leaf;' who, with out-stretched hand, and perpetual 'how d'ye do,' went the round of the circle, not bating' an inch of his prerogative' of acquaintanceship.'

The second specimen we shall lay before our readers, shall be somewhat of a different cast. It contains a description of the Hobson family, very tip-top people in Manchester, who have been seized with the travelling mania, so endemic of late years among all classes. We are not quite satisfied that the noble author has been very successful in this part of his subject. The old Hobsons appear neither very bright conceptions, nor very new, but Jem Hobson compensates amply for all his parents' defects. He is indeed a gem, a jewel of great price

"Miss Betty Dornton was some years older than her brother; and having brought her charms to market at a time when the prospects of her family were not so extensive as they afterwards became, (old uncle Smithson having then formed only the nucleus of that immense wealth, which he afterwards scraped together; and certainly having no intentions of bequeathing it in a lump to any one,) her marriage with Mr John Hobson was not at the time objected to. He was a steady, calculating foreman, in a large manufactory at Manchester. This situation he had gradually improved into that of a master of foremen; and his small back lodging he had changed into the largest extent of staring brick front in Manchester.

"Mrs Hobson, at the time of her marriage, was a silly, showy, bustling, chattering little body; with a brisk figure, and brisker tongue, good-humoured, illiterate, and vulgar. Twenty years, and more than half as many children, had rather taken from her briskness of figure her person seeming to have kept pace with her fortunes, in increase; but nothing had abated her activity of tongue, as Lady Matilda soon found to her cost, when the servant announced Mrs Hobson, the Miss Hobsons, and Master Hobson; the last a hobble-de-hoyish schoolboy. The three Miss Hobsons I shall not attempt to describe individually as to character, till the reader becomes by degrees better acquainted with them. In their dress there was a sisterly sameness, consisting, as it did, of bright peagreen cassimere pelisses, superabundant ly bebraided, and black beaver bonnets with pink linings. The only distinction in their appearance, was, that Miss Hobson's round rosy face was-one can't say

shaded, with small bright red corkscrew curls; whilst Miss Anne, from having rather a higher bridge to her nose than was common in the family, had taken the Grecian line, and had accordingly drawn two long straight strips of sandy hair across her temples, as she thought à la Madonna. The third, Jemima, was at that becoming age when young ladies' hair is neither long nor short. As to the conversation of these Manchester graces,

being in considerable awe of a person of whom the Morning Post said so much as it did of Lady Matilda, they confined that to occasional verbal corrections of their mother's slip-slop, which their boarding-school education fully qualified them to give. As to Mrs Hobson, she felt no such awe as that with which the name and fame of Lady Matilda inspired her daughters. Ever since her brother's marriage, she had persuaded herself that her own consequence was so much increased by the closeness of the connexion, that she did not feel abashed, even in the presence of the cause of all that additional consequence. So she waddled

straight up to Lady Matilda, in a scarlet velvet pelisse which made the sun hide his diminished head in the dog-days; and after a sisterly salutation, said,-(staring full at her,) Well, I'm sure Jem couldn't have done better.' She then broke at once into the subject now always uppermost in her thoughts; namely, the extraordinary circumstance of her being actually about to go abroad.

"Well,' said she, 'I hope that we shall all live as one family in foreign parts. To think of my going trapesing out of Old England! but my daughters must have the same advaantages as the Miss Tomkins's, though they did make old Tomkins å knight the other day. But an't my brother a baronet? to say nothing of you, Lady Matilda. Then Dr Snook says, that Jemima is rather pilmonary, and that the air of Italy will do her good; and to be sure, if it was not for fear of the muskittys, or bandittis, or what do they call them as attacks one there, I should like Italy well enough, and to see the Pope, and the Venus of Meddi-what is it, my dear?' appealing to one of her daughters. Medici, mamma,' said Miss Anne. Ay-Medici-and the Saint Peter's-but I don't think so much of that, because we've got a Saint Peter's at Manchester. And that great cascade (Turny, or what do they call it ?) that Briggs-old Briggs of our town's sonshowed a fine picture of it, as he did there at our exhibition, with the water all so white, and the rocks so black, and

daughters, of having arrived before them; and the consciousness of having thereby forfeited their best claim to that admiration hitherto so lavishly bestowed upon them from that quarter: the young ladies' idea of being 'quite the thing,' consisting in nothing so much as pre-eminent unpunctuality.

"The stranger bowed slightly to the duchess as she passed to his end of the room, which she answered with an inquiring curtsey,-her Grace's eye-sight, which was none of the best, being now rendered more treacherous by the darkness of the room. Who is it?' said she to Lord George, in a low whisper; to which he replied, Indeed I don't know'-in a tone of voice all but impertinently audible. At this moment their host and hostess appeared from an inner room-Lady Eatington employed with a half-drawn-on glove-his lordship applying a half-opened pocket-handkerchief to his nose; both which actions were meant to signify rather reproach fully, than apologetically, You have come sooner than we expected-but here we are.'

"As we have introduced our readers to their house, we shall be expected to make them acquainted with the master and mistress; but Lord and Lady Eatington were those every-day sort of people of whose characters it is almost impossible to speak in affirmatives. Perhaps the two most positive characteristics of his lordship were, that he was a receiver of rents in the country, and a giver of dinners in town. To speak negatively-he was-no politician -no farmer-no bel esprit-no connoisseur ; but the most distinguished of all these classes met at his house, to pronounce upon the merits of one of the best cooks in Europe in consideration of which, every one, in accepting his invitations, wrote to him- Dear Eatington,

:

"Yours truly.'

And every one enfiled the crowd at Almack's, to squeeze Lady Eatington's hand when she first came to town.

"Her ladyship was naturally a very silly, and by education (so called), a very illiterate woman; but long habits of the world enabled her to conceal this; and if she was seldom as well informed as her guests, she was always as well dressed as her dinners-which answered all the purpose.

"But how surprised were our young beaux, and our old duchess, to see, that whilst they themselves were casually recognised, the whole of the attention of both host and hostess was directed to the

"The reflections of Lord George and Mr Penryn, upon their half-wilful mistake, were not very consolatory, as the former fame of Augustus Arlingford occurred to them in all its pre-eminence. Lord George now recollected that, in his first conference with his tailor, he had been strongly recommended the Arlingford collar, and that a part of his dress, about which he was very particular, had been called Arlingford's.' Mr Penryn, too, had a disagreeable reminiscence, that whilst still at college, he lost a rouleau, when Mr Arlingford's colt won the Derby; and both distinctly remembered, that when they first came out, if any very well-looking young man appeared, all the oracles declared that he had a look of Arlingford;' and this was the man whom they had voted an awkward actor, a squab singer, or a methodist parson.

"From this time the cannonade at the street-door became almost incessant, and every possible variety of arrival was constantly swelling the circle, which, with truly English instinct, had formed itself round the place, where (strange to say) there was not a fire; and many were the different ways of presenting themselves which might be remarked:-First, The tender scion, just budding in the first rays of fashion, who, after advancing desperately, and retiring awkwardly from the circle, seemed anxiously to solicit a protecting nod from those around him, confirmative of the acquaintance he hoped he had made. Then came the wellestablished man of the world, who seemed carelessly to postpone the duties of recognition, till dinner and lights afforded him a more convenient opportunity of doing so. To him succeeded the cidevant jeune homme,' whose ' way of life is fall'n into the sear-the yellow

leaf;' who, with out-stretched hand, and perpetual 'how d'ye do,' went the round of the circle, not bating an inch of his prerogative' of acquaintanceship.

The second specimen we shall lay before our readers, shall be somewhat of a different cast. It contains a description of the Hobson family, very tip-top people in Manchester, who have been seized with the travelling mania, so endemic of late years among all classes. We are not quite satisfied that the noble author has been very successful in this part of his subject. The old Hobsons appear neither very bright conceptions, nor very new, but Jem Hobson compensates amply_for all his parents' defects. He is indeed a gem, a jewel of great price

"Miss Betty Dornton was some years older than her brother; and having brought her charms to market at a time when the prospects of her family were not so extensive as they afterwards became, (old uncle Smithson having then formed only the nucleus of that immense wealth, which he afterwards scraped together; and certainly having no intentions of bequeathing it in a lump to any one,) her marriage with Mr John Hobson was not at the time objected to. He was a steady, calculating foreman, in a large manufactory at Manchester. This situation he had gradually improved into that of a master of foremen; and his small back lodging he had changed into the largest extent of staring brick front in Manchester.

"Mrs Hobson, at the time of her marriage, was a silly, showy, bustling, chattering little body; with a brisk figure, and brisker tongue, good-humoured, illiterate, and vulgar. Twenty years, and more than half as many children, had rather taken from her briskness of figure her person seeming to have kept pace with her fortunes, in increase; but nothing had abated her activity of tongue, as Lady Matilda soon found to her cost, when the servant announced Mrs Hobson, the Miss Hobsons, and Master Hobson; the last a hobble-de-hoyish schoolboy. The three Miss Hobsons I shall not attempt to describe individually as to character, till the reader becomes by degrees better acquainted with them. In their dress there was a sisterly sameness, consisting, as it did, of bright peagreen cassimere pelisses, superabundantly bebraided, and black beaver bonnets with pink linings. The only distinction in their appearance, was, that Miss Hobson's round rosy face was-one can't say

shaded, with small bright red corkscrew curls; whilst Miss Anne, from having rather a higher bridge to her nose than was common in the family, had taken the Grecian line, and had accordingly drawn two long straight strips of sandy hair across her temples, as she thought d la Madonna. The third, Jemima, was at that becoming age when young ladies' hair is neither long nor short. As to the conversation of these Manchester graces, -being in considerable awe of a person of whom the Morning Post said so much as it did of Lady Matilda, they confined that to occasional verbal corrections of their mother's slip-slop, which their boarding-school education fully qualified them to give. As to Mrs Hobson, she felt no such awe as that with which the name and fame of Lady Matilda inspired her daughters. Ever since her brother's marriage, she had persuaded herself that her own consequence was so much increased by the closeness of the connexion, that she did not feel abashed, even in the presence of the cause of all that additional consequence. So she waddled

straight up to Lady Matilda, in a scarlet velvet pelisse which made the sun hide his diminished head in the dog-days; and after a sisterly salutation, said,—(staring full at her,) Well, I'm sure Jem couldn't have done better.' She then broke at once into the subject now always uppermost in her thoughts; namely, the extraordinary circumstance of her being actually about to go abroad.

But

"Well,' said she, I hope that we shall all live as one family in foreign parts. To think of my going trapesing out of Old England! but my daughters must have the same advaantages as the Miss Tomkins's, though they did make old Tomkins å knight the other day. an't my brother a baronet? to say nothing of you, Lady Matilda. Then Dr Snook says, that Jemima is rather pilmonary, and that the air of Italy will do her good; and to be sure, if it was not for fear of the muskittys, or bandittis, or what do they call them as attacks one there, I should like Italy well enough, and to see the Pope, and the Venus of Meddi-what is it, my dear?' appealing to one of her daughters. Medici, mamma,' said Miss Anne. 'Ay-Medici-and the Saint Peter's-but I don't think so much of that, because we've got a Saint Peter's at Manchester. And that great cascade (Turny, or what do they call it ?) that Briggs-old Briggs of our town's sonshowed a fine picture of it, as he did there at our exhibition, with the water all so white, and the rocks so black, and

the trees so green; very pretty it was, and little Briggs himself sitting on a threelegged stool, with it all splashing about him, poor fellow;-and then that Capital Colossus as the old Romans made.' -Coliseum, mamma,' said Miss Hobson; and the Capitol,' said Miss Anne, 'is a building by itself. Very well, my dears, a building by itself, is it? I thought it was in Rome-but Jem ought to know, for I suppose that's what they teach him at school.' This changed the current of her ideas, and called Lady Matilda's attention to a nuisance which the presence of more active annoyances had hitherto prevented her from observing.

"Of all the demands that the ties of connexion can make upon one's patience, there is nothing like the precocious introduction, into general society, of a genuine school-boy; where, either by his uneasy awkwardness, he makes all who see him equally uncomfortable, or, by his pert self-sufficiency, causes a more active disturbance. Sir James's saying, which he so aptly applied, of 'Love me, love my dog,' is nothing to the trial of, Love me, love my school-boy. It is true, though, that school-boys are, after all, (to use a metaphor peculiarly suited to the Hobson family,) the raw material of which the finished articles, most sought for in a drawing-room, must be manufactured. There are, also, two varieties in the species; your private school-boy is much worse than your public; by private schools, being meant all, however large and however open, except two or three, where the scholars are more select and gentleman-like; and which schools are therefore called public. And never was there seen a more regular specimen of the worst kind of school-boy, than that which met Matilda's eyes in the person of Jem Hobson, as he sat on the very edge of the sofa; his pale, shrunk, nankeen trowsers, having worked their way up his spindle leg, which was enveloped in a wrinkled cotton stocking; the collar of his new coat, and his black stock, alone, showing any embryo symptoms of incipient dandyism; his sandy hair plastered sideways with a wet brush, off his snubby, chubby face; and his hands occupied in studiously brushing, the wrong way, the nap of his shapeless hat.

brought him here, as he is not going abroad with us, on purpose to see him, as it is right boys should know who they are to look to. Jem, I'm sure, will do something for his godson, little Jem, as we call him: perhaps make him a parliament man; it is as good a trade as any; at least, I'm sure, so uncle Smithson found it. They say, he must make six so he may as well have one of his own kin as another. Who knows but, in time, Jem may live to be a-what was that great gentleman, who so civilly wrote to thank our people for, killing the Radicals?''A Secretary of State, mamma,' said Miss Hobson.

"Ah! Why should not Jem live to be a Secretary of State, Lady Matilda? I can assure you,' continued the fond mother, 'that all pains have been taken with his speechifying;-Jem, suppose you let your aunt hear that speech that I say makes me think I hear you in the House of Commons.' Matilda submitted to this, as a minor evil to hearing the mother talk about him; and Jem, who, with all his shyness, preferred to his present state of awkward inaction, that exposure to which habit had hardened him, immediately prepared to comply; and, throwing his hand stiffly up, like a way-post, began, My name is Norval,'-in that gruffish squeak, and with that measured twang, which generally accompany such exhibitions. He was proceeding, with wonderful success and had just arrived at the point where

A band of fierce barbarians from the hills, Rushed, like a torrent, down upon the vale, Sweeping our flocks and herds,'

when the door opened, and in walked our two friends of the preceding evening, Lord George Darford and Mr Penryn, who usually hunted time in couples, and meant to kill half an hour with Lady Matilda. Great, indeed, was their astonishment at the party they found assembled, and the exhibition they interrupted. Our young actor might have added

Our shepherds fled for safety and for succour,' for sudden was the flight this produced in the family;-Mrs Hobson displaying to the still wondering eyes of the intruders, as she moved towards the door, the broad back of her splendid pelisse, whose unequally-worn texture showed at once, that her velvet was English, and her habits sedentary. The young ladies followed in a cluster, stooping, shuffling, poking, and using every other means by which English young ladies of a certain class get out of the room. Roscius, alone, ⚫ still hovered about the enemy'-till, with some difficulty, he had extricated

his shapeless hat from under the feet of Lord George, who was, by this time, sprawling on the sofa; and having achieved this, with a formal bow, which he had learnt at the same time as his speech, he left the room.

6

"What, in the name of wonder,' said Lord George, is that young Esquimaux, whom we found exhibiting; and who are his attendant squaws?'

"That lady was the sister of Sir James; the others were her children,' Lady Matilda replied, in a tone calculated to stop any further attempts at ridicule."

The Hobsons get into France, and the following is a further specimen of the author's powers of humour

"The feeling which one experiences in the first change from an English to a -French inn, must be like that of a horse, who is suddenly taken out of a warm, close stable, and turned into a loose box. In the first, he is often cramped for room; kept much too hot; plagued with superfluous care and attention; never left enough to himself; and stuffed beyond what he can eat. In the other, he has a fine, roomy, airy place, to walk about in, and nobody ever seems to trouble his head about him, or to come near him, except at random, to feed him, when they have nothing else to do.

"At any rate, if the comparison be not quite just, it is one which struck Tom Hobson, as he and his family were turned into a large, staring, out-of-the-way kind of room, and left to their fate. Minutes, that seemed hours, passed, and there was no appearance of any one taking the least notice of them. Mrs Hobson, on whom the discipline of the packet had entailed a most ravenous appetite, now became most clamorous. All in vain ;-at last she heard a footstep on the stairs, and sallied forth. There she caught a stray waiter, singing-Partant pour la Syrie.' He was proceeding on his way, without attending to her, when hunger made her bold; and though she had lost her Manuel de Voyager,' she screamed at him, as she thought, in the words of that useful publication,—' Je suis femme il faut me manger.' The garçon stared a moment, in astonishment; when the truism contained in the first part of the sentence, not seeming to reconcile him to the obligation implied in the remainder,-he passed on- Partant pour la Syrie.' Their case thus seemed quite desperate; when first an authoritative voice was heard upon the stairs, abusing everybody to the right and left; of which the most audible words were,- Sacre ! de faire attendre; Sacre ! VOL. XIX.

Milord Hobson ;-une des plus riches fa milles d'Angleterre ;-Sacre !'-and, to their astonishment, there appeared the figure of the much-despised courier, sacreing into the room the identical garçon. Leon's altered appearance, in 'Rule a Wife and have a Wife,' did not create greater surprise, nor, indeed, a more complete change in manner and deportment ; nor was it easy to recognise the little, helpless, much-enduring being, in the shabby surtout and oil-skin hat, in the arbitrary, bullying, swaggering hero, glit tering in gold lace and scarlet, with shining yellow leather breeches, and clattering about in a commanding pair of boots. It was like the Emperor Napoleon, rising from a sous-lieutenant of artillery, upon the extinction of the ancien régime, into absolute power.

"Thus, after the short-lived anarchy of the steam-boat, Pierre had completely superseded all the former legitimate authorities of the Hobson family. From that time forward, nothing could be done without him; all Mrs Hobson's almost unintelligible wants were obliged to receive his sanction, before they could be satisfied ;-old Hobson's eau-de-vie, and water could not be obtained without his approbation-Tom was obliged to resign, into his more efficient command, all future control over the postilions; -even the young ladies could not lay their heads on a downy pillow, unless it was procured by him; and when Miss Hobson desired that she might have deux gros matelots on her bed, he it was that saved her from the danger to which an unconscious substitution of one vowel for another might have otherwise subjected her. The dinner was not only obtained at once by the exertion of his authority, but upon the whole gave astonishing satisfaction. True it is, that old Hobson began by dg the soup, as mere salt-water, with sea-weed floating in it; by which he succeeded, as usual, in making what, from recent recollections, was to all the party precisely the most unwelcome of similies. Some Maintenoncotelettes, too, excited much admiration; Mrs Hobson wondering why they were wrapped up in paper; and Tom, supposing that they were meant for them to carry in their pockets, instead of sandwiches.

"Dinner being finished, and the rain continuing, the party were again reduced to their internal resources for amusement; and as the detail of these is not likely to afford much gratification to my readers, I shall leave them for the present, to pursue their journey, turning my E