ontract is at an end."

The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the
house turned sour: he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person
in the company wellnigh fainted with the cholic. He slapped down the
great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it
with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of
wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with
his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole.

Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. "You drunken, lazy
scoundrel!" cried a shrill and well-known voice, "you have been asleep
these two hours:" and here he received another terrific box on the ear.

It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful
vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa.
Nothing remained to corroborate his story, except the bladder of lake,
and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches.

"I wish," said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, "that
dreams were true;" and he went to work again at his portrait.

My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is
footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said
that, her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the
only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion.

CARTOUCHE.

I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur
Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much
the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for
histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is
cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest
Church-of-England men.

Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says
the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the Courtille, and
in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years
later, and in the Marais;--of respectable parents, of course. Think of
the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough,
Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere,
Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same
twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing a l'envi!

Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift
was but a dull, idle, college lad; b