were pretty much out of the season, what
they were used to be in it. First, the shop
where they sell the sailors' watches, which
had still the old collection of enormous time-
keepers, apparently designed to break a fall
from the masthead: with places to wind
them up, like fire-plugs. Secondly, the shop
where they sell the sailors' clothing, which
displayed the old sou'-westers, and the old
oily suits, and the old pea-jackets, and the
old one sea-chest, with its handles like a pair
of rope earrings. Thirdly, the unchangeable
shop for the sale of literature that has been
left behind. Here, Dr. Faustus was still
going down to very red and yellow perdition,
under the superintendence of three green
personages of a scaly humour, with excrescential
serpents growing out of their blade-bones.
Here, the Golden Dreamer, and the
Norwood Fortune Teller, were still on sale at
sixpence each, with instructions for making
the dumb cake, and reading destinies in tea-
cups, and with a picture of a young woman
with a high waist lying on a sofa in an attitude
so uncomfortable as almost to account
for her dreaming at one and the same time
of a conflagration, a shipwreck, an earthquake,
a skeleton, a church-porch, lightning, funerals
performed, and a young man in a bright blue
coat and canary pantaloons. Here, were
Little Warblers and Fairburn's Comic
Songsters. Here, too, were ballads on the
old ballad paper and in the old confusion of
types; with an old man in a cocked hat, and
an arm-chair, for the illustration to Will
Watch the bold Smuggler; and the Friar of
Orders Grey, represented by a little girl in a
hoop, with a ship in the distance. All these
as of yore, when they were infinite delights
to me!

It took me so long fully to relish these
many enjoyments, that I had not more than
an hour before bedtime to devote to Madame
Roland. We got on admirably together on the
subject of her convent education, and I rose
next morning with the full conviction that
the day for the great chapter was at last
arrived.

It had fallen calm, however, in the night,
and as I sat at breakfast I blushed to remember
that I had not yet been on the Downs.
I a walker, and not yet on the Downs!
Really, on so quiet and bright a morning
this must be set right. As an essential part
of the Whole Duty of Man, therefore, I left
the chapter to itself—for the present—and
went on the Downs. They were wonderfully
green and beautiful, and gave me a good deal
to do. When I had done with the free air and
the view, I had to go down into the valley
and look after the hops (which I know
nothing about), and to be equally solicitous as
to the cherry orchards. Then I took it on
myself to cross-examine a tramping family
in black (mother alleged, I have no doubt
by herself in person, to have died last week),
and to accompany eighteenpence which
produced a great effect, with moral admonitions
which produced none at all. Finally, it was
late in the afternoon before I got back to the
unprecedented chapter, and then I determined
that it was out of the season, as the place
was, and put it away.

I went at night to the benefit of Mrs. B.
Wedgington at the Theatre, who had
placarded the town with the admonition, "DON'T
FORGET IT!"  I made the house, according
to my calculation, four and ninepence to
begin with, .and it may have warmed up,
in the course of the evening, to half-a-
sovereign. There was nothing to offend any
one,—the good Mr. Baines of Leeds excepted.
Mrs. B. Wedgington sang to a grand piano.
Mr. B. Wedgington did the like, and also
took off his coat, tucked up his trousers, and
danced in clogs. Master B. Wedgington,
aged ten months, was nursed by a shivering
young person in the boxes, and the eye of
Mrs. B. Wedgington wandered that way
more than once. Peace be with all the
Wedgingtons from A to Z. May they find
themselves in the Season somewhere!

THE MOFUSSIL.

A FEW years since I had, in common with
most of her Majesty's subjects, a vague and
unsatisfactory idea as to the true signification,
locality, and extent of the Mofussil. This oriental
word had become somehow so mixed up in
my mind with the Great Mogul, the Sunderbunds,
the Taj Mehal, and the Shastres, that
I could not for the life of me have said
whether it was a person, a place, a thing, or
a book. On my arrival in Calcutta I heard
a great deal about Mofussil men, Mofussil
law, and Mofussil life, and I was not indisposed
to believe that it was the Bengal term
for Mussulmen. At length, to my great
relief I learnt that the East Indigo Railway,
on the staff of which I had come out, ran
through the Mofussil, and that I must be
prepared to start off to the locality in
question at a day's notice. The truth thus oozed
out. The word Mofussil was applied
generally to the country, in contradistinction to
the cities and towns of India. I was therefore
destined for the Mofussil of Bengal, and was
not long in obtaining an insight into the
peculiarities of life in the Indian provinces.

I joined the Rajmahal branch of the East
Indigo Railway, full of great expectations of
what the iron road was to do for the country
in an incredible short space of time; not
forgetting how anxious the "court" in
Leadenhall Street professed to be that no
time should be lost in developing the resources
of that most magnificent country, according
to Despatch Number Twenty-five thousand
six hundred and thirty-seven.

I was assured by many friends in Calcutta
that the Mofussil was the jolliest place in
the world for a young fellow, aiid that the
Mofussil men were the most jovial, the happiest