I'm afflicted with dropsy; I've erysipelas in
the face; I've got lumbar abscess and
intermittent fever. I must get me to bed, and
die in a day at farthest."

But Tommy was deceived once more.
When the churchyard of the village was
filled with two or three more generations of
his contemporaries; when Elizabeth was
succeeded on the seat which she had made a
throne by a Scotch pedant who made it a
schoolmaster's stool; when all the England
of his early days had disappeared, and the
battle of Bosworth had begun to be
considered pretty nearly as ancient as the battle
of Marathon, there came down a gentleman
to the little Shropshire village, and inquired
his way to Tommy's cottage.

"How do, father? " he said, jauntily lifting
up his Spanish hat, and letting the feather
trail on the kitchen floor. "We have
heard of thee at court, old gentleman, and
the King wishes to see thee. Say, wilt jog
Londonward, and shake hands with King
Charles?"

"I'feckens I will," said the old man; "for,
by'r ladie, I began my knowledge of kings
pretty early, seeing I saw on one day both
King Richard and King Henry. But by the
crook o' Glaston, we must make haste; for I
haven't long to live now."

"Have with you, then! " said the gallant.
"You shall be guest of my Lord Bemerly,
and shortly shalt thou see His Majesty."

Lord Bemerly received the Shropshire
peasant very kindly. Lady Bemerly was
delighted to study such an old "put," and with
the tasteful graciousness of the time amused
herself by putting vinegar into his beer, and
filling his apple-pies with pepper and
mustard, and tying ribands across his path to
make him fall; and once succeeded in
tripping him at the top of the great staircase,
and had him taken up insensible when he
had reached the lowest step. All the gay
people in the neighbourhood were enchanted
with the infantine playfulness of the countess.
She was the most aristocratic of all the
families in the country; and so indeed was
her lord; between them they constituted the
very acme and perfection of high birth and
noble breeding.

"Do you know," she said, one day to
Tommy, "that some of my ancestors came
from Shropshire—'tis an immense time ago,
before the Crusades—I believe and even you
weren't born then. Look,—this ring and
chain—did you ever see anything more quaint
and old?"

Tommy looked at them as he was told, and
stood gazing as if he had been fascinated by
their sight.

"Odds flitters! " he said, "I've see'd they
before. Tell me, fair mistress, what was the
name o' thee afore thou wast married to my
lord?"

"My father was Earl of Boshfield," she
said, with a laugh; "great grandson of the
famous Sir Stephen Honi D'Eux, who was so
great a man in Henry's and Mary's time. He
married—let me see, here's a book that tells
us all about them—he married Susan Proddy,
who was descended from a noble family who
came over with William, and assumed their
name from the motto of their house, Pro Deo
et Rege. See, here is the ring with a coronet,
and under it the words."

"I knowed her well," said Tommy. "She
was Susan Proddy's child, as married Dodger,
the miller of Wakefield."

The countess laughed long and loud. "You
pronounce the names incorrectly, Master
Thomas. She married Reginald D'Ozier,
the head of the great Norman family of the
D'Oziers of Coutances, who were called the
millers from their prodigious strength and
the battle-axe with which they fought in the
Holy Land; and you degrade them into the
plebeian Dodger! See, here is another ring,
with the explanation of the name you call
Honeydew."

She took from a cupboard a plain gold
ring, and showed it to her visitor.

"Jackers! but this is more odd nor the
other! I sent that 'ere to thy grandmother's
grandmother the day she married the
constable in Warwick Church. And I do tell
thee, the name was Susan Proddy and Stephen
Honeydew. I see'd 'em both, and I wanted
to marry thy grandmother's great
grandmother myself; and I would too, only I was
so sickly and weak."

"Get thee to the buttery-hatch, and get
strong," said the countess, pettishly. " Thou
hast outlived thy strength and memory; and
I will have thee cudgelled to death if thou
breathest word more, about your Honeydews
and Proddys and Dodgers."

Tommy hobbled as well as he was able to
the buttery, and there endeavoured to recover
his courage and drown his remembrances of
Susan with such copious draughts of beer,
that in less than a week he expired of
repletion and indigestion. He was buried at the
expense of the illustrious family of the Honi
D'Eux, and on his tombstone was written:

In memory of Thomas Barr, who died in
the year sixreen hundred and thirty-five, at
the age of one hundred and fifty-three.

THE ART OF UNFATTENING.

LEANNESS, hitherto, has been considered a
reproach, rather than a merit, either in an
individual or a nation. Pharaoh's lean kine
were never held up as models to the graziers
of any age, or any country. Brutus was not
so very much in the wrong, when he
entertained doubts about "that Cassius" with
his lean and hungry look. The point of one
of the bitterest of the many epigrams shot at
Voltaire is blunted and rendered harmless
by translation into a language where "death
and sin" do not rhyme to "thin." We cannot
fancy a fat Macbeth; a corpulent traitor