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'Guilt doth not escape the penetrating search of Ho-Ho. Ho-Ho hath long ears.

"Ho-Ho would emulate the virtues of his father, Ha-Ha, and train up by good example his son, He-He.

'It hath come to the knowledge of Ho-Ho that a certain Yellow Girdle, named Ho-Fi, residing in the city of Din-Din, not respecting the im perial pleasure, so often proclaimed, that all shall live peaceably together without committing offences against their neighbours; hath contumaciously presumed to put six wives to death by various devices, and hath in like manner attempted the life of a seventh. The modes of their deaths have been these for each he accounted falsely. The first fell from a rock— he ascribed it to female giddiness: the second was drowned-he said that she died of drink: the third was hanged-he spoke of her tightness of breath the fourth was poisoned-he declared she was not careful in diet: the fifth was starved-he said that she lived too low the sixth was choked with her share-he gave out that she could not say herself how she died. By these evasions he for a while deluded justice, but the truth hath become manifest; the chicken hath pipped the shell;* the cat can no longer conceal the kittens; the parrot hath moulted; let him be ashamed of his tail.

'But it is agreeable to the rules of justice that the punishment should bear some reference to the particular nature of the crime. This was the attempted murder of his seventh wife, which he hath essayed by poison, by a dog, and by a viper. It is the will, then, of Ho-Ho that Ho-Fi be punished in this manner that he be stung to death by adders, and that his heart be filled with poison, and given to the dog Bou-wou. In consideration of his former enormities it is further ordered, that his body be cut into exceeding small pieces, one of which shall be sent to every square mile throughout the empire, and stuck upon a thorn. That his ten nearest relatives be put to death also; but as it is well to temper justice with mercy, they shall be merely strangled. His wife So-Sli shall be strangled likewise. His servants shall submit each to two hundred strokes of the bamboo; Poo-Poo, the father of So-Sli, shall receive five hundred, shall wear the wooden collar for twelve calendar months, a proper reward for his heretical doctrines; the allowance of pay and rice to all Yellow Girdles shall cease for three years; and the principal mandarin of Hum shall be hung up in his house.'

For hung up in his house,' some versions of the proclamation read 'suspended in his office.'

The wind-up of this enunciation of the celestial will is too long for insertion here; it exhibits a fine struggle between a proper humility and

conscious wisdom.

The story of Ho-Fi is told. Chinese and poetical justice go hand-inhand. His name has long been universally execrated throughout the Celestial Empire. The Greeks borrowed it, and among them op was an expression equivalent to 'O thou serpent!' Even among us barbarous inhabitants of the isles of the Western Ocean O fye!' is to this day used to convey a reproach.

The critics perchance may address it to me, and consider my story as poo-poo nonsense! They may do as they please, but I shall sing 'FO SAVE THE EMPEROR !'

Eggs are close things, but chickens will out at last. A Chinese proverb, sig nifying that murder will out.-DAVIS.

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MR. SAMUEL GIPPS still lives, is in good health and spirits, and is likely to be a happier man for the time to come than he has been heretofore; but he no longer lives at No. 15, Street, in the Strand. I

make no question but that by this time even he can venture to smile at a dramatic passage in his life, with which I cannot forego the pleasure of acquainting the reader. Like Shakspeare, he was the sole author of a comedy; and, like the immortal bard, played but an inconsiderable part in it. But it may be as well if I furnish a short preparatory notice of Mr. Gipps.

Mr. Samuel Gipps was a bachelor, about three-and-forty years of age, and enjoying "a small competence," a phrase which means just such an amount of yearly income as justifies a gentleman in lamenting the high prices of butcher's meat, and other perishable provisions, in boggling about house rent, and in being guilty of the petty disloyalty of cursing, even to his ominous and unanswerable face, the quarterly visit of the collector of Queen's taxes.

Like other young men upon town, Gipps in his time had been fain to content himself with lodgings, a first floor furnished with conveniences, a street-door key, and a tinder-box and greasy candlestick duly placed on the balustrade side of the first stair. He had, accordingly, passed through the ordeal of unconfessed dancing-masters on the second "flight," of unmentioned music-teachers in the parlours, of amateur songsters at free-and-easys and glee-clubs in the adjoining chamber, and of sleep-walkers from the garrets, who never find their way to their own room, and always discover a penchant for the first-floor lodgers.

Weary of this mode of self-stowage, and its vexatious contingencies, Gipps had subsequently suffered himself to be taken into permanent bait at sundry boarding-houses, which, the gloss of novelty once faded, conformed even less kindly with his inclinations, than his former more independent arrangement. He complained that the inmates, native and foreign, to be found in these establishments,-the men in particular-were the most inexplicably mysterious rational beings that ever sat down in common to one table-cloth. During the day they went hither and thither, but whither it was futile to conjecture: came punctually to their meals, and at night were perversely prone to penny-point whist, and whiskey and water. He could not help fancying, also, that whenever a friend of either of these gentlemen, or of his own, chanced to call, the visiter seemed to look upon the company as a junto of harmless maniacs humanely leagued together for the purpose of enriching a certain eager-faced person, in brown holland cuffs and spectacles, whom they were pleased to call the landlady. The female branches were, in Gipps' opinion, rather wintry-visaged samples of the fair sex, chiefly remarkable for sandy hair, large reticules, and one tooth out in front. In short, Gipps, in

due time became thoroughly indifferent to the agreeable amenities to be exchanged at boarding-houses,-tired of inscrutable soup,-of fish that had long left a seafaring life, and Atlantean shoulders of mutton. He had given boarding-houses a fair chance, and he said (for he was a gentleman of a mild manner, and choice of speech,) they were no good.'

'I have tried as many as most men,' said he to his friend Simpson, one day, and I ought to know. Some one "within three minutes' walk of the Royal Exchange." Bless you, sir, Captain Barclay, in training, couldn't have accomplished the distance in ten. And as for those that "command a delightful view of the park," all I can say is, their commands are never obeyed. The outline of a tree or two might be seen perhaps— with Herschel's telescope.'

'Why don't you take a house of your own?' returned Simpson, ' vote for a member, attend vestries, and get on the Paving Board? Be respectable-now, do be respectable. You are a middle-aged man-act as such. Sit under the shadow of your own fig-tree.'

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Therefore Gipps took No. 15, Strand, had the fixtures at a valu ation, made repairs, hung fresh bells, planted a new scraper, and placed his name in brass on the door. Handsome furniture, books, pictures, bronzes, shells, lamps-all complete. The place was a nucleus of comfort and respectability.

All would not do. There was a vacuum, as he said, a desideratum to be supplied. The house was too much for him. I do not mean in the common acceptation of those words, that is to say, that the house was too large, or had too many rooms in it (although less, to say the truth, might have sufficed); but he could not keep the concern in order; he couldn't manage it. Gipps had not taken a house-the house had got him; he had caught a tartar.

Now he knew very well, for he had heard his mother say so, that 'servants required' (his mother had said wanted, but this is any thing but the truth) that servants required looking after; but how was he all the livelong day to be tracking the footsteps of old Betty? In the first instance, he had thought Betty was pretty well, considering; but when, as the phrase goes, she showed herself in her true colours, they were rather startling than splendid. She had ap parently no conception of the course of time, as commonly indicated by clockwork, and brought up breakfast and served dinner at discretion. In a short time he began to fear that her morals were not in a high state of preservation. She wanted to make him believe that he ate four halfquarterns a-week. Ridiculous! He was by no means partial to bread. She pleaded that the rats made away with the candles, when, how the deuce,' thought Gipps, 'a rat or any animal of that genus can run up a kitchen door, and abstract moulds and long sixes out of the round lack ered box at the back of it, is more than I can possibly conceive.' It was true that about two months since, a man with a head like a hedgehog, and a face like a dolphin, did come to repair the cistern; but why he should therefore have since come twice a-week to take supper with Betty off his quarters of lamb, he could not satisfactorily divine.

Nat Salter, an uncouth urchin of some dozen years, who cleaned his boots, and knives and forks, and carried, and miscarried, as the case might happen, his letters and messages, was no better to his liking. Of him, too, he had formed, at first, a favourable opinion.

and had mentally measured him for pepper-and-salt trowsers with red cord down the seams, and a brown coat with a yellow collar and a gross of sugar-loaf buttons.

But the young rogue was always playing on the door-step with begrimed juveniles of his own age and physical calibre: and when he went forth, would start up incontinently, whip off his shapeless headgear, and shout, 'D'ye want me, Mr. Gipps? Once he had actually, with his own ears, heard him observe to a companion, 'That's my old master, Gipps-just twig him. Isn't he a article! Í believe you, he just is.'

Old master!-a article! Insufferable young rascal!

'No, no,' thought Gipps at last, this won't do. I must get a housekeeper. Nothing is to be done without a housekeeper.'

CHAPTER II.

The Advertisement.

BUT how to get a housekeeper? Gipps had no more notion of the process by which so desirable an acquisition was to be procured, than he had of the method of calculating by fluxions. He resolved to seek advice upon this head; and who is so capable of giving, and happy to extend his advice, as his old friend Mr. Jackson, a gentleman who had seen a vast deal of the world, and under whose ken housekeepers, without doubt, must frequently have come? He sought Mr. Jackson out accordingly, and made known his wants and wishes-his doubts and his difficulties.

'Very well,' said Mr. Jackson, a gentleman, by the by, whose narrow width of wisdom was eked out by a vast selvage of important gravity, 'you want a housekeeper. Well, sir, you want a respectable woman- a highly respectable woman-what I should call a comfortable body.'

'A comfortable body, certainly,' said Gipps; ' a comfortable

body.'

Very good, sir,' cried Jackson. application to your butcher?'

My butcher!' exclaimed Gipps. gate Market,' thought he, can "my and sells them in detail, have to do tegrity?'

Well, sir, and have you made

( What in the name of Newbutcher," who cuts up beeves with housekeepers in their in

Your butcher,' resumed Mr. Jackson; 'have you, I repeat, applied to your butcher, to your baker-pshaw! absurd! I was about to say to your candlestick-maker? Let me correct myself. Have you applied to your butcher, to your baker, to your grocer, to your greengrocer? What!' surveying Gipps with surprise, are you not aware that gentlemen, when they want servants, refer themselves to these purveyors, as, in like manner, when servants want places, they also refer to them?'

'I really was not aware, I am ashamed to say,' replied Gipps. Then I beg your pardon, sir,' remarked Mr. Jackson, but you must give me leave to tell you, you know very little of the world, and a true knowledge of the world is, in these days, highly important. Permit me to ask whether you lay in your spirits from the publican ?'

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'I do sometimes send for a bottle from the public-house,' answered Gipps, when my spirit-merchant is remiss in sending my two gallons. What then?'

Why, then, sir, I would by no means take a housekeeper upon a publican's recommendation. Mark me for this is deeply important?'

'How?' continued Gipps.

Mr. Jackson laid the forefinger of his left hand to the side of his nose, and cocked up the little finger of his right. Drinking,' said he solemnly, 'is incompatible with a due attention to domestic duties. They who go into a public-house to inquire for a place, are usually in want of one, because they have been there before.'

Gipps did not much relish the course pointed out by Mr. Jackson. He was a reserved, shy man, and could not think of bothering butchers and bakers, or of soliciting grocers and tallow-chandlers to catch housekeepers for him. He would confer with his friend Simpson about the matter. Simpson, after all, knew a great deal more of the world than Jackson, who was of the old school. Hang him and his purveyors!

'What d'ye think, Simpson,' said he to that gentleman; 'I find I can't do without a housekeeper, and Jackson tells me to apply to my butcher, my baker, my grocer, my green-grocer.'

Jackson's an ass!' cried Simpson imperatively; he knows nothing about it. Didn't I always say you must have a housekeeper? You must advertise for one.'

'Is that the way to get one?' asked Gipps. Mark-I must have a respectable woman.'

"Of course you must. A middle-aged woman; for you're not too old Gipps, eh? Scandalum magnatum, eh? d'ye see? I should say, she

must be a widow.'

'A widow,' coincided Gipps, his face mantling with satisfaction.

'Yes, a widow,' pursued Simpson; advertise, and you're sure to succeed. Everything is got now-a-days by advertisement, from a wife to a walking-stick. Why, my friend, I'd engage to advertise for a mermaid, and to get one within four-and-twenty hours, comb and looking-glass included. D'ye remember Frankenstein-the piece we saw together some years since ? Cooke was the fellow with a long scratch in the bills instead of a name; and he looked like old Scratch!'

'I do,' said Gipps. 'Ha! ha! that was one way of making an acquaintance. But do be serious, my dear Simpson. I must advertise, you say?'

'I tell you, yes. Why, Gipps, I'd make an infinitely superior fellow to Frankenstein's comparative failure out of materials indicated in the newspapers. I'd fit together a framework of a goodlooking rascal in one morning, and set him going with hydrogen. A choice of pills to keep him in rude health, and Rowland's Macassar for his complexion. Advertise to be sure; and the first dish of Hyson poured forth by the delicate hand of the widow shall be mine.'

Nothing better was to be done than to advertise. It was certain that hundreds did daily advertise; and they must get what they sought, or recourse would not so constantly be had to that method of proceeding. He decided upon advertising, and was mightily

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