his sword was honourably wreathed with laurel (though, on these occasions, like that of Harmodius hidden ev μνρтw), no one could doubt for a moment that his person would have been more fittingly decorated with the judicial ermine.

Nose-Grinder was a Scotchman, remarkable for little else than the pertinacity with which he adhered to the regulations recorded in the "buke;" and Fox the lawyer vindicated the aptitude of the name he bore by the possession of no inconsiderable mental acuteness, allied to the more vulgar faculty of "knowingness," which the angular sharpness of his features, and his rather small and piercing eyes, very faithfully reflected.

The peculiarity of the forensic proceedings consisted in the selection of any matter, however slight, upon which to ground an indictment against a member. The more unconsidered" the trifle, the greater was the amount of the ingenuity which was required to represent it as momentous; and the grave handling of topics (in an ordinary point of view), of indisputable levity, presented an admirable field for the display of that fanciful humour which abounded amongst these blameless "socialists." It is not to be supposed that all were equally acute, or equally endowed with wit and eloquence. On the contrary, many of those, admitted as members, were characterised by no small amount of absurdity. But their ambitious attempts to shine as "orators," when inspired by the juice of the grape, or the juniper-berry, afforded materials for inextinguishable amusement; and the efforts of the sharper wits were constantly applied to "drawing them out," and "fooling them to the top of their bent." Amongst this class of long-winded, but amusing bores, shone a multitude of law-students, who anxiously sought this opportunity to sharpen their faculty of speech, and put an oratorical edge upon their tongues; and not the least conspicuous of these was Mr. Blatherum Balderdash O'Dogherty, a gentleman who allowed no subject to pass by without

overlaying it with the illustrations of his many-hued eloquence, and of whose peculiar style I shall presently present my readers with a specimen.

To complete this sketch, I believe it is unnecessary that I should do more than state that the apartment (of course an exclusive one) in which these humourists assembled, was a very old-fashioned, low-roofed, irregular, narrow, comfortless, long and wriggling room, which, however, as having been applied to the uses of the society for a great number of years, was still perseveringly retained by the members out of a sort of filial reverence. In matters of this description, I believe most men are conservatives; and a proposition to shift the arena of " well-matched, friendly wits," was scouted at once with a degree of fervour that effectually prevented its repetition. A number of very venerable-looking chairs and tables constituted the sole furniture of the apartment, with the exception of a more elevated currule chair, a seat of honour, with a desk, and sundry candles, ranged before it ; a smaller desk and a stool somewhat lower for the clerk of the tables, the upper seat being destined for the dignified repose of the elected chairman and, surmounting the whole, a canopy of serge somewhat fantastically fringed, and if simple, yet not a whit less respected for the nonce than the cushion and canopy, with all their rich decorations, which contribute so much to the "pomp and circumstance" of the Lord Chancellor of England.

;

Upon the entrance of our party from the Temple, preliminary to which of course was the formal election of Davie, to the style, dignities, and privileges of a Member of "the House of Uncommons," by the title of Member for Fifeshire," (Davie having assured his friends that he never could turn a tune in his life); an announcement of that fact was made from the chair (occupied by Nose-Grinder), and this was followed by the stammering forth of a few words by Davie, in that peculiarly compact and connected style for which debutants are so remark

able, and the pledging of Davie's health, in the accustomed "cup of welcome."

When Davie responded to the toast, by drinking "a' their gude healths wi' vara muckle kindness," it became evident to the initiated, that Davie was a first-rate "character," and accordingly, with a little whispering, it was arranged that he should be drawn out forthwith.

While the members were crowding in, and other new aspirants were being inducted, O'Flaherty kept plying poor Davie, by preconcerted design, with brandy and water, until the floodgates of his naturally diffident eloquence were quite unlocked, and Davie was primed and loaded for as noisy a discharge as the keenest lover of fun could have desired.

At this instant a very conceitedlooking personage entered the room, about whose appearance there was nothing remarkable, with the exception of his wearing a tartan-plaid, folded (in the manner peculiar to Highlanders) over an ordinary walking-coat. So remarkable an object could not fail of arresting the eye of so enthusiastic a Scotchman as Davie; and as the not very symmetric mass of affectation in question took his seat within two of Davie, the latter stretched out his hand and exclaimed

"Then, by my sawl, brither Sawney, it's wi no sma' delicht I see one o' my ain kintrymin amang thae deevil's chiels o' Cokeneys-gie's yer han', mon, sin' you're no ashamed to wear the Tertan i' the heart o' Lunnun !"

The person addressed drew back with an expression of ineffable contempt.

"Hoot, mon, gie's your han'," repeated Davie, and he seized the other's palm, which was immediately rescued, however, with a conceited toss of the head, accompanied by"Moind your hown business, old feller! I disn't vant none of your hickevaintance !"

By what accident could such a person have been admitted a member of a Literary Society? The fact is, that the balloting for his admission had been performed with

unusual hurry, and that the circumstance of his being the son of a respectable Scotch merchant resident in London, was accepted as a sufficient proof of his eligibility. So engrossed was his father, however, in the congenial pursuit of money-making, that his son was abandoned almost exclusively to the society of underbred Cockney youths, whose vile peculiarities of enunciation he had faithfully acquired; and the wearing of the Tartan was a mere affectation, practised with a view partly to sustain some exaggerated notions which he had derived from his mother of the gentility of his Highland origin, but principally to direct more particular attention to the proportions of a very ordinary, yet in his own, and his mamma's estimation, a quite unimpeachable figure.

Davie's reply to this person's rudeness was a loud "guffaw," followed by the exclamation-" a Cokeney Heelander weel, in a' my boarn days!" Then, turning round to his friends, he said in an audible whisper, "Wheugh! A dom deesgoostin' indiveedyal."

This was O'Flaherty's cue. Up he reared his rotund figure, and naturally good-natured, but now ludicrously solemn countenance. With many expressions of regret he pleaded the absolute necessity under which he laboured of vindicating the character of the society at large by submitting to their notice a calumny which had been levelled "aginst the character of an honourable mimber," under circumstances of the most shocking atrocity. The duty was still more painful inasmuch as the individual against whom he was coerced to bring forward this momentous indictment was a personal friend of his own (Davie, quite in the dark, listened with much interest, never dreaming how the speech would end). But his (Mr. O'Flaherty's) ears had been the unwilling witnesses of this gross breach, not only of order and decorum, but even of common courtesy. He, therefore, had the honour of moving that Mr. MANNIKIN LILLIPUTZEN do take the chair for purpose of hearing the aforesaid charge.

The individual in question, a Bohemian of diminutive dimensions, who had got himself enrolled in the society for the purpose of bettering his knowledge of the English language, moved into the chair with the utmost reluctance, his acquaintance with English being barely sufficient to enable him to catch a glimmering of the different speakers' meaning. The rule, however, was peremptory that he should either take the chair, or pay the regulated fine; and the former course, he naturally enough judged to be the more convenient. This gentleman's presidency added very much to the farcical character of the entire proceedings; for his chin barely surmounted the lower part of the desk; and the somewhat savage cast of his features, overspread with the most ludicrous look of uneasiness-almost of positive consternation-altogether produced a singularly fine effect.

O'Flaherty now delivered his charge selon les règles, to be taken down by the speaker as follows:

"Mr. O'Flaherty charges with discourtesy, calumny, and blasphemy, Mr. David Douglas Diddledoft !"

Davie was literally horror-struck. I shall not vouch for his hair standing upon-end, but can aver that his jaws became instantaneously distended, and that, with mouth wide open, he gaped at the speaker, incapable of uttering a word.

"Oo sarge," (you charge) said the Bohemian, "Meister Daavid Duggleish Deiddle-doften vid-vid-mein gott-I has forgetten!"

Discourtesy, calumny, and blasphemy," repeated O'Flaherty.-

"Vid discortzen, blasphem, and kolomniation-goot, mein 'orrible fren' -you gotten now farr a to callen your veetness!"

The witnesses were called (Davie remaining passive, and seated, to all appearance, upon a bed of nettles), and the charge was most distinctly and ludicrously proven. Of course, from the words "Dom Deesgoostin Indiveedyal," there was no escaping. This chapter has already extended to such a length that I cannot possibly enter into the particulars of the mode in which the entire proceeding was

conducted; but I shall most probably return to these formalities in some succeeding chapter.

Mr. Blatherum Balderdash O'Dogherty, in the course of the observations which, in his capacity of counsel for the defendant, he was entitled to make, took a very original view of the case, dwelling with great emphasis upon the fact, that "the phrinological and craniological divergificaytion and entire pathological conglomeraytion of the intellectual faaculties of the accused, as dherived by the prenciples o' pure indhuction from his physiognomonical diagnosis, and a concaatenated and coetayneously comprehinsible consideraytion of his entire intity prechluded, previnted and rindhered uttherly imprescriptible as a dialectical induction, the very idaya of any supposition, imaginaytion, or somniferous speculaytion, that he could have been guilty of any thing so uttherly athroocious-so specifically-nay even ginirically abominable-so altogether disthructive of, and perniciously opposed to, the supernathural intity, as to presint himself upon the first night of his inthroduction to that splindid and illustrious associaytion, in the contimptible character of a calumniatin' blasphaymer!

With this complimentary oration -so much of it, at least, as was intelligible to him-Davie felt highly delighted. But his feelings were very much mortified, when the succeeding orator rose.

This was no less a person than Mr. GRUNT, the popular author, whose "Grandam Reminiscences" of members of the legislature, picked up from "tigers" and "flunkies" for the consideration of sundry halfpints of porter, caused so great a sensation in Scotland, his native country; whose "Great Blunderopolis," has been of such essential service to the butter and bacon trade, and to the public generally, by cheapening the means of enveloping those useful commodities, and whose "Blindfold Wanderings, and Wonderings in the Realms of Literature," have introduced Grunt in a literary téte-à-tête with no less a person than

Sir Walter Scott, who confided to him (testé GRUNT), his authorship of "Waverley," ten years before it was known to any other but Ballantyne-a remarkable proof of Scott's facility of disposition, inasmuch as the smallest of the existing gentlemen-litterateurs of London would not think of exalting the aforesaid Grunt to the office of cleansing his boots, unless, perhaps, he consented to scrub them with the old-womanish twaddle, stupid invention and bestial ignorance which he has discovered a bookseller weak enough to publish.

Mr. Grunt could not find it in his narrow soul to lend a helping hand to a countryman in distressnot he! But he was proceeding to fire off a series of "ponderous levities," like those with which his works abound, such as that Davie was " but a ra' Scotchman, an' naethin ava to his mair enlichtened kintrymin"-that he supposed he had put on the breeks the ithir day for the feerst time"-that he (Grunt) would "lin' him a fancy baw kalt, if he desired it;" and, finally, that "only he was a silly wee bodie,

he deserved ruchly to be expalled!"

Fired with the insolence of one who as a countryman should have protected him, Davie was up and at him in an instant

Like Highland cat, that guards her young, Full at Fitz-GRUNT's red throat he sprung! The scene which followed was delightfully amusing. Davie pummelled Grunt up and down in the most scientific style (having taken lessons, while at college). Grunt, as may be supposed, made a very poor defence; and though the bystanders interposed, their interference was not meant to be effective, for there was not one amongst them that did not desire to see Grunt exceedingly well trounced.

But, alas, for the mutability of human affairs! The noise of the scuffle had attracted the notice of an inspector under the New Police Act, who, accompanied by a constable, at this moment forced his way into the room, and, impervious alike to supplication and remonstrance, lodged the two combatants in the lock-up at Bow-street. Such was the termination of Davie's first night in London.

0.

Μηδὲν

ARISTOPH. In Nub. v. 995.

THE question may well be asked -aye, and repeated, and enforcedwhere is the monument of one of the greatest poets that England or Europe ever produced? Where the beautiful statue in which the exquisite chisel of the first of living sculptors-catching so felicitously the very look and moment of inspired enthusiasm, and recording it in one of his noblest works-has sought to perpetuate the poet's memory? Shame on enlightened England,-IN THE VAULTS OF THE CUSTOM-HOUSE! Shame on modern civilization,-enveloped still in the rough boards of the packing-case! Shame for our appreciation of that genius which has shed a lustre on our common country, and blazed over Europe, it is not, where it should long have stood, in the midst of monuments erected in abundance to men, almost all, his inferiors in mental power-many in the moral sense and in religious feeling-in the aisle of Westminster Abbey. A nation's gratitude (and a nation's, too, which calls itself greatbut in this, how little, how mean, how contemptible !) to the man from the universal perusal of whose delightful strains it has derived so

*As lady-readers have usually a great repugnance to the crabbed Greek character, we may as well explain that the poet's meaning in this passage, is to impress on the Athenian youth the necessity of completing the erection of a statue to an allegorical divinity, which the Greeks called Aiowo, the nearest exponent of which, in English, is reverential awe; veneration for our parents, and for illustrious men, whether living

much pure mental enjoyment-such exquisite abstraction from the plodding toils and miserable moneymaking, soul-starving pursuits of this every-day life, is witnessed by the fact that the marble monitor of his great and undoubted genius has lain for ten years, to the indignant derision of Europe, covered with dust and sack-cloth, rudely coffined up in deal boards, in that grave of all that is spiritual and refined-the Custom-house dungeon!

Upwards of a dozen years since, Lords Holland and Lansdowne, with Moore the poet, and Murray the publisher, exerted themselves very judiciously, and with great success, in obtaining subscriptions for a statue of Byron, to be executed by Thorwalsden, and placed in Westminster Abbey. Till that statue is there erected, the subscribers will be justified in directing against those individuals the reproach which was levelled at Pericles and Phidias, of “having misapplied the forty-four talents which were destined for a statue to Minerva." Their reply will be that they cannot coerce the ecclesiastical authorities. But have they been even moderately active and ener

or departed, combined with the sense of virtuous shame, which withholds from committing a dastardly or reprehensible action. As, amongst the innumerable statues which were to be found at Athens, there was none erected to this allegorical deity, the poet cautions his young audience thus: "Nor do aught base, but build up this statue in your own breasts!"