In this most laudable employ

He found himself at Lille one afternoon;

And that he might the breeze enjoy,

And catch a peep at the ascending moon,

Out of the town he took a stroll,

Refreshing in the fields his soul

With sight of streams, and trees, and snowy fleeces,
And thoughts of crowded houses and new pieces.

When we are pleasantly employed, time flies;
He counted up his profits, in the skies,

Until the moon began to shine,

On which he gazed awhile, and then

Pull'd out his watch, and cried-" Past nine
Why, zounds, they shut the gates at ten!"-
Backwards he turn'd his steps instanter,
Stumping along with might and main;
And though 'tis plain

He couldn't gallop, trot, or canter,

(Those who had seen him would confess it,) he

March'd well for one of such obesity.

Eyeing his watch, and now his forehead mopping,

He puff'd and blew along the road,

Afraid of melting, more afraid of stopping,

When in his path he met a clown

Returning from the town.

"Tell me," he panted in a thawing state,

"Dost think I can get in, friend, at the gate?" "Get in?” replied the hesitating loon,

Measuring with his eye our bulky wight,

Why yes, Sir, I should think you might, A load of hay went in this afternoon."

The Bank Clerk and the Stable-keepers.

Shewing how Peter was undone

By taking care of Number One.

Or Peter Prim (so Johnson would have written)
Let me indulge in the remembrance ;-Peter!
Thy formal phiz has oft my fancy smitten,
For sure the Bank had never a completer

Quiz among its thousand clerks,

Than he who now elicits our remarks.

Prim was a formalist, a prig,

A solemn fop, an office Martinet,
One of those small precisians who look big
If half an hour before their time they get
To an appointment, and abuse those elves
Who are not over-punctual, like themselves.

If you should mark his powder'd head betimes
And polish'd shoes in Lothbury,

You know the hour, for the three-quarter chimes
Invariably struck as he went by.

From morning fines he always saved his gammon, Not from his hate of sloth, but love of Mammon.

For Peter had a special eye

To Number One:—his charity

At home beginning, ne'er extends, But where it started had its end too; And as to lending cash to friends, Luckily he had none to lend to.

No purchases so cheap as his,

While no one's bargains went so far,

And though in dress a deadly quiz,

No Quaker more particular.

This live automaton, who seem'd
To move by clockwork, ever keen
To live upon the saving plan,
Had soon the honour to be deem'd
That selfish, heartless, cold machine,
Call'd in the City-a warm man.

A Bank Director once, who dwelt at Chigwell,
Prim to a turtle-feast invited,

And as the reader knows the prig well,

I need not say he went, delighted!

For great men, when they let you slice their meat
May give a slice of loan—a richer treat.

No stage leaves Chigwell after eight,
Which was too early to come back;
So, after much debate,

Peter resolved to hire a hack.

The more inclined to this because he knew
In London-Wall, at Number Two,

An economic stable-keeper,

From whom he hoped to get one cheaper.

Behold him mounted on his jade,

A perfect Johnny-Gilpin figure;
But the good bargain he had made
Compensating for sneer and snigger,
He trotted on,-arrived-sat down,

Devour'd enough for six or seven,
His horse remounted, and reach'd town,
As he had fix'd-exactly at eleven.
But whether habit led him, or the Fates,
To give a preference to Number One
(As he had always done),

Or that the darkness jumbled the two gates,
Certain it is he gave that bell a drag,

Instead of Number Two,

Rode in-dismounted-left his nag,

And homeward hurried without more ado.

Some days elapsed, and no one came
To bring the bill, or payment claim :
He 'gan to hope 'twas overlook'd,
Forgotten quite, or never book'd—
An error which the honesty of Prim
Would ne'er have rectified, if left to him.
After six weeks, however, comes a pair
Of groom-like looking men,

Each with a bill, which Peter they submit to;
One for the six weeks' hire of a bay mare,

And one for six weeks' keep of ditto:
Together-twenty-two pounds ten!

The tale got wind.-What, Peter make a blunder!
There was no end of joke, and quiz, and wonder,
Which, with the loss of cash, so mortified

Prim, that he suffer'd an attack

Of bile, and bargain'd with a quack,

Who daily swore to cure him-till he died;
When, as no will was found,

His scraped, and saved, and hoarded store

Went to a man to whom, some months before, He had refused to lend a pound.

THE LAST OF THE PIGTAILS.

"The body is the shell of the soul; apparel is the husk of that shell; the husk often tells you what the kernel is."

QUARLES.

No; never will I forgive thee, Frank Hartopp! Hadst thou been mine enemy, I might have obeyed the divine injunction, and pardoned thee; but as we are no where enjoined to forgive our friends, thou

shalt never have absolution for thine offence. Talk not to me of the last of the Romans; thou hadst a prouder distinction, for thou wert the last of the pigtails! And to cut it off, at the solicitation of thy Dalilah of a daughter!-verily, Frank, thou must wear in thy head the instrument that Samson wielded: —it was an act of capillary suicide, a crinigerous felode-se; and were the locks of Berenice, which ascended from the Temple of Venus, to shoot from their constellation, or the golden hair by which Absalom was suspended in the forest of Ephraim, or the immortal ringlet ravished from Belinda, to offer themselves as a substitute for thy loss, they could neither restore thee to thy former honours, nor to thy pristine place in my esteem. Feeling with that author who could not bear to see an old post grubbed up to which he had been long familiarised, what must I endure at the excision of this appendage, which I had seen hanging from a head I loved for nearly half a century, until I had identified it with my friend as part and parcel of himself?

The blow, too, fell upon a wounded spirit; for I had scarcely recovered the extinction of the last of the cocked-hats, with which my old friend John Nutt, of happy civic memory, had walked away into the other world. What a treat was it to me, some of whose senses have already left me, and gone forward to the land of shadows to announce my speedy coming-what a treat was it to me, in my walks city-wards, to throw mine eyes over the profane round-hatted vulgar of Fleet-street or Cheapside, and encounter in the distance