time of life who were retained on an intimate footing. Some few old friends, who themselves had suffered heart-shipwreck, or seen their argosies of early feelings go down in sight of port, claimed companionship with the querulous, crotchety companion of their youth, and had their claims allowed. His odd, quaint savagery, his utter contempt for the recognised laws of politeness, his free speaking, and his general eccentricity, had a great charm for young people of both sexes; and if they had any thing in them to elevate them above the ordinary run of yea-and-nay young persons, they invariably found their advances responded to. Then there was a great attraction for young people in the society which they met at one of Marmaduke's dinners--men whose names were before the world; an occasional cabinet-minister sweetening the severities of office with a little pleasant relaxation in company where he might take the mask from his face and the gag from his mouth; authors of note; rising artists; occasionally an actor or two,--all these were to be found round Wentworth's table. The old gentleman was in London from January to July. During that time he gave four dinner-parties a week (one of them, I regret to say, and generally the pleasantest, on a Sunday), and during the other three days dined out. He was a member of the True-Blue and the Minerva Clubs, but seldom went to either; he was admissible by the hall-porter of every theatre in London, and sometimes strayed behind the scenes and took possession of the green-room hearthrug, whence he vented remarkably free and discriminating criticisms on the actors and actresses surrounding him. He had one special butt, an old German baron of fabulous age, who was supposed to have been a page to Frederick the Great, who had been for thirty years in England, and had only acquired the very smallest knowledge of its language, and whose power of placidly enduring savage attacks was only equalled by the vigour of his appetite. The Baron was never brought down to Bissett; but, as we have heard from Gumble, was sent off to some seaside place to recruit his digestion; whence he invariably turned up again in Curzon Street in January, with the same wig, the same dyed beard, the same broken English, and an appetite, if any thing, improved by his marine sojourn.