policeman helped to allay his confusion a little by condolence, by promises of search, and accounts of daring robberies practised upon the most knowing; and our hero, in the gratitude of his heart, would have given him his card; but he now found that his pocket-book was gone! His companion rubbed his face to conceal a smile, and received with great respect an oral communication of the address. Mr. Blundell, to show that his spirit as a gentleman was not subdued, told him there was half-a-crown for him on his calling.

Alone, and meditative, and astonished, and, as it were, half undone, Mr. Blundell continued his journey towards the dinner, having made up his mind, that as his watch-chain was still apparent, and had the watch attached to it, and as the disorder of his nerves, if not quite got rid of, might easily be referred to delicacy of health, he would refresh his spirits with some of that excellent port, which always made him feel twice the man he was.

Nor was this judicious conclusion prevented, but rather irritated and enforced, by one of those sudden showers, which in this fickle climate are apt to come pouring down in the midst of the finest weather, especially upon the heels of April. This, to be sure, was a tremendous one; though, by diverting our hero's chagrin, and putting him upon his mettle, it only made him gather up his determination, and look extremely counter-active and frowning. Would to Heaven his nerves had been as braced up as his

face! The gutters were suddenly a torrent; the pavement a dancing wash; the wind a whirlwind; the women all turned into distressed Venuses de Medici. Everybody got up in door-ways, or called a coach.

Unfortunately no coach was to be had. The hacks went by, insolently taking no notice. Mr. Blundell's determination was put to a nonplus. The very door-ways in the street where he was, being of that modern, skimping, inhospitable, pennysaving, done-by-contract order, so unlike the good old projecting ones with pediments and ample thresholds, denied security even to his thin and shrinking person. His pumps were speedily as wet through as if they had been made of paper; and what rendered this ruin of his hopes the more provoking, was, that the sunshine suddenly burst forth again, as powerful as the rain which had interrupted it. A coach, however, he now thought, would be forthcoming; and it would at least take him home again; while the rain, and “the previous inability to get one," would furnish a good excuse for returning.

But no coach was to be had so speedily, and meantime his feet were wet, and there was danger of cold. "As I am wet," thought Mr. Blundell, sighing, "a little motion, at all events, is best. It would be better, considering I am so, not to stop at all, nor perhaps get into a coach; but then how am I to get home in these shoes, and this highly evening dress? I shall be a sight. I shall have those

cursed little boys after me. Perhaps I shall again be hustled.".

Bewildered with contending emotions of shame, grief, disappointment, anger, nay hunger, and the sympathy between his present pumps and departed elegancies, our hero picked his way as delicately as he could along the curb-stones; and, turning a corner, had the pleasure of seeing a hackney-coach slowly moving in the distance, and the man holding forth his whip to the pedestrians, evidently disengaged. The back of it, to be sure, was towards him, and the street long, and narrow, and very muddy. But no matter. An object 's an object ;a little more mud could not signify: our light-footed sufferer began running.

Now runners, unfortunately, are not always prepared for corners; especially when their anxiety has an object right before it, and the haste is in proportion. Mr. Blundell, almost before he was aware of it, found himself in the middle of a flock of sheep. There was a hackney-coach also in the way; the dog was yelping, and leaping hither and thither; and the drover, in a very loud state of mind, hooting, whistling, swearing, and tossing up his arms.

Mr. Blundell, it is certain, could not have got into a position less congenial to his self-possession, or more calculated to commit his graces in the eyes of the unpropitiated. And the sheep, instead of sympathizing with him, as in their own distress they might (poetically) be supposed to do, positively

seemed in the league to distress his stockings, and not at all to consider even his higher garment. They ran against him; they bolted at him; they leaped at him; or if they seemed to avoid him, it was only to brush him with muddier sides, and to let in upon his weakened forces the frightful earnestness of the dog, and the inconsiderate, if not somewhat suspicious, circumambiences of the coachman's whip.

Mr. Blundell suddenly disappeared.

He fell down, and the sheep began jumping over him! The spectators, I am sorry to say, were in an ecstacy.

You know, observant reader, the way in which sheep carry themselves on abrupt and saltatory occasions; how they follow one another with a sort of spurious and involuntary energy; what a pretended air of determination they have; how they really have it, as far as example induces, and fear propels them; with what a heavy kind of lightness they take the leap; how brittle in the legs, lumpish in the body, and insignificant in the face; how they seem to quiver with apprehension, while they are bold in act; and with what a provoking and massy springiness they brush by you, if you happen to be in the way, as though they wouldn't avoid the terrors of your presence, if possible,—or rather, as if they would avoid it with all their hearts, but insulted you out of a desperation of inability. Baas intermix their pensive objections with the hurry, and

a sound of feet as of water. Then, ever and anon, come the fiercer leaps, the conglomerating circuits, the dorsal visitations, the yelps and tongue-lollings of the dog, lean and earnest minister of compulsion; and loud, and dominant over all, exult the no less yelping orders of the drover,-indefinite, it is true, but expressive, rustical cogencies of oo and ou, the intelligible jargon of the Corydon or Thyrsis of Chalk-Ditch, who cometh, final and humane, with a bit of candle in his hat, a spike at the end of his stick, and a hoarseness full of pastoral catarrh and juniper.

Thrice (as the poets say) did Carfington Blundell, Esquire, raise his unhappy head out of the mélée, hatless and mudded; thrice did the spectators shout; and thrice did he sink back from the shout and the sheep, in calamitous acquiescence.

"Lie still, you fool!" said the hackney-coachman, " and they'll jump easy."

"JUMP EASY!" Heavens! how strange are the vicissitudes of human affairs. To think of Mr. Blundell only but yesterday, or this evening rather,— nay, not an hour ago,—his day fine, his hopes immense, his whole life lapped up, as it were, in cotton. and lavender, his success elegant, his evening about to be spent in a room full of admirers ; and NOW, his very prosperity is to consist in lying still in the mud, and letting sheep jump over him!

Then to be called a "fool:" fool."

"Lie still, you