reading. I may have undergone ago- | I dinners, and for the conversation which did not take place there, — is this tolerable press practice, legitimate joking, or honorable warfare? have not the honor to know my next door neighbor, but I make no doubt that he receives his friends at dinner; I see his wife and children pass constantly; I even know the carriages of some of the people who call upon him, and could tell their names. Now, suppose his servants were to tell mine what the doings are next door, who comes to dinner, what is eaten and said, and I were to publish an account of these transactions in a newspaper, I could assuredly get money for the report; but ought I to write it, and what would you think of me for doing so? And suppose, Mr. Saturday Re-· viewer- you censor morum, you who pique yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) upon your 'Where is that paper ? character of gentleman, as well of says mamma to one of the young la- writer, suppose, not that you yourdies. Lucy hasn't it. Fanny hasn't self invent and indite absurd twaddle seen it. Emily thinks that the gov- about gentlemen's private meetings erness has it. At last,out it is brought, and transactions, but pick this wretchthat awful paper! Papa is amazing-ed garbage out of a New York street, ly tickled with the article on Thom- and hold it up for your readers' son; thinks that show-up of Johnson amusement-don't you think, my is very lively; and now heaven be friend, that you might have been betgood to us! - he has come to the ter employed? Here, is my "Saturday critique on himself Of all the Review," and in an American paper rubbish which we have had from Mr. subsequently sent to me, I light, asTomkins, we do protest and vow tonished, on an account of the dinthat this last cartload is " &c. Ah, ners of my friend and publisher, poor Tomkins! - but most of all, which are described as " tremendously ah! poor Mrs. Tomkins, and poor heavy," of the conversation (which Emily, and Fanny, and Lucy, who does not take place), and of the guests have to sit by and see paterfamilias assembled at the table. I am informed put to the torture! that the proprietor of "The Cornhill" and the host on these occasions, is " a very good man, but totally unread;" and that on my asking him whether Dr. Johnson was dining behind the screen, he said, "God bless my soul, my dear sir, there's no person by the name of Johnson here, nor any one behind the screen," and that a roar of laughter cut him short. I am informed by the same New York correspondent that I have touched up Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cry, because it was not so much the Editor as the Publisher of The Cornhill Magazine "who was brought out for a dressing; and it is wonderful how gallantly one bears the misfortunes of one's friends. That a writer should be taken to task about his books, is fair, and he must abide the praise or the censure. But that a publisher should be criticised for his conversation for "The New York Times"! a contributor's article; that I once said to a literary gentleman, who was proudly pointing to an anonymous Attack our books, Mr. Correspondarticle as his writing, "Ah! I thought ent, and welcome. They are fair I recognized your hoof in it." I am subjects for just censure or praise. told by the same authority that "The But woe be to you, if you allow priCornhill Magazine "shows symp-vate rancors or animosities to influtoms of being on the wane," and having sold nearly a hundred thousand copies, he (the correspondent) “should think forty thousand was now about the mark." Then the graceful writer passes on to the dinners, at which it appears the Editor of the Magazine "is the great gun, and comes out with all the geniality in his power." ence you in the discharge of your public duty. In the little court where you are paid to sit as judge, as critic, you owe it to your employers, to your conscience, to the honor of your calling, to deliver just sentences; and you shall have to answer to heaven for your dealings, as surely as my Lord Chief Justice on the Benchi. Now suppose this charming intelli- The dignity of letters, the honor of gence is untrue? Suppose the pub- the literary calling, the slights put by lisher (to recall the words of my haughty and unthinking people upon friend the Dublin actor of last month) literary men, don't we hear outcries is a gentleman to the full as well in- upon these subjects raised daily? As formed as those whom he invites to dear Sam Johnson sits behind the his table? Suppose he never made the screen, too proud to show his threadremark, beginning- "God bless my bare coat and patches among the more soul, my dear sir,” &c., nor any thing prosperous brethren of his trade, there resembling it? Suppose nobody roared is no want of dignity in him, in that with laughing? Suppose the Editor homely image of labor ill rewarded, of "The Cornhill Magazine" never genius as yet unrecognized, independ"touched up" one single line of the ence sturdy and uncomplaining. But contribution which bears "marks of Mr. Nameless, behind the publisher's his hand"? Suppose he never said screen uninvited, peering at the comto any literary gentleman, I recog-pany and the meal, catching up scraps nized your hoof" in any periodical of the jokes, and noting down the whatever? Suppose the 40,000 sub- guests' behavior and conversation, scribers, which the writer to New York what a figure his is! Allons, Mr. "considered to be about the mark," Nameless! Put up your notebook; should be between 90,000 and 100,000 walk out of the hall; and leave gen(and as he will have figures, there tlemen alone who would be private, they are)? Suppose this back-door and wish you no harm. gossip should be utterly blundering and untrue, would any one wonder? Ah! if we had only enjoyed the happiness to number this writer among the contributors to our Magazine, what a cheerfulness and easy confidence his presence would impart to our meetings! He would find that poor Mr. Smith" had heard that recondite anecdote of Dr. Johnson behind the screen; and as for "the great gun of those banquets," with what geniality should not I "come out" if I had an amiable companion close by me, dotting down my 86 TUNBRIDGE TOYS. I WONDER whether those little silver pencil-cases with a movable almanac at the butt-end are still favorite implements with boys, and whether peddlers still hawk them about the country? Are there peddlers and hawkers still, or are rustics and children grown too sharp to deal with them? Those pencil-cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this pleasure wore off. The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and violent boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor. His constant remark was, ،، When are you going to pay me that threeand-sixpence What sneaks your of much use. The screw upon which the movable almanac turned was constantly getting loose. The I of the table would work from its moorings, under Tuesday or Wednesday, as the case might be, and you would find, on examination, that Th. or W. was the 23 of the month (which was absurd on the face of the thing), and in a word your cherished pencil-case an utterly unreliable time-keeper. relations must be ? They come to Nor was this a matter of wonder. see you. You go out to them on Consider the position of a pencil-case Saturdays and Sundays, and they in a boy's pocket. You had hard- | never give you any thing! Don't tell bake in it; marbles, kept in your me, you little humbug!" and so forth. purse when the money was all gone; The truth is that my relations were your mother's purse, knitted so fondly | respectable; but my parents were and supplied with a little bit of gold, making a tour in Scotland; and my long since prodigal little son!- friends in London, whom I used to scattered amongst the swine -I mean go and see, were most kind to me, amongst brandy-balls, open tarts, certainly, but somehow never tipped three-cornered puffs, and similar | me. That term, of May to August, - abominations. You had a top and 1823, passed in agonies then, in constring; a knife; a piece of cobbler's sequence of my debt to Hawker. wax; two or three bullets; a Little What was the pleasure of a calendar Warbler ; and I, for my part, remem | pencil-case in comparison with the ber, for a considerable period, a brass-doubt and torture of mind occasioned barrelled pocket-pistol (which would fire beautifully, for with it I shot off a button from Butt Major's jacket); with all these things, and ever so many more, clinking and rattling in your pockets, and your hands, of course, keeping them in perpetual | movement, how could you expect your movable almanac not to be twisted out of its place now and again - your pencil-case to be bent your licorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel of your pistol, and so forth? - In the month of June, thirty-seven | years ago, I bought one of those pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my form. Is he dead? Is he a millionnaire? Is he a bankrupt now? He was an immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of the thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in reality not one-and-nine. by the sense of the debt, and the con- A Away I ran and paid Hawker his three-and-six. Ouf! what a weight it was off my mind! (He was a Norfolk boy, and used to go home from Mrs. Nelson's · Bell Inn," Aldgate but that is not to the point.) The next morning, of course, we were an hour before the time. I and another boy shared a hackney-coach; twoand-six; porter for putting luggage on coach, threepence. I had no more money of my own left. Rasherwell, my companion, went into the "Boltin-Tun coffee-room, and had a good breakfast. I couldn't; because, though I had five and twenty shillings of my parents' money, I had none of my own, you see. friend's giving me a pound. pound? Pooh! A relation going to India, and deeply affected at parting from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow ! There was Hawker when I came back of course there he was. As he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage. He muttered curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. My relation, about to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, asked me with much interest about my progress at school, heard me construe a passage of Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was then engaged; gave me a God bless you, and sent me back to school; upon my word of I certainly intended to go without honor, without so much as a half breakfast, and still remember how crown! It is all very well, my dear strongly I had that resolution in my sir, to say that boys contract habits mind. But there was that hour to of expecting tips from their parents' wait. A beautiful August morning friends, that they become avaricious, I am very hungry. There is Rashand so forth. Avaricious! fudge! erwell " tucking" away in the coffeeBoys contract habits of tart and toffee room. I pace the street, as sadly aleating, which they do not carry into most as if I had been coming to after-life. On the contrary, I wish I school, not going thence. I turn into did like 'em. What raptures of a court by mere chance-I vow it pleasure one could have now for five was by mere chance- and there I see shillings, if one could but pick it off a coffee-shop with a placard in the the pastrycook's tray! No. If you window, Coffee, Twopence. Round of have any little friends at school, out buttered toast, Twopence. And here with your half-crowns, my friend, and am I, hungry, penniless, with five impart to those little ones the little and twenty shillings of my parents' flecting joys of their age. money in my pocket. Well, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy-tide holidays came, and I was to go to my parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells. My place in the coach was taken by my tutor's servants - "Bolt-in - Tun," Fleet Street, seven o'clock in the morning, was the word. My Tutor, the Rev. Edward P, to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had a parting interview with me: gave me my little account for my governor: the remaining part of the coach-hire; five shillings for my own expenses; and some five and twenty shillings on an old account which had been overpaid, and was to be restored to my family. What would you have done? You see I had had my money, and spent it in that pencil-case affair. The five and twenty shillings were a trust― by me to be handed over. But then would my parents wish their only child to be actually without breakfast? Having this money, and being so hungry, so very hungry, mightn't I take ever SO little? Mightn't I at home eat as much as I chose. Well, I went into the coffee-shop and spent fourpence. I remember the taste of the coffee and toast to this day—a peculiar, muddy, not-sweetenough, most fragrant coffee - - a rich, rancid, yet not-buttered-enough, deli cious toast. name? The waiter had nothing. At any rate, fourpence I know was the sum I spent. And the hunger appeased, I got on the coach a guilty being. At the last stage, what is its I have forgotten in seven and thirty years, there is an inn with a little green and trees before it; and by the trees there is an open carriage. It is our carriage. Yes, there are Prince and Blucher, the horses; and my parents in the carriage. Oh! how I had been counting the days until this one came! Oh! how happy had I been to see them yesterday! But there was that fourpence. All the journey down the toast had choked me, and the coffee poisoned me. I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, that I forgot the maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal voice. I pull out the twenty-four shillings and eightpence with a trembling hand. "Here's your money," I gasp out, "which Mr. P- owes you, all but fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence to Hawker out of my money for a pencil-case, and I had none left, and I took fourpence of yours, and had some coffee at a shop.' I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering this confession. My dear boy," says the governor, "why didn't you go and breakfast at the hotel?" "He must be starved," says my mother. I had confessed; I had been a prodigal; I had been taken back to my parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime as yet, or a very long career of prodigality; but don't we know that a boy who takes a pin which is not his own will take a thousand pounds when occasion serves, bring his parents' gray heads with sorrow to the grave, and carry his own to the gallows? Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our friend Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by playing pitch-and toss on a tombstone: playing fair, for what we know: and even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. From pitch-and-toss he proceeded to man-slaughter if necessary: to highway robbery; to Tyburn and the rope there. Ah! heaven be thanked, my parents' heads are still above the grass, and mine still out of the noose. As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common and the rocks, the strange familiar place which I remember forty years ago. Boys saunter over the green with stumps and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop by on the riding-master's hacks. I protest it is Cramp, Riding Master, as it used to be in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur Cramp must be at least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman with a bundle of novels from the library. Are they as good as our novels? Oh! how delightful they were! Shades of Valancour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how I shudder at your appearance! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap and richly embroidered tights! And as for Corinthian Tom in light blue pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from the country, can all the fashion, can all the splendor of real life which these eyes have subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion, with your brilliancy, with your delightful grace, and sparkling vivacious rattle? Who knows? They may have kept those very books at the library still I at the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, where they sell that delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. will go and see. I went my way to the Pantiles, the queer little oldworld Pantiles, where, a hundred years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it possible that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as I read lately in a |