to some of the early stages of his career, and picture the Hero in those days, like Lucy Neal's hapless admirer, "passing down the street." Just mark the string of hooded, knee-capped, lamb-tailed thorough-bred horses turning the top of the Haymarket, and clearing a passage down Piccadilly. Look at the young-one. How wonderingly and contemptuously he regards that awful instrument of economic utility-a Brompton 'bus! See how tenderly his tiny attendant soothes and coaxes him to face it; and how carefully and anxiously the head lad on the Welsh pony stays him from backing on that awkward scamp with the hack-cab! And then the effect of such a company! Lord! what are Lord Mayors' carriages or court equipages compared to them! Not a passenger but stops to have another look; and with what respect the very varmint gentleman at the corner of Dover-street ventures to ask whose they are and where they are going! Half-a-dozen foreign ambassadors, or three or four couple of cabinet ministers, should have gone even over the same tuft-hunting territory, without a semblance of "the sensation."

Or the hounds, again. You have seen a pack of fox-hounds coming through a town at that indescribable jog-trot pace to which hounds, huntsmen, and horses so readily accommodate themselves. You have seen the rush to drawing-room windows, street-doors, and upper casements; the curiosity and pleasure which light up every pair of eyes as "the darlings," "the beauties," or "the blazers" pass on. How the nurse-maids chuck up their charges, boardingschool misses smile, and men stare! How interested they become at the "hie, hie!" and crack of the whip, which calls old Commodore out of the pastry-cook's, or stays Caroline and Crafty from their call at the crockery-shop! Some folks fancy a regiment of soldiers or a circus company the finest draw for sight-seers; but we would back a well-turned-out pack of hounds against either.

And the Hero has had his full share of all these street-glory pomps and vanities. Was not he the high-mettled young one that lashed out at his poor brother in No. 999? or "the perfect hunter," placed in the body of the hounds as they wended their way through square and crescent? Remember him, too, in the team. How gaily they came along! How the cheerful, well-matched, even-going four were daily looked for! and what a difference their mere appearance showed between "the road" and "the street!" And "the farn," so dear for the retirement and comparative ease it afforded him-the negligé old coat and light-work stage, where, though soiled and shabby, he could adapt himself to his labour unobserved, and pursue it without publishing his fall and his disgrace. "The shop," however, with all its degradation in name and fact, dragged him forth to open and still humbler toil; while now, asbut the ghost of what he was, stiff and sore-the waterman brings him out to die in "the street"-to smart and starve in a hack-cab; the very last scene, it would appear, of that "noble animal, the horse's," labours, in every country. At least, so affirms the entertaining and prolific Monsieur Dumas, who thus traces the decline of the high-mettled in another clime:

"You are acquainted with the history of the horse, I suppose?"

"The natural history? Buffon's? Certainly. The horse is, after the lion, the noblest of all beasts.'

"No, no; the philosophical history-the different stages and vicissitudes in the existence of those noble quadrupeds.'

“Oh, yes! First, the saddle; then, the carriage or gig; then, the stage-coach, omnibus, hackney-coach; and finally-to the knacker's.'

"And from the knacker's?'

"To the Elysian Fields, I suppose.'

"No; not here, at least. From the knacker's they go to the corricoli.'

""How so?'

"I will tell you. At the Ponte della Maddalena, where horses are taken to be killed, there are always persons waiting, who, when a horse is brought, buy the hide and hoofs for thirty carlini, which is the price regulated by law. Instead of killing the horse and skinning him, these persons take him with the skin on, and make the most of the time he yet has to live. They are sure of getting the skin sooner or later. And these are what I mean by dead horses.'

"But what can they possibly do with the unfortunate brutes?' "They harness them to the corricoli.'

"What! Those with which I came from Salerno to Naples'"Were the ghosts of horses; spectre steeds, in short.' "But they galloped the whole way!'

"Why not? Les mortes vont vîte !'"

The corricoli, then, even goes a point beyond the knacker's; and we should not care to dispute as much as to the cab here. With the thorough-bred horse, especially, too weak in frame and strength for waggon or omnibus, it is now very commonly "the last scene of all in the sad eventful history." A man, armed like Mr. Pickwick, with a laudable curiosity and a ready note book, might trace out some very romantic cases from the street cabs of London. Indeed, it is not very long ago that some gentleman did discover Mameluke, Glenartney, and a few more Derby cracks on "the stand." With no great stretch of the imagination, we might picture the indefatigable inquirer making "a fact" of the Hero, under somewhat similar circumstances. Mamma, nurse, the two girls, and aunt Jane inside, and our friend in couples with Jarvey on the box. With a long pull, and a strong pull, the old one sets them going, and papa commences the examination :

*

"Fine old horse you have got there, cabman."

"Ah!" Yes, no, or what you please-laconic and not inviting. "Ah," reiterates the Fare, not exactly knowing how to take it. "Ah, I dare say, now, he's done something better than this in his time?" "Of course he has."

"I'll be bound, if it could be only properly ascertained, he has carried a gentleman-eh?"

"Done a d--n'd deal better nor that I hope," returns cabby; forced at length by the heinousness of the idea out of his usually quiet. propriety."

* Some very neat paragraphs, at any rate, went the rounds to this effect; but we believe they were contradicted.

"How do you mean-better than that?"

"How do I mean? Why, this here hoss, five-and-twenty year ago, come next Whit Monday, won the Derby-a hundred and twenty thousand pounds clear, besides bets."

"Did he indeed?"

"Of course he did, and run first for it agen the next year, with a set of false teeth in his head, and painted a yaller chestnut instead of a dark brown!"

"Law! you surprise me!"

"Of course I do. If you only know'd half he'd done, you'd think it a honor to sit behind him. He beat the celebrated Dr. Syntax for the Yorkshire Cup on the Tuesday, and was then brought up in a road waggon with eight horses going full gallop, all the way to Newmarket, on the Thursday; when he carried Squire H'Osbaldeston in his grand match of two hundred miles in five hours." "And did he win it ?"

"Of course he did. Never lost anything in his life but the Goodwood stakes, when they gave him two doses of physic at stable timehad a boy set up all night to hammer his legs-and let him have a couple of pails of strong brandy-water fifty minutes 'afore starting." "And that affected him, surely."

"Of course it did. Went rolling drunk to the post, but ran a h'awful race for all that, though he lathered enough to shave a couple a regiments of soldiers, or wash all the white trowsers they have in the world."

"Good heavens! what a shame-and to let him come to a cab, too, afterwards."

"Of course it is; but then what's to be done? He'd got no teeth, no legs, and no character, and so he must come to the cab naterally." Of course he must, and his present guardian naterally begins flicking him over the head to make him step out and honour his history, while the enlightened observer feels for an odd sixpence as his tribute to the high mettled.

"And though he groaning, quickens at command,
The extra shilling in the driver's hand

Becomes his bitter scourge-."

"CHAUNTING FOR THE MILLION."

A TALE OF LONDON HORSE DEALING.

BY SARON.

It is now nearly a quarter of a century ago, that I found myself just emancipated from a private tutor, who for the small stipend (!) of three hundred guineas per annum (extras not included), had opened an establishment, a sort of "finishing" school for young gentlemen, preparatory to their joining the army. At the above mentioned finish" were assembled five of as dashing youths as ever