his larboard fin, draw one of his digits to and fro beneath his nasal promontory, and assure the company that "that was the proudest moment of his life." Watkins could be chatty on matters theatrical, and spoke unreservedly of Ned Kean, Jack Harley, Billy Blanchard, and Charley Kemble; coughed peculiarly when Madame Vestris was named; and at the mention of ladies in general, that had obtained notoriety as well as fame, would hint, with a shrug, that in his profession he had opportunities of seeing some very strange scenes; he would then button his coat tight, and look round upon the company as if he really meant something, upon which, strange to say, the company responded with a look indicative of understanding what he meant; then, Mr. Watkins took up his glass, gave an oft-repeated toast, and started either another subject or another lady. During his visitations to those concerts (!), where both sexes assemble, and sentiment and cigars, rum and rapture, lemonade and love songs, are jumbled antithetically, he warbled himself into the good graces of a lady who might, or might not be forty, who had formerly figured as a bar-maid, and had been wooed and won by her master, whom she married and buried, according to a custom so old that as to "the time thereof the memory of man is not to the contrary." The common law clerk is now a licensed victualler: he issues executions against other people's goods every morning, and takes his own chair every night. He cracks some admirable jokes, about his lady loving a lawyer, because she was brought up to the bar herself; and when his customers follow up the pun, by asking some one to show cause why they should not have another glass of grog, he assumes the tone and manner of Justice Park, and exclaims, "Take a rule." Here let me indulge awhile in the egotism of autobiography; for 't is of myself I speak, as THE COPYING CLERK. Reader, if you glance at the spirited likeness presented to you by the artist, you will find that I am not what the world calls handsome: yet, I say it under the mask of pen, ink, and paper, "there is something about me exceedingly interesting." I have not put before you a sketch which was taken of me in my nonage, in blue, green, and yellow, on a sheet of foolscap; no! I present you with Kit Mark, matured to manhood; when the dreary drudgery of my unchanging task had done its work upon me. Nine never struck but my hand uplifted the knocker. After stirring the fire that did'nt want stirring, and doing the hundred and one things that a man doos to avoid commencing a hateful task, I stripped off my street, and mounted my office-coat, (a copying clerk wears out six sleeves to one coat, a garmental fact that should be more extensively known,) I pounced my parchment, for the skin is even in its prepared state unctuous with the relics of mutton-ity, (this isn't English, but I can't help it,) and commenced lease, release, roll, or record. "Next day 'twas the same, and the next, and the next!" The blood stagnated within me; I was rapidly becoming a mere thing of pen and fingers a producing power-a copying-machine. In a happy hour I met a few youths stage-struck, or moonstruck nightly did I ponder over Pierre, or do havoc upon Hamlet; at last, by a desperate economy, I saved enough to purchase a character at a private theatre, and appeared as the Fifth Robber, in "The Iron Chest;" the onerous duties of which consist in saying nothing, whilst the other gentlemen say the rest. My success was perfectly unequivocal, for I was neither hissed nor pelted. I then assiduously applied myself to comic singing, and as I am allowed to have the faculty of making faces, horribly hideous, I am generally admitted to possess great comic powers. When the daily task is over, I repair to "The Pickled Egg," "The Pig and Thunderbolt," or "The Cow and Compasses," their respective landlords allowing me eighteen-pence, and a glass of rum and water, for the pleasure of my company, and the exercise of my capabilities. My mother, who took ill from disappointment at my not becoming attorney-general at least, has left this world for a better. Jane (with whom I quarrelled because she fell in love with a journeyman carpenter) is in Canada, where her husband's industry (for she married Chisel after all) has made his fortune. I find myself every day growing older and poorer; I have every now and then odd twinges of rheumatism in my hands, and my eye-sight is impaired; these are sad things where a man's eyes and hands are his fortune. I have been in the law a quarter of a century, during which I have been employed seventy-seven thousand and five hundred hours, pent in a dark office, copying the senseless absurdities called law-proceedings. Transportation and imprisonment must be comparative luxuries. I have not-I never had-a —a hope. Unless incapacitated by illness, and driven to a workhouse, I must, after all my labour, die as I have lived-a LAWYER'S CLERK. THE "LION" OF A PARTY. EDITED BY HENRY BROWNRIGG, ESQ. A SUBTLE Italian, no less a man than the Count Pecchio, has called London "the grave of great reputations." In simple, prosaic phrase, this our glorious metropolis is—a vast cemetery for "Lions!" They are whelped every season; and, frail and evanescent as buttercups, they every season die: that is, they do not die body and bones, but have a most fatal cutaneous and depilatory disorder—a mortality that goes skin-deep, and little more-a disease that strips them of their hide, and tail, and mane; yea, that makes the very "Lions" that, but a few months since, shook whole coteries with the thunder of their voices, roar as "gently as any sucking-doves." The ferocious dignity of the "Lion" in fine condition-the grimness of his smile-the lashing might of his muscular tail-all the grand and terrible attributes of the leonine nature, pass away with the season—he is no longer a thing of wonder, a marvellously-gifted creature, at which 66 -the boldest hold their breath, For a time," but a mere biped-simply, a human animal—a man, and nothing more! He walks and talks unwatched amid a crowd; and spinsters who, but a year before, would have scarcely suppressed "a short, shrill shriek" at his approach, let him pass with an easy and familiar nod—it may be, even with a nod of patronage; or, if it happen that they remember his merits of the past season, they speak of them with the same philosophical coldness with which they would touch upon the tails and ears of a long-departed spaniel. It is a sad thing for a "Lion" to outlive his majesty; to survive his nobler attributes, it may be, lost to him in the very prime of life, thus leaving him bereft of all life's graces. And yet, how many men -"Lions" once, with flowing manes, and tails of wondrous length and strength-have almost survived even the recollection of their leonine greatness, and, conforming to the meekness and sobriety of tame humanity, might pass for nobodies. E |