immediately beneath him, who, but for the boy
on the spikes, would have looked skinny and
small too. But, the boy on the spikes exhausted
the subject of skinniness, just as his nose
exhausted that of redness.

"She's coming out," squeaked the impaled
boy again, with a noble disregard of gender.

For, it was the performing Bull to which the
infant on the spikes thus alluded, and it was
outside the private residence of this animal that
a little crowd had assembled, with that keen
appreciation of eleemosynary sights, which is
one of the most remarkable characteristics of
our race. They were there to see him come out
for an airing.

There is always a certain interest attached to
the private life of great public characters; so
your Eye-witness, who happened to be passing,
stopped and joined the knot of spectators,
thinking that he, too, would like to see this
performer emerge from his lodgings. His carriage
was waiting for him at the door, and the E.-W.
was soon in possession of a commanding place
in a front row.

It was a curious circumstance in connexion
with this particular assembly, that its members
manifested a courtesy in reference to this ready
resignation of these same front places, which the
E.-W. does not remember to have ever noticed
before—except on one occasion, when he found
himself in a crowd outside the door of a certain
public-house in which it was rumoured that a
prize-fighter had suddenly gone mad. There was
the same readiness to accommodate him with a
good place, manifested, on that particular evening,
which he now observed in the assembly gathered
round the mouth of the little covered way which
led from the Bull's private apartments to the
street. Thanks to this self-denying retirement
on the part of the crowd, the Eye-witness soon
found himself in a very good position indeed,
with nothing but the small boy, whose friend was
on the spikes, between him and the Bull's door.
[It was a remarkable thing that, though these
front places were so easily to be obtained, there
was a brisk demand for all sorts of distant
accommodation, and flights of door-steps, shop
entrances, and even lamp-posts, were inquired for
briskly.]

"What do the Bull do?" asked the small
boy below, of the smaller boy above.

"Do? stands up on her two behind legs, and all
sorts of games. And, won't some of yer get gored
down there presently, that's all," he added, in a
louder key. Whereat, and at the sudden
appearance through the open door, of a broad black
forehead and two white horns, the populace was
moved to a more modest retirement than ever, and
the small boy in front of the E.-W. commenced
butting against that gentleman's legs to such an
extent that he was glad to let him get behind,
preferring the contingency of the Bull's escape
to the certainty of having his shins bruised and
his toes trampled upon by this turbulent infant.

Such a comfortable little Bull! A short-
horned, plump, satiny, highly-groomed little
Bull. Eminently satisfactory; but so little. He
stepped up his inclined plane, and was upon the
platform of his car in no time, as good as gold.

It must be owned that the general aspect of
affairs was not imposing. The Eye-witness had
had visions of a triumphal car, with a black Bull
of the largest possible size on the top of it, and
drawn by six milk-white steeds. He had
pictured this to himself, and had made up his mind to
see the white horses, with the pink rims to their
eyes and flesh-coloured noses, such as he loves;
consequently, a team of ordinary grey carriage
horses, drawing a break with some planks across
the top of it, on which was perched an animal
not much bigger than a calf, but compact and
well-made, was rather disappointing, and had
rather the look of a procession which was to end
in the slaughter-house.

There was one result brought about by the
impressive spectacle, which was probably contemplated
by the management that organised it. This
was the developing in the casual spectator of a
burning thirst to see how this very comfortable
little animal conducted himself in his professional
capacity inside the quaint walls of the Alhambra
of Leicester Fields. Indeed it must be frankly
admitted that his countenance was not promising,
and it was curious to observe his bovine indifference
to the novel situation in which he found
himself and the novel circumstances under which
he was placed.

The scene is now, with the reader's permission,
shifted from the back slums of Castle-
street to the interior of the Alhambra Circus.
The time is two in the afternoon. The wind
north-east, and the general aspect of affairs the
reverse of encouraging. What shall be said of
circus performances in the daytime? Shall we
say that they are calculated to induce morbid
views of life generally, that he who assists at
such solemnisations will in the pauses of the
same be found—especially with the wind in the
east—to despond about his prospects, to see all
the weak points in his previous life with an
exceeding distinctness, and every lichen and
parasitical excrescence upon his rocks ahead for the
future? Shall we say that at such periods the
human finger and thumb are averse to the duty
of extracting from the waistcoat-pocket that
sixpence which the woman in the black muslin
cap expects in return for a programme fourteen
inches by eight? Shall we say that as the
sufferer fishes and dives for this sixpence (wishing
he had a fourpenny piece instead) he looks upon
the woman in the black cap with feelings nearly
allied to detestation; that he casts bloodthirsty
looks at her waistband, and thinks what a good
place that would be for the Performing Bull to
impale her by, and bear her off upon one of his
horns to his native country where she should
perish from not knowing the Spanish equivalent
for "Whatever you please to give, sir?" No;
nothing of this shall be said; it shall only
be recorded that the Alhambra, as the Eye-
witness saw it, before the gas was lighted;
the Alhambra, with modified daylight
insinuating itself by creeks and crannies; the
Alhambra, with fog in those galleries which rise