THE HUNCH-BACK COBBLER.

"I found before the door a swinging fellow, with all my shape and features, and accoutred also in my habit."

Dryden's Amphitryon.

AFTER the splendid ceremony of wedding the Adriatic sea, which the chief magistrate of Venice performs by going out in his state-barge and throwing a ring into the waves, a splendid banquet in his palace, and general revelry throughout the city, usually occupy the day. On one of these annual occasions, the doge, having celebrated the allegorical ceremony expressive of his maritime authority, retired to a small supper-table with a few select friends, to enjoy an entire release from official cares. And that it might be fully felt by his guests, he deputed his favourite, Count Annibal Fiesco, to perform the honours of the table, and sat himself among the entertained. The favourite, a nobleman of rich comic humour and grotesque person, compared himself to Sancho Panza in his court of Barataria; and the guests seizing the license of the moment, rallied him gaily on his likeness to that merry squire's exterior.

Say at once,” rejoined the count, “that you think me a tolerable Panache."

The doge asked an explanation of this sally, and was wered with great gravity :

Monsignor, the personage I mention is at this time high importance at the court of France. She is np-backed, wry-footed, squints prodigiously, takes ff, scolds every body, and sits at all tables. One es her a sweetmeat, another a box on the eare mistakes the offender, tells all the truth she knows, l never fails to make mischief. Therefore she dehts all the ladies of the court, and whatever ought t be told, is said to be told by Madame Panache. e of these fair ladies was well received by the yal family of Sweden, but unluckily compared the een to Madame Panache; and the consequence may guessed, as the queen was an ugly woman." "Had she been an ugly man," said the chamberlain, ly glancing at the favourite's deformed person," the venge would have been different. Instead of ruining e lady's husband, which probably gave her no great oncern, I would have sentenced her to wear the ump, and bear the name of Madame Panache. But erhaps she had not wit enough to play a fool's part vell."

Every wise man has not quite wit enough for that," terposed the doge, seeing some symptoms of Italian nger in his friends' faces; and casting a glance at the ount, he put on his scarlet cloak, and resumed his lace at the head of the table, with an air of mild

VOL. V.

authority, which seemed to request forbearance. favourite obeyed it with ready grace.

The

"Your highness," said he, "shall see how easily a fool's part may be played. No man in this city is said to resemble me, except the cobbler Antonio; and I will wager my best white horse, that in three days I will wear his clothes, handle his tools, and make his grimaces so well, that he shall not be certain whether he is himself, or I am he. Nay, if your highness chooses to have this carnival of folly complete, I will bring him to confess he is a dead man, and that I am his ghost."

The doge staked a hundred ducats on the experiment, and the chamberlain joined in wishing the count success in the farce of 66 Il Due Gobbi."

An obscure shed, or what in England would be called a cobbler's stall, was the abode in Venice of a celebrated person called Antonio Raffaelle-not the painter whose talents have excited so many imitators, but a little square-headed, hump-backed shoemaker, whose neighbours gave him this eminent surname in derision of his ridiculous ugliness and excessive vanity. Almost all the noted artists in Venice had taken this Esop's likeness, as an exercise for their skill in caricature, but with infinite delight to Antonio, who imagined himself a second Antonius. One night, after earning a few pieces of coin upon the quay, he returned to his cassino, and was surprised to see a square-headed humpbacked dwarf, seated by his wife's side, composedly eating macaroni, and drinking lemonade.

In the name of St. Mark," said the high-spirited lian cobbler, "how comes such an ill-favoured isbeo here in my absence? and how dares he stay en I come home?"

Signor Gobbo," replied the dwarf, bowing with eat civility and nonchalance, “considering that you ve thought fit to counterfeit my hump and my crooked g, I make no answer to your comment on my ill-looks; t I take leave to eat my own macaroni, and sit at my vn shopboard, without any offence to any gentleman." Antonio Raffaelle answered this harangue with a very ientific blow, which the new cobbler returned him with ach speed, and such sufficient aid from the lady, that s opponent was forced to abandon his household earth, and fight outside. All the lazaroni of the eighbourhood assembled to see the manual debate; nd as poor Raffaelle was completely vanquished, very isely, and with the usual logic of a mob, concluded im in the wrong, and joined the impostor in driving im out of the street. Antonio was a practical philo. opher, and instead of waiting for farther compliments rom the victors, went to the nearest officer of police, nd made his complaint.

"This is all very ingenious,' said the magistrate, aughing but my good little Annibal, every body knows the old cobbler you pretend to be, and his ugliness is a hundred times more comical than your's. I have known the steeple on his shoulder ever since

I was a boy, and wrote my lessons twenty years ago, under the inspiration of his genius for lying. Go and add three pounds to that mound on your back, and make a better semicircle of your leg, before you come to me again."

There was no enduring this taunt. Raffaelle ran in a fury of aggrieved honour to Signor Torregiano, an artist, who had just finished a sketch of him, and implored his aid to identify an injured man.

"Ha! ha!" answered the Signor, uncovering his easel," that will be no difficult matter. His back serves me as the model of Vespasian's arch; and I shall send for him to-morrow to finish his profile-I want it for the Princess of Parma's museum-and here it is, except the nose, which I have not ochre enough to finish. My wife's parrot mistook it for a cockatoo's beak, and pecked at it."

If Raffaelle was astonished at the insolent raillery of the painter, he was still more confounded when, in reply to his clamorous complaints, the Signor drily ordered his lacqueys to turn the impostor out of doors.

'These rogues think," said the artist, taking a long whip, and bestowing it liberally on his visitor, "that any dwarf may mimic our Raffaelle; but I would have have them to know, an ugly knave must be a clever one."

Poor Antonio hardly knew how to believe his own ears, which had been so often feasted with praises of