hin face, a
pinched-up nose, and a very sharp chin; he is most in vogue with your
government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats; little
spare, priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions,
and consider themselves of paramount importance.

We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by the innovation of a new kind
of knocker, without any face at all, composed of a wreath depending from
a hand or small truncheon. A little trouble and attention, however,
enabled us to overcome this difficulty, and to reconcile the new system
to our favourite theory. You will invariably find this knocker on the
doors of cold and formal people, who always ask you why you _don't_ come,
and never say _do_.

Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to suburban villas, and
extensive boarding-schools; and having noticed this genus we have
recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly-defined species.

Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of a man's brain by
different passions, produces corresponding developments in the form of
his skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to the full
length of asserting, that any alteration in a man's disposition would
produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. Our position
merely is, that in such a case, the magnetism which must exist between a
man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some
knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man
changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it,
that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he
and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to
launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and infallible as
many thousands of the learned speculations which are daily broached for
public good and private fortune-making.

Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers, it will be
readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal of
the knocker from the door of the next house to the one we lived in, some
time ago, and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity we had
never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody being able to exist without
a knocker, appeared so wild and visionary, that it had never for one
instant entered our imagination.

We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent our steps towards
Eaton-square, then just building. Wha