a shop, unless it is asked for; notwithstanding all this, and though it was bringing him in lots of money, our friend determined to ‘cut the shop’ and be done with trade altogether.

Accordingly, he sold the premises and good-will, with all the stock of potatoes and wheat, to the foreman, old Soapsuds, at something below what they were really worth, rather than make any row in the way of advertising; and the name of ‘Soapsuds, Brothers, and Co.’ reigns on the blue-and-whity-brown parcel- ends, where formerly that of Puffington stood supreme.

It is a melancholy fact, which those best acquainted with London society can vouch for, that her ‘swells’ are a very ephemeral race. Take the last five-and-twenty years, say from the days of the Golden Ball and Pea-Green Hayne down to those of Molly C--l and Mr D--l--f--ld, and see what a succession of joyous -- no, not joyous, but rattling, careless, dashing, sixty-per-centing -- youths we have had.

And where are they all now? Some dead, some at Boulogne-sur-Mer, some in Denman Lodge, some perhaps undergoing the polite attentions of Mr Commissioner Phillips, or figuring in Mr Hemp’s periodical publication of gentlemen ‘who are wanted.’

In speaking of ‘swells,’ of course we are not alluding to men with reference to their clothes alone, but to men whose dashing, and perhaps eccentric, exteriors are but indicative of their general system of extravagance. The man who rests his claims to distinction solely on his clothes will very soon find himself in want of society. Many things contribute to thin the ranks of our swells. Many, as we said before, outrun the constable. Some get fat, some get married, some get tired, and a few get wiser. There is, however, always a fine pushing crop coming on. A man like Puffington, who starts a dandy (in contradistinction to a swell), and adheres steadily to clothes -- talking eternally of the cuts of coats or the ties of cravats -- up to the sober age of forty, must be always falling back on the rising generation for society.

Puffington was not what the old ladies call a profligate young man. On the contrary, he was naturally a nice, steady young man; and only indulged in the vagaries we have described because they were indulged in by the high-born and gay.

Tom and Jerry had a great deal to answer for in the way of leading soft-headed young men astray; and old Puffington having had the misfortune to christen our friend ‘Thomas,’ of course his companions dubbed him ‘Corinthian Tom;’ by which name he has been known ever since.

A man of such undoubted wealth could not be otherwise than a great favourite with the fair, and innumerable were the invitations that poured into his chambers in the Albany -- dinner parties, evening parties, balls, concerts, bones for the opera; and as each succeeding season drew to a close, invitations to those last efforts of the desperate, boating and whitebait parties.

Corinthian Tom went to them all -- at least, to as many as he could manage -- always dressing in the most exemplary way, as though he had been asked to show his fine clothes instead of to make love to the ladies. Manifold were the hopes and expectations that he raised. Puff could not understand that, though it is all very well to be ‘an amaazin instance of a pop’lar man’ with the men, that the same sort of thing does not do with the ladies.

We have heard that there were six mammas, bowling about in their barouches, at the close of his second season, innuendoing, nodding, and hinting to their friends, ‘that, &c.,’ when there wasn’t one of their daughters who had penetrated the rhinoceros-like hide of his own conceit. The consequence was, that all these ladies, all their daughters, all the relations and connections of this life, thought it incumbent upon them to ‘blow’ our friend Puff -- proclaim how infamously he had behaved -- all because he had danced three supper dances with one girl; brought another a fine bouquet from Covent Garden; and walked a third away from her party at a picnic at Erith; begged the mamma of a fourth to take her to a Woolwich ball; sent a fifth a ticket for a Toxophilite meeting; and dangled about the carriage of the sixth at a review at the Scrubbs. Poor Puff never thought of being more than an amaazin instance of a pop’lar man!