other venerable but irrelevant cities. He brightened
at sight of his doge, and asked him warmly
if he had heard the news.

"No; what? Nothing wrong, I hope?"

"Why, two of our men are ploughed; that is
all," said Kennet, affecting with withering irony
to undervalue his intelligence.

"Confound it, Kennet, how you frightened
me! I was afraid there was some screw loose
with the crew."

At this very instant, the smoke of the pistol
was seen to puff out from the island, and Hardie
rose to his feet. "They are off!" cried he to the
ladies, and, after first putting his palms together
with a hypocritical look of apology, he laid one
hand on an old barge that was drawn up ashore,
and sprang like a mountain goat on to the bow,
lighting on the very gunwale. The position was
not tenable an instant, but he extended one foot
very nimbly and boldly, and planted it on the
other gunwale; and there he was in a moment,
headache and all, in an attitude as large and
inspired, as the boldest gesture antiquity has
committed to marble; he had even the advantage
in stature over most of the sculptured forms of
Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye
"spoiled the lot," as Mr. Punch says.

I am not to repeat the particulars of a distant
race coming nearer and nearer. The main
features are always the same, only this time it was
more exciting to our fair friends, on account of
Edward's high stake in it. And then their grateful
though refractory patient, an authority in their
eyes, indeed all but a river-god, stood poised
in air, and in excited whispers interpreted each
distant and unintelligible feature down to them:

"Cambridge was off quickest."

"But not much."

"Anybody's race at present, madam."

"If this lasts long we may win. None of them
can stay like us."

"Come, the favourite is not so very
dangerous."

"Cambridge looks best."

"I wouldn't change with either, so far."

"Now, in forty seconds more, I shall be able
to pick out the winner."

Julia went up this ladder of thrills to a high state
of excitement; and, indeed, they were all so tuned
to racing pitch, that some metal nerve or other
seemed to jar inside all three, when the piercing,
grating voice of Kennet broke in suddenly
with,

"How do you construe ?????????????"

The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual
ruins of Greece the moment the pistol went off,
and college chat ceased. Hardie raised his
opera-glass, and his first impulse was to brain
the judicious Kennet, gazing up to him for an
answer, with spectacles goggling like
supernatural eyes of dead sophists in the sun.

"How do you construe 'Hoc age?' you
incongruous dog! Hold your tongue, and mind the
race!"

"There, I thought so! Where's your three to
one, now? The Cockneys are out of this event,
any way. Go on, Universities, and order their
suppers!"

"But, which is first, sir?" asked Julia,
imploringly. Oh, which is first of all?"

"Neither. Never mind; it looks well. London
is pumped; and if Cambridge can't lead him
before this turn in the river, the race will be
ours. Now, look out! By Jove, we are ahead!"

The leading boats came on, Oxford pulling a
long, lofty, sturdy stroke, that seemed as if it
never could compete with the quick action of its
competitor. Yet it was undeniably ahead, and
gaining at every swing.

Young Hardie writhed on his perch. He
screeched at them across the Thames "Well
pulled Stroke! Well pulled all! Splendidly
pulled, Dodd! You are walking away from them
altogether! Hurrah! Oxford for ever, hurrah!"
The gun went off over the heads of the Oxford
crew in advance, and even Mrs. Dodd and Julia
could see the race was theirs.

"We have won at last!" cried Julia, all on
fire, " and fairly; only think of that!"

Hardie turned round, grateful to beauty for
siding with his university. "Yes, and the fools
may thank me; or rather my man, Dodd. Dodd
for ever! Hurrah!"

At this climax even Mrs. Dodd took a gentle
share in the youthful enthusiasm that was boiling
around her, and her soft eyes sparkled, and
she returned the fervid pressure of her daughter's
hand; and both their faces were flushed with
gratified pride and affection.

"Dodd!" broke in "the incongruous dog,"
with a voice just like a saw's; "Dodd! Ah,
that's the man who is just ploughed for smalls."

Ice has its thunderbolts.

MOB LAW AND ORDER.

THE untaught million in Chaucer's time were
called, because of the ease with which they
could be influenced, "the mobil people;"
afterwards, as by Sir Thomas More and Sir
Thomas Browne, the "mobility," or the mobile;
in Dryden's time, "the mobile," or by a
contraction, then recent, the mob. It is clear,
then, that they have always, when ill mannered,
reproached by their name the civilisation of
those who consider themselves the better
classes. If the great untaught, ill-lodged, and
ill-fed masses of the people can be so easily
influenced as that we have even named it from its
swift impressibility, why has it not been always
influenced for good?

A few weeks ago there passed through the
streets of London a Procession, which all London
crammed itself into some streets, and into houses
bordering those streets, to see. There was