time after his fall, Mr. Chops is found
on the following morning, as the disconsolate Magsman expresses it,
"gone into much better society than either mine or Pall Mall's." Out
of such unpromising materials as these could the alembic of a genius
all-embracing in its sympathies extract such an abundance of innocent
mirth--an illiterate showman talking to us all the while about such
people as the Bonnet of a gaming-booth, or a set of monstrosities he
himself has, for a few coppers, on exhibition. Yet, as Mr. Magsman
himself remarks rather proudly when commenting on his own establishment,
"as for respectability,--if threepence ain't respectable, what is?"

THE POOR TRAVELLER.

Apart altogether from the Readings of Charles Dickens, has the reader of
this book any remembrance of the original story of "The Poor Traveller"?
If he has, he will recognise upon the instant the truth of the words in
which we would here speak of it, as of one of those, it may be, slight
but exquisite sketches, which are sometimes, in a happy moment,
thrown off by the hand of a great master. Comparatively trivial
in itself--carelessly dashed off, apparently hap-hazard--having no
pretension about it in the least, it is anything, in short, but a
finished masterpiece. Yet, for all that, it is marked, here and there,
by touches so felicitous and inimitable in their way, that we hardly
find the like in the artist's more highly elaborated and ambitious
productions. Not that one would speak of it, however, as of a drawing
upon toned paper in neutral tint, or as of a picture pencilled in sepia
or with crayons; one would rather liken it to a radiant water-colour,
chequered with mingled storm and sunshine, sparkling with lifelike
effects, and glowing with brilliancy. And yet the little work is one,
when you come to look into it, that is but the product of a seemingly
artless _abandon_, in which without an effort the most charming results
have been arrived at, obviously upon the instant, and quite unerringly.

Trudging down to Chatham, footsore and without a farthing in his pocket,
it is in this humble guise first of all that he comes before us, this
Poor Traveller. Christian name, Eichard, better known as Dick, his own
surname dropped upon the road, he assumes that of Doubledick--being
thenceforth spoken of all through the tale, even to the very end of it,
by his new name, as Eichard Doubledick. A scapegrace, a ne'er-do-well,
an incorrigible, hopeless