A JACK-of-all-trades and master of none was Panurgus Pebbles: from the birchen tingle of boyhood to the mental pains of man's estate his shallow versatility was his bane: from the first kick and crow in long clothes to the silent rigidity in the shroud, his life, a patchwork harlequin, was ever slapping and flapping him. His mind was like Jacques' motley fool, or rather like a kaleidoscope-yet wanted reflection—the smoked glasses in that instrument, that by doubling the confused mass of glass splinters, &c., changes disorder into a "pattern of neatness."

When Pebbles picked up his scraps of knowledge, Heaven only knows! Pakilus Pigment, my artist friend, has ever beside his easel a spare canvass whereon he bestows at random the dabs of colour that remain in his brush, while he is working up his great picture for the Academy. On this canvass, upon the foundation thus laid, he afterwards depicts such a subject as the prevailing tints may suggest. Can it be that Nature, when supplying the crania of a number of mortals with brains of different tendencies, casts into the head of Pebbles the superabundant cerebral scraps. Panurgus was the son of an old Squire, whose spouse was a fashionable lady.

The father took him out for a ride; The mother sent him to school; The paternal care taught him to sing, "Tally ho!"

The maternal drilled him in the "Busy Bee;"

The Squire declared that his son should be "a man, not a milksop !" The lady said hers should be "a gentleman, not a stable-boy."

Between the two influences, Panurgus got off easily. If he did not go to school his father would screen him from his merited punishment; if he refused to ride a spirited horse his mother shielded him from his father's wrath; if he failed in the melody of

“Tally ho!” the lady would express her pleasure that he did not take a liking to a song that was not fitted for polite society." To which the squire retorted by observing-" that as to the matter of that he did not think Dr. Watts was much better. How about that one

"Abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs

Go sporting about by the side of their—' a proper word truly to be put in the mouths of children!"

So far his piebald breeding and disposition did our hero no harm-at least no present harm-for in after years the effects of these two counterinfluences came upon him.

But it was not only in his studies that our hero shone superficially. Was there a game of cricket proposed, who so ready as Pebbles to make one of a side. But without that genuine love of the sport, which would have sustained him during his fielding, he soon got tired, and the boys, knowing his failing, always sent him in last, being sure that his wickets once down Pebbles would slink off to some other pastime. Not that he was a great loss, for like all who do not enter into the spirit of the game conamore, he was a slovenly player, and went among the cricket-lovers by the soubrequet of butter-fingers; while among the boating community (for the school was near the river Weir and the boys had a whole fleet of "dingies" on it) he was known as crab Pebbles-a title derived from his frequent successes in catching those crustacea while rowing. To the uninitiated we will explain: He who would capture a crab must seat himself in a rowing boat, and taking an oar pull it scientifically until the vessel gets a swift onward motion, by seaman entitled "head-way." When this is accomplished let our friend turn his oar over slightly and try to lift it out of the water straight. There is a slight splash-a jerk-and