ties. The question having been thus far advanced, Mr. Spread began to make inquiries about villas on the banks of the Thames; he took notes of several places advertised in the Times, and obtained from the auctioneers and house-agents the names of sundry villas, or of people who had villas to dispose of. There was the Ash-groves, Bushy-parks, and Meadow-banks, River-views, Priories, and Dovecots, a Tusculum, a Sans Souci, and a Vallombrosa. How Barker ridiculed and abused the very names of the places; how he did run down the hills, cut up the groves, and trample the meadows under his feet! However, he was so bent upon keeping Mr. Spread to his engagement to locate himself somewhere about Richmond that he consented, with much less difficulty than his friend had anticipated, to go down with him, one marvelously warm and sunny day, to survey the district, though he positively objected at that late period of the year to taking an early dinner at the Star and Garter. Mr. Spread was of opinion-like a sensible man-that winter is the proper time to form a judgment of a country-house, and he thought, further, that he could make no more acceptable Christmas gift to his wife and children than the villa, upon which their hearts were set. As to the early dinner, he gave up the point at once, and agreed, with Barker, to dine at the usual hour at the Piazza Coffee House, in Covent Garden.

The tour of inspection was amusing enough; it supplied Spread with many subjects for pleasantry, and Barker with equally numerous occasions for a growl. Both gentlemen had abundant occasion to remark the singular fertility of imagination possessed by the auctioneers; what was a castle in print, dwindled to a cottage in reality; gorgeous woods shrunk into paltry shrubberies; stately mansions into citizen's boxes; lawns into paddocks; mountains into hillocks; parks and chases into wretched inclosures, where a herd of field-mice could with difficulty find sufficient range or pasture. They were also led to notice the admirable talent for nomenclature exhibited by the owners of suburban villas; how happily places without a bush were designated groves; and houses staring you in the face, on the sides of public thoroughfares, christened hermitages; they saw lodges, where they would not have lodged for a considerable bribe, and retreats which they were glad to retreat from; Vallombrosa was a sun-and-dust-trap on the top of a hill, and the villas with Roman names were the Cockneyist abodes in all the environs of London. Another field of observation was opened by the singular ingenuity with which the builders of numerous houses had selected the sites, so as to give them the full benefit of every bleak wind that

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blows, and spare them the greatest possible amount of light and warmth. In this respect, Tusculum was as near perfection as a house could be. The shelter from the south was complete, the exposure to the northeast incomparable, it seemed as if the advice of the astronomer-royal must have been taken, or it never could have been placed with such extreme precision, so as to have the minimum of the sun's favor in the circle of the year.

“The very place for the Narrowsmiths," said Mr. Spread.

“I had no idea," said Barker, "there was any thing to be had so perfect in its way."

They

"Let us return to town," said the merchant, in despair. did so, and owed to a fortunate incident in the evening, while they sat sipping their wine, what they had failed to discover in the morning, with all their pains and peregrinations.

At a table not far from them, in the Piazza Coffee House, sat four gentlemen, whose conversation soon proved that they were all literary men, novelists of greater or less repute. They were, in fact (though neither Mr. Spread nor Mr. Barker knew them personally), P. R. G. Lowestoffe, a voluminous writer of romances; Mr. Warner, great in the line of didactic fiction; Mr. Grimm, author of the Horrors of Houndsditch," "Mysteries of Bristol," and several other works belonging to the slouched-hat and dark-lantern school; and last, if not least, Lord Francis Shearcraft, who had recently found out a particularly expeditious method of composition, in which he was about equally indebted to the assistance of his bookseller and his cutler. Had the year been younger by some months, these four personages would have gone down to Blackwall, and dined at Lovegrove's, but now they were content to make themselves comfortable in Covent Garden: the banquet being at the cost of Warner, who had lost a bet to Lowestoffe, having rashly wagered that the latter would not produce three novels, of three volumes each, in the space of four calendar months. At a dinner under such circumstances, the conversation fell naturally upon the art of novel-writing in general, and Barker and Spread (being weary after their fruitless expedition, and more inclined to listen than talk) were both diverted and edified by the dialogue which they could not avoid overhearing. That they could be in any manner practically concerned in it, never, of course, for an instant entered their heads.

"The fact is," said Lowestoffe, justly elated at the victory he had won, "I have got a wonderful knack of novel-writing; I have no doubt I could have given four in the same time, if it had been worth

my while. For some years back I have regularly written four or five at least in the twelve month. My plan is to have one going on at my library table, another at a standing-desk, I throw off a third while I sit sipping my wine after dinner, and a fourth-faith, I can't tell how I manage to produce the fourth-but I do it-it's incredible -but I do it."

"You must find it very difficult," said Warner, who wrote at the slow rate of a novel a-season, "to keep your characters distinct, and the threads of the stories from getting entangled."

“Faith, the threads do get entangled a little now and then; but as to the characters, the only difficulty I find is to keep the hair of my heroines of the same color throughout. I sometimes make a slip there, I confess. Belinda, in my last historical romance, has fair hair in the first volume, auburn in the second, and jet-black in the third. The reviewers never detected it."

"And if they had," said Grimm, "your defense would have been simple enough—that Belinda, of course, used some of the hair-dyes and atrapilatories in vogue."

Lowestoffe and the others laughed.

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Still," said Warner, "I can't help thinking, that to create and sustain interesting characters is not so easy a task as Lowestoffe appears to suppose."

“I have a theory of my own on the subject of characters,” replied Lowestoffe. "A novel is, or ought to be, a picture of life; now do we commonly meet with interesting characters in life? Why, then, should people expect to find them in novels? I write upon what I call the picture-of-life principle; and I apply it to incidents as well as to characters. Perhaps you may have remarked, that my novels do not aim at abounding in what are commonly called interesting characters, or entertaining events."

"I certainly have remarked that they don't contain them," said Warner, maliciously; and Lord Francis and Mr. Grimm said they had made the same observation.

"The feuilleton system would suit you admirably ;" said Grimm; "you could supply all the journals in London."

"I am actually engaged at this moment," said Lowestoffe, "to write a romance in the Mark Lane Express.”

"Who is to be the villain ?" asked Warner, "Cobden, or Lord George Bentinck?"

Nobody like me,” said Grimm, “for villains.”

“That is your line," said Lowestoffe; "you are, unquestionably, very great in it."

“You have a diabolical imagination, Grimm,” said Lord Francis. "All habit," said the author of the "Mysteries of Bristol." "I ruminate so much on abandoned characters and revolting subjects. Every dilapidated house is to me the scene of some hideous assassination, or still more appalling crime. London, to my eye, teems with conspirators and murderers. I would undertake, in twelve months, to make the parks of this city so horrible, that the inhabitants would resort, for an evening's walk, to Goodman's Fields in preference."

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Very kind to the citizens of London," said Warner.

Why, in the cellars of this very house," continued Grimm, grow'ng excited.

"Hush, Grimm-don't ruin the Piazza," said Lord Francis. “I'll tell you an extremely curious fact," said Grimm, “in illustration of the power of fiction. In my Horrors of Houndsditch,' there is one scene laid at a villa near Richmond; I called it the Rosary; there is a brutal murder-indeed, two murders; and then there is a double apparition; all sheer invention, of course. But it turns out that there is actually a villa of the same name, in the same locality; and what do you think has occurred within the last week? Why, the family that occupied it has thrown it up-their servants deserted them in a body-the place is for sale at this moment, the nicest villa residence in England."

"Take a note of that, Spread," said the bachelor, sotto voce.

"I know it well," said Lord Francis; "it belongs to the best of all worthy fellows, my friend Dr. Bedford, dean of some place in Ireland he has resided in that villa for the last ten years."

"Take the Rosary, Spread," said Barker.

Mr. Spread took his friend's advice, and the haunted villa the next day. It was indeed a gem; and it may as well be stated at once, that the Spreads never received, during their tenancy, the slightest molestation from Mr. Grimm's apparitions.

The news of the taking of the Rosary was not long in reaching Norwood, and the ears of the eccentric and vixenish Mrs. Harry Farquhar, who penetrated with a glance into the share Mr. Barker bad in the defeat of her arrangements. The bachelor of the Albany will, sooner or later, get a blowing-up, depend upon it.

CHAPTER VII.

Cheer your heart;

Be you not troubled with the time, which drives

O'er your content these strong necessities;

But let determined things to destiny

Hold unbewail'd their way.

Antony and Cleopatra.

The Tropics of Life—Mr. Barker starts for Liverpool-Rail-way ReadingMutual Scrutiny of Faces-Litigious Behavior of the Bachelor-His Char acter of Lord Brougham and of Sir Robert Peel-Interesting discovery of a London Student-Barker attacks the Squires-The Company changesOld Mrs. Briscoe and her fat Maid-A Nephew in search of an UncleConduct of the Nephew-Mr. Barker overhears an alarming Conversation -How he got involved with Mrs. Briscoe and two other Petticoats-And in what an amiable Character he arrived at Mr. Spread's.

THERE are certainly turning points in the lives of men, when things, after going on smoothly or roughly, happily or the contrary, begin to alter either for worse or better; and it would seem that these tropical moments generally occur at the precise times when men are least expecting the tide to change, and most assured of the stability of their fortunes. At such a crisis, Mr. Barker, with all his confidence in his no-responsibility system (a confidence hitherto justified by its almost uninterrupted success), is now arriving rapidly; and, in truth, since it seems to be an elementary moral law, that the course of love (at once the original and conservative principle of society) shall never long run smooth, it would be equally unjust and contradictory that the stream of a bachelor's destiny (a course essentially anti-social) should flow unhindered and unruffled to the close.

The train started. Every place was occupied, and each traveler provided himself with one or two dayly or weekly newspapers. There were two Chronicles, two copies of the Times, the same of the Daily News, one Mrs. Gamp, and no Mrs. Harris. Barker had the Examiner, because it was witty and caustic; and the Spectator, because it was clever and crotchety. The proceedings commenced with a general reading of the journals. Three gentlemen attempted,