put one arm over the back of it, half-closed one eye, blinked with the other, and exhaled a huge puff of air, like a person who has just made some strong exertion.

"Thwaites," said Mr. Lawson, staring at him a little, "shall I send you a little more soup?"

"No, sir!" answered Mr. Thwaites with great pomposity.

"One more spoonful?" urged the host.

"Sir," replied Thwaites, "the man who would suffer himself to be helped twice to soup would also desire to be helped four times to mutton."

This dogma, delivered ex cathedra, with profound solemnity, drew all eyes on Thwaites, and caused Mr. Lawson to open his eyes rather wider. He merely, however, asked his guest if he would take some fish.

"Yes, sir,” simply answered Thwaites.

"Would you prefer brill, Mr. Thwaites," said Mrs. Lawson, “or mackerel ?"

"Madam," he responded, "I prefer mackerel. Brill, madam, is a poor fish. Madam, brill would be turbot if it could."

The reader, doubtless, has met with a similar remark to this before, but it so happened that the Lawsons and company had not; wherefore they laughed at it as rather a smart saying, and began to regard Mr. Thwaites as an original who was now beginning to manifest himself in his real character. Accordingly, some of them felt desirous of trotting him out; with which view, perhaps, a young lady present, somewhat à propos of nothing, asked him if he had seen the great pas de quatre at the Opera? Thwaites, without replying to this question, continuing to eat, she repeated it, when, swallowing with an effort, and sternly knitting his brows at her, he roared out,

"Miss, do you not know that it is rude to address any one who is eating? You saw, miss, that I had my mouth full. Miss, nobody but a ploughman would speak with his mouth full."

Might not a cabman?" demanded the hostess, amused, with the rest, at what they supposed his eccentricity.

"Yes, madam, perhaps a cabman might. But stay, madam. To speak with his mouth full, a cabman must have something to eat. Not every cabman has something to eat. But, madam, a ploughman would be less likely to have something to eat than a cabman."

The frequent use and peculiar pronunciation of the word madam, which he rendered a distinct dissyllable, was something quite new on the part of Thwaites. Mrs. Lawson could not understand what he meant by it, unless to create a laugh, which at least was the effect it produced.

Mr. Thwaites on this occasion ate enormously; and it was supposed that a tremendous appetite was one of those peculiarities that he had suppressed. At length he laid down his knife and fork, and wiped his mouth with the table-cloth. On Lawson's asking him if he should help him again, he said, "Sir, no more I thank you." His host repeated the invitation, saying "Just one slice more."

"Sir," answered Thwaites, "I have said I would take no more. Sir, he who presses a man to eat more than he cares for, incommodes him. It is troublesome, sir, to invent speeches in which to decline with civility that which we should accept with repugnance."

Having delivered himself of this long sentence, Mr. Thwaites began

to puff and blow as if out of breath; to the great diversion of his audience, including Mr. Lawson himself, who jovially asked him to take wine with him, to which proposal his guest acceded, by saying very gravely, "Sir, I will take a glass of wine with you with great pleasure. Sir, I wish you a very good health."

After dinner, Mr. Thwaites, relinquishing the taciturnity which he had displayed before it, began to talk copiously on various subjects, expressing himself to the amusement, if not to the edification, of his hearers, in aphorisms strongly didactic. His opinion, in the course of conversation, was inquired respecting an eminent nobleman of liberal principles; when he astonished everybody by crying out, "Sir, he's a

rascal !"

"A rascal, Mr. Thwaites!" said the querist. is well known to be most unblemished."

"Sir, he is a whig," was the reply of Mr. Thwaites. "Sir, no whig can be an honest man. Sir, whiggery and roguery are convertible terms."

Now, as Thwaites had always professed opinions bordering on radicalism, these very strong assertions on the opposite side of the question seemed, at least, extremely unaccountable. So, likewise, was a defence of duelling, which he made on a late affair of honour being canvassed. "Sir," he contended, "if nations decide their differences with cannons, individuals may settle theirs with pistols."

It happened that there was at table a half-pay officer, who was a marked exception to the generality of the company in not seeming at all to relish the singularities of Thwaites. This gentleman's ideas of social intercourse were formed entirely on the model of a regimental mess, his literary acquirements were very limited, and he had no relish whatever for humour. On the other hand, he was remarkably tenacious of his consequence, sensitive to anything that savoured of rudeness, and withal very irascible: possessing a somewhat dull intellectual, and a highly inflammatory moral, diathesis. He at last contrived to become engaged in an altercation with Mr. Thwaites, whom he had, all along, been regarding with evident dislike and indignation. Their difference related to claret, of which wine the Captain was the panegyrist, whilst Thwaites denounced it as vapid trash, finally declaring that no man would ever drink claret when he could get port, but a blockhead."

"What do you mean by that, sir?" said the son of Mars. "Do you mean to insinuate that I am a blockhead ?"

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Sir," returned Thwaites, amid general manifestations of uneasiness, "I scorn insinuation. Sir, I did not insinuate that you were a blockhead."

"What, then, was your meaning, sir?" demanded the other.

Sir, I am not bound to tell you my meaning. Sir, I do not choose to tell you my meaning. Sir, if I am to supply you with language, I am not obliged to supply you with comprehension. Sir, he who asserts that I am bound to tell you my meaning, lies."

The infuriated officer, amid the general confusion of the table, started up, and with a visage scarlet with rage, briefly excusing himself to the Lawsons, quitted the room. A dead silence ensued.

"Good Heaven, Thwaites!" said Mr. Lawson, “do you know what you have done?"

"What's the matter?" stammered Thwaites, turning very pale,

and entirely changing his tone and manner. said?-I am sure I meant no offence."

"What-what have I

"No offence!" repeated Lawson. Why, you have as much as given Captain Popham the lie. He will call you out as sure as fate." My goodness!" said poor Thwaites, "I did not intend that. I only meant to say that the assertion I alluded to would be incorrect. Otherwise I should have said that he lied, and knew that he lied." "Why, what is the difference?"

"Every difference," said Thwaites. "Don't you know what Johnson used to say? If he meant that a man was simply incorrect in a statement, he said that he lied; if that he told a wilful falsehood, he added that he knew he lied. I had no idea of telling the Captain that."

"Where did you learn this?" inquired Lawson.

"In Boswell's 'Life of Johnson, which I have just been reading. Dear me ! I would not have offended the Captain for the world."

"Tom," said Mr. Lawson to a friend who was present, "run, like a good fellow, after Captain Popham, and explain, if you can, that Thwaites had no intention to insult him. This really is a very awkward business. But come, let us hope it will be arranged."

All the mirth of the party had, by this untoward event, been altogether spoiled; and they sat, maintaining a painful silence, Thwaites abashed, discomforted, and looking the very picture of confusion. At length the mediator returned without having found the Captain, and Thwaites, hardly knowing what he was about, was fain to withdraw, in a state of mind which we must leave to be imagined.

The next day, as Mr. Lawson had predicted, a message demanding satisfaction was despatched by Captain Popham to Mr. Thwaites, and the latter was under the necessity of putting the affair into the hands of a friend. We are happy, however, to be able to state, that this very ugly business was, after all, settled without bloodshed, through the good sense of the seconds, who with some difficulty persuaded the Captain to accept an explanation, accompanied by the expression of regret, on the part of Thwaites, for his incautious language.

Let us hope that from the range of characters which Mr. Thwaites may in future enact, that of Dr Johnson will at any rate be excluded, or, at least, that he will be a little more cautious in his performance.”

THE OLD FARM-HOUSE.

'Tis a pleasant spot, that old farm-house
That stands by the lone wayside,

Where the sweet woodbine and the eglantine
The rents in its old wall hide!

And the porch, it seems as though 'twould greet
Each wanderer for its guest,

And lead him where there is hearty cheer,

And a home of tranquil rest!

How joyous once was the old farm-house,
In times that have pass'd away,

When the yeomen took, in the ingle nook,
Their place at the close of day!

And still doth the merry husbandman
The mirthful hours beguile;

And many a tale, as there they regale,
Belongs to that olden pile!

THE OPAL SET.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN LEECH.

EVERYBODY who was anybody in the year 1814, will easily remember what a flood-tide of dissipation and delight rushed in upon us with the news of the Capitulation of Paris, and the expected visit of the Allied Sovereigns. England, that had battled to the last with the stern energy of a bull-dog, was now disposed to freak and gambol with the wanton liveliness of a pet puppy. The whole nation, oblivious of enormous taxes and war-prices, was agog for a kind of national merrymaking, and grouped round an ideal transparency representing Britannia tossing away her trident and dancing, hands-four-round, with Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

As might be expected, the military were made a special object of popular enthusiasm. Real bronzed heroes who had "been through the Peninsula were difficult to catch, and received more invitations to dances and soirées than by any possibility they had time to answer. En attendant, many a beardless ensign who had been at Waterloo, and taken his small share of that " day of enormous mistakes," became elevated into a sort of authority upon military matters, and was listened to deferentially while he explained the peculiarities of the Duke's position, and traced upon the table, with his finger dipped in claret, the exact spot where Grouchy debouched, or where the Imperial Guard made their last stand, and were supposed to have uttered that immortal apothegm now happily classed among the myths of apocryphal history.

It was, however, for foreigners that the highest distinctions were reserved; upon foreigners were lavished the envy of the male sex, and the admiring glances of the fair. Then, as now, and probably ever since the days of the Norman invasion, the stranger received the lion's share of popular attention and regard. We have here no space to bestow beyond that of a passing remark upon the phenomenon that, with all our vaunted nationality, and John Bullishness, and such like undoubted characteristics, we always run madly after every semblance, shade, and shadow of a foreigner," who may condescend to drink our wine, ride our horses, flirt with our daughters, and show us up in three volumes at the end of the season. Such is the fact. Let others philosophize upon it; we are content to blush over it, and to continue our narrative.

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Among all the countless swarm that at this precise period alighted upon our coasts, none,-no, not a Baron, nor a Prince, could compare with Count Alexis Obrenow, Cuirassier of the Imperial Guard, Knight Grand Cordon of the order of the Black Eagle, and last, but by no means least, C. d. s. m. I. L'E. d. t. 1. R. These cabalistic signs, which might be discovered by the curious among the elaborate tracery of the Count's visiting-cards, imported that he held the rank of Chamberlain to His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias. If, in addition to these extrinsic qualifications, we add that the person of this distinguished Russian was unexceptionably ferocious, and that whether, judging from his hair, his head was placed above or below his chin, was

"La garde meurt, et ne se rende pas."

a matter (among the ladies) of delicious doubt and uncertainty, we have said enough to account for his elevation to the topmost round of that giddy ladder which is supported by the fickle hand of Fashion.

Yet let us be just to Count Alexis Obrenow. If not exactly talented in its better sense, assuredly he possessed to an astonishing degree the talent of society-the small currency of saloons and clubs. He could dance a minuet gracefully, could sing a chanson admirably, had the art of anecdote in perfection, and, above all these minor gifts, the Count could assume a certain vein of dangerous sentimentality dashed by a sombre tone which rather inferred than alluded to a mystery whose depths had never yet been fathomed, though they possibly might be by those tender blue eyes which at the moment dissolved between pity and curiosity, as they gazed upon the sallow cheek of the handsome Cuirassier.

Thus gifted, thus doubly armed by the aspect of what he was, and the thought of what he might be, was it wonderful that the success of the Imperial Chamberlain was the theme of every tongue in London?

Just at this time, indeed, if London gossip was to be credited, the coping-stone of the Count's good fortune was about to be laid, by his intended marriage with the Lady Anne Callington, sole child and heiress of the wealthy Earl Durston, or De Urston, as it pleased the Earl to pronounce his very ancient family name. By what arts the Count had won the haughty peer's consent to this match, is to this day, among certain circles, a matter of marvel; for the head of the De Urstons, so far from sharing his countrymen's predilection for foreigners, held them all in undisguised and indiscriminate contempt, remarking that the last real Counts were the Foresters, or Counts of the Low Countries, and they became extinct when Philip of Burgundy placed himself at the head of the Seventeen Provinces. By what arts Count Alexis obtained the consent of the Lady Anne has never, we believe, been made the subject of marvel in any society whatsoever.

It was towards midnight when a ball given at De Urston House attained its height of superb festivity. Country-dance, and cotillon, and the newly-imported French country-dance, or quadrille, had been executed to repletion, when a few select couples stood up to exhibit, in a stately minuet, the perfection of dignity and ease so essential to this courtly measure. Most conspicuous in the group were Lady Anne and Count Alexis, and a murmur of applause forced itself on the ear as the distinguished foreigner and his stately partner alternately advanced and retired according to the exigencies of the figure. So absorbed, indeed, was the general attention, that the entrance of a considerable accession of guests, which would otherwise hardly have escaped remark, passed unnoticed. They consisted of a tall and very handsome man in the prime of life, apparently attended by five or six officers of high rank, and one or two civilians. Some announcement was about to take place when the chief personage of the party imposed silence by a sudden and somewhat haughty gesture, and, taking his station as a spectator of the dance, quietly surveyed the circle which surrounded the performers, while his attendants, at a slight distance, conversed among themselves.

The moment was decisive of that crisis in the dance where the slow and staetly minuet blends, after a short introduction, with the livelier gavotte. The music had preluded a few quick bars, and the dancers stood motionless, but ready at the proper time to spring forward into