course for many years now, and must at no
distant period be brought to its final close. She looks forward to its
termination, with calmness and without apprehension. She has everything
to hope and nothing to fear.

A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very
conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady's next-door neighbours.
He is an old naval officer on half-pay, and his bluff and unceremonious
behaviour disturbs the old lady's domestic economy, not a little. In the
first place, he _will_ smoke cigars in the front court, and when he wants
something to drink with them--which is by no means an uncommon
circumstance--he lifts up the old lady's knocker with his walking-stick,
and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed over the rails. In
addition to this cool proceeding, he is a bit of a Jack of all trades, or
to use his own words, 'a regular Robinson Crusoe;' and nothing delights
him better than to experimentalise on the old lady's property. One
morning he got up early, and planted three or four roots of full-grown
marigolds in every bed of her front garden, to the inconceivable
astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when she got up and
looked out of the window, that it was some strange eruption which had
come out in the night. Another time he took to pieces the eight-day
clock on the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works, which
he put together again, by some undiscovered process, in so wonderful a
manner, that the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one
ever since. Then he took to breeding silk-worms, which he _would_ bring
in two or three times a day, in little paper boxes, to show the old lady,
generally dropping a worm or two at every visit. The consequence was,
that one morning a very stout silk-worm was discovered in the act of
walking up-stairs--probably with the view of inquiring after his friends,
for, on further inspection, it appeared that some of his companions had
already found their way to every room in the house. The old lady went to
the seaside in despair, and during her absence he completely effaced the
name from her brass door-plate, in his attempts to polish it with
aqua-fortis.

But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He
attends every vestry meeting that is held; always opposes the constituted
authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the churchwardens,
contests legal points agains