Tintamarre, when who should I meet in his
dreadful rattletrap of a Phaeton, as he calls it,
but Fubsy, my snip of a brother-in-law, with
his whole family, and my venerable parent, at
a dead lock in the Line. I could see as we
came up to the carriages, Fubsy rousing my
papa with his elbow, preparing for the pleasure
of recognising a man of my standing in
the midst of my aristocratic acquaintance; so,
putting on my coldest air, I raised my whip-
glass, and staring fall into Fubsy's box seat,
observed to Mrs. Pullaway:

'' ' Extraordinary! Really, what guys these
City people make of themselves; did you ever
see such a hat?

"Fubsy turned pale, and sunk back on the
box seat. Mrs. Fubsy muttered something
about a wretch. I believe I was scratched
out of the will, that night."

With such, and worse anecdotes of his
adventures, he kept us well amused in spite of
our secret twinges of disapprobation. He
was a mountebank who would have made his
fortune at the court of that merry and
exemplary monarch, Charles the Second. At
midnight, when my friends accompanied me
to the station, Spanner—having previously
borrowed a sovereign—followed me to the
refreshment room with " Come, Jack, you
know my weakness, one bottle of champagne!"
Of course he had it.

The next I heard of my fashionable friend
was still more extraordinary. His father had
died intestate, and he had come into I don't
know how many thousands, when he at once
re-appeared in the scenes of his former
glories, wherever money would buy him
admittance. This second career was even more
brief than the first.

I was married, settled, and had almost
forgotten him, when once or twice, passing along
the Strand, I was startled by a faint recollection
of a moustached person who hung about
a betting den. Raking up my memory, the
idea of my debauched schoolfellow occurred
to me.

A few nights ago, after one of Jullien's
concerts, I went with a friend into a tavern to get
supper. As we entered, an altercation was
going on between the waiter and a squat seedy
individual, who wished to enter the coffee-room;
as I passed, a dirty hand was laid
upon my shoulder. "This gentleman will
answer for my supper, you scoundrel; here,
Jack, lend us a sov. to satisfy these villains!
I have spent thousands with them, and now
they want to turn me out because I'm down
a little in the world."

Under immense moustaches and whiskers,
in the seediest of seedy paletots once white,
with a dirty blue bird's-eye round his neck,
grown to the size of a Falstaff, with moist
eye, trembling hand, and blackened teeth, I
recognised Harry Spanner, very dirty and
half drunk. .He obtained the sovereign, on
condition that he retired; and two hours
later we met a party of policemen conveying
him, strapped on a stretcher, riotously roaring,
"lis clothes muddy and torn, to the station-
house.

THE MASQUE OF THE NEW YEAR.

So forth issew'd the Seasons of the Yeare."—SPENSER.

I.

First, the young New Year came forward, like a little dancing child,
And his hair was as a glory, and his eyes were bright and wild,
And he shook an odorous torch, and he laughed, but did not speak,
And his smile went softly rippling through the roses of his cheek.

Round he looked across his shoulder;—and the Spirit of the Spring
Entered slowly, moved before me, paused and lingered on the wing;
And she smiled and wept together, with a dalliance quaint and sweet,
And her tear-drops changed to flowers underneath her gliding feet.

Then a landscape opened outwards. Broad, brown woodlands stretched away
Tn the luminous blue distance of a windy-clear March day;
And at once the branches kindled with a light of hovering green,
And grew vital in the sunshine, as the Spirit passed between.

Birds flashed about the copses, striking sharp notes through the air;
Danced the lambs within the meadows; crept the snake from out his lair;
Soft as shadow sprang the violets, thousands seeming but as one;
Flamed the crocuses beside them, like gold droppings of the sun.

And the Goddess of the Spring—that Spirit tender and benign—
Squeezed a vapoury cloud, which vanished into Heaven's crystal wine;
And she faded in the distance where the thickening leaves were piled;—
And the New Year had grown older, and no longer was a child.

II.

Summer, shaking languid roses from his dew-bedabbled hair,
Summer, in a robe of green, and with his arms and shoulders bare,
Next came forward; and the richness of his pageants filled the eye;
Breadths of English meadows basking underneath the happy sky;