the solicitors and accountants carry on with so
much profit to themselves, but with so little
satisfaction to others. And yet, to avoid winding-
up in Chancery is often impossible when a
company once gets into difficulties, although the
measure is most suicidal to the interests of all
save the official liquidator and the various legal
gentlemen employed in picking the flesh off the
dead carcase. But there are in these windings-
up wheels within wheels, which would take up a
vast amount of room to explain. I have known
a shareholder receive actual payment in hard
cash from a solicitor, in order that the latter may
present in the name of the former a petition for
the winding-up of a company. If it does not
succeed, the loss is small; if it does, the profit
is immense. The solicitor is pretty certain to
manage matters so that some friend of his shall
be appointed official liquidator, who in his turn
appoints the attorney to be solicitor for the
winding-up. But, stranger still, I have
positively known companies got up, board of
directors formed, bankers, solicitors, auditors,
secretary, manager, and what not appointed,
with the sole view of an ultimate, and not very
far off, winding-up in Chancery, when all who
were interested in the affair would get their
share of the plunder, and the unfortunate
shareholders be—to use an Americanism—"left out
in the cold." We often hear people talk of
"turf robberies," but has not the noble art of
plundering been practised of late years east as
well as west of Temple Bar?

In due time the winding-up of our bank came
to an end; but not before the oyster had been
eaten by the lawyers, and nothing but the shells
left for the shareholders. That many of the
latter were much to be pitied there can be no
doubt; but at the same time it was their
collective folly as a body that deprived them of
what little was left of their property. The
offices which had looked so trim and neat when
the Bank first started a few months before, were
let to other parties; the brass plate at our door
was taken down; in the Post-office Directory
for the new year the bank had not a place, and
save in the recollection of those who lost money
by the affair, the "Grand Financial and Credit
Bank of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and
Australia, Limited," ceased to exist even in
name.

AN AREA SNEAK.

THE visit of meteoric apparitiousness, when
intruding into the private regions of superior
life, is a fact which all right demeaning parties
will inscrutably resent.—It shines its hour; but
these immoderate efforts procure their own
level; and I request you, sir, to aid it, which,
when I mention what has passed, I have not a
doubt you will conduce to do.

Sir, I don't set my face against the fine arts,
having been in my time in valuable request
among them. There is six prints, if there is
one, entirely due to me;—because, having been
drawn in chalk as Cupid when I was a page—
shall I ever overlook that horrible cold day?—
Chance decreed that I should shoot up, within
two years later: and what with that and whiskers,
I could be took again, without any indelicate
piracy trenching on the interests of Cupid.
—I am thought attractive, but what boots it,
sir? We are human beings—and must prepare
for our long-home like anybody else.

And when photographicising began I did not
derogate from the movement. Far from it.
Willingness to gratify has always been uppermost
in my principles—reciprocation being taken
for granted. Sir, I have been photographered
by a foreign gentleman as the Model Footman—
my Lord's uniform giving scope. The lower
limbs came out beautiful. And, sir, I was dressed
up by Mr. Mackenzie, whom, you may know, is
attached to a Theatre Royal, and he brought a
friend, and they painted my face;—and they
showed me in a glass which way of smiling, and
they put cress on my head, and buttercups, and
the image was took according. The Genus of
the Spring—you have heard of it?—is due to
your obedient servant and generally admiring
reader (but is not them Boffins a leetle low?),
—the present and unfeigned Timothy.

Next, sir, I was photographiated as a Roman
Champion, a-leaning breathless over the front
of a gold go-cart, borrowed for the occasion
from the same Mr. Mackenzie (which his situation,
sir, is on the property of the pantomimes),
—and to lean breathless is not easy;—but as you
are already acquainted, I am ever desirable to
oblige. And Mr. Mackenzie's friend, I will
justify him in saying, did behave handsome;
because, as he said, taking the powder out of
my hair when our family was in town, and curling
it with tongues, and then making it all good
again, when they had done me, did merit
consideratiousness.—I mention these things, sir,
not to be thought narrow, or inferior to
discoveries equal to the Electral Telegram. But to
be photographicated with the party and the
proprietor coinciding, is one thing—to be catched
and stuck up in a frame at an outer door, is
another;—and I wish to elucidate what the facts
is,—concerning me and Miss Mary.

It is respective of my cousin.—He could not
proceed in the hosiery line—to which pursuit
his budding years had been devoted—and so he
tried play-acting; and when I saw his "King
Lear," cousin as I might be, Justice resumed
her sway, and my money back I would have,
the article was so inferior.—"Mings," said I,
"this is a erroneous path. Socks is a better one.
Before you attempts King Lear, you should look
like something yourself." He is under five feet,
and a cast in the right eye, and never would
learn to hold himself up, such as one who takes
a proper pride in himself, will do. But what is
these little drawbacks, save to brighten genius?
My attractions, sir, has never tended to make
me presumptious.

Well, sir, feeling unsettled, as a gentleman
may say, and not wishful, after King Lear, to
go back to the under-clothing business, Mings