Pau, in the Pyrenees. You know him, my dear: Mr. Lampkin, Doctor Lupus's curate. I believe the poor fellow receives alms from a dreadful society that gives old clothes to curates. When he comes here to tea, he eats so voraciously of muffin that he goes away quite shiny; and, if I were not ashamed to insult a clergyman, I should order him a good meal of cold meat in the kitchen, for I am sure he is half starved. He lives at the circulating library and Berlin warehouse on the Pump Parade, and, I think, works samplers or embroiders petticoat-hems in his leisure time. His courtship of Siphkins, who adores him, seems to consist, chiefly, in bringing her bookmarkers, with appropriate devices. He never said "Bo!" to her in my hearing, and I don't think he could muster up enough courage to utter the same exclamation to a goose, were he left alone with the Michaelmas bird for a lifetime. He is not in the least High Church, and shudders when I talk of Doctor Pusey. He is one of the best and tenderest of creatures. Old as his clothes are, and scanty his body linen, I am certain he stints himself of both to cover the naked. That man's charities are untold, though his bounty often cannot exceed twopence-halfpenny. He was a sizar of his college, I am told, and kept an idiot sister, from the proceeds of a scholarship he won, till she mercifully died. He is up early and late, going about curate's work, bumping that poor large head of his in low-browed doorways, sitting beside beds made of rags and shavings on the floor, where the poor lie sick of typhus and cholera. I hear this on every side; yet, somehow, he isn't popular. The girls don't work braces or muffatees for him, or subscribe to buy him a silk gown. There is no talk of presenting him with an ebony cabinet, with the drawers full of sovereigns. What use is there in his marrying Siphkins? He has nothing. She has nothing. The most that I could do for them would be to set them up in a school, where,

in six months perhaps, they would go bankrupt. Hydrag, my doctor, says it would be much better to put them into a chandler's shop. I am no politician; but surely there must be something wrong here. All that money oughtn't to go to Pau, in the Pyrenees. Some of it should remain to increase the salary of the curate of St. Piston, Pumpwell. But what can you do, my dear? There are Bishops, and commissioners, and people, who of course know more about these things than we laymen and women can do. Latin and Greek, and Hebrew and mathematics, and only seventy pounds a year! It is all for the best, I suppose. You can't make a man popular; and Mr. Lampkin is decidedly not liked. They say he has two H's in his alphabet. He has a very large head and sandy hair. He breathes dreadfully hard when he is spoken to, and has an unpleasant habit of cracking his finger-joints. To have all these defects, to be poor and in love with a woman he cannot marry, and a curate, is a most hopeless state of life indeed.

Who was your sixth companion in the carriage? There were the three clergymen, your maid Pincott, yourself, and -ah! artful girl, who was Numero Six? You tell me all about him in your postscript. Infatuated young woman, are you already in love? He sat opposite to you. His feet were the tiniest in the world. His teeth gleamed like diamonds. (Rats' teeth also gleam, my dear. And serpents' fangs are sharp as lancets.) He had such loves of moustaches, blonde and drooping, and mingling with his whiskers. His hair was parted down the centre. The puppy! His hands were small and white. He wore a beautiful rough suit, all over pockets; and a heavy watchguard, with two lockets-one square, one round-hanging to it. One of them, perhaps, dear, held the fusees he lights his cigars with; in the other there may be the heart of a

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foolish girl. He looked at you with those deep blue eyes till you felt quite confused. I dare say. His neckcloth was passed through an exquisite diamond ring. Are you quite certain that he had paid for it? He didn't speak much, but he asked you if you knew a horse called Pepperbox" that they were laying odds against for the Cesarewitch. He was a fribble, child! You say that you are sure he was an officer. Can't a man wear blonde moustaches, and carry a cocked-hat box under the carriage-seat for show, without belonging to the Life Guards? And even if he belonged to the army, do you think there are no cornets and captains who, covered with gold lace, ride before the Queenwho live on their pay, and spend half-a-crown out of sixpence a day? At Babylon Bridge Terminus, you say, this exquisite alighted without wishing you good morning. He was a brute; but you are ready to excuse him because he was in such a hurry to claim the rough little Skye terrier that had been howling so dismally in his solitary box all the way from Pumpwell. Did your moustachioed dandy go away in a Hansom cab? He may have been a Government clerk on leave, a betting man, a fashionable tailor, or a rough-rider to a livery stable. No; when I come to pore over your closely-crossed postscript, I find that a charming little brougham was waiting for him at the platform-the coachman and groom with cockades in their hats. You say that he lit a cigar as big as two fingers as he entered the carriage. It must have been his own brougham, or he would not have smoked in it. There were two horses. There was a tiny coronet on the panel. My dear, I may have been too hasty. Your travelling companion was, in all probability, a Nobleman. But you say a King Charles's spaniel was looking out of the brougham window, and began to snap and bark furiously directly he espied the

terrier; also that the nearest window-blind was half-down, and that you think some one else—a lady-was in the vehicle. My darling, a British Nobleman is a personage whom we ought all to be proud and delighted to know; and, had my afflictions permitted me to have been with you, I should, probably-from the society in which I mixed during the lifetime of your dear papa-have recognised his lordship immediately. He might have been a baby in arms when I first saw him; but I should have detected the family likeness in a moment. To know an individual of such elevated station would, indeed, be an honour and inestimable pleasure; but a railway carriage was not the place for such an introduction. You may meet his lordship hereafter. You did quite right in lowering your veil when he turned round-his foot on the carriage step-to have a last look at you. The young nobility of England, my dear, are very wild; and there is no knowing whom else might have been in that brougham.

I most earnestly hope that the wretch of a cabman who abused you so shamefully, and flung your luggage on the pavement when you refused to pay him more than half-acrown fare from Babylon Bridge to Pagoda Square, will be prosecuted and punished as he deserves. There used to be stocks and pillories for these disgraceful people; but such wholesome punishments seem to have been abolished since that Reform Act from which we were all to reap so much benefit. There was a hackney coachman who was rude to poor dear Sir Charles one night, when he brought him home from a loyal dinner at the British Coffee Hotel, Cockspur Street, and who was transported. I believe that it was some months afterwards that he was punished, and for horsestealing that time; but Sir Charles threatened that he would speak to Government about him, and I am sure he

kept his word. I remember that your dear papa could scarcely stand or speak plain on the night he came home, doubtless in consequence of the man's rudeness; and the wretch had also, it appears, robbed him of eight corkscrews and two volumes of Acts of Parliament, which I don't exactly know why he had brought home from the British Hotel. I wonder Pincott did not tear the cabman's eyes out. Of course, the servants in the Square took his number, and he will be had up and tried.

Shanko Fanko, my little page, tells me that it is nearly post time. He has to call at the library and the doctor's, and I must close this letter. Heaven bless you, my