on a good face, and walked stoutly up the ladder, saying softly to himself, “the eyes of Europe are upon you." All being ready, with the Ordinary on the right hand, and the Extraordinary on the left, and the Great Constrictor a little behind, Tony (who had his whim with him) was asked how he felt himself, and how his father and mother did, and all his little brothers and sisters; to which he answered thankfully, that they were all very well, and that for his own part, he felt very comfortable, and died in the faith of St. Vitus. Now the faith of St. Vitus is not exactly the faith of the Church of England, nor, in faith, do I well know what faith it is; but the Ordinary took no objection to it, for he was a man in favour of universal toleration, remembering the saying of the heathen Priest of Apollo to the Bishop of Magnum Bonum, "You have your thology, and let me have mythology." So the Ordinary held his peace, but the Extraordinary would fain have argued the point regularly and methodically, according to the dogmatical manner of Cerberus, namely, in a

discourse with three heads; and if he had once begun to spin the triple yarn of controversy, prosyversy, and viceversy into a cable, there is no saying on oath whether the other rope might have been used to this day. Seeing, therefore, how matters stood, Master Strangulator pushed in, with an elbowing manner, and began begging pardon of Tony for the part he was about to perform, who forgave him very readily, requesting him moreover to shake hands, and by Gog and Magog, such a 'shake was never shaked since the Shakers became a sect!

At the first grapple of their fingers, the Strangulator pulled away his hand with a jerk, as if a bear's palm had been palmed upon him instead of a human paw. Then, after making a frightful face, he gave a mighty great spring or vault upwards, a deal higher than the gallows, when, on coming down, he alighted with his legs astraddle upon the beam, where he kept posturing for some five minutes; now rowing with his arms and legs, like a fish, now hanging with his head downwards,

first by one leg and then by the other, then by one hand, and then again by his chin; you never saw a rope-dancer or tumbler of them all, at Bartlemy's or Astley's, more nimble. Then coming down to the stage with a bound, he threw three summersets forward, and then three backwards, as quick as thought. Anon, after standing for a minute in the first position, he fell a-dancing with all his might and main, and as fast as he could lift his feet, like a bear upon a hotted floor. Never was such a spring danced round about the gallows-tree; Gilderoy was a fool to him. You may guess how the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and the Ordinary and the Extraordinary, stared at such a caper, till their eyes grew as big as owls'; and still more when they saw Tony, after making a round O of his mouth, fall to bouncing and bounding like another Oscar Byrne! Shade of Holbein, what a Dance of Death! Only think of Jack Ketch and the condemned dancing face to face on the drop, now poussetting, now setting to each other, now allemanding, now waltzing, and then, Father of Vestris,

what a tableau! Tony figuring, opera-fashion, on one leg, with Cheshire poising on tip-toe on the calf of the other! As for his whim, it was jerked out of the box at the first frisk, and had enough to do, you may be sure, to scuttle out of the way of the skipping and hopping; as it was, the poor reptile got more kicks than ha'pence.

In the meantime the Humanes, and the Samaritans, and the Benevolents, and the rest of the mob, did not stand and look on quite as mum as if it had been an overbrimming Quaker's meeting, with a collection afterwards at the door for the Deaf and Dumb. They chuckled, and crowed, and laughed till they brayed again; and roared, and bellowed, and shouted, and shrieked like hyænas in hysterics. "Huzza! buzzaw! Go it Jack! That's your sort! encore-ancore-anker-ancoore,-bravo-brawvo -bravoo-brawvoo! Well done Tony-Tony for ever-Tony for my money!-keep it up! It's better than dancing upon nothing." If Laporte had been there, who knows what offer he might have made them; for Taglioni herself never danced so

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that is to say, gratis, and without music. On they jigged, however, without let or stint, and may I hang my hat up for ever, if the same whim did not suddenly take the marshal, janitor, or head gaoler, however unfit for dancing, seeing that one of his legs was made of the same flesh as my oak table. Timber or not, he balanced on it for a whole minute, while the other foot's great toe, far above his hip, pointed

exactly at the clock of St. Sepulchre, and then swinging his arms like a horizontal windmill, he spun off into a whirlwind of pirouettes that made one giddy to look at. That done, he struck in between the other two with a reel step, and they immediately began to work out a dancing sum in the rule of three, which requires only one figure, namely, a figure of eight. Scuffle, shuffle, in and out, the three Kirk Alloway witches could not have footed it better. In fact, there was no resisting it. The whim took the very Ordinary himself, though less boisterously at first, by reason of the gravity of his calling, wherefore, taking a graceful grip with either hand of his cassock, he only glided off,