of a quiet colloquy with the intelligent-looking driver.*

"My worthy friend," said Jones, "we are only two miles from St. Giles's Pound-what sort of a pound is St. Giles's Pound?" "For the matter of that," said the cab-driver, "I have driv here these ten years, and I never yet seed St. Giles's Pound, nor Holborn Bars,-no, never,-though ve always reckons by them" "Wonderful!" 'replied Mr. Jones," then please to drive me to the Standard in Cornhill." "The Standard in Cornhill,-that's a good one!-I should like to know who ever seed the Standard in Cornhill. Ve knows the Swan with Two Necks in Lad Lane, and the Golden Cross, and the Vite Horse Cellar in Piccadilly, but I never heard of anybody that ever seed the Standard in Cornhill." "Then, Sir," said Jones, breathlessly, "perhaps you don't know the place where Hicks's Hall formerly stood?" "As for Hicks's Hall," said the cabman, "it's hall a hum. There's no such place,-no more than the Standard in Cornhill, nor Holborn Bars, nor St. Giles's Pound, and my oppinnun is, there never wor such places, and that they keep their names on the milestones to bilk the poor cabs out of their back carriage."

Jedediah Jones was discomfited. He did not quite understand the cabman's solution; and he had a vague notion that, if the milestones were

*In 1837 the cab-driver and his fare rode lovingly together side by side.

placed with reference to the Post-office, or St. Paul's, or some place which did exist, the back carriage and other carriage of cabmen and hackneycoachmen would be better regulated. He, however, made the best of his position. He spent one of his remaining shillings upon a very frugal dinner ; and, wending his way back to Islington, he bestowed the other upon the coachman of a Holyhead mail to convey him to Barnet without further loss of time or property.

AN EPISODE OF VATHEK.

[Thirty years ago, the world went mad about Fonthill. SalisburyPlain became populous, with May-Fair and Cheapside travelling to see Mr. Beckford's wonders. No profane eyes had ever looked upon his towers and pinnacles-his domes and galleries. There was mystery, then, to combine with what was really worth seeing at Fonthill. Its exhibition and its auction produced as much excitement as a Crystal Palace upon a small scale. The towers of Fonthill are in the dust, with its magnificent builder. They might have fallen, without a revival of my old recollections, had I not considered that the public curiosity to see their works of art was an anticipation of the feeling of a better period. The people saw nothing of Art in those days, but the dingy Angerstein Gallery in Pall Mall; and the state rooms of Hampton-Court and Windsor, at a shilling a-head for the showman. The nobility kept their pictures locked up; and Poets' Corner was inaccessible except to sixpences. Other days have come. Fonthill belongs to the Past.]

THE taste for tower-building, and for other architectural absurdities, of which Vathek had set the example, became infectious in the country about Samarah. This monarch was at first indignant that his subjects should presume to copy his extravagances; but his vanity was stronger than his pride, and he left them in the quiet possession of their follies. His most ambitious rival was the merchant Bekfudi. The riches of this superb person were enormous. His caravans every year brought him silks and jewels that would have

rivalled a princess's dowry, and the slaves that cultivated his groves of cinnamon might have formed the rear-guard of a sultan's army. He became dizzy with his wealth, and fancied that he was descended from the Assyrian kings;-though his grandfather had carried a basket in the streets of Bagdad.

Bekfudi had a handsome palace and extensive grounds; the hills and the valleys of a little province were his; a broad lake lingered in his groves of citrons and palms; and the apricots of his garden almost rivalled those which Vathek so prized from the isle of Kirmith. The ladies of his seraglio were as numerous and as beautiful as the harem of the grand vizier, and the other furniture of his palace was equally rare and costly. But Bekfudi began to be satiated with the pleasures and the magnificence of ordinary mortals: in an evil hour he pulled down his palace and sold his women. He built an impenetrable wall round his extensive gardens, and vowed to raise, upon the highest hill which this barrier enclosed, a palace upon a new fashion. Bekfudi had no violent reverence for the religion of his country; and he therefore considered it a sinless profanation to make his dwelling-place like a mosque, and his tower resembling a minaret, though he modestly proposed it to be only ten times higher than the minarets of Bagdad. It was the extravagance of his ambition which prompted him to shut out all the world till he should have finished his mosque; and when his tower rose

above the highest pines of the neighbouring hills, he solaced himself with the hope that the peasants who gazed at an awful distance would believe that within its walls dwelt one of the sons of men, as powerful as the Genii, and as mysterious as the Dives.

Bekfudi possessed abundance of taste. His command of wealth enabled him to engross the rare productions of art which were sometimes too costly even for emirs to acquire; and he lavished his gold upon those who could best apply their talents to the excitement of his self-admiration. All the ornaments of his palace had reference to his ancestors; but though the artists, who recorded in fit emblems the mighty deeds of his progenitors, had an especial regard to truth, they sedulously avoided all allusion to the basket-bearer. In a word, the mosque was a very magnificent place. It was the handsomest monument that taste ever reared to pride; and though Bekfudi in his arrogance had tried to make his tower rival the dome of the great mosque at Damascus, and had only been stopped in his presumptuous aspirings by the equally insolent hurricane, which twice blew it down,—and though in his profaneness he had built his dormitories like the cells of the most pious santons, and had constructed studies and refectories after the models of sanctuaries and shrines, still the palace was gorgeous and elegant, shrines,—still and such as no subject ever before raised in the dominions of the Commander of the Faithful.