"By the world, I recount no fable!"SHAKSPEARE.

UNACCUSTOMED as I am to public writing, and to any other arts of composition than those by which the phraseology of a day-book or a ledger is got up, still cannot refrain from trying my pen at a piece of description which ought long ago to have been furnished by some of my equally distressed and more gifted fellow-sufferers, the extensive class of persons distinguished by the name (itself, alas, most undistinguished!) of clerks. It is my object to recount, in my own individual, but far from peculiar case, some of the hardships and annoyances to which we prisoners of the counting house are constantly exposed. I would exhibit to the public a bill of lading, as it were, of our heavy grievances, and an invoice of the amount of our complaint-such an invoice too, as shall not be liable to discount from being overcharged. I am encouraged in this task, by the hope that principals" may be urged to soften, in some degree, the rigours of employment; though I am duly sensible that this hope may be fated to prove as vain as that which I once entertained, for six years together, of a trifling advance of salary. By way of being sufficiently methodical, I will go so far back as to state that I was born in London, of respectable parents, and a feeble constitution. My education, received at a well frequented though cheap academy, was rather limited in quantity, and not so well directed as it might have been. My father, a substantial small tradesman in the grocery line, and a very plain sort of man in most matters, had the mistaken, but not uncommon notion, that his children should have "a finished education." Mine was very soon finished, in one sense, for I

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was taken away from school at thirteen, crammed, as I was, with a chaotic mass of Latin accidence and syntax (which my memory and inclination speedily got rid of,) and tolerably conversant with cyphering up to the rule of three inverse, besides being possessed of a smattering of bad French. Beyond this amount, I knew nothing; in truth, the Latin and French, as is usual, had absorbed by far the greater portion of the time. But these, if they were little understood at home, were very much admired; and my father, in particular, thought me as refined as his own best lump sugar. The paleness of my face, and that proneness to a sitting posture, that I shewed in common with other boys of weak health, had often occasioned him jocularly to say, "that I was cut out for a clerk;" and he now seriously proceeded, but no doubt with the best intentions, to make me a partaker in that deplorable destiny.

.

My father, among other things which he had no idea of, had none of "boys being idle;" and I was therefore hardly permitted to taste the sweets of that liberty, which consisted in what was called the run of the shop. Here I was fated to make, not a figure, but figures, in the capacity of junior clerk. The nature and limits of my office were no further defined than by the vague understanding that I was to make myself useful." The first week convinced me abundantly that those were not wanting who would make me so, whether I did it myself, or not. It will, perhaps convey no unlively idea of the multifarious nature of my daily engage ments at that time, if I say that I positively cannot reckon up their number, in spite of the force of annoyance with which many of them severally impressed me. Among those which dwell most pertinaciously in my remembrance, is the process of copying. It was part of my business to transcribe nearly all that of the house. Letters, invoices, accounts current, accounts of sales, pro-formä statements, and many matters else, were all to be copied, and Jones (for so I was familiarly distinguished by my surname) was alone expected to do them. I was thus, alternately, either a "copying machine," myself, or the animal that worked the machine. It should be observed also, that part of the correspondence to be copied (for our firm had an extensive foreign business as agents) consisted of illegible Dutch and German letters. Mr. Gladwin, the senior partner, wrote a hand past all understanding, but was not a whit the less astonished at the blunders in my conjectural transcriptions. could not at all bring himself to ima

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gine how so plain a thing as a letter of business could be mistaken. Then, as for the engagement of mind promoted by such a use of the pen, take the following as a sample :-" Molasses are heavy, bu rums are looking up. In ashes, little has been done; pot are stationery, and pearl are of small value. Very considerable sales both of Irish and India pork are reported. In beef some transactions have transpired, and bacon is much sought after. Butters are nominal." The checking of calculations, as it was called, was another labour, that contributed materially to check my own growth. Every clerk in the office required his arithmetical processes to be gone into over again, and Jones was of course to work them out. Many a column of figures was my jaded eye obliged to ascend and descend half-a-dozen times, owing to my having made the amount greater by my own headache-and in many a subtraction did I fail, from being unable to take away from the operation the dizziness of my feelings.

Such were, in part, my tribulations as an in-door clerk-but I was likewise at the same time an out-of-door one-because I was called neither. Among other perambulating pursuits of a like interest, was invited to make myself the "circulating medium" for distributing letters of routine among dealers and middlemen, and in general, all those matters which might be called the "unclaimed dividends" of employment, fell to my share. Was an errand to be run upon? Was a broker to be gone after? Was the price given for a lot of indigo, or a parcel of tobacco to be got at? Was a

circular to be distributed over the metropolis? Jones was in requisition, and Jones was expected to be always at

hand.

It happened to be the season of winter when I commenced my official martyrdom at Messrs. Gladwin and Co's, and my arrival there was marked by that of a cargo of Virginia tobacco in the London Docks, consigned to their house. I was despatched, accordingly to deliver the manifest, as it is termed, at the Excise Office and Custom House, and to check the weights of the several hogsheads taken at the king's scales in the tobacco warehouse at the docks. In the performance of this latter duty, I had to stand, during every day of a tedious frosty week, from ten o'clock till four, on the benumbing stones, among an assemblage of blackguards, under the divers names of tidesurveyors, scale-men, foremen, and labourers, whose conversation was far too low and ribaldrous to be fitted for the ears

EPIGRAM

ON THE LONDON DOCK COMPANY.

"Oh! how that name befits my composition.' "-SHAKSPEARE.

"Dock Company!" choice name! and best Of characteristic, off-hits! For merchants, by its dues opprest,

Are docked of half their profits.

At

But to return to my sad story. Harassing as were the details of my emyloyment during the other four days of the commercial six, they were actually light in comparison with what I had to struggle and perspire through on the two foreign post-days, Tuesday and Friday. these times, the Messieurs Gladwin were more than usually surly, and Mr. Makeweight more than usually bustling and directive; while I, after such a merciless fatigue of copying by candle-light, as must have made me look like a false copy, as it were, of myself, was posted off to the Post Office, frequently at the hour of midnight, minus three minutes, which three minutes were to suffice for the transit from our counting house in Crutched Friars, to Lombard-street. I was thus required to unite the qualification of running legs to that of a running hand, and if sometimes I failed to buffet through the opposing crowd before the fatal exclusive chime of the official dial, my return with the heap of letters was sure to be met with a still greater heap of reproofs.

To be Continued.

TO A WORM KILLING DOCTOR.
'Tread on a worm and it will turn.'

Hail, thou Long Acre Gard'ner, destroyer of worms!

Who from Shoreditch art famed to thine other famed firms:

race,

SHORTLY after Sir James Mansfield was made Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, he was offered a peerage by Government; but, although there were those attached to him whose advancement he was naturally not indifferent, could it have been legimitately obtained, and to whose interests he was anything but callous, he was induced to decline the proffered honour. Off the Bench he showed himself a fine, hale hearty old man; and when he put on his buckskins and other Nimrod attributes of dress, verily he might have been taken for some ancient and long practised huntsman, for he was powerful of make, strong of limb, of active habits, bluff, bold, and somewhat uncourteous when he would. Lord Kenyon used to eye his Prestons with ineffable contempt, as he reflected upon the improvidency of his brother judge; and regard his own interminable doeskins, on which age had bestowed a hue scarcely less sombre than the silken robe that hid them, and to which long rubbing (a practice he had when he charged the Jury) gave a gloss that any polisher of mahogany might have envied.

"It was, as I remember, on a fine summer morn, (if such a thing be among the other fine things of London,) that returning to town through the fields north of the metropolis, at an unusual early hour, I observed before me one whose strange movements and unaccountable gestures led me at first to the belief of his being deranged; for as, with form as upright as Lord Tenterden's conduct, he paced nervously and manfully along, he threw aloft as he went a ponderous cudgel, which, having performed the requisite number of evolutions in upper air, was caught in his powerful grasp as it fell, and again expedited on high, with as much energy as it was caught in its des cent, with ease. Long he pursued this violent exercise, with a degree of perseverance and exertion that would have exhausted a round dozen of the dandies of this day, and, while he thus gave play to his muscles, trod lightly and firmly; his figure was, as I said, strong and not inelegant; he was habited in black, and with the utmost care and neatness, and my curiosity was awakened to ascertain who might be this matinal athléte. approached him, he turned suddenly without discontinuing his gymnastics, or evincing the slightest embarrassment at being observed; and to my low and reverent courtesy, the cudgel-playing Chief Justice removed his beaver and replaced it, while yet his far-sent Djerrid was somer

As I

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setting above, and, clutching it again, pursued his homeward course to breakfast, and then to law. I am morally certain that he often wished in Court that he had but that vivacious shilelah in his grasp when as some brother in a moment of brief excitement- -I know not how it is, but no sooner has some dull, long-plodding jurisconsult, by the especial compassion of the Chancellor for his age or infirmities, been vested with the coif, than all his homelier and quiescent ideas become active, deranged, and unsettled; and the black patch on his wig has the immediate effect of a blister on the head, without the beneficial results of that vesicatory application in regard to the fever of the brain. There may be some secret with the craft or brotherhood; but the comparison is unfair, as there is no unanimity in their association; it is rather a Carbonari meeting, where all are couzins and all cozening, where their language and manners are scarcely less common than their pleas. Sir James was learned as a lawyer, and a sound judge, with some trifling bias, it may be (haply to himself unknown) towards the powers that be;' his feelings were warm and readily excited, but without irritability, although his voice and manner might often induce the idea that his passions had been effectually aroused. I never beheld him more earnest and energetic than on occasion of charging the jury in an action tried before him between the late John Kemble, as proprietor of Covent-garden Theatre, and Henry Clifford the barrister, when the merits of the celebrated O. P. Row came under discussion, and Clifford stood the advocate of popular rights (more fitly termed popular wrongs,) as the tragedian the defender of his interests and property. The opinion of the Chief Justice was warmly and decidedly expressed in favour of the latter, and in prejudice of the 'honest counsellor,' and his exposition of the law of the case was so forcibly opposed to the legality of the proceedings of the Pitt party, that, relying upon its effect on the twelve 'good men and true,' he hesitated not, on their retiring-(it was untimely certainly; for a verdict, if it be reversible, should never be anticipated)-to address the people, in endeavouring to impress on their minds the impropriety of the conduct pursued towards the theatrical manager, and in cautioning them against the recurrence of scenes tending to the disturbance of the public peace, and which would be now pronounced, by the decision of a just, impartial, and enlightened jury, equally unjustifiable, and subjected to correction of no trifling character, which would, on any future occasion,

be as strictly as decidedly enforced.' He had scarcely ended his address ere the twelve matter-of-fact judges appeared in the box, and at once gave an unanimous and unqualified verdict in favour of Clifford, with damages against Kemble (trifling in amount, it is true,) in direct contradiction to to the directions of the Judge and as much to his amazement and disappointment as to the high delight of the assembled million, which filled the Hall in eager and anxious expectation of the event. One involuntary shout of ecstacy, prolonged and forceful as the well expressed aspirations of Donnybrook fair— as a gentle difference of opinion at a female Bible Society,-as the simultaneous burst of a Drury-Lane chorus in the Coronation Anthem-as the war-cry of fifty men or two women in a fight-rang through the Hall, startled Lord Ellenborough in his distant den, threw Lord Eldon's nerves into Chancery, and excited many a quickly successive pinch of snuff from Sir Archibald Macdonald in his hold, completely exchequering his ideas. I never saw a man so thoroughly posed as Sir James he stood aghast, thunderstruck, and confounded; for when moved he always got upon his feet :-he cast one glance of fear and distrust at the rebellious dozen, and with a wrathful shake of head, which drew down clouds of powder from his perruque, left the court hastily, and in silence.

"I remember Lord Cochrane passing through the Hall at the moment his newfound constituents were indulging their vocal propensities. With all his service, he was neither weather-beaten nor careworn then. There was an expression of curiosity and wonder in his true Caledonian and right manly countenance, as he viewed the vagaries of Westminster. He knew as little of his companions at that time as he did of either disgrace or fear. To him it was truly Scot and Lot-a little time and much was changed. Twenty years have since gone by, and with them Bonaparte and South American slavery, the Turkish power in Greece, Brummel and Skeffington, Sheridan and Canning, Sheriff Parkins and Joanna Southcoat, Kemble, Clifford, O. P. Rows, and what not?

"There was also Sir Giles Rooke, a good, quiet, simple, sad, and gentlemanlike person,' who, after having devoted a long life to the arduous study of the law, was seized in his patriarchal days with a taste for novel-reading-Mrs. Radcliffe, George Walker, the Burney, and even the emanitions of the Minerva Press. was, it is said, as little choice in the selection of writers, as eager in the perus l

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