at court, you shall see my Lord Rochester the very pink of fashion; but Gramercy! there is little chance of so ominous a transformation while Charles the Second is King; his pleasures are his ministers; idleness his occupation; the dinner-table his council-board; and his mistresses his masters. A merry world and a mad, is the motto of to-day to which, if you add, a fig for yesterday! and hang to-morrow! you have a clue to all the mysteries of the court, past, present, and to come. What shall be our next freak, my man of the woods? As you helped me to run away with Mistress Mallett, wilt help me now that she is my wife, to run away from her? 'Twere the better service of the two. O that inimitable drunken mountebank! how many times have I attempted to enact the character, and how unworthy was the copy of the great original! Hyperion to a Satyr. Here come more friends; they have heard of your appointment: O the summer rogues! They come like the flies with the sunshine, to disappear when you are under a cloud. Let me avoid their buzzing. I know their value, for I have written a poem upon Nothing." His Lordship fled, leaving Jocelyn to a levee of subordinates and minor courtiers, whose interested professions and congratulations he received with apparent complacency, though he fully appreciated the worth of such lip-deep friendship. Among others came Tracy, with a message from the Queen, inviting him, if he felt sufficiently recovered, to attend a splendid entertainment which was to be given that evening in Christ-church Hall, and at which he might be presented to the King upon his appointment. Little as he felt disposed to encounter such festivities after the lamentable scenes of suffering and sickness he had so lately visited, he considered her Majesty's invitation as a command which he was bound to obey, and accordingly dressed himself in the gayest attire that he could procure at so short a notice, girt his diamond-hilted sword to his side, and betook himself to the venerable Hall of Christ-church, which had never before resounded with such notes of revelry and music, nor encircled by so joyous and magnificent an assemblage. The whole enclosure was nearly filled with company when he entered, the gothic and gloomy architecture of the building, and the recollection of the purposes to which it was usually applied, contrasting strongly with the blaze of lights, the sparkling beauties, the splendid court, the smiling faces, the tables covered with cards and dice, and the waving plumes of the dancers, as they moved to the melody of wind instruments, whose cadences were mingled with the buzz of conversation, or the louder echoes of merriment and laughter. Misgivings, as to the kind of reception he was likely to experience from the King, rendered him anxious for the completion of that ceremony, and he was always so impatient of suspense, that he was not sorry when Lord Rochester took him by the hand, and leading him directly up to the Monarch, exclaimed as he presented him; "Here is another of your Majesty's naughty boys, who is a petitioner for forgiveness, and is ready to perform whatever penance may be enjoined him, only barring birch and ferula, imprisonment or starvation." "He cannot be condemned to wear the fool's. cap without robbing your Lordship," said the Monarch, smiling, " and we therefore sentence him to learn fifty lines by heart, and yourself to write them." "Your Majesty was ever merciful," cried Rochester an easy penalty, indeed!" "Not so simple as you may imagine”—said the King" for you are prohibited from being either indecent or profane in your verses." "I am absolved by the very conditions," replied Rochester," for no one is bound to perform impossibilities." Jocelyn was expressing his regret that he should ever have fallen under his Majesty's displeasure, when the good-humoured Monarch interrupted him with an exclamation of " Tilly vally, man! name it not. If every man who abuses me behind my back were to run away from Court, I might hold my grand levee in a sentry-box; and besides, I have forgotten so many services, that I am bound in justice to overlook a few offences. Your father, stout Sir John, was ever a trusty I remember too well our supper at Bruges, to punish the quondam Queen of the Gate-house for forgetting her own station, and arraigning royalty." He held out his hand which Jocelyn kissed, and as others were pressing forward to be presented, he retired from the throng, not less delighted with his reception, than surprised that his Majesty should recollect their supperparty at Bruges, and the particulars of his escape from prison. Finding himself unpleasantly affected by the heat, he retired to the deep embrasure of one of the windows, from which retreat he saw Lady Castlemaine flaunt athwart the hall, blazing like a meteor, her whole dress being illuminated with jewels she was succeeded shortly afterwards by Mistress Wells, Mistress Stewart, and others of the King's real or reputed mistresses, all decorated with a magnificence that eclipsed other competitors, although it did not equal that of Lady Castlemaine. Lord Mordaunt and an elderly lady were seated at a little distance, noticing this procession of emblazoned wantons, and coupling it with the King's lavish expenditure upon Nell Gwynn and Moll Davies, for whom he had lately been fitting up houses in Pall Mall and Suffolk Street, when the Lady exclaimed-" Ought not such shameless and wasteful hussies to be impeached ?" "No, indeed," replied Lord Mordaunt, "we should rather erect statues to the patriotic courtezans who make their lover dependant upon Parliament for his subsistence. The people would soon be slaves, if the King were not always a beggar." Conceiving from the tenor of their conversation that it was not meant to be overheard, Jocelyn left his retreat, and again mixed himself with the company, anxious to get near the fantastical Dutchess of Newcastle, whom he saw at a little distance, attracting all eyes by the preposterous singularity of her dress and discourse. This lady, who had written thirteen volumes upon speculative subjects, was inquiring of the Bishop of Chester, who had attempted to show the possibility of a voyage to the moon, where she was to stop and bait, supposing she were to undertake the journey. "Madam," said the Bishop, "of all people in the world I should least have expected that question from you, who have built so many castles in the air, that you might sleep every night in one of them." Notwithstanding this rebuff, her Grace was preparing to renew her attack, and Jocelyn was anticipating some amusement from the keen encounter of two such original wranglers, when, as his evil destiny ordained, he was pounced upon and seized, beyond all possibility of escape, by his old assailant Lady Babington, who thus began to pour out upon him the inexhaustible poverty of her ideas, nodding at in |