tended into an audible grin, and he pledged the dainty merchant in execrable brandy. Their conversation at length became interesting. The man of sulphur had a most agreeable collection of oaths; and as he swore by Solomon and Eblis, by the sacred camel and the dog of the seven sleepers, the man of spice perceived that he had a high reverence for the mysteries of theology ;—and a wonderful sympathy in this particular grew up between them. They embraced and parted; but Bekfudi never forgot the garlic.

The little Jew soon applied his master's purchase to good account. Within a week the superb merchant began to indulge a wish for the possession of some of his former most splendid baubles; he bethought him that his free habit of expressing his thoughts in the broad margins of his beautiful manuscripts might one day cause some awkward inquiries; and he was desirous of securing some pictures, of which he thought none but himself knew the peculiar value. He of the dirty hands was as ready to comply with these reasonable wishes, and Bekfudi began to think that his turban and his garlic might in time be endurable. The articles were selected, but the little Jew had yet to name the price. Bekfudi raved and tore his hair when a fourth of his four hundred thousand sequins were demanded for what had cost even him not a tenth of the sum. He raved and tore his hair; but the Jew and the sulphur-merchant were calm.

Bekfudi had not yet learned to subject his desires to his circumstances; and two dromedaries marched off with their costly load.

The Jew and his merchant passed the winter very industriously. From his warehouses in Samarah, this active dealer brought all the glittering pledges which the misfortunes of his clients had left unredeemed; and he decorated the mosque, like a grand bazaar, with a great many new curiosities, and a great many rare commodities with fine names from the east and the west, which the artists of Samarah could manufacture as well as those of Persia or China. The little Jew knew where to find expert limners, who could imitate the paintings even of the celebrated Mani, so as to deceive the most critical eyes; clever copyists, that would transcribe the tales and poems of Arabia, with a correctness that would enchant the most exquisite connoisseurs; and acute chemists, that would give to the secretly pressed grape-juice of the gardens of Bekfudi himself, the inimitable flavour of the wines of Shiraz or Kismische. The little Jew had, however, not quite so complete a judgment as the builder of the mosque, and he therefore committed a few mistakes with a very enterprising spirit. Amidst the solemn and subdued splendour of the sanctuary, upon which Bekfudi most prided himself, he hung up an enormous mirror which brought all the varied colours of the neighbouring galleries, and all the garishness of day, into the heart of its former deep and impressive

gloom; and in the hall which the spice merchant had dedicated to the worthies of his country, he stuck up the statue of one of the rebellious princes who had presumed to contend against the justice of the great Haroun al Raschid. But the little Jew was yet a most deserving factor. All Samarah again flocked to the mosque with the great minaret; and all Samarah came this time with money in their vests, to purchase some relic of the magnificent Bekfudi. Every one was pleased, except the unhappy builder of the palace, for every one was agreeably relieved of his sequins at his own free-will. He alone writhed under the mortifications of his pride, and the outrages upon his taste. He stalked one day into the palace of his splendour, now metamorphosed into one large bazaar, and with a yell of fury he overthrew the statue of the foe of the caliph, and shivered into a thousand pieces the mirror which deformed the sanctuary. He then coolly paid the price which the Jew demanded, and retired to a humble dwelling without a minaret, purposing to pass the remainder of his days in composing treatises on temperance and humility-but ending in building another tower.

THE ETON MONTEM,

AMONGST the "Memorable Things Lost" is the Eton Montem. Railroads destroyed it; for they made it vulgar. Whitechapel turned out for the last Montem, as it turns out for the Lord Mayor's show— and the aristocratic school would no longer indulge the mob with a cheap holiday. Let me remember Montem, as I last saw it in 1820.

London gave up its Poet of Mayor's Day a century ago. Eton retained its Montem Poet till he went the way of other immortals. The Poet was a more prominent personage in the ceremony of Montem than the Head-master of the college. But the reader must permit me to throw my remembrances into a dialogue between three or four friends, who came to look at the triennial show,to laugh at it, or to defend it:

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Who is that buffoon that travesties the

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travesty?" inquired Frazer. Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico?"

"That, my most noble cynic," said Gerard, “is a prodigious personage. Shall birth-days and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel? He, sir, is Her

bertus Stockhore; who first called upon his muse in the good old days of Paul Whitehead, —run a race with Pye through all the sublimities of lyres and fires, and is now hobbling to his grave, after having sung fourteen Montems, the only existing example of a legitimate laureate. Ask Paterson about him ;-he is writing a quarto on his life and genius."

"He ascended his heaven of invention," said Paterson, "before the vulgar arts of reading and writing, which are banishing all poetry from the world, could clip his wings. He was an adventurous soldier in his boyhood; but, having addicted himself to matrimony and the muses, settled as a bricklayer's labourer at Windsor. His meditations on the house-tops soon grew into form and substance; and, about the year 1780, he aspired, with all the impudence of Shadwell, and a little of the pride of Petrarch, to the laurel-crown of Eton. From that day he has worn his honours on his 'Cibberian forehead' without a rival.”

"And what is his style of composition?" said Frazer.

"Vastly naïve and original;-though the character of the age is sometimes impressed upon his productions. For the first three odes, ere the school of Pope was extinct, he was a compiler of regular couplets, such as

"Ye dames of honour and lords of high renown,

Who come to visit us at Eton town."

During the next nine years, when the remembrance