partisans, the waving of silken banners
'broidered by the white hands of noble ladies.
"Non sum qualis eram" his chaplain will tell
him; but, ah me! what a sorry evening is
this to so bright a morning.

To come nearer home: the good Queen
Anne reigns in England, and an enthusiastic
phalanx of High Church ragamuffins have
just been bellowing round the Queen's sedan
chair, " God save your majesty and Doctor
Sacheverell." There are a great many country
gentlemen in town, for term is just on, and
the cause list is full. A white haired patriarch
in extreme old age, who has been subpœnaed
on some trial, has strolled from Westminster
Hall, and entered the House of Lords, where
he stands peering curiously at the carved roof
and dingy tapestry, and scarlet covered
woolsack. He is one of those men in whose whole
apparel and bearing you seem to read farmer,
as in another man's you will read thief. His
snowy white locks, his ruddy, sunburnt,
freckled countenance carved into a thousand
wrinkles, like a Nuremberg nut-cracker,
tell of hale, hearty old age. You may
read farmer in his napped felt hat and
long duffel coat; in his scarlet-flapped waistcoat
and boots of untanned leather, his stout
ashen staff, with a crutch and leathern strap.
His full clear eye, his pleasant smile, his
jaunty, though feeble bearing, say clearly
farmer—a well to do, Queen-loving, God-
fearing old agriculturist. His life has probably
passed in peace and comfort; and when he
dies he will sleep in the green churchyard
where his fore-elders sleep. Here is a London
gentleman who accosts him, a coffee-house
wit, a blood skilled in the nice conduct of a
clouded cane. He patronises the old farmer,
and undertakes to show him the lions of the
place. This is the door leading to my Lord
Chancellor's robing room; from behind that
curtain enters Her Majesty; there is the
gallery for the peeresses; there the bar. Is
he not astonished? Is not the place magnificent?
Being from the country (" Shocking
BÅ“otian," says the blood mincingly to
himself) he has probably never been in the House
of Lords before. The old man raises his stick,
and points it, tremulously, towards where
blazing in crimson velvet, embroidery and
gold is the Throne. " Never," he answers,
"since I sat in that chair!" The old farmer's
double was Richard Cromwell, whilom Lord
Protector of England.

Here is a placid-looking little old man, trotting
briskly down John Street, Tottenham
Court Road. He is about seventy, apparently,
but walks erect. He has a natty little three-
cornered hat, a well-brushed black suit, rather
white at the seams, grey silk stockings, and
silver buckles in his shoes. Two powdered
ailes de pigeon give relief to his simple good-
humoured countenance, and his hair is
gathered behind into a neat queue, which
leaves a meandering line of powder on the
back of his coat. His linen is very white, so
are his hands, on one of the fingers of which
he wears a ring of price. He lodges in a
little street in the neighbourhood, pays his
rent regularly, has frequent friendly chats
with the book-stall keepers, of whom he is
an excellent customer, and with whom he is
highly popular; pats all the children on
the head, and smiles affably at the maid-
servants. The neighbours set him down as a
retired schoolmaster, a half-pay navy
purser, or, perhaps, a widower with a small
independence. ,At any rate, he is a pleasant
body, and quite the gentleman. This is about
the close of his Day. Would you like to
know his Night? Read the Old Bailey
Sessions Paper: ask the Bow Street officers,
who have been tracking him for years, and
have captured him at last; who are carrying
him handcuffed to Newgate, to stand his trial
for murder. His double was Governor Wall,
commandant of Goree, who was hanged for
the murder of Serjeant Armstrong, whom he
caused to be flogged to death; very strongly
adjuring the drummer who inflicted the
torture, to cut his liver out!

But I should never end were I to notice a
tithe of the Days and Nights that flit across
this paper while I write. A paralytic old
octogenarian, drivelling, idiotic, and who, of all
the passions of his other self has preserved but
one,—the most grovelling avarice,—hobbles
across a room, and, glancing at himself in a
mirror, mutters, " That was once a man."
The man was John Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough. A moping invalid, imbecile and
speechless, dozing in an arm-chair, sees a
servant endeavouring to break an obstinate
lump of coal in the grate: "It's a stone, you
blackguard!" he cries; and these are the first
words he has spoken for years—the first that
have passed his lips since the Day shone no
more on Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's.
Anon a shrivelled little dotard, with a bald
head and a yellow face, clad in a nightcap,
drawers, and slippers, comes grimacing to
my desk, and tells me that although it is
Night now, he, Louis the Fourteenth, had
his Day—Ludovico Magno: of the Porte
St. Denis: Louis le Grand in the Gallery of
Versailles: in a towering perruque and high-
heeled shoes, giving laws to princes. A
mincing gentleman in powder, with a sky-
blue coat, a waistcoat lined with rose-coloured
satin, and silk stockings, and with an air
something between a petit maitre and a
dancing-master, tells me that, when alive, he
lived over an upholsterer's shop, in the Rue
St. Honoré; that he was frugal, just and
incorruptible; that he was beloved by his landlord
and landlady; but that he had a
double of the Convention and of the
Committee of Public Safely; a double who swam
in the blood of all that was great and noble
in France; a double whose name was
Maximilian Robespierre.

O Day and Night, but this is wondrous
strange!