"War! Pestilence! and Famine!" bellows a Modern Astrologer !

"And Earthquakes," croaks an unskaken believer in the shocking predictions of the old Monk of Dree and Doctor Dee.

"It will blow up our Powder-Works," groans a resident near Waltham Abbey.*

"And dry up our Water-Works," moans a Chelsea Director, turning to all the colors of a Dolphin out of its ele

ment.

"It's played the dickens already with the Consternations," says Ignorance. "They do say as how it's singed the Ram, set fire to the Wirgin, roasted the Bull whole, scorched up the Man with the Watering-pot, and fried all the heavenly Fishes!"

"So much the better!" ejaculates the Lord Mayor.

"So much the better!" exclaims his Worship of Bow Street.

"So much the better!" cries his Worship of Marlborough Street.

"So much the better!" observes his Worship of Hatton Garden.

"So much the better!" remarks his Worship of Marylebone.

"So much the better! echoes his Worship of Queen Square.

"So much the better!" says his Worship of Worship Street, briskly rubbing his hands together, and drawing a long, deep sigh of satisfaction from somewhere about the solar plexus, so much the better! The public panic will now perhaps take another direction, and instead of the daily monomaniac, and the everlasting question, "How's his head?" it will be, "Where's its tail?”

*As good a prophecy as any of Zadkiel's: for the Waltham PowderWorks actually blew up, about a fortnight after the hint in print.

CHAPTER X.

BUT Mr. Hatband

The Undertaker was so delighted with the interest I had taken in his work, and the decoration of the coffin, that on parting, he presented to me his card, which he gave me with a pleasure only inferior to mine on receiving it, but derived from a very different source he supposing that I had some funeral order in store for him, and I exulting that there had been no occasion, on my own behalf for his services-in reality, feeling very much like a man who has just escaped, untouched, from meeting with a dead shot.

The sun was shining brilliantly, and the morning was delicious; one of those Spring mornings when we seem to walk on spring-boards; but never on elastic wood, or turf, did man tread so lightly as Peregrine Phoenix, Esq., on the broad, flat flagstones, pleasantly contemplating, now and then, the active shadow, which proved that he was not a shade. It was the most agreeable promenade I ever enjoyed — that solitary walk to the West End-making a dozen satisfactory purchases by the way; for example, a stick of red sealing-wax, simply because it was not black — a piece of Holland linen for shirting, which " was warranted to wear well," and two pair of trousers that were ticketed "Everlastings." The next shop but one to the draper's was a Circulating Library, a rather petty repository; but there was a placard of the terms in the window, and although the act cost me a guinea, I could not resist going in and subscribing for a year.

A Statuary's, a few yards further on, supplied me, like the Undertaker's, with some very comfortable cogitation. For the first time since my birth, I found a charm in potbellied monumental Urns-in stone-blind Cherubs with wigs à la mode and alabaster and in petrified Angels, with wings of good solid masonry, blowing dumb coach-horns. They were finer to me, in my peculiar frame of mind, than Phidian sculptures. And then those polished snow-like marble slabs and tablets, how cheerfully they shone in the bright sunshine! It was indeed my lucky day, marked with white stones! Yes, lucky, although in turning away from the statuary's, I was run against, full butt, by a workman with a package of laths un

der his arm, that came in uncomfortable contact with my body, a little below the chest. But the poor fellow begged my pardon so humbly, that it was impossible for a Christian, and especially under my circumstances, to refuse it.

Well, well, pick up my hat. That poke in the stomach has given me a strong conviction, at any rate, of my corporeal vitality."

"I'm sorry to hear it, sir," replied the workman, “I am indeed, and I hope it's a feeling as will soon wear off."

But my greatest triumphs awaited me at my Club. O, the indescribable look of the porter, when he saw my Ghost thrust open the glazed door! the unutterable astonishment of the waiter when my Apparition orderd a biscuit and a glass of sherry—the profound mystification of my friend B. when my Spirit carelessly asked him the current price of Long Annuities. The other members present were equally amazed. Some started up-most of them ejaculated all stared one choked and a tumbler of Bass's Pale Ale dropped with a crash on the floor. Had I walked into the room à la Phonix, in a pair of incombustible asbestos trousers, blazing with burning spirits of wine, there could not have been a greater sensation. However, the excitement subsided at last, and gave place to boisterous congratulations. The news of my sudden demise had circulated amongst my club intimates and acquaintance, and to do them justice they hailed my resurrection from my ashes as cordially as if they had conjointly underwritten my life.

A House Dinner was proposed to celebrate my revival; and fixed for seven precisely. The interval I employed chiefly in the pleasant task of composing a public contradiction of the paragraph in the Herald, and writing bulletins of my perfect health to all my friends and acquaintances, and some few others, including a tradesman or two, and the actuary of the Eagle Assurance. And when the missives were done and delivered to the house-steward for the post, with what gusto I added, "Mind, not the Dead Letter Office!" while the steward stared by turns at the enormous red seal, and the staring P. PHOENIX, in the corner of each envelope, intended to break my life to my correspondents.

“And did the dinner go off well, Mr. Phoenix?”

Excellently, madam. The best I ever ate. Every delicacy

the

of the season the most delicious fruits I ever tasted most exquisite wines I ever drank. Then everybody was in capital spirits, and myself above all (good reason why)joking, punning, telling my best stories (dead men tell no tales), and laughing, like one of the Immortals. Then after the cloth was drawn, the toasts that were drunk-not in solemn silence but vociferously, with all the honors, “The Arabian Bird," "Never say Die," "Many Happy Returns of the Day," and the songs that were sung, and the speeches that were made, including my own, in which I assured the company, with unusual sincerity, that upon my life (a phrase since become habitual with me) it was the happiest day of my life one to be remembered to my last hour-but which, in spite of somebody putting on my clock, like the grim Covenanter in "Old Mortality," had not yet arrived.

Hear, hear, hear!" shouted my auditors, and to tell the truth, I joined lustily in their cheering, out of sheer selfcongratulation. If ever a human biped enjoyed the ninefold vitality of the feline quadruped, it was mine at that moment. I was full, brimming, overflowing with life; there was enough in me, had I been chopped up like a polypus, to animate a dozen Phoenixes!

It was nearly dawn ere we broke up, when between two companions, who these are Confessions looked sometimes like four, I set out to walk home, not walking as a mechanic plods to his work, or as an invalid ambulates for exercise, but with occasional skips and curvetings, or a little run, in one of which courses my head came in collision with a lamp-post, and gratified me with occular demonstration of my existence in a shower of vital sparks. Nor yet did we proceed quite so mum-chance as quakers, or boarding-school misses, but whistling, warbling trios, and occasionally shouting in chorus, when just at the bottom of Waterloo Place, or it might be the top of the Haymarket - by some mystery not to be explained through some Casus Belli never clearly defined for it was in the days of Tom and Jerryism, when war was seldom formally declared all at once I found myself engaged in battle royal, or rather republican — it was so free and independent with an unknown number of opponents. My new life, probably, was in danger, for I fought

for it like a tiger, wrestling, hugging, tugging, kicking, pushing, striking right and left, and being kicked, pushed, and belabored in return. One unlucky punch, I suspect, punched out my centre of gravity, from my difficulty afterwards in keeping my legs. Sometimes I was on my feet, sometimes on my head, now on my back, then on my front, then on my side, and then on my seat-bounding, scrambling, rolling, up again, posturing, squaring, warding, and down again-at first dry, next wet, then tattered and torn, but still fighting, encouraged by shouts of "Go it, Lively!" though purblind, giddy, bleeding, and almost out of that precious article, my breath. Still the battle raged with various success; my spirit, or spirits, for I seemed to have several within me, yet unsubdued, when just in the middle of a furious rally, in the very crisis of victory, I was caught up horizontally, and before tongue could cry rescue, Peregrine Phoenix, Esq., the Dead Man of the Morning Herald, was borne off kicking and shouting at the top of his voice "Hurrah for Life - Hurrah for Life - Hurrah for Life - Life Life Life in London!"

DOGBERRY.