"A SCENE NEAR HOGSNORTON.
"A ditch frequented much by water-rats,
With velvet-headed rushes bordered;
Two little boys who fish for tittlebats

With sticks, and crooked pins, and bits of thread;
Three willow trees that stand with drooping boughs
Upon the banks, and look disconsolate;

A ball that flings his taii up as he lows

He's coming at those boys, as sure as fate!
A church spire peeping from amid the trees,
With vane in semblance of a fiery cock;
And Farmer Stubbles lolling at his ease,

Across a gate to view his fleecy flock;

A barn that seems just ready to fall down,

And would, but for the shores that stay its falling;
And, where yon row of elms the green slopes crown,
Is Thomas Noakes, with hand to mouth, outcalling
To Simon Simpson in the fields below,

And telling him to mind that precious bull-
He's fresh from town, poor lad, and does not know!
What danger lurks amid the beautiful;

Here a tall oak its branches flingeth out,

As if it said "I am of trees the king!"
And there an aged hawthorn spreads about

Its crooked arms-a queer misshapen thing;
Far off you see a mill-more trees-some houses-
Look at this frisking colt, why what a kicker !—
Feathers and parasols! here come the spouses

Of Dr. Dobbs, and Mr. Trench, the vicar,
The Smiths, the Joneses, and Jemimah Prescot-
I'm off, before they nail me for their escort!"

The reciter, who wore an air that bespoke him of the country, was here addressed by a metropolitan gentleman seated in his vicinity, who announced himself as a brother initialist, A. G. K. "Well, sir, Simon Simpson, fresh from town,' was not more awkwardly situated than I once was, in this very lane here, when fresh from the country. You see the vehicle has just turned out of Fleet Street, and is making for Holborn; so if you like to listen, I'll give you my impressions on first finding myself in

"CHANCERY LANE.

'I meditated the desperate design of hastening to Holborn by the first street which led thither; a desperate design, indeed, as I knew not the street through which I should have to pass. As ill-luck would have it, "Chancery Lane" was the first that offered, and well does it deserve the name; dark, narrow, crooked, long, and tedious is this Elysium of the Law! On every side I beheld long and careworn faces, and, as is generally the case with legal suits, I might easily have got through it alone, had I not been prevented by the many passengers, like the numerous little cases put into causes to protract and swell the client's difficulties. Perhaps it may be thought that I could have stepped into the middle of the street, and so have managed to walk on; not so-the vehicles were as numerous nearly as the passengers, and there was no resource but to wait. On this, I began to look around me, to see if I could discover anything that could take away the tedium of stoppage. I gazed on the persons nearest to me; from the youngest to the oldest -from the poorest to the richest, there was the same invariable careworn look.

"First there came the young office-boy, groaning under a large bag of parchment and what not; then the unfortunate articled clerk, desponding at the idea of five years in so gloomy a place, wherein his youth's best years were to be spent. The needy clerks, who received a stipend, came next; their little all had, with the characteristic theatrical mania of lawyers' clerks, vanished the night previous at the Adelphi, or adjacent tavern. But not alone did these wear a look of gloom: the fishermen, the snarers, even the attorneys themselves, looked vexed; the stoppage of the way teased them sadly. It was five minutes past the time when

that little bony wretch, the office boy, should have been screwed down to his comfortless stool, far from the apparition of a fire, from the phantom of heat! Last of all came the client: it will easily be surmised why he looked gloomy.

"The sun never shines there-the houses take care of that; in fact, the very 'fretwork' of the heavens seemed of a parchment yellow; the air breathed of briefs! No merry laugh is heard in Chancery Lane; no girl trips gaily along! No! the moaning of the dupe is heard there; the decrepit, grief-worn widow totters there, to find that her hope of subsistence is faded in useless expense. I have spoken of the numerous conveyances in the street. The horses were halfstarved, the people within seemed bailiffs; and the omnibus proprietors (unlike our Omnibus') looked anxiously for in-comers.

Chancery Lane is, indeed, a fit place for the law: the houses overhang the street-the smoky windows, ay even the few shops seem impregnated with it. I turned to a book-stall to relieve my aching gaze, when a massive row of calf-bound volumes frowned upon me; I looked in a fruiterer's stall,-dry musty raisins, bitter almonds, olives and sour apples met my view. I then cast my eyes at a perfumery-shop; the wax dummies were arrayed in judge's wigs and black legal drapery. In despair I turned to a tailor's: a figure arrayed in black, on a wooden mould, appeared; but it was swathed in a barrister's gown. There was another figure with finely-cut clothes certainly; but allegorically, I suppose, it had no head. Such is Chancery Lane. My associations with it are none of the pleasantest. What are yours?"

This question, addressed to everybody, was answered by nobody. We had now advanced to the upper end of Chancery Lane; and, passing those buildings on the left, in which Equity presides over the affairs of suitors, a passenger, who introduced himself under the designation of Sam Sly, and in whose eye there was a pleasant twinkle not ill associated with the appellation, observed in an inward tone, as if he were speaking to himself, "A poor devil who has once got into that court, must soon feel himself in the position of the letter r." As Mr. Sly's remark was not intended to be heard at all—so at least it seemed-it of course attracted general notice; and as there was a disposition manifested to know "why," Mr. Sly politely explained, "Because, though far advanced in Chancery, he can never get quite to the end of it. By the way," he proceeded, "all law is but an enigma; and talking of enigmas, I happen to have one-yes, here it is. Rather an oldfashioned sort of thing, an enigma, eh? True, but so are epics, you know. Am I to read? oh! very well, since you're all so pressing ;"-and then to the following tune Mr. Sly trolled out his

ENIGMA.

"A delinquent there is, and we ever shall scout him,
For roguery never would flourish without him.

We're lovers of peace; but regardless of quiet,

This knave is the first in a row or a riot;

A strange, paradoxical elf, we declare,

That shies at a couple but clings to a pair.

Though at first in the right, still he's found in the wrong;
And though harmony wakes him, yet dies in the song.
Three fifths of the error that poisons our youth,
Yet boasts of a formal acquaintance with truth.
Though not fond of boasting, yet given to brag;
And though proud of a dress, still content with a rag.
He sticks to our ribs, and he hangs by our hair,
And brings with him trouble, and torment and care;
Stands thick in our sorrows and floats in our tears,
Never leads us to Hope, but returns with our Fears:
To the worst of our passions is ever allied,
Grief, Anger, and Hatred, Rage, Terror, and Pride.
Yet still, notwithstanding, the rogue we might spare
If he kept back his old ugly phiz from the Fair."

We had by this time stopped at the end of Drury Lane to take up a passenger, who now appeared, emerging from that very dirty avenue, with an exceedingly

small roll of MS. under his arm. The new-comer's eye was evidently in a fine frenzy rolling, and it was at once suspected from one end of the vehicle to the other, that he had just been writing a German Opera for Drury-lane Theatre. Gentlemen," said he, the instant he had taken his seat, "you're all mistaken. Through that miserable cranny I have been picking a path to the theatre for the sole purpose of taking off my hat to the statue of Shakspeare, over the portico, in celebration of the event which renders its presence there no longer a libel and a mockery. You guess what I allude to. Mr. Macready has become the lessee of Drury; and the noble task which he assigned to himself in the management of Covent Garden, he purposes here to complete. The whole public will rejoice in the renewal of his experiment, which should be hailed in golden verse. I wish I could write sonnets like Milton or Wordsworth. Here are two, such as they are, addressed to the regenerator of the stage."

TO WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY,

ON HIS BECOMING THE LESSEE OF OLD DRURY.

I.

MACREADY, master of the Art supreme,
That shows to dazzled and else guideless eyes
(As doth Astronomy the starry skies)
The airy wonders of our Shakspeare's dream;
Com'st thou again to shed a wakening gleam
Of morals, taste, and learning, where the gloom
Most darkens, as around the Drama's tomb!
Oh, come, and show us yet the true Extreme;
Transcendent art, for coarse and low desire;
The generous purpose, for the sordid aim;
For noise and smoke, the music and the fire
Of time-crown'd poets; for librettos tame,
The emulous flashings of the modern lyre-
Come, and put scowling Calumny to shame!

II.

What though with thee come Lear, himself a storm
Of wilder'd passion, and the musing Dane,
The gallant Harry and his warrior-train,
Brutus, Macbeth, and truth in many a form
Towering! not therefore only that we warm
With hope and praise; but that thy glorious part
Is now to raise the Actor's trampled Art,
And drive from out its temple a loose swarm
Of things vice-nurtured-from the Porch and Shrine!
And know, Macready, midst the desert there,
That soon shall bloom a garden, swells a mine
Of wealth no less than honour-both most bare
To meaner enterprise. Let that be thine-
Who knowest how to risk, and how to share!

L. B.

Hereupon, a bard started up in the very remotest corner, and interposed in favour of the epigram, seeing that such oddities as sonnets and enigmas were allowed to pass current. Immediately, and by unanimous invitation, he produced some lines written in the album of a fair damsel, whose sire has but one leg, and complains of torture in the toes that he has not.

"The heart that has been spurn'd by you

Can never dream of love again,
Save as old soldiers do of pain

In limbs they left at Waterloo."

We expressed our acknowledgments, and then heaved a sigh to the memory of an old friend, who, having suffered from the gout before his limb was amputated,

felt all the pain, just as usual, at the extremity of his wooden leg, which was But here regularly flannelled up and rubbed as its living predecessor used to be. our reflections were broken off by a stoppage, as if instinctively, at a chemist's shop, the door of which, standing open, afforded a fair view of the scene which follows. On the subject of homoeopathy we profess to hold no opinion; but, considering that it prescribes next to nothing to its patients, it must be an excellent system for a man who has next to nothing the matter with him. It is comical, at all events, to think of a doctor of that school literally carrying his "shop" in his pocket, and compressing the whole science of medicine into the smallest Lilliputian nut-shell. Imagine a little customer going with

Little Girl. "Please, sir, I want the hundred-thousandth part of a grain of magnesia."

Young Chemist (Whose hair would certainly stand on end, were it not so tightly pommaded down, at the simplicity of the little innocent in asking for as much medicine as would kill or cure a whole regiment of soldiers). "Very sorry, miss, but we don't sell anything in such large quantities; you had better apply at Apothecaries' Hall." And he follows her to the shop-door to see whether she had brought with her a hackney-coach or a van to carry away the commodity she had inquired for!

Driver. I say, Tom, here's that there elderly lady a coming, as wanted to go with us at our

first start.

Cad. Ay, well, it's no use, Bill-she's too late agen-ve're full-ALL RIGHT-GO ON!