handsome allowances of vices to youth might not be allowed to progress unfavoured and unfee'd. This, however, is a moral reflection interfering with the natural progress of biography, which it ought never to be permitted to do. Pineter-Mr. Pointer on the coach-a day and a night on the road-was an universal favourite; so discreet, so pleasant when he pleased, so kind to the girl-of-all-work, who loitered at the inn-gate, to see her only bit of life, and enjoy her only minute of rest, when the coach pulled up at eleven at night all of a heap, in smoke, great-coats, straw, and lamps, to supper! Then he would deliver a packet (a letter with a brown great-coat) so faithfully for Miss James to Mr. Jury; and blow so regularly under the window of the straw-hat shop at Dunstable, and wrap up a maid-servant changing place, so comfortably in his own great upper benjamin, and drink so fascinatingly and unrefusingly at the White Hart, at a traveller's request; and, in short, be so much of a guard, that he gathered, in the way of half-crowns and the like, silver, if not golden, opinions from all sorts of men. Can this be the reader will to himself ejaculate can this be the man described as the sharp, little, quiet-looking thing in brown-blackwith his quickness all over, his "beaver up!" as introduced to him in the Harp-prelude? Reader, it is the man! You have seen the sunny and moonlight side of his existence; you have seen him in his hour of bar-maid, basket, benjamin, joke, pleasantry, fee, fun, and horn; but the life of a guard is like the life of an insect, "gay being! born to flutter through a day "-and a night. The truth is, Pineter was so active, so able, so agreeable, so intense, that the coach could not run too fast for him. He could go through absolute guard-miracles; and it is a recorded fact, on the back of one of the Telegraph way-bills, that he could pole up a wheeler without a pull-up, let the pace be ten miles an hour; lock a wheel without a draw of the rein; take in a curb-link of an off-leader down hill-best steady pace; and do up his coach at the Bull and Mouth in one minute and a half office-time! Some of these things would not be believed; but let any porter at the booking-office bring to us his book and we can only say we'll kiss to it, that's all! Pineter of the coach and Pineter of the Harp back-room are one and the same thing, only they are the outside tints of the identical same rainbow. The fact is, Pineter blew too well-he blew up lazy ostlers too well; he blew cigars on long woolly nights too well; he blew-yes, "last thing of all that ends this strange eventful history!"-he blew the key-bugle too well. Accomplished and ardent in most villages, full of variations and capriccios at most evening-towns, he was earnest, impressive, pathetic, and too-oh too-powerful at Market-street! There was a young lady residing there; he wished to make her his wife—“ Else why this horn?" She half encouraged him as he passed through; but -woe the sex-she wholly encouraged another, a resident; and what with over-blowing, the breaking of a blood-vessel, hopeless love, nightair, and the coach being put down, Pineter left the road-shrunk saddened into a wiser if not a better man, became the thin, sharp clerk to an old-school attorney in the Temple; married a lady that took in needlework; lived over the water; and became the very quiet, keen, meagre, harpist (no longer buglist), to whom Mr. Quail addressed his mingled wonderment, bad English, and inquiry, which has already been detailed to the reader. The history has run out a length. The pause was long; take from the history and add it to the pause, if, reader, thou art particular. At any rate, consider thyself as now taking up the dialogue between the two pipers, with a knowledge also (no matter whether naturally arrived. at or not) of two of the units that make up the great sum of human existence, to use the words of Scott-one unit being Mr. Quail, the other Mr. Pineter. "Well! I don't and I can't see this!" repcated Quail, with a double X emphasis on his can't, determined to draw Pineter from behind his pipe into a palaver. "Why," continued Quail, "should the magistrate first order him-aye, I won't mince matters, the Earl of Z- -to find bail, do you see, and then let him loose upon this here society for five shillings? There's no coming at these things, Mr. Pineter, look at 'em on all the three sides as you will." Pineter spoke-short epigrammatic in his looks, his tone, his voice. His nature seemed to have been whetted upon the hard grindstone of the law, and had taken keenness and roughness together. Pineter blew out a vapour, with his little finger suspended over the bowl of his pipe, as though he were finishing upon the key-bugle in other days, and replied "You don't see these things, my dear Mr. Quail, because you who have lived quietly all your life have never been behind the scenes -that's it!" That was not it. Quail was answered, but he was mazed! He was instructed, but he wanted an interpreter! "Behind the scenes!" ejaculated Quail, pushing his sand-box away, pushing his abandoned pipe away, and clearing away, as it were, the decks for action-"What has the magistrate to do in this case behind the scenes ?" "I repeat," said Pineter, unmoved, "you have never been behind the scenes." And a cloud closed up the remark, something like that vapour which encircles one of the genii in the Arabian Nights after a miraculous observation to a terrified caliph ! Quail collected all this cloud into his countenance, and looked at his companion with as perfect a fog of expression as even Quail in his happiest moments of at-sea-ism could muster up. "I see," said Pineter (though he never looked at the pozee), "I see that you take things plainly as they are spoken. Now you think what is said of 'behind the scenes,' means the back of the Adelphi, or the Surrey here, or Sadlers Wells, or Covent Garden, or indeed the rear part of any of the playhouses, with Vestris, and Mr. T. P. Cooke, and Macready, and Mr. Davidge; but bless your innocence! behind the scenes,' is a wide expression. It takes in, you see, Mr. Quail, both sides of matters, and lets you into the rough face of Saxony blue, as it were, as well as the smooth back. Now you see what I mean?" "I thought I was nigh it once," said Quail; "but I can't see your two sides of Saxony blue at once; and what has that to do with behind the scenes ?" A puff from Pineter seemed to make the already obscure a perfect chaos. Quail called back and took up his pipe; but Pineter appeared to have put it out; and he thrust it away from him again at a greater distance than ever! This divorcement ever denotes an approach-mark this, reader!-this divorcement of live clay from dead clay ever denotes Feb.-VOL. XLIX. NO. CXCIV. R an approach to an alienation from temper. A man may part from his friend, his child, his love, his wife, with a collected and philosophic coolness; but the moment he parts, at a push, from his pipe, then is he fearful, then is there in him something dangerous! Pineter, without observing upon this testy act of unsatisfied ignorance, proceeded" Mr. Quail, I'll tell you what I meant by 'behind the scenes,' which you seem to know so uncommon little about; and I don't think I can bring it clearer to your understanding, or comprehension (for I don't want to use so offensive a word as understanding), than by giving you a character of a young man of our office; because his life is a life of behind the scenes, you see, and I know it; at least I now know it; and I have seen a good deal inside and out! Now mind that's true!" "I should like nothing better than a pictur!" exclaimed Quail, more alive than usual; and he reached his hand instinctively at the bell-pulled it, but it did not ring-waited for the waiter, who did not come and then pulled again, fit to pull the house down-ordering, at the appearance of "the sleepy groom,' "another glass of cold sherrywithout, with an air of indignation, as if he were the most neglected of The waiter, half a somnambulist and half a deformity, gathered up, almost unconsciously, three empty glasses-slowly repeated the order at the door, like a charity child waiting for confirmation, and, in due time, placed before the commander a sloppy goblet of yellow-caped water, with a lump of something white at the bottom, and a sticky teaspoon to ascertain what it was. men. Quail at once seemed a happy man!-a fresh glass, or rather a glass of something fresh, and a chance of historical information, were before him. 66 Now, Mr. Pineter-now, if you please-now the lad is out of the room, let me have behind the scenes ?" Pineter, little and angular as his blowing-life had left him, almost swelled himself into a Gibbon as he began his history. The boa-constrictor with a month's abstinence, and the boa-constrictor after an immediate rabbit, could not be more opposed to each other in appearance. Sir Giles Overreach says of Wellborn "His fortune swells him!" but nothing swells a man like the pipe-importance which comes to a being of this working-day world, when, in a back parlour, in a small company, he first essays to enlarge, with some small anecdote, the minikin mind of his fellow-man. "You see, Mr. Quail-now, mark me!-we have a clerk in our office-not a large man, mind! but an industrious man-not a florid man, but a pale man-not a man, in short, given to pleasure, but a glutton at business from nine to nine out of term, and nine to ten and upwards in. Mr. Petty, that's his name, is beloved by all in the office. He is the common law clerk-and out-of-door clerk-and attends to the agency and the accounts-and assists Mr. Pike in Chancery. Nothing puts him out of sorts-nothing goes wrong. He writes till he can't spell, and runs about till he can't walk. He tells nothing of master or his affairs to any human being-close, mark me !-which you know is very considerate in a lawyer's office." "I should think so," murmured Quail, listening, fit to burst. "Oh!" continued Pineter, uninterrupted by Quail's reponse; "oh! if you could but have seen his patience under difficulties-his politeness, look you, to clients-his humble civility, mark me, to his masterhis endurance of tricks from the articled clerk-his punctuality, you see, at office time. He was-if ever there was one in the Temple-a lamb of the law!" “A limb, you mean," said Quail. No, a downright lamb without a bleat of complaint!" "Oh! ah! quite a lamb," ejaculated Quail. "And he had only seventeen shillings a-week, and was married; but then, to be sure, he got work at over-hours, and his wife was a most industrious woman at milliner-work and the like; and he had only two children, mark me. He was a pattern to all clerks, pick 'em where you will! Now, Mr. Quail, you begin to smell my meaning, eh?"-so Pineter exclaimed as he worked himself into the marrow of his biography. Upon my word I'm never a bit nearer yet, though I like the character of Mr. Petty. But I don't see your meaning, no way!" And Quail, with an evident desire to be alive, seemed at this inquiry to relapse into the last stage of mental consumption. "Why, then, this it is. You see," continued Pineter, “ you have now seen Mr. Petty before the curtain-that is-now mind-because here it is-you have now seen him in his duties—and mind-and I'm right-mind a man is never so much a man as when he is in his duties. Then he's there! Well, you've seen him a perfect man-a real perfect Petty! Now, Mr. Quail, I'm going to take you behind the scenes. Six weeks agon, look you, it was his birth-day-Petty's birth-day,". "What-his annual birth-day-that what we keep, eh?" asked Quail. - "Yes! that identical day. Well, nothing would serve Petty in the hilarity of the moment at ten in the morning, after post had come in -just before Mr. Pike came to office-but I and the articled clerk must sup with him. He wanted to keep it, you see-natural enough. No denial-indeed we did not try him with one. But I'm sure from his manner he would not have had it. Mr. Pike came-testy as usual— till five o'clock; and then Petty got over all the work by nine. We left soon after Mr. Pike, certain that Petty was sure to stay. To the supper we went-knocked, mind me-waited-knocked again--some one answered-told us to ring the second bell, and shut the door, in order to let it be properly opened." "Well, but it was opened, I thought," inquired Quail. "Don't interrupt!-Down came a lady-Mrs. Petty-all over best! Up-stairs we were ushered, and into a room we entered. There sat Petty-Petty, bless you! He seemed a common-law lion! There he was, in a large, rather raggedish, arm-chair, looking twice his office size-in a wrapping-gown stuffed--his feet in slippers, red-uns-his poor day-drooping hair combed up, or thrust up, into a mane ;—and he welcomed us with a voice of his own-an air of his own-a motion of his own-all new, and up! No longer Petty at 17s. a-week!-it seemed Petty the Great! He blew up his wife for all she did (and she did everything), and for all she did not, and he did nothing. He ordered us to our seats-chucked our oysters into our plates-thrust our ginand-water upon us-sang a song about When Vulcan forged '-made his wife sing, and then abused her for it-drank twice for our oncebullied us both-got very drunk-and was helped, or rather wrenched, to bed by all of us.-Could this be Petty-our Petty? you say. Yes, Mr. Quail, it was Fetty—' behind the scenes,' mind you. In the morning he was again at office, we heard, as usual; and certainly, when I saw him, meeker and more attentive than ever. But I had had a touch of him behind the scenes,' and never knew what a common-law clerk could be before. Now you understand what I mean by this account of Mr. Petty-mind me," concluded Pineter. Why, I do just guess at it," replied Quail, as he made a conclusive gulp of his Cape-and-water. "If you sit in front, you see, Mr. Quail, you don't see what's going on behind," continued Pineter, determined to hammer something like a meaning into his companion's understanding. "Now, if the magistrate hadn't been let behind the scenes, look you, and been shown who the Earl of Z- really was, he'd have sent him right off as a common knocker stealer, or made him find bail, which is worse; and so have committed somebody of consequence, which, you know, is against all rule Mind me, that's it." "Jist so," said Quail. "Two sides, mind. One all dress, and show, and front lamps, you see, for the front! Well, then, all's in the rough if you go round-all dark, dirty, dingy, and ugly behind-eh?-or tersy-versy. Now you see." Quite," said Quail; and he rose up (for the landlord had twice opened the door, and shut it again loudishly, without a word); and Quail hemmed, and he reached down his beaver. "You are clear now," said Pineter; "because it's a notion worth remembering." "Quite," concluded Quail. "But, after all, it's just the same, when you think on it, as the Adelphi or the Surrey, as far as I can see. We are but where we set out Mr. Pointer left for the night. The Harp was immediately closed, according to Act of Parliament hours; and Quail reached his home in perfect safety and profound ignorance! R. MARTIAL IN LONDON. ACTOR AND FISHMONGER. AN actor, one day, at a fishmonger's shop |