ingly introduced. At a later hour in the day a very good dinner was served up. A true bill was soon found against that; and it was not only tried, but executed with praiseworthy despatch. Considering the toil we had undergone, and the solemn character of the duties we had to perform, we were in pretty good spirits. Mr. Kneller especially seemed to feel himself quite at home, and could not have been more jolly at a funeral.

The cloth removed, not to appear too festive, we determined that only two bottles of wine should remain on the table while we continued our inquiries, which we hoped to bring to a close that day; but that though, as we proceeded, the witnesses called in became fewer and fewer, and the examinations shorter and shorter,we could not accomplish, and in the end we were obliged to adjourn to the following morning.

On assembling in the grand jury room on the second day, the first inquiries of the chairman and Mr. Kneller were naturally directed towards dinner. I had paid my guinea on our first meeting, rather than look mean, with a tolerably good grace; but I hardly cared to subscribe a second, and such, I perceived, was the feeling of at least half the company. It produced a series of very genteel excuses, and apologies of the most touching character. One gentleman was obliged to deny himself the enjoyment of our society, as the Lord Mayor on the preceding day had postponed a party solely on his account. Mr. Felt, the hatter, could not be with us, as he had a public duty to perform, having to carry a petition to Mr. Quackly the member, which must be presented that very evening. Another juror begged to be excused, as his mother (a lady who, as he was at least sixty-five, must have been somewhat advanced in years,) was dangerously ill; and a cadaverous little man, with a turn-up nose and crooked legs, was most anxious to be at home, as his lady was on the point of being confined. Mr. Kneller, who was appointed treasurer the day before, and who in that character had been most active in collecting subscriptions, received these excuses, and half a dozen others, with as much good will on this occasion as he had done the guineas upon that; and whispered to me with a friendly wink that "he by no means wished those to stay who desired to be absent, as he for his part had no taste for screwing down."

I held this to be very liberal on his part; but to show that I did not value money more than he did, and having never been in such a scene before, I determined to see it out. Our task was not very severe; and early in the afternoon we found ourselves so near the end of our labour, that the president considered we had leisure to see the prison, and accordingly sent a message to the chairman of the sessions, requesting his permission to do so.

Our suit was granted; and, preceded by a man with a wand, who had on both days been in attendance, we all marched to the gaol. I beheld, with mingled feelings of satisfaction and sorrow, the commodious but formidable iron-guarded area appropriated to the various classes of prisoners then awaiting their trial. One circumstance struck me rather forcibly: where the men were confined, several sad, anxious-looking females appeared, who approached, as closely as the grating would permit, the objects of their solicitude, evidently desirous of contributing all the solace that affectionate sym

pathy could supply; but, when I looked to the yard in which the women were detained, no man was to be seen acting the same kindly part by them. "Oh, woman!" I mentally exclaimed, "while man is happy, shy, timid, and retiring, you are faithful to him in adversity and disgrace!

'When stern affliction wrings the brow,

A ministering angel thou!'

But he who eagerly, impetuously pursues you when ease and comfort surround you, coldly leaves you in the hour of your humiliation and distress, to pine and sigh, and, it may be, to die alone!"

I wished to see more-to explore the interior-to examine the cells; but no order to that effect had been given, and, instead, we were allowed to walk round the governor's garden, which, the strawberries then being ripe, was pleasant enough. We returned to the grand jury room, where a report, setting forth that we had minutely inspected the prison, and were highly gratified with the cleanliness, order, &c. which everywhere prevailed, was tendered to us for signature. Of course we all put our names to it; though of the general economy of the gaol, as may be collected from what has just been stated, we knew no more than we did before leaving our apartment, or than might have been indited with equal propriety from Camberwell Grove or London Bridge. I do not mean to say that I felt this was exactly right; but then, I thought to myself, it was no use one going against the rest of the jury, and I did not like to make myself conspicuous. To do so might have offended some very pleasant gentlemanly people with whom I had been on excellent terms for a day and a half, and for what?-to abate the misery of a hundred or two of wretches whom I had never seen. The thing would not bear thinking of.

Our last bill presented, with the report above mentioned, we sat down to dinner. The fare was excellent, so excellent that occasionally I had what, under some circumstances, might have been called a presentiment on the subject of what was to follow in that thrilling moment when,

"the banquet o'er,

The reckoning comes, and then men smile no more."

Mr. Kneller called our attention to this important matter. My mind was a good deal relieved at hearing him say we should not have more than half a guinea each additional to pay. All present, I thought, seemed cheered by the intelligence; but what language can adequately paint, as an eloquently descriptive writer would say, the transport experienced when, in the next moment, he added, The fact is, gentlemen, we have funds sufficient to cover everything, and three bottles of wine to come in."

On scenes of extraordinary felicity it is generally thought unwise to dwell. At the theatre, managers drop the curtain the moment all parties are seen happy. Proud to imitate an example so illustrious, I stop not here to tell how we acknowledged the able and impartial conduct of our chairman, and the wonderful virtues of his vice. "Some feelings are to mortals given

With less of earth in them than heaven,"

as Mr. Kneller the undertaker said in a "neat and impressive speech," it being his way to go from "gay to grave," while returning

thanks on his health being drunk with three times three. He explained the cause of our present happiness to have partly grown on the readiness with which he had admitted the shirking excuses of about half our body, who would, it was more than probable,—so he said, and so I thought,-have forgotten the Lord Mayor, the House of Commons, the dying mother, and the lying-in-wife, had they been aware that they could have found in the grand jury room a superior dinner, plenty of wine, and nothing to pay.

(A mere old woman's guess)

Proves thee to be, unlike our Murphy, no magician!
"Tis plain,

Frost, thunder, wind, and rain,

All follow at thy bidding! Not in vain

Thou scann'st the stars.

Venus or Mars

May smile or frown;

Or the "Great Bear,"

Or the "man in the moon," may stare,

And try to put thee down :

Thou carest not a button for them! so,

The passing salutation
Throughout the nation

Is daily now “ Good morning !—
Murphy's right!"

Or else, "Good night!

I've book'd a place for Sunday by the mail,-
The next fine day, as Murphy gives us warning!"
"When do you sail?"

"Not till the 25th, because I fear the gale!"

'Tis very strange,

But every man on 66

'Change"

Grows learned! talking much of "meteoric,

Galvanic, and magnetic powers,'

""caloric,'

And all the secret causes strange combin'd,

Obscure to all save Murphy's mighty mind;

Expressing oft their wonder

What damage will be done next autumn by the thunder!
Murphy, adieu! beware!

The public sometimes" change," which is not "fair."
Long may you reign, a hale old man of metal,
Great prophet! 'till the snows of age shall settle

Around thy brow!

Farewell! and now

(Though not a glutton)

Enjoy your "heavy-wet" and wether-mutton!

H. T.

W. E. S.

MONOSANIA.--MR. KLÜNCHÜNBRÜCH.

"My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music. it is not madness!"

Hamlet.

MR. JULIUS SHEMPENFELT HACKERMAN SMITH KLÜNCHÜNBRÜCH was an Englishman, in spite of himself, and in spite of his names, (selected as compliments to friends and customers,) which might have sent him home to his parish in more countries than one. His father had been a German; had localised in England as a purveyor of German, French, and Italian goods; had opened a shop in early days in a good quiet situation at the West-end of London, showing dark, squabby bottles, full of rough, emeraldcoloured little things in vinegar, like children's gangrene fingers in spirits, hanging out at the sides of the door-posts mummylooking tongues, and lumps of brown dirt in strings, called Hambro' beef; not to mention constables' staves dotted with white spots, which were proclaimed to be real Bologna sausages,—and tri-cornered lumps of dingy fat, which bore the interesting title of pigs' chops. This, though an unpicturesque, was a thriving trade, -thriving, however, upon the terms on which every trade is only thriving, viz. by a strict attention to business from the hour of seven in the morning to eleven at night; a parsimonious regard to the frugalities of the home department; no ambitious heaviness or swellingness in the weights and measures used in the trade department; an anchorite's abstinence from scenes of pleasure in the leisure hours; careful book-keeping, with no want of niggardness of figures to those who are on credit; an arrangement of old goods for those who are ill on the books; and, if possible, a parochial situation as overseer or tax-gatherer (the last, the best,) to extend the trade into the business and bosoms of men.

Old Mr. Klünchünbrüch was a very careful man,-an extremely careful man. He was to be seen at the early hour when his boy -the usual cheap parochial martyr, who had, by the consent of churchwardens, abandoned for no consideration the muffin-cap and the kneeless leather breeches, for the eternal counter and the bed under it, took down the shutters, and let in the morning light, the only London romance of his life. The old gentleman stood at the door to see this ceremony, tying on the apron of the day before, speaking a courteous word to the clumsy-hipped Welsh woman, who made inaudible the kindness by the martial mode with which she grounded the arms of her milk-pails; and looked at the sky alternately with the shop-window, as though he were divided in interest between fleeting clouds and Gorgona anchovies, the blue sky and split peas, India soy and sunrise. The fact is, this excellent tradesman was-as all Germans are most sensitively alive to "the skyey influences" as well as to the influences of trade; and if any weather-wise person would have taken the trouble to have gone by his shop at seven o'clock in the morning invariably, and

to have looked into those solemn old grey barometers-his eyes-he would with a moderate intellect have ascertained whether west winds or Westphalia hams were likely to look up, or whether frost or girkins would prevail. He had peculiar eyes, of a colour I had never yet seen,-bleak brown, stained white, faded green; an expression, in short, something between that of pickled onions and French olives. This is a nice distinction of colour, unknown to Stanfield, and artists who pretend to know what colour is. Dear old man! he stood at his door a concentrated human emblem of his trade, a cod's-sounds complexion, potted-char person, knap-wrorst legs; and, certainly, with a smoked tongue for general use, as he could not divest himself of his German idioms, making their way over the tobacco-flavoured lips in odorous twang to his English purchasers. He was civil before breakfast, civil after breakfast, (that meal being a very slight partition between the two civilities); civil before dinner, civil after dinner, (the partition ditto as to slightness); extremely civil in the little back-room behind the shop over a very cumbrous swarthy old pipe, which I could never help thinking he smoked (so earnestly, so patiently, so perseveringly he did it,) with an eye to hams, tongues, sausages, beef, hung ditto, pigs' cheeks, and other distortions of smoke, salt, and red muscle. Having mentioned these great faculties, it seems trifling with the niceties of biography to mention that he wore powder, had his hair in a queue, and was married. He found a lady at the German chapel who bore a very long, solemn, and severe ogling, and who with mulled tenderness, liked a successful and attentive tradesman, and did not dislike garlic and sauerkraut; and after a severe acquaintance, the two darling slownesses became one, mixed (to use the language of the trade) their two mild vinegars of affections-the eschalot and the Chili -together, and made a very respectable mixed pickle of human married life.

There is no event in the life of old Mr. Klünchünbrüch to warrant me in having been so minute as to take an inventory of his existence. His wife was as himself, only finer in quality,-pearl barley to common barley; the refinement only on the common, German dish. They scarcely had a life: they seemed to vegetate, perhaps with a professional eye,-so innocent and so harmless were their days and thoughts, to a preserving of a higher nature than this world held out to them. They saved money; and in due, orderly, German time, were purveyed to another world.

In the impetuosity into which a biographer is naturally hurried in writing the life of a German, I had almost forgotten to recur to the hero of my tale: come I to the son. I have mentioned that Mr. and Mrs. Klünchünbrüch were blessed with a son: the name, therefore, could not die. Oils, vinegars, sauces, mustards, salts, pickles, sausages, cheeses, spices, the whole genera of the immortal shop seemed to have centred in and inspired the son:-he was all these. At times he had the German solemnity and solidity of the father and mother; and at times he had the wicked, untradesmanlike pleasantry of an English boy. The fact is, he ran in and out of the door in a pinafore all the early days, when the memories of children are 66 wax to receive and marble to retain," between imperial prunes and seven o'clock in the morning, between Italian niceties and London cries, between figs and fine air, Cagliari paste and dust