of taking wine with the Duke of
Cambridge—we remember to have met the
three gentlemen, who there form the
committee of a charitable institution, under very
diiferent circumstances; through the present
disguise of a detective officer, we recognise a
very favourite highwayman of ours; and one
of the first officials of the Great Northern
Railway Company, in the act of leaving his
family and elegant home, in order to restore
public confidence in the management, he is
surely our old friend the roue baronet again,
having a stormy interview with Lady Cecilia.
This is certainly as appropriate a way as any
of getting up the lives of what may be called
commercial plagiarists, and we admire the
pictures very much, although not so much as
the letter-press.

After lamenting that for two short years
of pleasure, W. J. E. has forfeited family,
society, and, dearer than all, honour and freedom,
his biographer indulges in the melancholy
question, "Where are now his fast-
trotting mare, his broughams, his priories,
his grooms, and his mistresses? " As far as
the priories are concerned, we believe that
there is still one of them in the neighbourhood
of Kilburn; but how should the reader
be expected to put himself to the expense
and trouble of getting up the other
information? The rest, perhaps, as the biographer
observes, "remain only like demons upon the
memory, to taunt him with the dreadful cost
at which he purchased them."

To philosophise upon such extraordinary
careers as these, says the author, would be
alike vain and intrusive, but he, nevertheless,
goes on to do so at some length; he divides
the life of man into nine stages, at distances
of ten years apart, and assigns its proper
peculiarity to each. At ten, the ruling
passion is play (?), not unfrequently mixed
with a love of mischief; at twenty, love
reigns paramount; this is the age at which
he would risk death (query, life?) to obtain
a smile from beauty, and at which he would
give even our security without a moment's
hesitation. . . . At seventy, the passions are
merged into a love of building palatial
dwellings; till at last the cycle is completed, like
the symbol of the serpent, holding his tail in
his mouth.

Messrs. Robson and Redpath, at their
present epoch of thirty-five, appear for a
moment to illustrate this theory, and then
exeunt to make room for an acquaintance of
the biographer (and not in the least connected
with them), who has been stopped in a
disgraceful course of life by reading awful
annals, such as these, and converted to
honourable courses. He, too, had been living
in the priory style, and had even gone one
night to his uncle's seat in Derbyshire—an
accurate woodcut here occurs of the
biographer's acquaintance's uncle's seat—with
the intention of cutting that revered relative's
throat; but the old gentleman being away,
he desisted from that purpose; read the
awful annals, sold horses, hounds, and
furniture; and reformed instead. The relative
particulars of the sale of his personal effects
are here subjoined to heighten the picture of
his late extravagance, but as a proof that the
young acquaintance of our author could
practice economy to some extent, we may
mention that he possessed but one
nightshirt, and that of calico: his day-shirts also
do not altogether exceed fourteen, although
he seems to have somewhat exceeded in linen
collars, having thirty-six. We have nothing
to offer in extenuation of the rich blue silk-
velvet dress, of the handsome maroon-coloured
silk-velvet dress, and of the handsome puce-
coloured silk-velvet dress, but leave them
branded with the italics in which we found
them. Our author attended this sale, we
trust without any eye to the silk-velvets, and
never will forget the want of sympathy and
hollowness of friendship exhibited by the
fast-men there present. He, himself,
purchased a painting of a Boat putting off in a
Storm—opportunity here occurring of a
spirited wood-cut of ditto, it is taken the
fullest advantage of—and various books;
the latter furnish us with the long half of
a story, composed by the biographer's young
acquaintance, and breaking off somewhat
abruptly with these words, written in red
ink, " Now to my uncle, he must do
something for me, or I will do something for
him."

Not till the fifteenth page do we again
meet with W. J. R., the subject of the
biography; he is there represented in the pit of
a theatre fixing a sensual yet poetic eye upon
the boxes, and soliloquising, If he had but a
thousand a year, he would snare beauty as
easily as birds; which latter sport he must
have, of course, become a great proficient in,
as a law-clerk living in a street out of
Chancery Lane.

About this time W. J. E. began to be much
enamoured of authorship, and in his
biographer's opinion would have got on
exceedingly well in his profession; he lisped in
numbers very young, and was but a youth
before (after?) he became an occasional
contributor to the periodicals. One of his
lyrics, which has been set to some sweet
music, and is called the Dreams of Youth,
is here submitted to us:

We all have dreams in early youth
Ere life hath gathered elder dross,
And thought lies buried in its truth,
Like violet hidden in its moss;
Those times ere fancy leapt to speech
And teardrops then unclouded bows (sic),
When Hope and Love throbbed each in each,
And every blossom bloomed a Rose.

The fourth and eighth lines seem to be
somewhat familiar to us, but the rest of
the poem eludes both memory and
understanding: