, and Boiled Watermen Companies'-capital investments both!-(Loud cries of Oh! Oh!" and much blushing indignation from simple Mr. Smith.)

Among other comical atrocities committed by that mad wag on that merry occasion, a Mr. Worsell having popped his head into the coffee-room for a moment, and as suddenly popped it out again, Waggle bawled after the young gentleman-(whose father is either a great grower or a monopolizing speculator in cattle-food)—"Has your father sold his mangel, Worsell?" (The unconscious reader should, perhaps, be informed that mangel wurzel is the favourite

vegetable diet of your dairy-fed vaccine creatures.) And some one having remarked that Mr. Worsell, though a handsome boy, was rapidly growing up into an ugly man, "No; he thought he was only becoming fastidious (fast hideous)." (Such loud outcries of "Oh! oh!" and such scraping of boots upon the floor ensued as rendered a very respectable hostelry almost as bad as the House of Commons, or a bear-pit.)

I have thus given you some hastily-gathered specimens of his large and his small talk, or wit, or whatever you may choose to call it. "You must take the small with the large as they comes," as the fishwives say when their customers wish to pick and cull the biggest sprats in their baskets.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

OF

SIR VANE VAGARY, BART.

I HAVE, in a preceding volume, introduced my Readers to that hearty, plethoric, red-faced, silverybearded, flaxen-wigged, obstinate-headed, hare-brained, warm-tempered, warm-hearted, vagarious old gentleman, Sir Vane Vagary, of Turnstile Hall, Woodvale, in the county of Warwickshire-Shakspeare's Warwickshire; and I have sometimes thought that either a portion of Shakspeare's blood, or some unused remainder of his humour, flows in the full veins, and works in the warm head and heart of the worthy, whimsical, "fine old English gentleman," who, to paraphrase the gentle Drummond's verse,

66

in all forms, at home, abroad doth range, And only constant is in constant change."

But I shall, perhaps, best shew the man as he is, by allowing him to exhibit himself in his own way, as

his humours moved him and kept him going through one day at Turnstile Hall, and the parts adjacent.

The vagarious Sir Vane was to have led the hunt on the morning of the day I have selected; but having risen two minutes and ten seconds later than his usual rising hour of four-an error in his valet's timekeeper being the cause of so unusual a deviation from his punctual regularity-all the preconcerted proceedings which he meant overnight to abide by, but never did next day, were disconcerted and deranged, and it was now too late for him to do anything-except exhaust his vocabulary of hard words-not ill supplied-upon the unoffending head of John Curtis, his valet and gentleman-an exceedingly proper varlet, notwithstanding anything which the passionate old person his master might aver to the contrary: patient as Sir Vane was impatient-silent as he was vociferous-answering not to the thousand cross questionings of his severe master as to whether he was not lazy, neglectful, indifferent, a sluggard, a rogue, a rascal, and did not deserve to be horse-whipped, horseponded, pumped upon, be d―d, hanged, drawn, quartered, &c., &c., &c. He knew his master's temperament so thoroughly, having had twenty years' experimental knowledge thereof, that he "let the storm rage on," knowing full well that the louder it blew the sooner it would exhaust itself, and subside into an agreeable hour of calm, all the more enjoyable from the previous hour of hurricane. The storm over, a guinea, or some generous grant of graciousnesssuch as that he might go to the d-l, or the statutefair and the dance at night, if he liked, or have all his relations-not a few, and some very remotely related to visit him, and an unlimited key to "the jolly good ale and old" for which the Hall was celebrated all the country round-patched up a peace between quarrelling master and pacific man for the day, or the hour, as it happened; for Sir Vane did not limit himself to one storm per day, if two were more agreeable, and better carried off his superabundance of humours..