the same on the head of an increscent, or growing lad of fifteen, and I opine that the falsity of the doctrine shall be self-evident. I consider it in the list of vulgar errors, though not mentioned by the great Sir Thomas Browne in his treatise on that subject."

"I think, sir," said the honest spouse of the fat man, most heartily intending a compliment-"I think, sir, that they have spoiled your trade- they should have made a minister of ye. Ye explain things in a wonderful clear manner. I wish the Rev. Dr. Deaver would take a lesson or twa from you. Don't you think so, mem?" she added, addressing the ancient young woman.

"Two opinions on that subject cannot be entertained, sir. But, doctor," she continued, "are you a convert to the lumps and bumps of craniology? For my own part, I am confident there is something in it, as one of the council of the society fingered my head last week, and was so correct, that I almost thought he was reading my mind from paper.'

“May I ask you, madam, what were found the most completely developed faculties, or which of the thirty-three were largest? Do be so good, unless I am running counter to politeness, to give us something of the council-man's general conclusions."

"Excuse me, you must excuse," said Miss Threescore, attempting to force a blush: "I must own that he flattered me. Of the thirty-three fa

culties

“Thirty-three faculties! I ask pardon for stopping you, mem; I would like to know a few of them there is the faculty of advocates, and—”

"We are not talking of that, sir," interrupted the verrucose-nosed physician, rather sharply. "Please, ma'am, to proceed."

"Locality, ideality, veneration, music--no, no, I cannot go on. Pray, doctor, do you read any of the new publications? I hope you do: some of them are perfectly divine."

"With shame I confess, ma'am, that I am far behind in that respect; but when any thing good falls in my way, I take a look of it."

"Have you read Bulwer's Pompeii, or Hogg's Wars of Montrose?"

"No, ma'am, I have not," after putting his finger to his temple in the Lawrence Sterne's style, and cogitating an instant: "I believe-no, ma'am, I have not."

"Is not Fenella admirably drawn? She is quite a creature of the element,' a perfect Ariel, an embodied fairy." "I truly believe so-whom did you speak of, ma'am?”

"Fenella, sir, in Peveril, you know. But I dare say you would like Lord Byron's

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Oh, ay-Byron, Byron-that is he that the Constitutional Association prosecuted--Don, Don-bless me, I forget his surname."

"You mean Lord Russell's Don Carlos. Oh! I love poetry, sir-I am passionately fond of romance, blank verse, and all that sort of thing. What is life without these-don't you think so, doctor?" added the thrice erudite bas-bleu.

"To be candid with you, ma'am," replied the pharmacopolist, fairly driven by interrogatory to the very ropes, over which he every moment threatened a somerset, "I have not a great taste for either poetry or romances; but I have read Shakespeare many years ago at college. I got it, volume by volume, from the college library. I think him a very sweet poet."

"Oh, yes, he was that--a most inimitable man! So was the late Mrs. Radcliffe, doctor-most inimitable! The Mysteries of Udolpho, the Romance of the Forest-I can scarcely think of them without crying. How full of terror they are ?—they

'Make each particular hair to stand on end,

Like bristles on the fretful porcupine.''

"We have a bit beuk yonder at hame, with pictures in't, that I've read mair than ance. I dinna bide reading when I have ony thing better to do; thumbing over leaves 'll not keep the pot boiling, as Lucky there says. I mean the Pilgrim's Progress. Did ony of ye ever read it, gentlemen or ladies?" asked the fat man, looking round.

The starched blue-heel muttered within her teeth, "Savage, Goth.No, no," she said aloud, "nobody reads these old publications. They are all ill-printed, stupid, and on coarse paper. They are not for a lady's reading, sir."

"I beg your pardon, mem, there are some funny, diverting things in it, for a' that; and if it be coarse, it should nae be it, as it came out in twenty-four numbers, sixpence each, sterling money, and that would have laid in twa or three thumping quarter-bricks. It's a true story, l'se warrant; which is mair than can be said o' every thing of the kind we meet wi'. There is nae farther gane than last week that I bought a penny 'last speech and dying words' of ane Cobbett, and I hear that the man is as living-like yet as ony of us. I buy in a hundred weight, now and then, of these new books you speak about, at fourpence the pound, to roll about soap, sugar, and candles. It's far cheaper than buying brown by the quire. But the paper is in a manner dirtied, ye ken. That's a long rigmarole in your hand, lawyer. I'se warrant somebody will find that to their cost. There's a heap of gude paper wasted there, too."

"Wasted, do you say?" answered the man of law, who was thumbing over a twenty page MS. folio.

"Ay, round about the edges like-a desperate heap of white. Hout, man, ye should gie better pennyworths. But I'm joking, ye ken; every ane has a right to live by his trade."

At this moment Miss Plumbdamasc cried out lustily, "What a rate we are getting on at! Oh, la! I am sure the driver is trying a race with some other vehicle; and see, see, that man's leg shall be through the window," she added, as a foot and ankle, the property of some one on the top, seesawed in a highly edifying manner before the glass.

"Cry up to the fellow," said the fat man, "cry up to him, or we shall have the pleasure of paying for his breakage. Lend me your stick, sir, and I'll come across his shins." With this he seized on the lawyer's staff, and, pulling down the glass, gave the intruding leg a smart crack.

The foot instantly disappeared with a yell, followed by a "Hollo, avast there!" and straightway a face, with the hat downmost, appeared: "Who was so obliging as comed athwart my pin?" hoarsely roared a husky voice. "By the pope's toe, if I knowed who it was I would give him chase. What, gemmen, do you go for to suppose for

that althof I ride on deck

Whoever goes for to presume for to think so, is in a devil of a bit of a mistake.".

"Come, come, Jack," answered the fat man, laughing, “it was all a joke, Jacky, my boy. Put your feet in your pocket, my good fellow, and it may perhaps save your purse the expense of paying for cracked panes. Hark ye that, Jack-a-tar."

"Well, well-thank ye, d'ye see. I was sound asleep. But you might have tould me-and mayn't you not, look ye, sir, without breaking of my pins, my jolly boy?"

This altercation had thrown the stale virgin into a kind of hysterics, which came to their paroxysm when the blunt sailor winded up his diatribe by saying, "Don't do the like o't again, my hearties you are all well on, and ought to know more about sense.

But I wouldn't care to fight ye all round for a farthing, if ye hadn't, d'ye see, these two old ladies to take care on."

Jack's glazed hat and flushed face disappeared with a growl of the polar bear species; and the old miss, throwing herself back in the seat rashly, the crash of some glass utensil was heard, and thereupon succeeded a pleasant, though somewhat overpowering smell of-was it of-was it of-brandy? Impossible

"Oh, gently scan your brother, manMore gently sister woman.'

At this the fat man turned his nose to larboard, and held it there for a few seconds steadily, like a pig scrutinising the colour of the wind; then wrinkled it up strongly, and screwed his mouth into the shape of the letter O, philosophically stroking his chin, and gave me, who was sitting right opposite him, a sly, knowing sort of wink.

"We shall have cheap whisky, soon," said he, now that half the duty is coming off. Man, woman, or child, may get comfortable for fourpence."

"That's a cut at the women, gudeman; ye're aye bothering folks wi' your wit," said his better half; "ye're aye joking. It wouldna be telling us if we did not take better care of oursells than some people." With this she leaned forward, and gave Miss Plumbdamasc a cutting glance. "Na, na-whisky, say ye?-whan we begin to drink, something better maun serve us. Na,

ployed. We visit the sick, mind our ain household concerns, manage our husbands, and gang, when we have leisure, to the Bible societies."

From the unremitting attentions of the primitive son of Esculapius, it was evident that he was on the look-out concerning the virgin; but, alas and alack-a-day! the bursting of the pocketpistol ruined his tenderest hopes. The modern Anacreon beautifully says: "Alas! how small a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! A something light as air-a look,

A word unkind, or wrongly takenOh! love, that tempests never shook

A breath, a touch like this, has shaken."

But the present instance surpassed all these. Heavens! that the ties of affection should be cut asunder by a smell, a mere aroma, an invisible effluvium. On what sandy foundations are the structures of man built! For the remainder of his ride the doctor sat, like Diogenes in his tub, stern and cynical, caring not for man-no, nor woman either." He was like the stricken deer, over which the melancholy Jacques moralised

"Harebat lateri lethalis arundo."

Miss Wrinkle kept her handkerchief at her face, as if afflicted with toothach and afraid of the air,-not without strong reasons, which any one could easily smell; strong were the volatile effluvia.

The despairing shepherd, the forsaken Corydon, the pulse and purse feeling graduate, reckless of his rheumatic cheek, thrust his red napkin into his pocket, and gazed out at the window" with the fixed cold glance of despair."

There was a universal silence. We trotted on. It was truly a populous solitude." The lawyer, finding no room for display, or afraid of throwing his pearls before swine, had cut our conversational party altogether, and was busily engaged conning_over some broad-margined papers. The fat man,

picture of self-satisfaction, philosophy, and a full stomach" needing not," as Blair said of Shakespeare, "the spectacles of books to read nature "felt, from silent conviction, that the digestive process goes on best during sleep, and, not being particularly anxious as to where he enjoyed his siesta, wisely thought of "catching time by the forelock." His spouse, from looking at the nodding head and winking eyes of her better half, felt that sympathy to "go and do likewise " which strong affection dictates, and in five minutes from her husband's first attempt at nasal horn-blowing I felt the facilis descensus of her head towards my left shoulder-at first a languid declension, like that of a lily surcharged with weight of dew, and then a calm, steady settlement, like that of the "vast rotundity" of the ethereal expanse on the ditto of Atlas. His was a burden, but mine was a welcome freight, had it not been from a carious tooth, which imparted to the breath of this confiding Juliet an odour not exactly similar to that of violets.

The coach drawing up rapidly, her head (bonnet and all) fell down into her lap with a jerk. I was afraid it had fallen off for ever; but my fears were at an end when she cried out, "Losh me! I have had a comfortable nap--needcessity has no law." From the operation of the same cause, the fat man lost his balance, and fell to the left on the affligé of the rheumatism, "like Mount Etna on the Titans," as Barry Cornwall would emblematise it, but was received in sullen silence, and regained an equipoise on coming to his senses.

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One after another we shook our ears, as Burns would say, bowed to each other, and disappeared into the multitudinous human cattle-show exhibition of one of the most crowded streets in the Scottish capital. In half a minute the vehicle stood on the pavé, empty, like many an unsuspecting head, and silent as a scolding wife who has succeeded in getting the last word.