'Con-found it!' Tom gasped. 'Bad language will not intimerate ME, Mr. Probus, and as for hoaths I scorn them. But maintain the 'ouse quiet and respectable I will, as long as I've breath in my body,' continued Mrs. C., who did not appear to possess at that moment any superfluity of the article in question.

'I think everybody is mad,' said Tom, getting more and more desperate. Mrs. Croker, I feel convinced you're a lunatic; and, upon my word, if you don't explain yourself, I'll do my best to get you a straitwaistcoat

Don't westcot me, Mr. Probis, if you please,' retorted the landlady.

But just you read that letter, and answer me, sir, as a gentleman, do you think clandestine correspondence is a proper and a decent thing to be going on between parties as calls theirselves gentlefolks in a Christian lodging-ouse?'

Clandestine correspondence!' cries Tom. 'Why, good heavens!'

'Don't appeal to hevings in my presence, sir,' interrupts Mrs. Croker, 'when you must be well aweer that I brought you a letter from Miss Webster this very morning, with these silf-same 'ands, which, though intended for the post, and left on the first-floor bracket along with the rest, I see at once was intended for you, and brought it to its destination.

'I don't believe' begins Tom.

You don't believe is all very well, Mr. Probis,' continues the lady; 'but I do believe; and, what's more, I know. And here's another, which I see her give Susan with my own eyes. But such goings on shall not be tolerated in my ouse if I can prevent it; and the sun does not go down this day before I make it my business to acquaint Mr. Webster.'

So saying, she flounced out of the room, leaving Tom aghast with the letter. When she had gone, he tore it open, and read aloud as follows:

'SIR,-I have this morning received a letter signed with your

name, and of which it would be difficult to say whether the contents were more distinguished for their folly or impertinence. I should

have referred the matter at once to my brother, but he is unfortunately out of town, and will not return for some days. I therefore take the earliest and the only means in my power to demand an instant explanation of what at present I can only look upon as an unwarrantable liberty on your part.

'Awaiting the favour of a reply,
'I am, Sir,

"Yours indignantly,
'AGNES WEBSTER.'

If Tom had been angry before, he was perfectly dumbfounded now. He paced the room in a state of the greatest agitation for a minute or two, and then, suddenly turning to me, said

'My dear Easel, what on earth is the meaning of all this? Am I awake or dreaming? Have you got such a thing as a pin, or a penknife, or any sharp instrument about you? Because, if so, you would confer an immense obligation by sticking me with it-just to prove to me that this is reality, and not the nightmare. I ask a man to breakfast, and when we are just going to begin he runs out for weeds to smoke, and never smokes 'em, but bowls off before one can say Jack Robinson. He is no sooner gone than in comes my landlady, looking as black as thunder, with a letter from a young lady whom I had fondly imaginedWell, there-never mind-let us say from a young lady. Letter turns out to be a valentine-"throbbing heart"-" God of Love". deuce knows what-heap of rubbish-don't believe a word of it. Exit landlady. Enter Susan, grinning like a Cheshire cat-tells me a lot of lies about a valentinesend her about her business. Exit Susan, re-enter landlady, looking blacker than ever, with another letter-talks like a lunatic about clandestine correspondence-and when I open the letter, by Jove! I find myself accused of impertinence to the very girl who-. Oh, it's too

bad, it's infamous! I'll run down to Miss Webster at once, and explain everything.'

*

Tom did so; and the result was a full and honourable acquittal of the charge which had been brought against him.

Nor was this all; for the young lady-partly, perhaps, from a conviction that she had been too hasty, and owed him some compensation for his outraged feelings-and partly, perhaps, because Tom on this occasion made himself so agreeable(you must know he is an exceedingly good-looking young fellow, and stands about five feet eleven in his Balmorals)—our heroine of the drawing-room floor, I say, from some cause or another was graciously pleased to express her entire approbation of Tom's conduct, and furthermore intimated to him that her brother was desirous of making his acquaintance.

Ön Webster's return from the country the gentlemen exchanged calls; and from thenceforth Tom (who had had up to this time an unconquerable aversion to tea) sipped his souchong at least twice a week on the drawing-room floor with extraordinary relish.

It was not very difficult to see

how this sort of thing would end; and a few days after the anniversary of St. Valentine in the next year the following paragraph appeared in the Times:

On the 14th inst., at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, by the Rev. Andrew M'Carver (uncle to the bridegroom and brother of Professor M'Carver, F.R.C.S.), Thomas Probus, Esq., M.D., M.R.C.S., to Agnes, only daughter of the late Major Webster, R.E., of Harkaway Hall, Huntingdon.'

Planter and I were both asked to the breakfast; and the former, after the conclusion of that ceremony, and when the nuptial knot had been duly tied, took Probus aside to congratulate him, and at the same time to unbosom himself of a secret which I had long suspected, but which, if the reader has not himself divined, I do not feel myself called upon to reveal. It is sufficient to say that the mysterious appearance of the two valentines was fully accounted for, and their real author heartily forgiven. For had he not been the means of making two people happy for life, and securing for Tom (who, by-the-way, is now in capital practice) one of the prettiest and dearest little wives in existence?

JACK EASEL.

THE
HE Loyal Westminster, remem-

ber, not the Royal Westminster; not that wonderful theatre on the Surrey side of the water which, under Mr. Boucicault's ingenious management, invalids could reach without leaving the Parks; which presented such extraordinary conveniences for old ladies, country visitors, and fathers of families; which had morning performances for little boys and girls; which was elevated from a circus into a sensation shop; which was at last shut up, and sold nothing and nobody any more, until the indefatigable Mr. E. T. Smith took the shutters down. No; not Astley's; no vulgar arena full of sawdust and spangles, but the fine old original, legitimate, classical drama, invented more than two thousand years ago, and nightly produced before an admiring Roman audience under the distinguished patronage of Scipio Africanus and C. Lælius, Esquires, who were mightily taken with a clever young playwright of the day, one Publius Afer, a born slave in the service of Mr. Senator Terentius Lucanus. That worthy magistrate, perceiving his protégé to be a youth of promise, gave him his freedom and his own name at the same time; and he did wisely, for the name has lived for twenty centuries, and will live as long as mortal lips can speak-as long as ink and paper can be found to print it.

Well, our theatre has nothing much to boast of in its external aspect. It was built by the great Lord Burlington, it is true, in an era of architectural magnificence, but it has undergone much alteration since that day, and from the side where we approach it looks, it must be confessed, somewhat dingy. There is a battered old door at the entrance, and young ladies who arrive there as visitors to the play look round them with a curious air, and wonder what manner of place this may be which looks so much like a hospital, a guard-room, a union-house-anything but that college of St. Peter's about which

they have heard their brothers talk so much. Yet St. Peter's College it is; and here it stands, under the shadow of Westminster Abbey, close to that venerable school where statesmen, poets, soldiers - hundreds who have won a name in the world's history-began their race in life. From this same threshold young Warren Hastings stepped out on his brilliant career; so brilliant, indeed, that the few dark clouds which gathered round his fame were lost in the splendour of its sunshine. There was a puny, spirit-broken schoolfellow of his, who, after shaking hands with his boy-friend and wishing him Godspeed, I dare say turned away to muse alone in some dark corner of the Cloisters. It was William Cowper, whose delicate frame and sensitive disposition ill fitted him for the trials of a public school. Years afterwards, when half Europe cried shame upon the Governor-General of Bengal, this pure, good, gentle boy had grown to manhood and become a poet-a poet whose rhymes breathed nothing but of innocence and virtue, and who refused to believe that his old comrade Warren Hastings was anything but virtuous and innocent.*

Among his other schoolfellows were Churchill (who made a clandestine marriage while still under the discipline of the rod), Colman, Lloyd, and Cumberland. A century before their day, Master John Dryden was cutting his name on the school benches, with no doubt a well-thumbed Virgil at his side. Had he heard, I wonder, of the bricklayer's 'prentice who thirty years before turned up his nose at his stepfather's honest calling, and ran off to fight with the army in Holland? You may see that graceless truant's name in the Abbey over the way. He was brought up at Westminster under the famous Dr. Busby, and, no doubt, frequently winced under that stern old pedagogue's birch. 'O RARE

* See Macaulay's Essays.