with a duster, and look miserable, and wish there was nobody in the world but good, old, indulgent masters. "Suit myself in a month," quotha! Unreasonable girl! Who ever heard of an essayist who could suit himself in a month? It is a Quarterly publication, is a suit just out, with the most famous wits; a Half-yearly with wits of less celebrity; a Nine-monthly with the third-rate sort; and an Annual with the Great Unknown; and then it is of Monmouth Street Monmouthy-a suit that might suit anybody.

As I have undertaken it, I sit up for my maid, instead of my maid sitting up for me, as is too common; and already I begin to feel what an irksome task it is to wait up for anybody. I am persuaded that maids undergo a great deal when they sit up for bachelors, and that sitting up for a married man aggravates their complaint.

Oh, the weariness of sitting up! I try everything to pass away the time. I take up "The Disowned," and lay it down again, as personal to me, situated as I am-alone-" deserted by those my former bounty fed," viz., my maid, who is shaking the half-pence, keys, and other odd miscellaneous matters in her pocket, to a pretty tune at "The Three Jolly Gardeners" by this time-(happy girl!); and my tortoiseshell pet, who is I know not where-unless he, too, is there! I try a game at draughts, and am beating myself hollow: there I am, up in a corner, with three kings, as tyrannical as the famous three of Brentford, ready to pounce upon me if I move— so I won't move, but will lie still, like Poland, for the present. try my German flute, and find that, through putting it up wet in the warm weather, it has split in the cold weather. I take a hand at cribbage with myself-and, there, that Dummy has pegged me out already! I try a Sonnet to the Moon, as she has been neglected lately, and out of twelve steel pens I cannot find one that will describe a decent "Oh!" to begin with.

I

Just as I have come to this reflection, or it has come to me, a loud, startling, solitary knock comes at my outer-door, which causes me to leap convulsively out of my easy-chair, as if galvanised, and grasp the parlour poker to-stir the fire. I listen all is silent as a Quaker's meeting when the spirit thinks. I make up my mind that it was a runaway knock, or a knock of the imagination. I sit down, and putting the poker in its place, I snuff the candles. Thump!" comes knock the second, with such an emphasis as brings to my mind the sturdy John Knox, there is such determination to be heard in it. I look at my watch-it is one minute past twelve-" Oh, that good girl! It is Susannah! She shall go again to The Three Jolly Gardeners,' since she is so true to her time!" I hasten to the door

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-unfasten it-it is Susannah! But what am I to think?-the handsome hair-dresser sees her home! "Where is Barbara ?" I enquire. "Oh, if you please, Sir, Grabb has seen her home,' answereth Susannah, with a significant fling up of her head, like a high-spirited Arabian wrangling with the bit. Maxwell bows to me, and then to my maid, like the first gentleman to the first lady in a country dance, and then departs, with his toes so exquisitely turned out, that my Lord Burleigh, good old Bess's dancing minister of state, would have died with envy of his excellence in that way. I say nothing further to my maid, but I look a great deal; and, giving her a light, retire to bed, determining to enquire into her tergiversations in the tender way to-morrow.

"Susannah, you will prepare breakfast-I shall be back in half an hour: and, as is my wont, I walk through the High Street of Highgate, to pick up an appetite, &c.; and, under pretence of ordering some grocery matters, I drop into Plum's, and there is Mr. Grabb, as diligent as ever, macadamising loaf-sugar into lumps of portable dimensions!

"Well, Mr. Grabb," I say, "I hope you had a pleasant entertainment of it yesternight." "Oh, certainly, Sir!" answers Mr. Gabriel; "nothing could be better mounted!" "What?" cry I. "Mounted," and he repeats the odd expression: "but I thought-I might be mistaken, though—we are too apt to think that no one can appreciate a highly-refined enjoyment so well as ourselves-I thought it was decidedly a cut above the cut of the Highgateteers—what Shakspeare divine man!—calls' Cuvier to the general!'' "What, was the General present?" I enquire; for we have an old Indian officer a settler in our hamlet. “Oh, dear, no; you mistake me quite, Sir!" answers Mr. Grabb, with a conceited chuckle, and two curls of his d-d moustache: "Cuvier, I take it, Sir, is French for our vulgar term queer; but Shakspeare couldn't say 'Queer to the general'-he had too much taste, Sir!" I look into the ugly puppy's face, perplexed-I cannot make him out! The rascal is either a wag (in which case I have fewer hopes of him than ever, and shall persuade Barbara against him, for I don't know any sort of man who has so little chance of doing well in this world as a wag); or else he is the most impertinent dog in Highgate; or extremely ignorant, and pretending to know better: in all of which cases he is no match for Barbara; and I'll take good neighbourly care that he has as little to say to her, and to my Susannah, too, as possible.

What am I to think of Barbara Briggleswiggle, my pattern MAID OF ALL-WORK? What do you think of her, gentle reader?

THE FASHIONABLE PHYSICIAN.

BY R. H. H.

SIR COURTNEY PALMOILE, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, attained the very summit of professional popularity and practice. None of the haut-ton could be sick without his advice; no sick personage could die happy without his assistance. In short, there were no bounds to the mental satisfaction and substantial "relief" which the aristocracy and rich gentry experienced from paying a series of fees to Sir Courtney Palmoile-the most fashionable physician of his day. With reference to the costume of the class, concerning which we are writing, we have a word to say. Our readers will be pleased to remember that the ancien regime of the physician's constant full dress-his black satin smalls, with knee and shoe buckles; his powder, queue, his glass and pin, his point-lace ruffles and wise-headed gold cane-all have fled and evaporated. The character of the courtly physician remains much the same; but the dress is quite altered. The movements and style of manners are also different. They have lost their ball-room effect and presentation; though still very precise, soft, and of feline velvetude in noiseless tread, so that the ear of noble sickness knoweth not of their advance or retirement— "Come like Palmoile, so depart!" There is a certain something, however, about the hands, and the movements from the elbow to the wrist, of a physician of this class, which has never changed. They are continually displayed in a pacifying, dulcifying, deprecatory, reconciling, soothing, and patting position-of which action and expression the Doctor in Punch is the exact prototype. In place of the ruffles, however, he now wears an ostentatious mourning-ringthe gift of a dear, deceased patient, who died under his hands; and sometimes pearl studs, attached to very large and finely "got-up" lawn wrist-bands. He always wears flannel down to his very wrists, where you just see it peep. He always wears a superfine great-coat, with long skirts, in the pocket of which he carries a stethoscope. This is a newly-invented instrument to examine the chest; and, in its genuine form, resembles a thick wooden ruler; but, as used by a

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