Clifford turned his eyes first on one, and then on the other, but made no answer.

"Imprimis," said Tomlinson, "let us each produce our stock in hand. For my part, I am free to confess-for what shame is there in that poverty which our exertions are about to relieve?—that I have only two guineas, four shillings, and three pence half-penny."

"And I," said Long Ned, taking a China ornament from the chimney-piece, and emptying its contents in his hand, " am in a still more pitiful condition. See, I have only three shillings and a bad guinea. I gave the guinea to the waiter at the White Hart yesterday; the dog brought it back to me to-day, and I was forced to change it with my last shiner. Plague take the thing! I bought it of a Jew for four shillings, and have lost one pound five by the bargain!"

"Fortune frustrates our wisest schemes!" rejoined the moralizing Augustus. "Captain, will you produce the scanty wrecks of your wealth?"

Clifford, still silent, threw a purse on the table. Augustus carefully emptied it, and counted out five guineas. An expression of grave surprise settled on Tomlinson's contemplative brow; and, extending the coins towards Clifford, he said, in a melancholy tone

A look from Clifford answered the interesting interrogatory. "These, then," said Tomlinson, collecting in his hand the common wealth," these, then, are all our remaining treasures!" And as he spoke, he jingled the coins mournfully in his palm, and gazing upon them with a parental air, exclaimed

"Alas! regardless of their doom, the little victims play!'"

"Oh! damn it," said Ned, "no sentiment! Let us come to business at once. To tell you the truth, I, for one, am tired of this heiress-hunting; and a man may spend a fortune in the chase before he can win one.'

"You despair, then, positively, of the widow you have courted so long?" asked Tomlinson.

"Utterly?" rejoined Ned, whose addresses had been limited solely to the dames of the middling class, and who had imagined himself, at one time, as he punningly expressed it, sure of a dear rib from Cheapside. "Utterly: she was very civil to me at first; but when I proposed, asked me, with a blush, for my references. References! said I; why, I want the place of your husband, my charmer; not your footman!" The dame was inexorable; said she could not take me without a character; but hinted that I might be the lover instead of the bridegroom; and when I scorned the suggestion, and pressed for the parson, she told me, point blank, with her unlucky city pronunciation, That she never would accompany me to the haltar!""

"Ha, ha, ha!" cried Tomlinson, laughing, "one can scarcely blame the good lady for that. Love rarely brooks such permanent ties. But have you no other lady in your eye?"

"Not for matrimony: all roads but those to the church !"

While this dissolute pair were thus conversing, Clifford, leaning against the wainscot, listened to them with a sick and bitter feeling of degradation, which, till of late days, had been a stranger to his breast. He was at length aroused from his silence by Ned, who, bending forward, and placing his hand upon Clifford's knee, said, abruptly,

"In short, captain, you must lead us once more to glory. We have still our horses: I keep my mask in my pocket-book, together with my comb. Let us take the road to-morrow night, dash across the country towards Salisbury, and after a short visit in that neighbourhood to a band of old friends of mine- bold fellows, who would have stopped the devil himself when he was at work upon Stonehenge make a tour by Reading and Henley, and end by a plunge into London."

"You have spoken well, Ned!" said Tomlinson, approvingly. "Now, noble captain, your opinion?"

"Messieurs," answered Clifford, "I highly approve of your intended excursion, and I only regret that I cannot be your companion." "Not! and why?" cried Mr. Pepper, amazed.

"Because I have business here that renders it impossible. Perhaps, before long, I may join you in London."

"Nay," said Tomlinson, "there is no necessity for our going to London, if you wish to remain here; nor need we at present recur to so desperate an expedient as the road. A little quiet business at Bath will answer our purpose; and, for my part, as you well know, I love exerting my wits in some scheme more worthy of them than the highway-a profession meeter for a bully than a man of genius. Let us then, captain, plan a project of enrichment on the property of some credulous tradesman. Why have recourse to rough measures so long as we can find easy fools?"

As I approach the termination of this-work, I was going to say, but "patch-work" is the more appropriate term for it-the difficulty of a graceful end becomes more and more manifest. Genius, and the artistic application of materials, no doubt go far in forming the character of a literary composition; but perhaps no amount of either could construct a perfect production upon a subject intrinsically disagrecable, or with agents calculated to command nothing but contempt. "Leatherlungs the Leg" is a biographical fiction," founded upon fact" as notorious in its general working as any item of modern social economy. Nevertheless, "leggism" is undoubtedly the greatest anomaly of our time. It is no longer the fashion for our nobles to affect the society and occupation of stage-coachmen, nor for gentlemen to be seen in our streets arm in arm with prize-fighters. But it is considered correct for men of station and mark to mix up with their pleasures association with professional bettors-as a class probably the most disreputable society of men to be found at large on the face of the earth. I wish to Mercury that the author of "Ten Thousand a-Year" had taken this matter in hand. It was just the subject for Mr. Warren's plain, vigorous, common sense, coupled with the style of expression and chasteness of thought which shed such a

flavour of poetry over his incidents and narratives. Had Leatherlungs been his hero in lieu of Tittlebat Titmouse, he would have had Achilles substituted for Bob Acres. As it is, I must even come at my climax as best I may-by a route, be it understood, by no means laid out by my imagination, and wind up with a scene which has no sort of claim to be "Fancy's sketch."

Towards the end of the season of the Leg and his lady designed an entertainment which they spared no cost or pains to render piquante, seeing that men who have been dining as well as supping full of luxury for some four or five months without intermission need a highly-spiced cuisine to tempt them to taste freely. The dinner, therefore, left nothing to be imagined or desired.

The party, too, were of especial caste. There was the Count d'Or-Moulu, just beginning to be a little tarnished, but still excellently well thought of " in the world." There was the Honourable Captain Antinuous Fox, whose pursuits were said to be of a nature to insure his being soon hunted by another pack beside that of "the ladies" by whom he was then considerably rnn after. There was Sir Fribble Fetterly and his chere amie, whose bouquets and bustles were the glory of the ballet at the Princess's. Squire Brandy Fitz Tyke was also there; but he came so drunk that he may be looked upon as little better than a nominis umbra. Of course Chili Chizzle was one of the party; and though in the category of cunning, like Isaac in the play, "not the least in the good love of the host-or hostess." It boots not to particularize the polloi, which consisted of individuals of no account, save that at their bankers, and the reputation for great scarcity of brains. Only one of the guests remains to be especially alluded to, and with him the reader has been already much acquainted: Latest of the arrivals in the drawing-room was the Baron Von of whom it is only necessary to remark that he had grown a vast deal more disgusting than when we saw him in the salon of the Widow Ward. The cause of his tardy appearance was his detention in the boudoir of the lady now become Mrs. Leatherlungs. What brought him there, and what he did, may be gathered from the subjoined dialogue.

Mrs. L.: "My good friend, sit there, on that prie-dieu-I'd ask you to share this ottoman with me, only for your execrable passion for lavender water. Lord Dubberley's taste for melting day' was the refinement of odorous eccentricity compared with your bias for that barbarous bad smell. There, now your mouchoir is beyond reach of

my nose."

The Baron: "I'f heard shay shome beobles ears ish de nishest blace about 'em; but yours ish a bardickler noshe. Nebber mind for shmells, but pissness: what's ub now ?"

Mrs. L.: "My philosopher of life, it's not the ups, but the downs I'm thinking of. Leatherlungs is on his last legs. Too much prosperity has made him mad. His enemies are already leagued to spoil him; were it not better he should fall into the hands of friends? I see you comprehend. You and Chili must do the Damon and Pythias of this drama. Five-and-twenty per cent. a-piece will not pay very poorly for the capital to be turned. He can touch eight

and-thirty thousand pounds any day, between ten and five-you must not put by his cheques as curiosities, eh?"

The Baron: "Monish sho shoon ash de doors ish oben.”

Mrs. L. "I think you'll find lansquinette the best medium of transfer, because its growing fashionable. I'll take care of his curaçoa; he drinks it liberally just now, because the Marquis has a bottle laid at his bedside every night."

People may say this and that about French cooks and foreign cookery; but I never saw the like of a first-class English dinner in my culinary experience. Take it from oysters to ice-the ab ovo usque ad malum of the Roman-and it is, to my poor thinking, a passage of godlike gastronomy. Suppose we succumb to the Gaul in the item of soup-which I by no means admit-has the continent of Europe, or have the other four quarters of the globe, any idea in fish comparable with a Severn salmon in the perfection of its season? Well, Leatherlungs had recourse to Gunter on sublime occasions like the present; and Gunter, of course, affects Groves in the affair of piscatory provend; and, in short, the Leg gave that day an extatic feed. Ample justice done to the duties of the table, succeeded by coffee and chasse, the real business of the tryst was put upon the scene. Among the earliest of the human family, the passion for play is recorded as having been something akin to instinct. You find it at this hour more absorbing among the remotest races of savages than in the circles of Paris or Baden Baden. That those of high civilization, who hunger and thirst after excitement, should resort to it, in this land where multitudes possess money as if they wore Fortunatas's cap, or had the philosopher's stone in their pockets, is matter of course. There is a spirit of gambling abroad in Great Britain to an extent only dreamed of by such as have experience of the principle, with logic enough to apply it to practice.

It will not be difficult, therefore, to conceive that the coterie at our Leg's rendezvous, selected from those of keen appetite for the feast, set to it like French falconers. All clutched their cards as men who greet dear friends after long separation. Some played for love-for the widow and her ladies had all their cavaliers, sans peur, to say nothing of the rest of the adage--and some played for lucre, chiefest among them the Baron and Chili and the host. Indeed this trio presently resolved itself into a band, offensive and defensive; and, like the Spartans at Thermopylæ, set themselves against thousands. They played, too, a similar game; for it was for independence-the independence of "the Greeks." It is proverbial that, when those of that state meet, "then comes the tug of war." To give Leatherlungs his due, he stood to it as dauntlessly as Leonidas. As his forces disappeared, his courage gained ground; and, either by grace of superhuman courage, or Fortnum and Mason's curaçoa, he did battle at sore odds-with the bravery of Bayard or old Blucher. They swept his "counters" from before him-that Baron and Chili Chizzle-as though they had merely been "rascal" and valueless as the bits of bone which were their substitutes. Nobody knows the sums that Leatherlungs lost, because nobody took cognizance of them except the confidantes; and they not only took cognizance, but cheques payable

to bearer on demand. Nor were they suffered long to remain in suspense; for scarce had the drawer shut his eyes, and the clerks at and's opened their ledgers, than they were presented, and as duly honoured. The result was never known in its details; but it was pretty generally understood that the ophecleide of Tattersall's had gone somewhere for repair, for after that evening it took no part in the weekly concert at "the Corner."

I had been discounting the day in Routine Row, in preparation for the evening meal, and it was a long, dull business; and, halfdozing, I gave my horse to my groom, and strolled down Waterlooplace to my club. At the end of the Quadrant a fellow with an infamous face solicited me to invest half-a-sovereign in a white poodle pup in a high state of coiffure. I told him to go to the devil. He went, and as he departed on his way, it struck me I had seen him before. The heat and the solitude and the bore-the opera and everybody else had already left town-had made me drowsy, and I threw myself on my chaise longue before I dressed. When my valet roused me, and I had finished adjusting a sufficiently orthodox choker, I asked myself, could it be a dream, or had Leatherlungs the Leg really gone to the dogs?

THE HIGH-METTLED RACER.

PLATE VII.-THE CHASE.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY J. f. Herring, sen.

"Now Reynard's turned out, and o'er hedge and ditch rush
Hounds, horses, and huntsmen, all hard at his brush;
They run him at length, and they have him at bay,
And by scent and by view cheat a long tedious way:

While alike born for sports of the field and the course,
Always sure to come through, a staunch and fleet horse;
When, fairly run down, the fox yields up his breath,
The high-mettled racer is in at the death."

Who-whoop! ne'er was so carried in my life! Gently, thoughgently, my darlings! Much as you deserve every inch of him, still let's have some signal to show how "the High-Mettled Racer was in at the death."

Our hero, then, like a Cheap-Jack article, is gradually travelling downwards. Put him in now-a two-year-old colt, by Sir Hercules, dam by Little John, out of Metre by Waxy, engaged in the Derby and warranted untried. Put him in now-come with that action, them quarters, and that shoulder-put him in at fifteen hundred, and as far from dear at the price as a Yankee statesman is from politeness, or a methodist parson from self-conceit. Or, there, if you moderation gentlemen don't like a race-horse, can't ride a race-horse, and won't buy a race-horse, just stop a minute more, and look at