To Mary, at No. 45 Mount Street Grosvenor Square.

Dear Mary

Littel did I Think wen I advertisd in the Tims for annother Plaice of taking wan in Vandemin's land. But so it his and hear I am amung Kangerooses and Savidges and other Forriners. But goverment offering to Yung Wimmin to Find them in Vittles and Drink

my Memmery but I often Thinks of Number 22 and the two Next Dores. yew may Disclose my matterymonial Prospex to betty as we hav always had a Deal of Confidens. And I remane with the Gratest Your affexionat Frend

asurance

Susan Gale-as his to be Simco.

P.S. Deer mary my Furst Match beeing broke off short hope Yew will not take it Ill but I have Marrid the yung Man as was to Hav waited for Yew but As yew hav never seen one Annother trusts yew will Not take Him to hart or abrade by Return of Postesses be has behaved Perfickly honnerable And has got a verry United frend of his Hone to be atacht to Yew in lew of Him. adew.

Allegory-A moral vehicle.-DICTIONARY.

I HAD a Gig-Horse, and I called him Pleasure,
Because on Sundays, for a little jaunt,
He was so fast and showy, quite a treasure;
Although he sometimes kicked, and shied aslant.
I had a Chaise, and christen'd it Enjoyment,
With yellow body, and the wheels of red,
Because 'twas only used for one employment,
Namely, to go wherever Pleasure led.
I had a wife, her nickname was Delight;

A son called Frolic, who was never still:
Alas! how often dark succeeds to bright!

Delight was thrown, and Frolic had a spill,
Enjoyment was upset and shattered quite,

And Pleasure fell a splitter on Paine's Hill!

A SERIO-COMIC REMINISCENCE.

It seems but the other day-instead of nearly ten years ago-that my drawing-room door opened, and the female servant, with a very peculiar expression of countenance, announced a memorable visitor. Shakspeare has inquired "What is there in a name?" But most assuredly he would have withdrawn the question could he have seen the effect of a patronymic on our Sarah's risible muscles. To render the phenomenon more striking, she was a maiden little addicted to the merry mood: on the contrary, she was rather more sedate than her age warranted. Her face was of a cast decidedly serious-quiet brow--steady eyes-sober nose-precise mouth, and solemn chin, which she doubled by drawing it in demurely against her neck. The habitual expression of her physiognomy was as grave, short of actual sadness, as human face could assume, reminding you of those set, solid, composed, very decorous visages, that indifferent persons put on for the day at a funeral: her very complexion was uniformly colourless-pale yet not clear-that slack-baked look which forbids the idea of levity. When she smiled, which was rarely, and in cases where most females of her years would have indulged in a titter, or excusable laugh, it was the faintest possible approach to hilaritythe corners of her mouth curving, if anything, a little downwards. Nothing, in fact, less than

"sets

galvanism, which
corpses a-grinning,"seemed
likely to shock her fea-
tures into any broad de-
monstration of jocularity,
and yet, lo! there she
was, her face shortened
by half its length-her
mouth stretching from ear
to ear, and hardly able,
for a suppressed giggle,
to articulate its brief an-
nouncement.

I have always considered the above physiognomical miracle-the lighting up of that seemingly impracticable countenance as the best criticism I have ever seen of the performances of the great Pan of Pantomime:

-a most eloquent retrospective review of the triumphs of his genius.

I

It was a glorious illustration of the Pleasures of Memory, to behold that face so like the sea in a dead calm on a dull day burst suddenly into ripples and radiance, like the brook that laughs in the sun. What recollections of exquisite fooling must have rushed into her fancy to convert that Quakerly maiden, as by a stage metamorphosis, into a perfect figure of fun! What grotesque fantastic shapes must have come tumbling, rolling, crawling, dangling, dancing, prancing, floundering, flopping, striding, sliding, ambling, shambling, scrambling, stumbling, bundling, and trundling into her mind's eye, to so startle her features from their propriety! What face-making faces, with telegraphic brows-rolling, reeling, goggling, ogling, hard-winking, and soft-blinking eyes-and grinning, gaping, pinching, puckering mouths must have grimaced at her to put her steady countenance so out of countenance! What is there in a name? Why magic! A serious, quiet, decrepid man had but to announce himself, and Presto! Prestissimo! before an engineer could cry "Ease her! stop her! back her!" our Sarah had retraced her course up the stream of time to the bright wintry gallery nights at the Lane, or the Garden, or the Midsummer Night's Dream at the Wells. Talk of magnetizers! when did Baron Dupotet, or any of his sect, without pass or manipulation, thus throw a sedate orderly maiden, into an ecstacy, and set her looking through the back of her head at the pantomimical experiences of the past? Talk of Laughing Gas! when was there a facetious fluid so potent that the mere sight of the empty bottle-(for such, alas! the ex-clown was become)-could throw the ticklesome muscles into merry convulsions?

I have often speculated since on Sarah's deportment, when, having ushered "Mr. Grimaldi, alias Joe," into the drawing-room, she returned to her kitchen. Of course, in the first flutter and frisk of her animal spirits, she postponed all domestic duties; or, at best, obliviously broke the eggs into the flower-tub, popped the lump of butter into the oven, and secured the rolling-pin in the safe. More probably she dropped herself into the first chair that offered; and throwing her apron over her head to shut out the daylight, indulged in a lamplight vision of the drolleries of Mother Goose, or the Sleeping Beauty; when the frolics of funny Joe had cheated her for awhile of the sorrows of servitude, low wages, a crustaceous mistress, a perfidus young man, and a hard place, with perhaps the bodily pains of a recent scald, a bad bruise, and tight shoes. No doubt it had been one of her wishes, born of wonder and curiosity, to see the popular Motley off the stage "in his habit as he lived;" and lo! beyond her hope, she had met him face to face without his paint, and been on speaking terms with that marvellous voice, so sparingly heard, even on the stage.

For my own part, I confess to have been somewhat unsettled as well as the bewildered maid by pantomimical associations. Slowly and seriously as my visitor advanced, and with a decided stoop, I could not forget that I had seen the same personage come in with two odd eyebrows, a pair of right-and-left eyes, a wry nose, a crooked

EPICUREAN REMINISCENCES OF A SENTIMENTALIST.

115

mouth, two wrong arms, two left legs, and a free and easy body without a bone in it, or apparently any centre of gravity. I was half prepared to hear that rare voice break forth smart as the smack of a waggoner's whip, or richly thick and chuckling, like the utterance of a boy laughing, talking, and eating custard, all at once, but a short interval sufficed to dispel the pleasant illusion, and convinced me that the Grimaldi was a total wreck.

"Alas! how changed from him,

The life of humour, and the soul of whim."

The lustre of his bright eye was gone-his eloquent face was passive and looked thrown out of work-and his frame was bowed down by no feigned decrepitude. His melancholy errand to me related to a Farewell Address, which at the invitation of his staunch friend Miss Kelly—for it did not require a request-I had undertaken to indite. He pleaded earnestly that it might be brief, being, he said, "a bad study," as well as distrustful of his bodily strength. Of his sufferings he spoke with a sad but resigned tone, expressed deep regret at quitting a profession he delighted in, and partly attributed the sudden breaking down of his health to the superior size of one particular stage which required of him a jump extra in getting off. That additional bound, like the bittock at the end of a Scotch mile, had, he thought, overtasked his strength. His whole deportment and conversation impressed me with the opinion that he was a simple, sensible, warmhearted being, such indeed as he appears in his Memoirs-a Joseph after Parson Adams's own heart. We shook hands heartily, parted, and I never saw him again. He was a rare practical humorist, and I never look into Rabelais with its huge-mouthed Gargantua and his enormous appetite for "plenty of links, chitterlings, and puddings, in their season," without thinking that in Grimaldi and his pantomime I have lost my best set of illustrations of that literary extravaganza.

EPICUREAN REMINISCENCES OF A SENTIMENTALIST. "My Tables! Meat it is, I set it down!"-HAMLET.

I THINK it was Spring-but not certain I am-
When my passion began first to work;

But I know we were certainly looking for lamb,
And the season was over for pork.

'Twas at Christmas, I think, when I met with Miss Chase,

Yes, for Morris had asked me to dine,—

And I thought I had never beheld such a face,

Or so noble a turkey and chine.