class in the community have so much to do.
And then it is the dullest and most uninteresting
kind of work. It is executed on the knees, on
door–steps, and in front of iron grates, and
involves an amount of grovelling among cinders,
from which one of the saints would have shrunk,
even on Ash Wednesday. Saints, indeed! Are
not these real saints?  When I see one of
these little worthy frights labouring on from
early morning to late night, sleeping in a kennel,
living upon everybody's leavings, and cheerful
from first to last, I ask myself whether such
inglorious martyrdom can be spoken of with
too much respect, and whether there is not
more of glory in the frouzy black cap which
surrounds her ill–favoured countenance, than in the
brightest nimbus which any church has wreathed
about the heads of any conventual saints?

I will say no word, then, in this my protest,
disparaging the lodging–house maids–of–all–work:
seriously believing that a more sorely tried, and,
at the same time, a more patient industrious
deserving class of persons, does not exist. But
concerning the lodging–house proprietress I have
no such scruples. She is a grasping, illiberal,
tyrannical, servile humbug, with a shocking and
satirising genius for devising new and unheard–
of extras. What does she mean by swelling my
bill with a charge for boot–cleaning, when the
process is executed by Saint Betsy, who gets
nothing for it? What does she mean by making
me pay for the kitchen–fire, through whose
agency my chops are rendered grey in the prime
of life, and my meals are destroyed?

But I must ask no more questions on this or
any other subject connected with lodgings,
having already been betrayed into too long a
digression by my indignation at the injustice
which drives me away from the Royal Hotel
opposite. And then I know so well that
there is no need for this to be. I am so
perfectly well aware that the object which this
arrangement is organised to carry out, is not
carried out. During the whole of that long
journey from London to York, Mr. Foxey and I
may sit in adjoining compartments of the same
carriage, and may, if we feel inclined, discuss
all the rights and wrongs of that inevitable libel
case in which Mr. Pestle, the local practitioner,
seeks to recover damages from Mr. Mortar, the
practitioner of a neighbouring town, for throwing
doubts upon his professional capability and
his personal character, calculated to injure his
reputation and reduce the amount of his
professional income—about this and all sorts of
other cases Foxey and I may, if we choose, plot
and confabulate and conspire to our hearts'
content during the whole of our journey; but the
moment we arrive at our journey's end, we must
suddenly become strangers to each other!

And then to take the case of those barristers
who reside (as some do) in the towns in which
the assizes are held. Are not they perpetually
on intimate terms with the local attorneys?
Are not the two classes in constant intercourse,
living in the same small society, and members
of the same profession?

Sir, I am at this moment writing from my
lodgings in a certain assize town. They are over
the hatter's shop. Since I was last here, the
hatter, upon that principle of combination which
prevails so largely in county–towns, has combined
the trunk and portmanteau making business
with his former undertakings, and an incessant
hammering and tapping sound reaches me in
consequence from the lower regions. The chimney of
my sitting–room has taken to smoking violently,
while the old servant who used to wait upon me,
and who knew my ways, has disappeared, and
her place is supplied by an individual who not
only does not know my ways, but appears, from
her conduct, to be ignorant of the ways of
the whole civilised community. Exactly opposite
to my sitting–room window is one of the
best and pleasantest hotels in provincial England.
Under these circumstances I write in a condition
of considerable irritability, which I must
plead as my excuse if I have seemed in this letter
to dwell with undue force on the grievance under
which I am suffering.

Sir, I reiterate my apologies for troubling you
at such length about a matter which affects only
one class. It is simply under the firm conviction
that in making my complaint through the
medium of your columns, I have the best chance
of getting justice done to it, that I adopt this
otherwise roundabout way of appealing to the
big–wigs of my bewigged profession.

I am, Sir, with much respect,

Your obedient servant,
CIRCUITUS ROOTS
(Barrister–at–Law) .

MEYERBEER—A CHARACTER.

IT is strange, but true, that not a tune by
Meyerbeer is on the organs or in the streets;—
it is no less true, yet not strange, that he has
ruled the musical stage of Europe for the past
thirty years as no one has done since Signor
Rossini provokingly ceased to write.—Bellini's
works have passed, Donizetti's have passed; but
"Robert" and "Les Huguenots," in spite of
their huge and over–elaborate complication, have
got a hold everywhere, and have kept the place
which they have got.—A more singular
phenomenon in the history of art is not on record.

There is no need here to call back all the
particulars of his birth, parentage, and education,
to tell how Meyerbeer was born rich among
parents devoted to him; how soon he showed
a will for music—how soon great technical
dexterity; with this a certain indecision in
carrying his purposes out—a singular absence
of inventiveness, conjointly with a singular
persistence.—To illustrate from the history
of two Hebrew boys born into rich Berlin families,
neither of the two endowed with electric
genius: each of the two resolute to make his
way—Mendelssohn wrote, when he was aged
only fifteen, works which made an epoch, such
as his pianoforte Quartets, and his immortal
Shakespeare overture—Meyerbeer, after