or two.

puffed up by the salutations of the country bumpkins in your own little village, you will certainly be for passing the season in London during the time when your country place looks most beautiful. Finding yourself nobody, upon two legs, you will want to add to your importance by getting upon four. Having once made up your mind to do so, do not attempt to economize. No price within your capabilities is too great for a first-rate hack. I know a common idea now is that any brightcoated, cat-legged, long-tailed animal is quite good enough for a month The gentlemen of my day never thought so. Two hundred was not a shilling too much for fifteen hands, perfect in shape, temper, mouth, and a knee that nearly reached the lip-strap at every movement. The same may be said for harness. Did Manners Sutton's chesnut horse and tilbury, or Lord Gardiner's hollow-backed hack, or Count d'Orsay's hog-maned bay horse, or Lady Blessington's chariot and coachman look of the same genus as the spindle-shanked thirty-pounders and low, dingy, miserable-looking broughams (I don't mean the exChancellor), clarences (nor the august family of that name), and other substitutes for walking, which your old uncle contemplates with a sigh when accident brings him in contact with the great world? No-not a bit of it. They looked like what they were-the horses and carriages of gentlemen and noblemen, who spent their money in a little innocent rivalry. Perhaps they haven't got it to spend? Do not tell me they ought to have, or else make a sacrifice of some more culpable folly to add to a pageant which the whole world could not surpass. So when you make an ass of yourself by turning a country gentleman of moderate independence into a London swell of no importance, but great pretension, be sure you do so in a laudable manner, and begin with your equipage. One thing I must advise. Never have a pony for a park hack, unless he is of such surpassing beauty as is not to be met with once in a thousand years. In the dirt they are intolerable; in the dust they are nearly as bad. You may keep one for your farm, if you like it, and then mind he is a good fat-bottomed one, with a short tail. You might overlook the whole of the reclaimed lands in Ireland on a thorough-bred one; but even His Grace of Richmond would not give you credit for being a man of business. However, that's not what you want now. You want a cover hack, and to know where to get one. Dealers are of no use to you; their condition won't do for hard work at once. Certainly not, if you mean galloping thirteen miles in fortyfive minutes, within a week of buying. And it is not a very easy thing to tell who would be of use to you. You have tried farmers, Welsh droves, Irish droves, Oxbridge hacks (short of fore legs), and fairs: Well, I think I know the man to suit you; and luckily our admirable Church system provides such in every neighbourhood. I mean a curate. Not a rector, or a dean: everything is fat about them-livings, horses, and all; but a curate-a good hardworking curate upon £100 a-year, with three duties on Sunday wide apart, and plenty to do in the week to keep the hack in exercise. If you see one of those ill-paid, hardfaring, patient souls on a good-looking hack, bid money. You may be quite sure the condition and constitution are all right, and that the animal is handy at gates, and probably not amiss at what the curate calls a gap; 'tis not more than four feet, but very seldom under three. It is the only recreation the poor fellow has. He won't rob you, because

he is a gentleman in the proper sense of the word, and having bought his horse cheap, and ridden and fed him into what he is, he is not so wealthy as to refuse what such a beast must be worth to you. The three years' corn he has in him would more than double his value, compared with the same animal in the hands of an idler. I really do not know a better market, if you want good looks with condition and

use.

I want to impress this, my dear boy, upon your mind. Condition is such a mistaken term. When I was young it was hardly understood, excepting by a few men, and then generally with a view to racing. Dealers' condition is one thing; hunting condition another; and racing condition a third and the condition I mean is neither one of them. I mean condition, as the general hardness or capability of a horse to do the work required of him. This cannot be obtained by two doses of physic, and some forced exercise, in perfection. It may be to a degree. But for really great powers of endurance in a horse, I think you must count your condition not by months, but by years. I have a little experience in that matter, because I have always been too poor to have a idle horse in my stable; and nothing but an old favourite should ever occupy my field. Rich or poor, and offering you advice to be followed or not at your pleasure,

PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF TILBURY NOGO, ESQ.

BY FOXGLOVE.

CHAP. XXIII.

"Lo you, here she comes! this is her
Very guise-and upon my life fast asleep.
Observe her; stand close."

MACBETH.

"In slumber, I prithee how is it

That souls are oft taking the air,

And paying each other a visit,

While bodies are-Heaven knows where."

MOORE.

I have already said, that pleasant as were the days which passed on so smoothly at Topthorne Lodge, the hours of darkness were those in the diurnal twenty-four which were spent least to the satisfaction of my somewhat nervous temperament. Not only did the supernatural horrors of "the Lily of the Lea" haunt my nightly dreams, but the more

substantial terrors of midnight assassins, and burglarious entries into peaceful dwelling-houses, as vividly painted in the daily columns of the Morning Journals, kept me awake for many an uncomfortable hour, in a most unenviable state of morbid apprehension. "The Forest" was a thinly populated district, and proportionally ill supplied with rural police. Poaching on a grand scale had from time immen orial been the characteristic crime of the country; but of late a series of burglaries, not always unaccompanied by violence, had beer effected upon lone farm-houses and detached mansions. The larder at Castle Bow shot had been stripped of its savoury contents-Farmer Veal had lost a dozen of currant wine and a side of bacon, ingeniously abstracted by removing a lattice from the cheese-room; whilst old Mrs. Swans ot, on looking under her bed, as had been, during a long and v 11-sint life, her nightly custom, had found the usual prospect afforded by that dusky locality varied by the lurking figure of a stealthy marauder ; certainly a thief-possibly an assassin-coiled up, as the old lady herself said, evidently for no good purpose. With a courage and coo ness that proved indisputably the truth of the well-known French mili ary maxim 'C'est le cœur qui fait le grenadier," this resolute old woman pulled her unwelcome visitor out by the heels, and as she dragged him from his ambush, greeted him with the following pithy salutation: "Now I've got you, I shall not let you go-you're the man I've been looking for for forty years, and here you are at last!" All these events were decidedly of an uncomfortable tendency; and I'm not sure which of the two catastrophes I regarded with the greatest horror-a visit from the "SpectreLily," whom I had now heard so often passing my door, that I believed as firmly in her existence as in my own identity, or a personal collis on with some bodily desperado; my only attacking weapon a short brass poker, my only defensive armour a thin cotton shirt.

After such a day of agitation as that which beheld my first interview with Kate, in her new capacity, and my long and confidential walk with Mrs. Montague Forbes, it is no wonder that the broken slumbers which visited my pillow were short and unrefreshing to my excited system. Disturbed and pantomimic dreams, in which confused and charging scenes and figures crowded themselves inexplicably on my brain, were succeeded by an attack of obstinate wakefulnes, that no change of position, no amount of tossing and turning could overcome or modify. It was a mild winter's night, such a night as precedes "a fine hunting morning," and the soft South-west wind sighed mournfully round the house, as it drove the heavy vapour-laden clouds gently athwart the struggling moon-beams; now partially veiling, now totally obscuring her light. It was a night for an adventure of love or war, but no night to be lying wide awake on a restless bed. That cursed clock-how it ticks! I shall ask Topthorne to stop it-I know his sister will, if I only mention it. Ah! I might do worse than come to an understarding at once with her and that little jilt Kate-how it would pique her, and serve her right. Well it is no use, but I suppose I must try to get to s'eep again." Such were the dispirited thoughts that half rose in broken murmurs to my lips, when horror! curdling my blood and freezing my marrow, came the well-known stealthy step along the passage, that too surely heralded the unearthly approach of " The Lily." A cold perspiration broke out on my forehead, my damp hair stood on end, and my

he is a lemn in the proper sense of the word, and having bought Ls horse cheap, and ridden and fed him into what he is, he is not so way as to refuse what such a beast must be worth to you. The three years' corn he has in him would more than double his value, compared with the same animal in the hands of an idler. I really do not know a better market, if you want good looks with condition and

I want to impress this, my dear boy, upon your mind. Condition is such a mistaken term. When I was young it was hardly understood, exerting by a few men, and then generally with a view to racing. Dealers condition is one thing; hunting condition another; and racing condition a third: and the condition I mean is neither one of them. I mean ecndition, as the general hardness or capability of a horse to do the work required of him. This cannot be obtained by two doses of physie, and some forced exercise, in perfection. It may be to a degree. But for really great powers of endurance in a horse, I think you must count your condition not by months, but by years. I have a little experience in that matter, because I have always been too poor to have a ille horse in my stable; and nothing but an old favourite should ever occupy my field. Rich or poor, and offering you advice to be followed or not at your pleasure,

I am, my dear Nephew,

Your affectionate Uncle,

SCRIBBLE.

THE UNSUCCESSFUL MAN;

OR,

PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF TILBURY NOGO, ESQ.