cry, 'Here, venerable sire, here let us linger!'

I believe a common protest is raised from time to time, by old togeys, that young men in this country are not what they used to be; and, upon my word, though I disregarded the notion a dozen years ago, I begin to have some faith in it now. One faculty, at least, they seem to be losing-the faculty of enjoyment.

Look at Young England in a ball-room, at the theatre, or during a pic-nic. Does he look happy, amused, or impulsed in any way? or is he a mere listless young dandy, blasé, and bored-or affecting to be so-with everything and everybody around him? I vow there are some young gentlemen of this description whom I never see without feeling a strong desire to slap them heartily hetween the shoulders (can't you imagine their horror at such a greeting?), and ask what on earth they think worth caring for. Early in the last decennium, we young fellows, whose whiskers were just beginning to bud, not only enjoyed life, but didn't mind showing that we enjoyed it. Our tastes were none of the most intellectual, I am afraid. We courted the muses after a rough and ready fashion-over pipes of bird's-eye and tankards of pale ale. There weren't so many novels to read then as there are now; but somehow I fancy they had better stuff in them. I know we looked forward every month to the appearance of Mr. Thackeray's two yellow leaves, and Mr. Dickens's two green leaves, with a zest which is unknown to the rising generation. There was not a chapter in David Copperfield' that we didn't discuss, laughing at Peggotty and Mr. Micawber, indignant with Uriah Heep, pitying poor little Dora, and deeply touched by the fate of handsome, reckless, proud, misguided Sturforth. Pendennis we voted somewhat of a prig; but his friend, George Warrington-was not that a character to study, to admire, and emulate? I believe when the great satirist of our day, in his profound world-wisdom, sketched that lifelike portrait, half the interest with

which he invested it was due to the fact that he was unconsciously describing himself. Only a few of us had kept up our Latin; and Raikesmere, of the State Sinecures Office (who went up from Eastminster to Oxford, but left that university, for reasons which need not here be named, without taking his degree), was mighty apt with his quotations from Horace when we met at the Cimbrian Stores to dine, or sat gossiping round some third-floor fireplace in the Temple. 'Nunc est bibendum!' he used to cry, blowing off the froth from his pewter; and most of the young artists who heard him, not having themselves had the advantage, as the phrase is, of a classical education, regarded that thriftless reprobate as a miracle of wit and learning. But when we came to talk of books in our own mother-tongueof English poets, from Chaucer down to Mr. Tennyson-my goodness, what a chattering there was! what a fierce puffing of threepenny cheroots! what an outpour of earnest, frank, and beer-inspired arguments!

The Cimbrian Stores was an old-fashioned tavern, where an eighteenpenny ordinary was held at six o'clock. The bitter ale (and a very decent tap too) came to fourpence, and one gave twopence more to the waiter, which, you see, exactly made up the two shillings-a modest but sufficient item in our

daily expenses. I've had worse dinners in my time, I can tell you. They gave us soup or fish, a cut off the roast, vegetables, and a famous piece of Cheddar cheese. There was wine at a moderate tariff for those who liked it. Mr. Vokins, the respected landlord, took the chair precisely as the quaint old mahogany-cased clock in the corner struck the hour, and, rapping the table with his carving-knife, said a brief but impressive grace. It was a snug and cosy little set that gathered round that table. A few middle-aged personal friends of Mr. V. sat right and left of him. On the subject of their respective professions I was then, and am still, completely in the dark. They en

tered the room just five minutes before dinner-time, and fell half asleep over their grog, when we youngsters went back to our books and drawing-boards, or oftener, if my memory doesn't deceive me, to the pit of some theatre, especially in the winter season, when we made a point of visiting all the pantomimes.

I am thankful to say that I have not yet lost my relish for pantomimes. Burlesques, I admit, bore me horridly. It wasn't so with dear Planché's inventions. His wit was elegant and scholar-like; his jokes, if not profound, had a genuine sparkle about them quite independent of the mere double entendre; the stories which he chose for illustion were admirably adapted for his purpose. You didn't want a breakdown nigger dance, or an infant prodigy, or an optical illusion to set them off. The days of Vestris, the days of Harley, oi Mdlles. St. George, Reynolds, and Horton,-that was the golden age of burlesque writing and burlesque acting. Those artists played their parts as if they enjoyed the fan themselves. Your modern actors and actresses seem only to condescend to theirs. They enunciate those wretched little milkand-water puns as if they were ashamed of them-and well they may be, for, as a rule, weaker balderdash has never passed for wit. Jokes indeed! why you might make a gross of them in an hour. They are not jokes-they are not even puns-but a silly jingle of sounds. The audience don't laugh at this stuff: they can't. I defy any one with a grain of sense to do so. They only utter a dismal groan, which runs round the dress-circle like a banshee's wail.

But a pantomime, a real, genuine, well-organized pantomime, with a regular transformation-scene and plenty of harlequinade, is a national institution which I trust may never become extinct. It is not an intellectual amusement, perhaps; to enjoy it you need be familiar neither with politics nor the pages of Dr. Lemprière's dictionary. It is simple nonsense, if you will-but then it pretends to be nothing else. We

can't always (thank goodness) combine instruction with amusement, like the amiable pedagogues who invent geographical games, and playfully beguile little boys into the rule of three. No; a pantomime is solely intended to make us laugh, and the man who refuses to laugh at it once a year, and in the presence of children, must be a gloomy misanthrope. For my part I confess to no little sympathy with Mr. Merryman in his various escapades. I like to see him purloining sausages, geese, and legs of mutton, and admire the adroitness with which he transfers those comestibles to his capacious pocket. I am pleased when he divides the fish with Pantaloon, and, with a great semblance of fairness, reserves by far the larger share for himself. I rejoice when he is fired out of a cannon or pressed flat in a mangle, because I know by experience that his constitution can stand these trials, and that ten to one he will be livelier for them in the next scene. As for Columbine, I have always regarded her as one of the most fascinating women in Christendom, and could 'desire no better fate than to go through life with such a partner, pirouetting up and down the world dressed in a tight suit of spangles, like that lucky dog Harlequin, who can leap into a clock-face, or disappear through a shop-shutter as quick as lightning-whenever it suits his convenience.

A halo of intense respect surrounds the memory of those old Cimbrians as I picture them to myself, seated on sturdy Windsor chairs, in that homely but hospitable parlour panelled high with English oak, and bearing on its walls fair copies of the Lely portraits at Hampton Court. They were very strong in politics-those stout and ancient Britons-a subject which, judging from my own experience, interests the art-student but very little. So we let them say their say, and wag their venerable old heads with solemn earnestness, as they discussed the merits of Sir Robert Peel, and entered at length upon the great Chartist question.

As for nous autres, we kept our conversation pretty much to our

selves. Sometimes a dozen of us, painters, sucking barristers, governinent-office clerks, and a medical student or two, would form a little conclave at one end of the table, and, content for once to spend a quiet evening, would sit on, gossiping, long after the old habitués of the place (the extra-ordinaries, as we used to call them, in playful allusion to the nature of the banquet) had toddled home. It was at one o'clock, I think, when Robert, the head waiter, used to come in, rubbing his eyes, with a Now gennlemen, if you please!' the usual form of warning which he gave us previously to turning off the gas. I fear a good deal of what military men call 'pipeclay,' and civilians 'shop,' was talked on all sides, and the artists had the best of it. It will, I believe, be admitted that the failing is natural to us as a class. Scarcely any other calling can be said to furnish a theme for work and play to the same devotees. When Mugwell, the rising young lawyer, goes off to Switzerland for the long vacation, do you suppose he troubles his head with Blackstone on the Wengern Alp, or pops a brief into his pocket before stepping on board the boat at Lucerne ? You might travel all day with those eminent medical celebrities, Dr. Pillington and Mr. Lancelot Probus, and never find out that one gentleman obtained a livelihood by writing hieroglyphics at a guinea a page, and that the other would be ready at any moment to cut you up-not metaphorically, but in the flesh-without the slightest remorse? I have known even sober and unimpeachable divines modify their costume to no small extent as soon as they have crossed the Channel, exchange the conventional white choker for an easy silk neckerchief, replace the stern chimneypot with a comfortable wideawake, and wear an ordinary shooting-coat instead of the more orthodox paletot. Barring a slight tendency to intone his conversation, you would hardly recognize his reverence in the frank and genial talker who sits next you at the table d'hôte. If our young clergy have their little failings they

certainly do not intrude ecclesiastical intelligence upon you between the wine and walnuts, that is, unless you begin the subject. But what does 'an artist like to talk about so much as his art? How delighted he is sure to be if, agreeing with the theories which he propounds, you endorse his opinion that Madder Brown is a great genius! With what mingled pity and contempt he will regard you if you happen to admire the landscapes of Stippler! 'What, my dear fellow, that man's work like nature? Nonsense! I tell you there isn't a bit of nature in it! It's the feeblest, most commonplace stuff you ever saw! I don't suppose he ever drew anything but a cork correctly in all his life! Colour, indeed! the fellow's got no sense of colour in him. That foreground of his thing last year-hung on the line too, by Jove!--was nothing but a sheer piece of cabbage from Fogley's picture, and as for his greens-' &c., &c.

The artist-diners at the Cimbrian Stores outnumbered all the others put together. Law and medicine held their own sometimes; and when the gossip turned on general literature, we met on common ground. But art was the favourite subject of conversation, or 'jaw,' in the polite language of the Cimbrians. Our occasional visitors, perhaps, found it a little too much of a good thing sometimes, but most of them were very good-tempered on this point, and listened in meek astonishment to the astounding expressions of sentiment which came pouring forth from our lips in a fragrant cloud of tobacco. Once,

and once only, was there any marked or offensive allusion to this habit, when that muff, Raikesmere, would insist on bringing his friend, young Tuftleigh Hunter, also of the, S-nec-re Office, to dine with us. The idiot came in evening dress, with a jewelled shirt-front, and looked round upon our tweed coats and hairy faces with a mixed look of surprise and contempt. We were civil enough to him at first, but he scarcely deigned to speak to one of us, and, winking at Raikesmere after dinner (he had been

drinking pretty freely), remarked that there was a d-d smell of paint in the room. I don't think any one of us would have seen the allusion, but that the fool began to chuckle (as fools will) when he had uttered this splendid piece of witticism.

I was sitting just opposite him, and my old schoolfellow, Dick Dewberry, of the Middle Temple, was by my side. Dick had been at Oxford with Tuftleigh, and knew his line. Moreover, Dick was an amateur painter of no inconsiderable merit, and had a fellow-feeling for

our cause.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' cries Mr. Dewberry, very stiffly, across the table; 'I think you said that'

"That there was a smell of paint. Yes, I did,' says the grinning dandy; 'perhaps you don't object to it?'

To which, sir, the paint or your remark?' asks Dick, pretty smartly. Raikesmere turned crimson.

"Pon my life I don't know,' drawled Hunter. You seem to take offence. Are you a painter?'

'Why, no, sir, but I'm a gentleman,' cries Dick, lighting his cigar; 'and a few of my friends here are both.'

"Then I s'pose you're accustomed to paint,' sneers Hunter, unabashed. Raikesmere was nudging his elbow, and telling him to shut up.

'Perhaps so,' retorts Dick; but there are some things we are not accustomed to, and don't mean to endure. Raikesmere, if your friend wants the fresh air, there's plenty of it down stairs in the street.'

Tuftleigh, pouring out another glass of wine, muttered something about a public room being public property, and that he'd be blanked before he moved to oblige anybody. He was getting rapidly drunk. Dewberry rang the bell.

'Robert,' said he, when the waiter made his appearance, is the billiard-room engaged?'

'Not a soul but the marker in it, sir,' says old Bob. 'Very well. Then what do you say to a game of pool, gentlemen?' We all started up, glad of the opportunity to avoid a row, and left this uncivilest of civil servants alone with his friend. Raikesmere

came after us with an ample apology, but it was the last time he ventured to bring one of his dandiacal acquaintances to dine with us.

'Confounded puppy!' growled Dewberry, when he had got back to his chambers; I wish I had punched his head. I would if he could have stood up and taken care of himself. There's no love lost between us, I promise you.'

'Ever seen him before?' I asked, for I felt sure there was some old grudge rankling in Mr. Dewberry's bosom.

'Well, yes, I have,' said Dick, somewhat mysteriously. He was pointed out to me at the Crystal Palace last Thursday.'

'By whom?' said I.

Mr. Dewberry blushed a little, and, in reply, asked me whether I could keep a secret.

'To be sure, especially when a lady is in the case,' I said, for the honest fellow had turned as red as a peony, and I saw at once that we were on delicate ground.

The fact is, Jack,' continued D. D., 'that that fellow has been annoying a very great friend of mine for some time past, and in such a way that it would be very awkward, and, in fact, almost impossible for her-you're right, it is a lady-or for me, on her behalf, to take any notice of it.'

I now ventured to ask for a full explanation, having in the meantime mixed myself a glass of toddy, at Mr. Dewberry's express desire.

'You must know, then,' said Dick, after a pull at his own tumbler, 'that I have some friends living at Kensington, not far from where this fellow, Hunter, lives. In fact, they attend the same church of St. Didymus. Their pew is in one of the aisles, and he generally manages to get a seat close by. Well, fancy, for some weeks past the horrid snob has been in the habit of staring in an impudent manner every Sunday during service at this lady, who is very young, you know, Jack, and -ahem!-really very pretty; and she hasn't any father or brother, by the way—yes, by Jove! in such a manner as really to annoy her very much, and she