Let the world wag as it will, there are some tempers which its vicissitudes never reach. Nothing makes a picture of distress more sad than the portrait of some individual sitting indifferently looking on in the back-ground. This was a secret Hogarth knew well. Mark his deathbed scenes:--Poverty and Vice worked up into horror--and the Physicians in the corner wrangling for the fee!--or the child playing with the coffin--or the nurse filching what fortune, harsh, yet less harsh than humanity, might have left. In the melancholy depth of humour that steeps both our fancy and our heart in the immortal Romance of Cervantes (for, how profoundly melancholy is it to be compelled by one gallant folly to laugh at all that is gentle, and brave, and wise, and generous!) nothing grates on us more than when--last scene of all, the poor Knight lies dead--his exploits for ever over--for ever dumb his eloquent discourses: than when, I say, we are told that, despite of his grief, even little Sancho did not eat or drink the less:--these touches open to us the real world, it is true; but it is not the best part of it. What a pensive thing is true humour! Certain it was, that when Walter, full of contending emotions at all he had witnessed,--harassed, tortured, yet also elevated, by his feelings, stopped opposite the cottage door, and saw there the Corporal sitting comfortably in the porch,--his vile modicum Sabini before him--his pipe in his mouth, and a complacent expression of satisfaction diffusing itself over features which shrewdness and selfishness had marked for their own;--certain it was, that, at this sight Walter experienced a more displeasing revulsion of feeling--a more entire conviction of sadness--a more consummate disgust of this weary world and the motley masquers that walk thereon, than all the tragic scenes he had just witnessed had excited within him. “And well, Sir,” said the Corporal, slowly rising, “how did it go off?--Wasn’t the villain bash’d to the dust?--You’ve nabbed him safe, I hope?” “Silence,” said Walter, sternly, “prepare for our departure. The chaise will be here forthwith; we return to Yorkshire this day. Ask me no more now.” “A--well--baugh!” said the Corporal. There was a long silence. Walter walked to and fro the road before the cottage. The chaise arrived; the luggage was put in. Walter’s foot was on the step; but before the Corporal mounted the rumbling dickey, that invaluable domestic hemmed thrice. “And had you time, Sir, to think of poor Jacob, and look at the cottage, and slip in a word to your uncle about the bit tato ground?”