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though the gentlemen have desired to be private; the other must take heart of grace, and help me at the tap."

"The tap for me," said Lance, without waiting his master's decision. "It is an element which I could live and die in."

"The bar, then, for me," said Peveril, and, stepping back, whispered to Lance to exchange cloaks with him, desirous, if possible, to avoid being recognised.

The exchange was made in an instant; and presently afterwards the landlord brought a light; and as he guided Julian into his hostelry, cautioned him to sit quiet in the place where he should stow him; and if he was discovered, to say that he was one of the house, and leave him to make it good.

"You

will hear what the gallants say," he added; "but I think thou wilt carry away but little on it; for when it is not French, it is court gibberish, and that is as hard to construe." 99

The bar into which our hero was inducted on these conditions, seemed formed, with respect to the public room, upon the principle of a citadel, intended to observe and bridle a rebellious capital. Here sat the host on the Saturday evenings, screened from the observation of his guests, yet with the power of observing both their wants and their behaviour, and also that of overhearing their conversation-a practice which he was much addicted to, being one of that numerous class of philanthropists, to whom their neighbour's business is of as much consequence, or rather more, than their

own.

Here he planted his new guest, with a repeated caution not to disturb the gentlemen by speech or motion; and a promise that he should be speedily accommodated with a cold buttock of beef, and a

tankard of home-brewed. And here he left him, with no other light than that which glimmered from the well-illuminated apartment within, through a sort of shuttle which accommodated the landlord with a view into it.

This situation, inconvenient enough in itself, was, on the present occasion, precisely what Julian would have selected. He wrapped himself in the weatherbeaten cloak of Lance Outram, which had been stained by age and weather, into a thousand variations of its original Lincoln green; and with as little noise as he could, set himself to observe the two inmates, who had engrossed to themselves the whole of the apartment, which was usually open to the public. They sat by a table, well covered with such costly rarities, as could only have been procured by much forecast, and prepared by the exquisite Mons. Chaubert, to which both seemed to do much justice.

Julian had little difficulty in ascertaining that one of the travellers was, as he had anticipated, the master of the said Chaubert, or, as he was called by Ganlesse, Smith; the other who faced him, he had never seen before. This last was dressed like a gallant of the first order. His periwig, indeed, as he travelled on horseback, did not much exceed in size the bar-wig of a modern lawyer; but then the essence which he shook from it with every motion, impregnated a whole apartment, which was usually only perfumed by that vulgar herb, tobacco. His riding-coat was laced in the newest and most courtly style; and Grammont himself might have envied the embroidery of his waistcoat, and the peculiar cut of his breeches, which buttoned above the knee, permitting the shape of a very handsome leg to be completely seen. This, by the proprietor thereof, had been stretched out upon a stool, and he

contemplated its proportions, from time to time, with infinite satisfaction.

The conversation between these worthies was so interesting, that we propose to assign to it another chapter.

VOL. II. 16

CHAPTER XI.

This is some creature of the elements,
Most like your sea-gull. He can wheel and whistle
His screaming song, e'en when the storm is loudest-
Take for his sheeted couch the restless foam

Of the wild wave-crest-slumber in the calm,
And dally with the storm. Yet 'tis a gull,
An arrant gull, with all this.

The Chieftain.

"AND here is to thee," said the fashionable gallant whom we have described, "honest Tom; and a cup of welcome to thee out of Looby-land. Why, thou hast been so long in the country, that thou hast got a bumpkinly clod-compelling sort of look thyself. That greasy doublet fits thee as if it were thine reserved Sunday's apparel; and the points seem as if they were stay-laces bought for thy true love Marjory. I marvel thou canst still relish a ragout. Methinks now, to a stomach bound in such a jacket, eggs and bacon were a diet more conforming."

66

Rally away, my good lord, while wit lasts," answered his companion; " yours is not the sort of ammunition which will bear much expenditure. Or rather, tell me news from court, since we have met so opportunely."

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You would have asked me these an hour ago,' said the lord, "had not your very soul been under Chaubert's covered dishes. You remembered King's affairs will keep cool, and entremets must be eaten hot."

"Not so, my lord; I only kept common talk whilst that eaves-dropping rascal of a landlord was in the room; so that, now the coast is clear once more, pray you for news from court."

"The Plot is non-suited," answered the courtier -"Sir George Wakeman acquitted-the witnesses discredited by the jury-Scroggs, who ranted on one side, is now ranting on t'other."

"Rat the Plot, Wakeman, witnesses, Papists and Protestants, all together! Do you think I care for such trash as that?-Till the Plot comes up the palace back-stair, and gets possession of old Rowley's own imagination, I care not a farthing who believes or disbelieves. I hang by him will bear me out."

"Well, then," said my lord, "the next news is Rochester's disgrace."

"Disgraced!-How, and for what? The morning I came off, he stood as fair as any one."

"That's over-the epitaph has broken his neckand now he may write one for his own court favour, for it is dead and buried."

"The epitaph!" exclaimed Tom; "why I was by when it was made; and it passed for an excellent good jest with him whom it was made upon.

"Ay, so it did amongst ourselves," answered his companion; "but it got abroad, and had a run like a mill-race. It was in every coffee-house, and in half the diurnals. Grammont translated it into French too; and there is no laughing at so sharp a jest, when it is dinned into your ears on all sides. So, disgraced is the author; and but for his Grace of Buckingham, the court would be as dull as my Lord Chancellor's wig."

"Or as the head it covers.-Well, my lord, the fewer at court, there is the more room for those that can bustle there. But there are two mainstrings of Shaftesbury's fiddle broken--the Popish

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