flattered by the cheers, and bows condescendingly ere he alights from the well-appointed mail phaeton. See how graciously the ladies receive him, as, having ascended the stairs, he appears among them. ‘A man is never too old to marry’ is their maxim.

The cry is still, ‘They come! they come!’ See at a hand-gallop, with his bay pony in a white lather, rides Pacey, grinning from ear to ear, with his red-backed betting-book peeping out of the breast pocket of his brown cutaway. He is staring and gaping to see who is looking at him.

Pacey has made such a book as none but a wooden-headed boy like himself could make. He has been surfeited with tips. Peeping Tom advised him to back Daddy Longlegs; and, nullus error, Sneaking Joe has counselled him that the ‘Baronet’ will be ‘California without cholera, and gold without danger;’ while Jemmy something, the jockey, who advertises that his ‘tongue is not for falsehood framed,’ though we should think it was framed for nothing else, has urged him to back Parvo to half the amount of the national debt.

Altogether, Pacey has made such a mess that he cannot possibly win, and may lose almost any sum from a thousand pounds, down to a hundred and eighty. Mr Sponge has got well on with him, through the medium of Jack Spraggon.

Pacey is now going to what he calls ‘compare’ -- see that he has got his bets booked right; and, throwing his right leg over his cob’s neck, he blobs on to the ground; and leaving the pony to take care of itself, disappears in the crowd.

What a hubbub! what roarings, and shoutings, and recognisings!’ Bless my heart! who’d have thought of seeing you?’ and, ‘By jingo! what’s sent you here?’

‘My dear Waffles,’ cries Jawleyford, rushing up to our Laverick Wells friend (who is looking very debauched), ‘I’m overjoyed to see you. Do come upstairs and see Mrs Jawleyford and the dear girls. It was only last night we were talking about you.’ And so Jawleyford hurries Mr Waffles off, just as Waffles is in extremis about his horse.

Looking around the scene there seems to be everybody that we have had the pleasure of introducing to the reader in the course of Mr Sponge’s Tour. Mr and Mrs Springwheat in their dog-cart, Mrs Springey’s figure, looking as though ‘wheat had got above forty, my lord;’ old Jog and his handsome wife in the ugly old phaeton, well garnished with children, and a couple of sticks in the rough peeping out of the apron, Gustavus James held up in his mother’s arms, with the curly blue feather nodding over his nose. There is also Farmer Peastraw, and faces that a patient inspection enables us to appropriate to Dribble, and Hook, and Capon, and Calcot, and Lumpleg, and Crane of Crane Hall, and Charley Slapp of red- coat times -- people look so different in plain clothes to what they do in hunting ones. Here, too, is George Cheek, running down with perspiration, having run over from Dr Latherington’s, for which he will most likely ‘catch it’ when he gets back; and oh, wonder of wonders, here’s Robert Foozle himself!

‘Well, Robert, you’ve come to the steeplechase?’

‘Yes, I’ve come to the steeplechase.’

‘Are you fond of steeplechases?’

‘Yes, I’m fond of steeplechases.’

‘I dare say, you never were at one before,’ observes his mother.

‘No, I never was at one before,’ replies Robert.

And though last not least, here’s Facey Romford, with his arm in a sling, on Mr Hobler, come to look after that sivin-p’und-ten, which we wish he may get.