lord and my wife a lady." Whereat his
Majesty laughs, and to the end that he may
stop that dangerous talk betimes, through
fear of eavesdroppers, strolls away into
another apartment.

Thence, from that humble tavern at Brighton,
I go forth with the royal party about
four of the clock on the morning of Wednesday
the fifteenth of October, for the last brief
march before embarkation. Having within
the interval occupied by these adventures
run the gauntlet of the enemy through
eleven counties, having passed undetected
more than two-score days and nights of
perilous uncertainty, unbetrayed by more
than two-score faithful adherents, staunch to
the last, in spite at once of terror and
temptation. Trudging along the coast-line as far
as the little village of Shoreham, I watch
the king, still in the sad-coloured suit of
Will Jackson, and with hirn my Lord Wilmot,
still to the end blazoning it out haughtily
in velvets and gold embroidery—take boat
about seven of the clock, the tide then
serving, and so on board a tiny bark in
the offing, a collier of no more than sixty
tons burden, commanded by worthy Captain
Nicholas Tattersall. A pleasant excursion
across the channel with fair winds, and we
are landed in Normandy, being taken on
shore in the cockboat on Thursday the
sixteenth of October, one thousand six hundred
and fifty-one, at Fescharmp, near Havre-de-
Grace.

PASSING THE TIME.

EVERY man who in the course of his
business existence has had the misfortune
to be compelled to seek an interview with
Mr. Proviso, the eminent lawyer, can tell a
painful story of monotonous hours passed in
the outer office of the great master of the
law, awaiting the coveted favour of an interview.
Mr. Proviso's business appears to lie
amongst a class of people who are doubtless
very influential and highly respectable, but
who seem either to have no proper sense of
the value of time, or who hoard up their
legal grievances,—their actions and their
defences,—until they assume such gigantic
proportions, that half a day passed with their
professional adviser is scarcely sufficient to
clear off the accumulation. It may be that
in the rank and file of clients who hang upon
the wisdom and experience of Mr. Proviso,
I hold a position rather below the general
level, and am, therefore, treated to those
broken scraps of time which can be spared
from the banquet of more favoured, because
more important, individuals. One thing is
certain, that go on what day and what hour
of that day I will, I am met with the eternal
answer from the eternal clerks: " Will you
have the kindness to take a seat, sir, for Mr.
Proviso is engaged? "  When I first heard
these now too familiar sounds, I was weak
enough to inquire how long the engagement
was likely to last, and was always met with
the reply, intended to be comforting: That
a few minutes would certainly be sufficient
to finish the business on hand. Sitting
patiently upon an old office chair, listening
to the measured ticking of the office clock;
taking a mental inventory of the faded office
furniture; reading the not very interesting
placards regarding the sales by auction of
houses, leases, and lands, and varying this
meagre meal of literature with the titles of
blue-books, and the calf-bound treatises of
the law, the precious moments of the short
business day passed from me one by one, and
at last I awoke to a sense of the utterly
unreliable nature of the information given
me by Mr. Proviso's clerks concerning their
master's professional arrangements. After
the first few visits I became reconciled
to the existing order of things, and sank
mechanically into my accustomed chair, to
await the convenience and the pleasure of the
great professor of the art of making a living
out of the quarrels of foolish or wicked
people. The distant mellowed hum of
carriages in the street, the music of new quills
gliding quickly over folio foolscap, the warmth
of the office fire, and the general monastic
gloom of the place, always produced in me a
kind of torpor akin to sleep, in which the
imagination was actively engaged in proportion
as the body was indulged in idleness
and rest.

It was on these occasions that I always
found myself looking at the gaping mouths of
the conversation tubes, which communicated
with Mr. Proviso's private room, and the
apartments above stairs; and, by way of passing
the time, allowing my fancy to run riot
upon all the probable uses and abuses of these
ingenious gutta percha mechanical contrivances
of modern times.

I saw in imagination young Pyramus, the
youthful cashier of Mr. Proviso's establishment,
when the other clerks were fully
employed, whispering his tubical tenderness
to his Thisbe—the housekeeper's fair daughter—
up through intervening reception-rooms,
and dusty receptacles of ancient records of
folly, spite, and wrong; past the stern,
pompous lawyer sitting amongst his wordy
deeds; past the copying-clerks' garret, where
old men and boys were writing over and
over again the same old story of an ejectment,
until " whereas, and therefore, and
inasmuch, and thereof," burnt into their
dizzy brains, and nearly drove them mad;
past all these things, until it reached the
bower of the listening damsel, who sat with
her needlework high above the house-tops,
looking across the river at the pleasant Surrey
hills. And then came Thisbe's silvery reply
so gently down the tube,—past the copying-
clerks,—past the dusty records,—past the
old lawyer who had left his youth in his law
books and his bills of costs,—until it found