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indicated, I have never yet been regarded as Saint George; neither, on the other hand, have I ever before been represented as the Dragon! Time was, when the dove was not more gentle; but now I " frighten people from my presence," and the isle from its propriety. The "Saracen's Head" is all suavity and seductiveness compared to mine. Forty thousand knockers, with all their quantity of fright, would not make up my sum. I enter a drawing-room, it may be supposed, like one prepared to go the whole griffin. Gorgons, and monsters, and chimeras dire, are concentrated by multitudes in my person.

The aspect of Miss Jemima Jones, who is enchanting the assembled party with "See the conquering hero comes," instantaneously assumes the expression of a person singing " Monster, away." All London is Wantley, and all Wantley is terror-stricken wherever I go. I am as uncourteous as a gust of wind, as abrupt as a flash of lightning, and as rude as the billows of the sea. But of all this, be it known that I am "unconscious." This is acknowledged; "he is himself unconscious of this," which is true to the very letter, and very sweet it is to light at last upon an entire and perfect fact. But enjoying this happy unconsciousness-sharing it moreover with my friends, why wake me from the delusion! Why excite my imagination, and unstring my nerves, with visions of nursery-maids flying before me in my suburban walks-of tender innocents in arms frightened into fits at my approach, of five-bottle men turning pale in my presence, of banquet-halls deserted on my entrance!

(9.) "G. C. is the only man I know mov-so ing in a respectable sphere of life who is a match for the under class of cabmen. He meets them on their own ground, and fights them with their own weapons. The moment they de begin to swagger, to bluster, and abuse, he darts a look at them, which, in two cases out of three, has the effect of reducing them to a tolerable state of civility; but if looks do not produce the desired results-if the eyes do not operate like oil thrown on the troubled waters, he talks to them in tones which, aided as his words and lungs are by the fire and fury darting from his eye, and the vehemence of his gesticulation, silence poor Jehu effectually," &c.

Fact is told in fewer words than fiction. It so happens that I never had a dispute with a cabman in my life, possibly because I never pro

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voked one. From me they are sure of a civil word; I generally open the door to let myself in, and always to let myself out; nay, unless they are very active indeed, I hand the money to them on the box, and shut the door to save them the trouble of descending. "The greatest is behind" -Iinvariably pay them more than their fare; and frequently, by the exercise of a generous forgetfulness, make them a present of an umbrella, pair of gloves, or a handkerchief. At times, I have gone so far as to leave them a few sketches, as an inspection of the albums of their wives and daughters (they have their albums doubtless) would abundantly testify.

(10.) "And yet he can make himself exceedingly agreeable both in conversation and manners when he is in the humour so to do. I have met with persons who have been loaded with his civilities and attention. I know instances in which he has spent considerable time in showing strangers everything curious in the house; he is a collector of curiosities."

No single sympI was about to say that no single symptom of a curiosity, however insignificant, is visible in my dwelling, when by audible tokens I was (or rather am) rendered sensible of the exist

ence of a pair of bellows. Well, in these it must be admitted that we do possess a curiosity. We call them "bellows," because, on a close inspection, they appear to bear a much stronger resemblance to "bellows" than to any other species of domestic implement; but what in reality they are, the next annual meeting of the great Scientific Association must determine; or the public may decide for themselves when admitted hereafter to view the precious deposit in the British Museum. In the mean time, I vainly essay to picture the unpicturable.

Eccentric, noseless, broken-winded, dilapidated, but immortal, these bellows have been condemned to be burnt a thousand times at least; but they are

bellows of such an obstinate turn of mind that to destroy them is impossible. No matter how imperative the order-how immediate the hour of sacrifice, they are sure to escape. So much for old maxims; we may "sing old Rose," but we cannot "burn the bellows." As often as a family accident happens-such as the arrival of a new servant, or the sudden necessity for rekindling an expiring fire, out come the bellows, and forth go into the most secret and silent corners of the house such sounds of wheezing, squeaking, groaning, screaming, and sighing, as might be heard in a louder, but not more intolerable key, beneath the roaring fires of Etna. Then, rising above these mingled notes, issues the rapid ringing of two bells at once, succeeded by a stern injunction to the startled domestic "never on any account to use those bellows again," but, on the contrary, to burn, eject, and destroy them without reservation or remorse. One might as well issue orders to burn the east wind. A magic more powerful even than womanly tenderness preserves them; and six weeks afterwards forth rolls once more that world of wondrous noises. Let no one imagine that I have really sketched the bellows, unless I had sketched their multitudinous voice. What I have felt when drawing Punch is, that it was easy to represent his eyes, his nose, his mouth; but that the one essential was after all wanting-the squeak. The musician who undertook to convey by a single sound a sense of the peculiar smell of the shape of a drum, could alone picture to the eye the howlings and whisperings of the preternatural bellows. Now you hear a moaning as of one put to the torture, and may detect both the motion of the engine and the cracking

of the joints; anon cometh a sound as of an old beldame half inebriated, coughing and chuckling. A sigh as from the depths of a woman's heart torn with love, or the "lover sighing like furnace," succeeds to this; and presently break out altogether-each separate note of the straining pack struggling to be foremost the yelping of a cur, the bellowing of a schoolboy, the tones of a cracked flute played by a learner, the grinding of notched knives, the slow ringing of a muffled muffin-bell, the interrupted rush of water down a leaky pipe, the motion of a pendulum that does not know its own mind, the creaking of a prison-door, and the voice of one who crieth the last dying speech and confession; together with fifty thousand similar sounds, each as pleasant to the ear as "When am I to have the eighteen-pence" would be, to a man who never had a shilling since the day he was breeched. The origin of the bellows, I know not; but a suspicion has seized me that they might have been employed in the Ark had there been a kitchen-fire there; and they may have assisted in raising a flame under the first tea-kettle put on to celebrate the laying of the first stone of the great wall of China. They are ages upon ages older than the bellows of Simple Simon's mother; and were they by him to be ripped open, they could not possibly be deteriorated in quality. The bellows which yet bear the inscription,

"Who rides on these bellows?

The prince of good fellows,
Willy Shakspeare,"

are a thing of yesterday beside these, which look as if they had been industriously exercised by some energetic Greek in fanning the earliest flame of Troy. To descend to later days, they must have invigorated the blaze at which Tobias Shandy lighted his undying pipe, and kindled a generous blaze under that hashed mutton which has rendered Amelia immortal. But" the days are gone when beauty bright" followed quick upon the breath of the bellows: their effect at present is, to give the fire a bad cold; they blow an influenza into the grate. Empires rise and fall, and a century hence the bellows may be as good as new. Like puffing, they will know no end.

(11.) And lastly-for the personality of this paragraph warns me to conclude "In person G. C. is about the middle height and proportionably made. His complexion is something between pale and clear; and his hair, which is tolerably ample, partakes of a lightish hue. His face is of the angular form, and his forehead has a prominently receding shape."

As Hamlet said to the ghost, I'll go no further! The indefinite complexion, and the hair "partaking" of an opposite hue to the real one, may be borne; but I stand, not upon my head, but on my forehead! To a man who has once passed the Rubicon in having dared to publish his portrait, the exhibition of his mere profile can do no more injury than a petty larceny would after the perpetration of a highway robbery. But why be tempted to show, by an outline, that my forehead is innocent of a shape (the "prominently receding" one) that never yet was visible in nature or in art? Let it pass, till it can be explained.

"He delights in a handsome pair of whiskers." Nero had one flower flung upon his tomb. "He has somewhat of a dandified appearance." Flowers soon fade, and are cut down; and this is the "unkindest cut of all." I who, humbly co-operating with the press, have helped to give permanence to the name of dandy-I who have all my life been breaking

butterflies upon wheels in warring against dandyism and dandies-am at last discovered to be "somewhat" of a dandy myself.

"Come Antony, and young Octavius, come!
Revenge yourselves—"

'

as you may;-but, dandies all, I have not done with you yet. To resume. "He used to be exceedingly partial to Hessian boots." I confess to the boots; but it was when they were worn even by men who walked on loggats. I had legs. Besides, I was very young, and merely put on my boots to follow the fashion. His age, if his looks be not deceptive, is somewhere between forty-three and forty-five." A very obscure and elaborated mode of insinuating that I am forty-four. "Somewhere between!" The truth is though nothing but extreme provocation should induce me to proclaim even truth when age is concerned,—that I am "somewhere between" twenty-seven and sixty-three, or I may say sixtyfour-but I hate exaggeration.

Exit, G. CK.

MY LAST PAIR OF HESSIAN BOOTS.

"Ah! sure a pair was never seen
So justly formed—”

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OBY would say, that as "all are not men who bear the human form," so all are not boots that bear the pedal shape. All boots, for example, are not Hessians; nor are all Hessians like my last pair. Mathews used to tell a story of some French Hoby, who, having with incredible genius constructed a pair of boots, which Tom Thumb when a little boy could no more have got on than Cinderella's sister could the magic slipper, refused to part with them for any sum of money-he had "made them in a moment of enthusiasm." Myriads of such moments were consumed in the construction of my last pair. The boots published by Mr. Warren in magazines and country newspapers, exhibiting the grinning portrait of a gentleman in the interesting act of shaving, or a cat bristling up and outwondering Katerfelto, were vulgar in form, and dull of polish, beside mine Hessians. Pleasant it was, just as I was budding into life, to draw them on, and sit with one knee crossing the other, to contemplate my favourite leg. I used to wish myself a centipede, to wear fifty pairs of Hessians at a time.

To say that the boots "fitted like gloves" would be to pay the most felicitous pair of white kids a compliment. They had just as many natural wrinkles as they ought to have; and for the tassels-we have all seen the dandies of that day take out a comb, and comb the tassels of their fire-bucket-looking boots as often as they got into disorder; but mine needed no aid from such trickery and finessing.

I had strolled forth at the decline of a day in spring, and had afterwards dined at Long's-my boots and I. They had evidently been the admiration of every observer. I was entirely satisfied with them, and consequently with myself. Returned home, a pair of slippers was substituted for them, and with my feet on the fender and the vapour of a cigar enwrapping me like a dressing-gown, I sat contemplating "my boots." Thought reverted to the fortunes of my Lord Marquis of Carabas, and I saw in my Hessians a brighter destiny than Puss in hers won for him. I thought too of the seven-leagued boots of my ancient friends the Ogres, and felt that I could take Old and New Bond Streets at a step. That night those boots melted into thin air. There was nothing like leather" visible there in the morning. My golden vision had vanished as suddenly as Alnaschar's-only his perished amidst the crash and clatter of a basket of crockery kicked into the clouds; mine had stolen away in solemn silence. Not a creak was heard, yet the Hessians were gone. It was the remark of my housekeeper that boots could not go without hands. Such boots I thought might possibly have walked off by themselves. But when it was discovered that a window-shutter had been forced open, and sundry valuables carried away, it was plain that some conceited and ambitious burglar had eloped with my boots. The suspicion was confirmed by the detection of a pair of shoes conscientiously left behind, on the principle that exchange is no robbery. Ugh!-such

shoes. Well might I declare that nothing like leather was visible. What odious feet had been thrust into my desecrated Hessians! I put my legs into mourning for their loss; and, convinced that I should never procure such another pair, sank from that moment into mere Wellingtons.

It was not long after this, that, seated in a coffee-room in Piccadilly, my attention was drawn to the indolent and comfortable attitude of a person, who, with his legs stretched conspicuously along the cushioned bench, was reading a newspaper. How it was I can hardly tell; but my eye was irresistibly attracted to his boots, just as Othello's was to the handkerchief bound round the wounded limb of Cassio. He seemed to be proud of them; they were ostentatiously elevated into view. The boots were Hessians. Though not now worn in their very "newest gloss," they were yet in excellent, I may say in enviable condition. My anxious glance not only wandered over their polished surface, but seemed to penetrate to their rich bright linings, the colour whereof was now no more a secret to me than were those silken tassels that dangled to delight the beholder. I knew my boots again. The wearer, having the newspaper spread before his face, could not notice any observation directed to his lower extremities; my opportunity of inspection therefore was complete. They were my Hessians. My first impulse was to ring the bell for a boot-jack, and claim them upon the spot; but before I could do so the stranger suddenly sprang upon his feet, seized his hat, and with one complacent glance at those tasselled habiliments, which were far from having lost all their "original brightness,” swaggered out of the coffee-room.

Curiosity prompted me to follow-I caught a glimpse of the bright backs of my boots as they flashed round the corner of a neighbouring street. Pursuing them, I surveyed the wearer; and now perceived that not even

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