perhaps even melodramatical for its sake. Numberless were the deskquakes, the ink-spouts, the book-bolts, the pea-showers, and other unregistered phenomena, which likened the studies of those four unlucky maidens to the "Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties," so that it glads me to reflect, that I was in a very small minority against the persecution; having already begun to read poetry, and even to write something which was egregiously mistaken for something of the same nature. The final result of the struggle in the academic nest-whether the hen-cuckoos succeeded in ousting the cock-sparrows, or vice versa -is beyond my record; seeing that I was just then removed from the scene of contest, to be introduced into that Universal School where, as in the preparatory ones, we have very unequal shares in the flogging, the fagging, the task-work, and the pocket-money; but the same breaking-up to expect, and the same eternity of happy holidays to hope for in the Grand Recess.

In brief, a friend of the family having taken a fancy to me, proposed to initiate me in those profitable mercantile mysteries which enabled Sir Thomas Gresham to gild his grasshopper; and like another Frank Osbaldestone, I found myself planted on a counting-house stool, which nevertheless served occasionally for a Pegasus, on three legs, every foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee. In commercial matters, the only lesson imprinted on my memory is the rule that when a ship's crew from Archangel, come to receive their L. S. D., you must lock up your P. Y. C.

And that gamekeeper too, with advice!
Of my course he has been a nice chalker,
Not far, were his words,

I could go without birds:

If my legs could cry out, they'd cry "Walker!

Not Hawker could find out a flaw,

My appointments are modern and Mantony, And I've brought my own man,

To mark down all he can,

But I can't find a mark for my Antony !

The partridges,-where can they lie?
I have promised a leash to Miss Jervas,
As the least I could do;

But without even two

To brace me,-I'm getting quite nervous'

To the pheasants-how well they're preserved! My sport's not a jot more beholden,

As the birds are so shy,

For my friends I must buy,

And so send "silver pheasants and golden"

I have tried ev'ry form for a hare,

Every patch, every furze that could shroud her, With toil unrelax'd,

Till my patience is tax'd,

But I cannot be taxed for hare-powder.

I've been roaming for hours in three flats
In the hope of a snipe for a snap at;
But still vainly I court

The percussioning sport,

I find nothing for "setting my cap at!"

A woodcock, this month is the time,-
Right and left I've made ready my lock for,
With well-loaded double,

But spite of my trouble,
Neither barrel can I find a cock for!

A rabbit I should not despise,

But they lurk in their burrows so lowly

This day's the eleventh,

It is not the seventh,

But they seem to be keeping it hole-y.

For a mallard I've waded the marsh,

And haunted each pool, and each lake-oh!
Mine is not the luck,

To obtain thee, O Duck,

Or to doom thee, O Drake, like a Draco!

Joyce may talk of his excellent caps,
But for nightcaps they set me desiring,

And it's really too bad,

Not a shot I have had

With Hall's Powder, renown'd for "quick firing."

"Do you see that 'ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?" inquired Ned Stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some fifty yards in advance. "Well, for all he's driving there so easy like, and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that's a fact, driv right through his body!"

"Rather him than me," drawled a passenger on the box, without removing his cigar from his mouth.

"It's true for all that," returned Ned, with a nod of his head equal to an affidavit. "The shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the tug, and out again at t'other, besides pinning bim to the wall of the stable-and that's a thing such as don't happen every day."

"Lucky it don't," said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar. "It an't likely to come often," resumed Ned, "let alone the getting over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. To see him bowling along there, he don't look like a man pinned to a stablewall with the rod through him, right up to the tug-do he?" "Can't say he does," said the smoker.

"For my part," said Ned, or indeed any man's part, most people in such a case would have said, it's all up with me, and good reason why, as I said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the tug-and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit. But somehow he always stuck to it-not the wall, you know