to put upon this work, in two volumes, the sum | in a palace, and entertained at the public charge of eight shillings."

Mr. Prickett stepped forth from the Cimmerian gloom of some recess, and cried, "What! Mr. Burley, is that you? But for your voice, I should not have known you."

"Man is like a book, Mr. Prickett; the commonalty only look to his binding. I am better bound, it is very true."

Leonard glanced toward the speaker, who now stood under the gas-lamp, and thought he recognized his face. He looked again. Yes; it was the perch-fisher whom he had met on the banks of the Brent, and who had warned him of the lost fish and the broken line.

MR. BURLEY (continuing)." But the 'Art of Thinking!'-you charge eight shillings for the 'Art of Thinking.'

upon Ortolans and Tokay. He should be kept lapped in down, and curtained with silken awn. ings from the cares of life-have nothing to do but to write books upon tables of cedar, and fish for perch from a gilded galley. And that's what will come to pass when the ages lose their barbarism, and know their benefactors. Mean. while, sir, I invite you to my rooms, and will regale you upon brandy-and-water as long as I can pay for it; and when I can not, you shalı regale me."

Mr. Prickett muttered, "A very bad bargain, indeed," as Mr. Burley, with his chin in the air, stepped into the street.

CHAPTER XX.

Ar first, Leonard had always returned home

MR. PRICKETT.-"Cheap enough, Mr. Burley. through the crowded thoroughfares-the contact A very clean copy."

MR. BURLEY.-"Usurer! I sold it to you for three shillings. It is more than 150 per cent you propose to gain from my 'Art of Thinking.'

of numbers had animated his spirits. But the last two days, since his discovery of his birth, he had taken his way down the comparatively unpeopled path of the New Road.

He had just gained that part of this outskirt in which the statuaries and tomb-makers exhibit their gloomy wares-furniture alike for gardens and for graves-and, pausing, contemplated a column, on which was placed an urn half covered with a funeral mantle, when his shoulder was lightly tapped, and, turning quickly, he saw Mr. Burley standing behind him.

MR. PRICKETT (stuttering and taken aback). -"You sold it to me! Ah, now I remember. But it was more than three shillings I gave. You forget-two glasses of brandy-and-water." MR. BURLEY.-"Hospitality, sir, is not to be priced. If you sell your hospitality, you are not worthy to possess my 'Art of Thinking.' I resume it. There are three shillings, and a shil- "Excuse me, sir, but you understand perchling more for interest. No: on second thoughts, fishing; and since we find ourselves on the same instead of that shilling, I will return your hos-road, I should like to be better acquainted with pitality; and the first time you come my way you you. I hear you once wished to be an author. shall have two glasses of brandy-and-water." I am one."

Mr. Prickett did not look pleased, but he made no objection; and Mr. Burley put the book into his pocket, and turned to examine the shelves. He bought an old jest-book, a stray volume of the Comedies of Destouches-paid for themput them also into his pocket, and was sauntering out, when he perceived Leonard, who was now standing at the doorway.

"Hem! who is that ?" he asked, whispering Mr. Prickett.

"A young assistant of mine, and very clever." Mr. Burley scanned Leonard from top to toe. "We have met before, sir. But you look as ᎥᏝ you had returned to the Brent, and been fishing for my perch."

"Possibly, sir," answered Leonard. "But my line is tough, and is not yet broken, though the fish drags it among the weeds, and buries itself in the mud."

Leonard had never before, to his knowledge, seen an author, and a mournful smile passed his lips as he surveyed the perch-fisher.

Mr. Burley was indeed very differently attired since the first interview by the brooklet. He looked much less like an author-but more perhaps like a perch-fisher. He had a new white hat, stuck on one side of his head-a new green overcoat-new gray trowsers, and new boots. In his hand was a whalebone stick, with a silver handle. Nothing could be more vagrant, devil me-carish, and, to use a slang word, tigrish. than his whole air. Yet, vulgar as was his costume, he did not himself seem vulgar, but rather eccentric-lawless-something out of the pale of convention. His face looked more pale and more puffed than before, the tip of his nose redder; but the spark in his eye was of livelier light, and there was self-enjoyment in the cor

He lifted his hat, bowed slightly, and walk-ners of his sensual humorous lip. ed on.

"You are an author, sir," repeated Leonard.

"He is clever," said Mr. Burley to the book- "Well. And what is your report of the calling? seller: "he understands allegory."

MR. PRICKETT.-"Poor youth! He came to town with the idea of turning author: you know what that is, Mr. Burley."

MR. BURLEY (with an air of superb dignity). -"Bibliopole, yes! An author is a being between gods and men, who ought to be lodged

Yonder column props an urn. The column is
tall, and the urn is graceful. But it looks out
of place by the roadside: what say you ?"
MR. BURLEY.-"It would look better in the
church-yard."

LEONARD." So I was thinking. And you are an author!"

MR. BURLEY.—" Ah, I said you had a quick | from the clay-take it from jerkin and corduroys, sense of allegory. And so you think an author and wrap it in the 'singing robes' that floated looks better in a church-yard, when you see him wide in the skies: the beer or the whisky needbut as a muffled urn under the moonshine, thaned but for that, and then it changed at once into standing beneath the gas-lamp in a white hat, the drink of Hebé. But come, you have not and with a red tip to his nose. Abstractedly, known this life—you have not seen it. Come, you are right. But, with your leave, the author give me this night. I have moneys about mewould rather be where he is. Let us walk on." I will fling them abroad as liberally as AlexanThe two men felt an interest in each other, and der himself, when he left to his share but hope they walked some yards in silence. Come !"

"Whither ?"

"To my throne. On that throne last sate Edmund Kean-mighty mime. I am his suc

"To return to the urn," said Mr. Burley"you think of fame and church-yards. Natural enough, before illusion dies; but I think of the moment, of existence-and I laugh at fame.cessor. Fame, sir-not worth a glass of cold without! And as for a glass of warm, with sugar-and five shillings in one's pocket to spend as one pleases—what is there in Westminster Abbey to compare with it?"

"Talk on, sir-1 should like to hear you talk. Let me listen and hold my tongue." Leonard pulled his hat over his brows, and gave up his moody, questioning, turbulent mind to his new acquaintance.

And John Burley talked on. A dangerous and a fascinating talk it was-the talk of a great intellect fallen. A serpent trailing its length on the ground, and showing bright, shifting, glorious hues, as it groveled. A serpent, yet without the serpent's guile. If John Burley deceived and tempted, he meant it not-he crawled and glittered alike honestly. No dove could be more simple.

We will see whether in truth these wild sons of genius, who are cited but 'to point a moral and adorn a tale,' were objects of compassion. Sober-suited cits to lament over a Savage and a Morland-a Porson and a Burns !—” "Or a Chatterton," said Leonard, gloomily. "Chatterton was an impostor in all things; he feigned excesses that he never knew. He a bacchanalian-a royster! HE!-No. We will talk of him. Come!" Leonard went.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ROOM! And the smoke-reek, and the gas glare of it. The whitewash of the walls, and the prints thereon of the actors in their mime-robes, and stage postures; actors as far back as their own lost Augustan era, when the stage was a real living influence on the manners and the age. There was Betterton in wig and

Laughing at fame, he yet dwelt with an elo-gown-as Cato, moralizing on the soul's eternity, quent enthusiasm on the joy of composition. "What do I care what men without are to say and think of the words that gush forth on my page?" cried he. "If you think of the public, of urns, and laurels, while you write, you are no genius; you are not fit to be an author. I write because it rejoices me-because it is my nature. Written, I care no more what becomes of it than the lark for the effect that the song has on the peasant it wakes to the plough. The poet, like the lark, sings 'from his watch-tower in the skies.' Is this true?"

"Yes, very true!"

"What can rob us of this joy! The bookseller will not buy, the public will not read. Let them sleep at the foot of the ladder of the angels -we climb it all the same. And then one settles down into such good-tempered Lucianic contempt for men. One wants so little from them, when one knows what one's-self is worth, and what they are. They are just worth the coin one can extract from them, in order to live. Our life-that is worth so much to us. And then their joys, so vulgar to them, we can make them golden and kingly. Do you suppose Burns drinking at the ale-house with his boors around him, was drinking, like them, only beer and whisky? No, he was drinking nectar-he was imbibing his own ambrosial thoughts-shaking with the laughter of the gods. The coarse human liquid was just needed to unlock his spirit

and halting between Plato and the dagger. There was Woodward as "The Fine Gentleman," with the inimitable rake-hell air in which the heroes of Wycherly and Congreve and Farquhar live again. There was jovial Quin as Falstaff, with round buckler and "fair round belly." There was Colly Cibber in brocadetaking snuff as with "his Lord," the thumb and forefinger raised in air-and looking at you for applause. There was Macklin as Shylock, with knife in hand; and Kemble, in the solemn weeds of the Dane; and Kean in the place of honor over the chimney-piece.

When we are suddenly taken from practical life, with its real workday men, and presented to the portraits of those sole heroes of a WorldPhantastic and Phantasmal, in the garments wherein they did "strut and fret their hour upon the stage," verily there is something in the sight that moves an inner sense within ourselves-for all of us have an inner sense of some existence, apart from the one that wears away our days: an existence that, afar from St. James's and St. Giles's, the Law Courts and Exchange, goes its way in terror or mirth, in smiles or in tears, through a vague magic land of the poets. There, see those actors! They are the men who lived it-to whom our world was the false one, to whom the Imaginary was the Actual. And did Shakspeare himself, in his life, ever hearken to the applause that thundered round

the Personators of his airy images? Vague children of the most transient of the arts, fleet shadows on running waters, though thrown down from the steadfast stars, were ye not happier than we who live in the Real? How strange you must feel in the great circuit that ye now take through eternity! No promptbooks, no lamps, no acting Congreve and Shakspeare there! For what parts in the skies have your studies on the earth fitted you? Your ultimate destinies are very puzzling. Hail to your effigies, and pass we on!

vances to the lamps, and begins " Di tanti pal piti." Time flies. Look at the Dutch clock over the door. Half-an-hour! John Burley begins to warm. A yet quicker light begins to break from his eye; his voice has a mellow, luscious roll in it.

"He will be grand to-night," whispered a thin man, who looked like a tailor, seated on th3 other side of Leonard.

Time flies-an hour! Look again at the Dutch clock. John Burley is grand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent drollery!—what luxuriant humor! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun (what word else shall describe it), the man's intellect is as clear as gold sand under a river. Such wit and such truth, and, at times, such a flood of quick eloquence. All now are listeners, silent, save

as he would some nights ago, in innocent, un questioning delight. No; his mind has passed through great sorrow, great passion, and it comes out unsettled, inquiring, eager, brooding over joy itself as over a problem. And the drink circulates, and faces change; and there are gabbling and babbling; and Burley's head sinks in his bosom, and he is silent. And up starts a wild, dissolute bacchanalian glee for seven voices. And the smoke-reek grows denser and thicker, and the gas-light looks dizzy through the haze. And John Burley's eyes reel.

There, too, on the whitewashed walls, were admitted the portraits of ruder rivals in the arena of fame-yet they, too, had known an applause warmer than his age gave to Shakspeare; the champions of the ring-Cribb, and Molyneux, and Dutch Sam. Interspersed with these was an old print of Newmarket in the early part of the last century, and sundry engrav-in applause. And Leonard listened too. Not, ings from Hogarth. But poets, oh! they were there too; poets who might be supposed to have been sufficiently good fellows to be at home with such companions. Shakspeare, of course, with his placid forehead; Ben Jonson, with his heavy scowl; Burns and Byron cheek by jowl. But the strangest of all these heterogeneous specimens of graphic art was a full-length print of William Pitt!-William Pitt, the austere and imperious. What the deuce did he do there among prize-fighters, and actors, and poets? It seemed an insult to his grand memory. Nevertheless there he was, very erect, and with a look of ineffable disgust in his upturned nostrils. The portraits on the sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary men -very like the motley pictures of the FAMOUS hung up in your parlor, O my Public! Actors and prize-fighters, poets and statesmen, all without congruity and fitness, all whom you have been to see or to hear for a moment, and whose names have stared out in your newspapers, O my Public!

And the company? Indescribable! Comedians, from small theatres, out of employ; pale haggard-looking boys, probably the sons of worthy traders, trying their best to break their fathers' hearts; here and there the marked features of a Jew. Now and then you might see the curious, puzzled face of some greenhorn about town, or perhaps a Cantab; and men of grave age, and gray-haired, were there, and among them a wondrous proportion of carbuncled faces and bottle noses. And when John Burley entered, there was a shout that made William Pitt shake in his frame. Such stamping and hallooing, and such hurrahs for "Burly John." And the gentleman who had filled the great high leathern chair in his absence gave it up to John Burley; and Leonard, with his grave observant eye, and lip half sad and half scornful, placed himself by the side of his introducer. There was a nameless expectant stir through the assembly, as there is in the pit of the opera when some great singer ad

Look again at the Dutch clock. Two hours have gone. John Burley has broken out again from his silence, his voice thick and husky, and his laugh cracked; and he talks, O ye gods! such rubbish and ribaldry; and the listeners roar aloud, and think it finer than before. And Leonard, who had hitherto been measuring himself, in his mind, against the giant, and saying inly, "He soars out of my reach," finds the giant shrink smaller and smaller, and saith to himself, "He is but of man's common standard, after all!"

Look again at the Dutch clock. Three hours have passed. Is John Burley now of man's common standard? Man himself seems to have vanished from the scene: his soul stolen from him, his form gone away with the fumes of the smoke, and the nauseous steam from that fiery bowl. And Leonard looked round, and saw but the swine of Circe-some on the floor, some staggering against the walls, some hugging each other on the tables, some fighting, some bawling, some weeping. The divine spark had fled from the human face; the beast is every where growing more and more out of the thing that had been Man. And John Burley, still unconquered, but clean lost to his senses, fancies himself a preacher, and drawls forth the most lugubrious sermon upon the brevity of life that mortal ever heard, accompanied with unctuous sobs; and now and then, in the midst of balderdash, gleams out a gorgeous sentence, that Jeremy Taylor might have envied: driveking

He had a latch-key to his lodging. He let himself in, and walked noiselessly up the creak-ed by the undergraduates for his thick shoes ing, wooden stair. It was dawn. He passed on to his window, and threw it open. The green elm-tree from the carpenter's yard looked as fresh and fair as if rooted in solitudes, leagues away from the smoke of Babylon.