charge of it, to his faithful foreman and orphan niece that worthy pair having by this time been blessed with a male and female image of their respective graces; Mrs. D. being, moreover, in a situation shortly to ascertain if in children, as in less important matters, there is luck in odd numbers.

Railroads were not invented at the period in question; but the prosperity of the Dobbses was soon accelerated to a railroad pace. Many of the neighbours, who dealt at a distance rather than encourage a crabbed, and most-likely-wicked old bachelor, now deemed it almost a duty as well as a pleasure, to contribute their custom towards procuring bread (Dobbs himself subscribed the butter) for the sturdy and interesting little D.'s. Profits increased in a greater ratio than expenses; and upon the whole, Dobbs had no reason to complain of the times, whatever may have been his actual practice. Children, to be sure, would now and then have the measles; and inconsiderate customers would sometimes persevere too long in singing "Call again to-morrow," the burthen of a comic song that happened to be very much in vogue at the period. Occasionally, too, they anticipated the more modern prosaic drollery, "Don't you wish you may get it?" But these were comparative trifles, and little affected the general balance which, every Christmas, Dobbs found steadily increasing in his favour.

In justice to Dobbs, it must be admitted, that although not exactly a model of generosity, he was not deficient in natural feeling. He provided for his helpless parents, gave his own left-off clothes (with now and then a sovereign in the breeches pocket) to a poor brother, subscribed his annual guinea to a dispensary, and on three several occasions was known to contribute (legends differ as to the amount) to the relief of sufferers from fire in his own immediate neighbourhood. As overseer of the poor, his dynasty marks quite an era in the living annals of the workhouse; nothing being more common than to hear old men and women, who may think themselves wronged in some tea or tobacco question, say, with a significant shake of the head, "Ah! it was not so in 'Squire Dobbs's time; or, "If 'Squire Dobbs was in office, the poor would get their rights!" It does not follow from this circumstance, however, that 'Squire Dobbs" got always thus lauded while in the actual exercise of his official duties; it being usual enough among all classes to recollect the virtues only of those who have left us, and see nothing but the imperfections of those who remain.

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Exactly seven-and-twenty years after Skrimshire's death, and forty-one from his own arrival in London, Dobbs determined (find

ing himself rich enough to execute the plan of retirement he long had contemplated) finally to surrender his butter-knife and cheesecutter into the hands of his eldest son. We do not feel at liberty to state the exact sum he had achieved;-say, however, in round numbers, fifteen thousand pounds and if any vain-glorious philosopher has the temerity to think he could manage to exist upon one farthing less than the interest of so very moderate a provision, the only punishment we wish him is the opportunity of trying. Dobbs retired, as we have stated, to a pretty little place some four or five miles from Hyde-park Corner; here he cultivates flowers, cabbages, and philosophy, and all with a very reasonable degree of success: he was country-born, be it remembered, and his early predilections shoot up kindly in the "latter spring" of his closing days. His resident family consists of a wife and two buxom daughters-[don't agitate yourself, Mr. Idleman, the young ladies are both bespoke];— and what with his garden, kitchen and floral; what with presiding over an infant school that he has been mainly instrumental in establishing in his neighbourhood; watching that nobody cheats his son in town, and that nobody runs away with his daughters in the country; together with the assistance now and then of a book (which he may be rather said to endure than to like)-Dobbs manages to eke out a very tolerable existence; far superior, it is to be feared, to the average lot of mortal man. Indeed, strange to say, he seems to be himself somewhat of that opinion; for the last time we dined with him in a family way, he was pleased, after the third glass of wine, to edify us with the moral strain of one or two of his desultory remarks. "Providence" (said the worthy Dobbs) " has been exceedingly kind to me; much more so than to millions equally deserving. I endeavour to show my gratitude by doing what little good I can, and wish it were in my power to effect more.-But we are getting too serious. I must show you the summer-house; you hav 'n 't seen it since we gave it a new coating of green paint.-By the bye, what did you think of that Stilton we had at dinner? George sent it down last night; and I pronounce it capital. That boy will come to something yet, mark my words."—" It will be strange if he do n't," thought we (for we would not say anything to check the excusable exultation of a parent): but had he started on life's voyage with no greater advantages than his sire, it may be doubted if he would, like him, come so snugly into port as-a RETIRED TRADESMAN.

THE ENGLISH PAUPER.

BY THORNTON LEIGH HUNT.

"THE overseers of Surly-cum-Little!" cried the well-dressed magistrate's clerk.

"The overseers of Surly-cum-Little!" shouted a constable of the court, as the clerk stood up on his stool, and turned to have a chat with the magistrate on the bench behind, about the suppression of the anticipated Chartist meeting, and the dinner-party at which they had met the day before.

"Mr. Easy is not here, sir," said the chief constable.

The clerk jumped down from his stool. Mr. Bollington, the magistrate, a comfortable, respectable, more-than-gig-keeping man, with a shirt as white as his hair, and a face as ruddy as his watchriband, drew himself up with an air of self-possession suited to the dignity of the bench, and wonderfully consolatory to the irksome gnawing in the region of the nether waistcoat, the memento of yesterday's feast.

The clerk turned to the stall railed off for plaintiffs: there stood a group of a class familiar to his eye. Near to the bench was a creature whose shrunken, stunted size belonged rather to a lad than a man. His face was raised as his head lay back on his hunched shoulders, through fatigue, or indolence, or both. His colourless eyes stared abroad, with a glassy vacancy; his face was sickly, dull, stolid; patient as a jackass. Whether he had on a coat or a waistcoat it would have puzzled the most erudite of tailors to pronounce, for the thing seemed to be a hybrid between the two. The colour and texture of his clothes, his flesh, his hair, seemed all alike; their tint much resembled that of the court ground-a dingy, neutral, damp-dusty, mouldy hue, such as painters, to the astonishment of the uninitiated, admire for backgrounds. In a November fog, or in front of a decayed wall, the man would have been invisible; where he stood, it made one feel uneasy in the eyes to look at him, he was so dim, so faint, so squalid, so like the abstract idea of disease.

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