knowledge, from the melancholy that has succeeded to his joviality. Fat men always appear to be "good fellows," unless there is some manifest proof to the contrary; so we wish, for his sake, that every body in this world could do just as he pleased, and die of a very dropsy of delight.

Exeunt our fat friend, and the more ill-humoured of the two fat women; and enter, in their places, two young mothers,-one with a good-humoured child, a female; the other with a great, handsome, red-cheeked wilful boy, all flounce and hat and feathers, and red legs, who is eating a bun, and who seems resolved that the other child, who does nothing but look at it, shall not partake a morsel. His mother, who "snubs" him one instant, and lets him have his way the next, has been a spoiled child herself, and is doing her best to learn to repent the sorrow she caused her own mother, by the time she is a dozen years older. The elderly gentleman compliments the boy on his likeness to his mamma, who laughs and says he is "very polite." As to the young gentleman, he fancies he is asked for a piece of his bun, and falls a kicking; and the young lady in the ringlets tosses her head.

Exit the Methodist, and enter an affable man; who, having protested it is very cold, and lamented a stoppage, and vented the original remark that you gain nothing by an omnibus in point of time, subsides into an elegant silence; but he is fastened upon by the man with the bundle, who, encouraged

by his apparent good-nature, tells him, in an under tone, some anecdotes relative to his own experience of omnibuses; which the affable gentleman endures with a variety of assenting exclamations, intended quite as much to stop as to encourage, not one of which succeeds; such as "Ah"-"Oh"-" Indeed"-"Precisely"-"I dare say"-"I see"-"Really?"-"Very likely;”—jerking the top of his stick occasionally against his mouth as he speaks, and nobody pitying him.

Meantime the good-humoured fat woman having expressed a wish to have a window closed which the ill-humoured one had taken upon her to open, and the two young ladies in the corner giving their assent, but none of the three being able to pull it up, the elderly gentleman, in an ardour of gallantry, anxious to show his pleasing combination of strength and tenderness, exclaims, "Permit me;" and jumping up, cannot do it at all. The window cruelly sticks fast. It only brings up all the blood into his face with the mingled shame and incompetence of the endeavour. He is a conscientious kind of incapable, however, is the elderly gentleman; so he calls in the conductor, who does it in an instant. "He knows the trick," says the elderly gentleman. "It's only a little bit new," says the conductor; who hates to be called in.

Exeunt elderly and the maid-servant, and enter an unreflecting young gentleman who has bought an orange, and must needs eat it immediately. He

accordingly begins by peeling it, and is first made aware of the delicacy of his position by the gigglement of the two young ladies, and his doubt where he shall throw the peel. He is "in for it," however, and must proceed; so being unable to divide the orange into its segments, he ventures upon a great liquid bite, which resounds through the omnibus, and covers the whole of the lower part of his face with pip and drip. The young lady with the ringlets is right before him. The two other young ladies stuff their handkerchiefs into their mouths, and he, into his own mouth, the whole of the rest of the fruit, "sloshy" and too big, with desperation in his heart, and the tears in his eyes. Never will he eat an orange again in an omnibus. He doubts whether he shall even venture upon one at all in the presence of his friends, the Miss Wilkinsons.

Enter, at various times, an irascible gentleman, who is constantly threatening to go out; a longlegged dragoon, at whose advent the young ladies are smit with sudden gravity and apparent objection; a young sailor, with a face innocent of every thing but a pride in his slops, who says his mother does not like his going to sea; a gentleman with a book, which we long to ask him to let us look at; a man with a dog, which embitters the feet and ankles of a sharp-visaged old lady, and completes her horror by getting on the empty seat next her, and looking out of the window; divers bankers' clerks and tradesmen, who think of nothing but the bills

in their pockets; two estranged friends, ignoring each other; a pompous fellow, who suddenly looks modest and bewitched, having detected a baronet in the corner; a botanist with his tin herbarium; a young married couple, assuming a right to be fond in public; another from the country, who exalt all the rest of the passengers in self-opinion by betraying the amazing fact, that they have never before seen Piccadilly; a footman, intensely clean in his habiliments, and very respectful, for his hat subdues him, as well as the strange feeling of sitting inside; four boys going to school, very pudding-faced, and not knowing how to behave (one pulls a string and top halfway out of his pocket, and all reply to questions in monosyllables); a person with a constant smile on his face, having just cheated another in a bargain; close to him a very melancholy person, going to see a daughter on her deathbed, and not hearing a single one of the cheater's happy remarks; a French lady, looking at once amiable and worldly, -hard, as it were, in the midst of her softness, or soft in the midst of her hardness,-which you will, -probably an actress, or a teacher; two immensewhiskered Italians, uttering their delicious language with a precision which shows that they are singers; a man in a smock-frock, who, by his sitting on the edge of the seat, and perpetually watching his time to go out, seems to make a constant apology for his presence; ditto, a man with some huge mysterious

accompaniment of mechanism, or implement of trade, too big to be lawfully carried inside; a pedant or a fop, ostentatious of some ancient or foreign language, or talking of a lord; all sorts of people talking of the weather, and the harvest, and the Queen, and the last bit of news; in short, every description of age, rank, temper, occupation, appearance, life, character, and behaviour, from the thorough gentleman who quietly gives himself a lift out of the rain, secure in his easy unaffected manner, and his accommodating good-breeding, down to the blackguard who attempts to thrust his opinion down the throat of his neighbour, or keeps his leg thrust out across the door-way, or lets his umbrella drip against a sick child.

Tempers are exhibited most at night, because people by that time have dined and drunk, and finished their labours, and because the act of going home serves to bring out the domestic habit. You do not then, indeed, so often see the happy fatigue, delighted with the sudden opportunity of rest; nor the anxious look, as if it feared its journey's end; nor the bustling one, eager to get there. The seats are most commonly reckoned upon, and more allowance is made for delays; though some passengers make a point of always being in a state of indignation and ill-treatment, and express an impatience to get home, as if their house were a paradise (which is assuredly what it is not, to those who expect them there). But at night, tongues are loosened,