lue pelisse with
rose-coloured satin trousers, and a black velvet hat, "the latter
seemingly founded on the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent." One is
almost reconciled to Polly, however,--becoming oblivious for the moment
of her connivance in her mother's secret device, and reminiscent only
of her own unsophisticated mixture of prattle and impertinence--on
learning, immediately after this elaborate description of the gorgeous
doll of her choice, that "the name of this distinguished foreigner was
(on Polly's authority) Miss Melluka."

THE BOY AT MUGBY.

Several _gamins_ have been contributed to our literature by
Dickens--quite as typical and quite as truthful in their way, each of
them, as Hugo's Gavroche. There is Jo the poor crossing-sweeper. There
is the immortal Dodger. There is his pal the facetious Charley Bates.
And there is that delightful boy at the end of "The Carol," who conveys
such a world of wonder through his simple reply of "Why, Christmas Day!"
The boy who is "as big," he says himself, as the prize turkey, and who
gets off at last quicker than a shot propelled by the steadiest hand at
a trigger! Scattered up and down the Boz fictions, there are abundant
specimens of a _genus_ that, in one instance, is actually termed by
the Humorist, "a town-made little boy"--this is in the memorable street
scene where Squeers hooks Smike by the coat-collar with the handle of
his umbrella. He is always especially great in his delineation of what
one might call the human cock-sparrows of London. Kit, at the outset of
his career, is another example; and Tom Scott yet another.

Sloppy carries us away into the suburbs, thereby taking us in a manner
off the stones, and otherwise represents in his own proper person,
buttons and all, less one of the dapper urchins we are now more
particularly referring to, than the shambling hobbledehoy. Even in
the unfinished story with which the Author's voluminous writings were
closed, there was portrayed an entirely novel specimen, one marked by
the most grotesque extravagance, in the shape of that impish malignant,
"the Deputy," whose pastime at once and whole duty in life seemed to be
making a sort of vesper cock-shy of Durdles and his dinner-bundle.

Conspicuous among these comic boys of Dickens may be remembered one who,
instead of being introduced in any of the Novelist's larger works, from
the Pickwick Papers clown to Edwin Drood, interpolates himself, as
may be said, a