Mr. Withering, Gentle Reader, was a drysalter of Dowgate-hill. Not that he dealt in salt, dry or wet,-or, as you might dream, in dry salt stockfish, ling, and finnin haddies, like the salesmen in Thames-street. The commodities in which he trafficked, wholesale, were chiefly drugs, and dyewoods, a business whereby he had managed to accumulate a moderate fortune. His character was unblemished,-his habits regular and domestic, but although advanced in years beyond the middle age, he was still a bachelor.

"And consumptive. Why then according to Dr. Imray's book, he had hair of a light colour, large blue eyes, long eyelashes, white and regular teeth, long fingers, with the nails contracted or curved, a slender figure, and a fair and blooming countenance."

Not exactly, Miss, Mr. Withering was rather dark

"Oh yes as the doctor says, the tuberculous constitution is not confined to persons of sanguineous temperaments and fair complexion. It also belongs to those of a very different appearance. The subjects of this affection are often of a swarthy and dark complexion, with coarse skin, dark hair, long dark eyelashes, black eyes, thick upper lip, short Aug.-VOL. LXVIII. NO. CCLXXII.

2 F

fingers, broad nails, and a more robust habit of body, with duller intellect, and a careless or less active disposition."

Nay, that is still not Mr. Withering. To tell the truth, he was not at all like a consumptive subject:-not pigeon-breasted, but broad chested-not emaciated, but plump as a partridge-not hectic in colour, but as healthily ruddy as a redstreak apple-not languid, but as brisk as a bee,-in short, a comfortable little gentleman, of the Pickwick class, with something quizzical, perhaps, but nothing phthisical in his appearance.

"Why, then, what was the matter with the man ?"

A decline, madam. Not the rapid decay of nature, so called, but one of those declines which an unfortunate lover has sometimes to endure from the lips of a cruel beauty; for Mr. Withering, though a steady, plodding man of business, in his warehouse or counting-house, was, in his parlour or study, a rather romantic and sensitive creature, with a strong turn for the sentimental, which had been nourished by his course of reading-chiefly in the poets, and especially such as dealt in Love Elegies, like his favourite Hammond. Not to forget Shenstone, whom, in common with many readers of his standing, he regarded as a very nightingale of sweetness and pathos in expressing the tender passion. Nay, he even ventured occasionally to clothe his own amatory sentiments in verse, and in sundry poems painted his torments by flames and darts, and other instruments of cruelty, so shockingly, that, but for certain allegorical touches, he might have been thought to be describing the ingenious torture of some poor white captive by a red Indian squaw.

But, alas! his poetry, original or borrowed, was of no more avail than his plain prose, against that petrifaction which he addressed as a heart, in the bosom of Miss Puckle. He might as well have tried to move all Flintshire by a geological essay; or to have picked his way with a toothpick into a Fossil Saurian. The obdurate lady had a soul above trade, and the offer of the drysalter and lover, with his dying materials in either line, was met by what is called a flat refusal, though it sounded, rather, as if set in a sharp.

Now in such cases it is usual for the Rejected One to go into something or other, the nature of which depends on the temperament and circumstances of the individual, and I will give you six guesses, Gentle Reader, as to what it was that Mr. Withering went into when he was refused by Miss Puckle.

"Into mourning?"

No.

"Into a tantrum?"

No.

"Into the Serpentine ?"

No-nor into the Thames, to sleep in peace in Bugsby's Hole.

"Into the Army or Navy?"

No.

"Into a madhouse?"

No.

"Into a Hermitage?"

No-nor into a Monastery.

The truth is, he opportunely remembered that his father's great

aunt, Dinah, after a disappointment in love, was carried off by Phthisis Pulmonalis; and as the disease is hereditary, he felt, morally as well as physically and grammatically, that he must, would, could, should, and ought to go like a true Withering, into a Consumption. "And did he, sir?"

He did, miss ;-and so resolutely, that he sold off his business, at a sacrifice, and retired, in order to devote the rest of his life to dying for Amanda-alias Miss Susan Puckle. And a long job it promised to be, for he gloried in dying very hard, and in pining for her, which of course is not to be done in a day. And truly, instead of a lover's going off, at a pop, like Werter, it must be much more satisfactory to a cruel Beauty, to see her victim, deliberately expiring by inches, like a Dolphin, and dying of as many hues,-now crimson with indignation, then looking blue with despondence, anon yellow with jaundice, or green with jealousy, at last fading into a melancholy mud-colour, and thence darkening into the black tinge of despair and death.

CHAP. II.

"BUT did Mr. Withering actually go into a consumption?"

As certainly, miss, as a passenger steps of his own accord into an omnibus that is going to Gravesend. He had been refused, and had a strong sentimental impression that all the Rejected and Forsaken Martyrs of true love were carried off, sooner or later, by the same insidious disease. Accordingly his first step was to remove from the too keen air of Pentonville, to the milder climate of Brompton, where he took a small detached house, adapted to the state of single unblessedness, to which he was condemned.

His establishment consisted but of two female servants; namely, a housemaid, and a middle-aged woman, at once cook, housekeeper, and nurse, who professedly belonged to a consumptive family, and therefore knew what was good or bad, or neither, for all pulmonary complaints. Her name was Button. She was tall, large-boned, and hardfeatured; with a loud voice, a stern eye, and the decided manner of a military sergeant-a personage adapted, and in fact accustomed to rule much more refractory patients than her master. It did not indeed require much persuasion to induce him to take to wear "flannin next his skin," or woollen comforters round his throat and wrists, or even a hareskin on his chest in an east wind. He was easily led to adopt cork soles and clogs against wet, and a great-coat in cold weathernay, he was even out-talked into putting his jaw into one of those hideous contrivances called Respirators. But this was nothing. was absolutely compelled to give up all animal food and fermented liquors to renounce successively his joint, his steak, his chop, his chicken, his calves' feet, his drop of brandy, his gin-and-water, his glass of wine, his bottled porter, his draught ditto, and his ale, down to that bitter pale sort, that he used to call his Bass relief. No, he was not even allowed to taste the table-beer. He had promised to be consumptive, and Mrs. Button took him at his word. As much light pudding, sago, arrow-root, tapioca-or gruel with toast-and-water, barleywater, whey, or apple-tea, as often as he pleased-but as to meat or

He

"stimuluses" she would as soon give him " Alick's Acid, or Corrosive Supplement.'

To this dietary dictation, the patient first demurred, but soon submitted. Nothing is more fascinating or dangerous to a man just rejected by a female, than the show of kindness by another of the sex. It restores him to his self-love-nay, to his very self,-reverses the sentence of social excommunication just pronounced against him, and contradicts the moral annihilation implied in the phrase of being" nothing to nobody." A secret well known to the sex, and which explains how so many unfortunate gentlemen, crossed in love, happen to marry the housemaid, the cook, or any kind creature in petticoats-the first Sister of Charity, black, brown, or carroty, who cares a cus

"Oh !-"

--a custard for their appetite, or a comforter for their health. Even so with Mr. Withering. He had offered himself from the top of his Brutus to the sole of his shoe to Miss Puckle, who had plumply told him that he was not worth having as a gift. And yet, here in the very depth of his humiliation, when he would hardly have ventured to bequeath his rejected body to an anatomical lecturer-here was a female, not merely caring for his person in general, but for parts of it in particular his poor throat and his precious chest, his delicate trachea, his irritable bronchial tubes, and his tender lungs. Nevertheless, no onerous tax was imposed on his gratitude; the only return required— and how could he refuse it!-was his taking a Temperance, or rather Total Abstinence Pledge for his own benefit. So he supped his semisolids and swallowed his slops: merely remarking on one occasion, after a rather rigorous course of barley-water, that if his consumption increased he thought he should "try Madeira."

"And did he ?"

Yes, madam, but very cautiously. That is to say, not by a whole island, but only a bottle at a time.

CHAP. III.

In the mean time Mr. Withering continued as plump as a partridge, and as rosy as a red streak apple. No symptoms of the imputed disease made their appearance. He slept well, ate well of sago, &c., drank well of barley-water and the like, and shook hands with a palm not quite so hard and dry as a dead Palm of the Desert. He had neither hectic flushes nor shortness of breath-nor yet pain in the chest, to which three several physicians, in consultation applied their stetho

scopes.

Doctor A.-hearing nothing at all.

Doctor B.-nothing particular.

Doctor C.-nothing wrong.

And Doctor E. distinctly hearing a cad-like voice, proclaiming "all right."

Mr. Withering, nevertheless, was dying if not of consumption, of ennui-the mental weariness of which he mistook for the physical lassitude so characteristic of the other disease. In spite, therefore, of the faculty, he clung to the poetical theory that he was a blighted drysalter,

withering prematurely on his stem; another victim of unrequited love, whom the utmost care could retain but a few short months from his cold grave. A conviction he expressed to posterity in a series of Petrarchian sonnets, and in plain prose to his housekeeper, who only insisted the more rigidly, on what she called her "regimental rules" for his regimen, with the appropriate addition of Iceland Moss. A recipe to which he quietly submitted, though obstinately rejecting another prescription of provincial origin-namely, snails beaten up with milk. In vain she told him from her own experience in Flanders, that they were reckoned not only nourishing but relishing by the Belgians, who after chopping them up with bread crumbs and sweet herbs, broiled them in the shells, in each of which a small hole was made, to enable the Flemish epicure to blow out the contents. Her master decisively set his face against the experiment, alleging plausibly enough, that the operation of snails must be too slow for any galloping complaint.

There was, however, one experiment, of which on his own recommendation, Mr. Withering resolved to make a trial-change of air of course involving change of scene. Accordingly, packing his best suits and a few changes of linen in his carpet-bag, he took an inside place in the Hastings coach, and was whirled down ere night, to that favourite Cinque Port. And for the first fortnight, thanks to the bracing yet mild air of the place, which gave tone to his nerves, without injury to his chest, the result exceeded his most sanguine expectations. But alas! he was doomed to a relapse, a revulsion so severe, that, in a more advanced stage of his complaint, he ought to have "gone out like a snuff."

"What, from wet feet, or a damp bed?"

No, madam-but from a promenade, with dry soles, on a bright day in June, and in a balmy air that would not have injured a lung of lawn-paper.

CHAP. IV.

POOR Mr. Withering!

Happy for him had he but walked in any other direction-up to the Castle, or down to the beach-had he only bent his steps westward to Harlington, or Bexhill, or eastward to Fairlight, or to the Fish-ponds -but his sentimental bias would carry him towards Lover's Sea,and there on the seat itself-he beheld his lost Amanda, or rather Miss Puckle, or still more properly, Mrs. Scrimgeour, who, with her bridegroom, had come to spend the honeymoon at green Hastings. The astounded Drysalter stood aghast and agape at the unexpected encounter; but the lady, cold and cutting as the East wind, vouchsafed no sign of recognition.

The effect of this meeting was a new shock to his system. He felt, at the very moment, that he had a hectic flush, hot and cold fits, with palpitation of the heart,-and his disease set in again with increased severity. Yes, he was a doomed man, and night at once betake himself to the last resource of the consumptive.

"Not," he said, "not that all the ass's milk in England would ever lengthen his years."

Impressed with this conviction, and heartily disgusted with Hast