doctors of that faith. Lady Pocklington takes the capitalist
line; and those stupid and splendid dinners of hers are devoured by
loan-contractors and railroad princes. Mrs. Trimmer (38) comes out in
the scientific line, and indulges us in rational evenings, where history
is the lightest subject admitted, and geology and the sanitary condition
of the metropolis form the general themes of conversation. Mrs. Brumby
plays finely on the bassoon, and has evenings dedicated to Sebastian
Bach, and enlivened with Handel. At Mrs. Maskleyn's they are mad for
charades and theatricals.

They performed last Christmas in a French piece, by Alexandre Dumas, I
believe--"La Duchesse de Montefiasco," of which I forget the plot, but
everybody was in love with everybody else's wife, except the hero, Don
Alonzo, who was ardently attached to the Duchess, who turned out to be
his grandmother. The piece was translated by Lord Fiddle-faddle, Tom
Bulbul being the Don Alonzo; and Mrs. Roland Calidore (who never misses
an opportunity of acting in a piece in which she can let down her hair)
was the Duchess.

ALONZO.

You know how well he loves you, and you wonder To see Alonzo suffer,
Cunegunda?--Ask if the chamois suffer when they feel Plunged in their
panting sides the hunter's steel? Or when the soaring heron or eagle
proud, Pierced by my shaft, comes tumbling from the cloud, Ask if the
royal birds no anguish know, The victims of Alonzo's twanging bow? Then
ask him if he suffers--him who dies, Pierced by the poisoned glance that
glitters from your eyes! [He staggers from the effect of the poison.

THE DUCHESS.

Alonzo loves--Alonzo loves! and whom? His grandmother! Oh, hide me,
gracious tomb! [Her Grace faints away.

Such acting as Tom Bulbul's I never saw. Tom lisps atrociously, and
uttered the passage, "You athk me if I thuffer," in the most absurd way.
Miss Clapperclaw says he acted pretty well, and that I only joke about
him because I am envious, and wanted to act a part myself.--I envious
indeed!

But of all the assemblies, feastings, junketings, dejeunes, soirees,
conversaziones, dinner-parties, in Our Street, I know of none pleasanter
than the banquets at Tom Fairfax's; one of which this enormous
provision-consumer gives seven times a week. He lives in one of the
little houses of the old Waddilove Street quarter, built long before
Pocklington Square and Pocklington Gardens and the Pocklington family
itself had made their app