Till a very recent period it was the invariable custom, whenever a Frenchman appeared on our stage, to represent him ridiculously attired. This was originally done out of revenge for an affront put upon us by Catherine de’ Medici; who, instigated by the Duc de Guise, had dressed up her buffoons at a court entertainment, and called them English _milords_. Elizabeth made a capital remark when she was told of this insult. She called aloud, in full court, to the French Ambassador, that when these French buffoons were declared in presence of her own Ambassador, Lord North, to be English noblemen, that envoy ought to have told those who witnessed the unseemly entertainment, that the tailors of France who had so mimicked the costume of her great sire Henry VIII. should have better remembered the habiliments of that great King, since he had crossed the sea more than once with warlike engines displayed, and had some concern with the people there. The most fortunate, perhaps I ought to say the most successful, tailor of very recent times, was Mr. Brunskill, whose seat of operations was at Exeter. No provincial, and not above one metropolitan, tailor ever realized such a fortune as he did: it was realized not by luck, but by labour. For the first seven years that he was in business on his own account he worked seventeen hours a day. And if he went to church on Sundays, he plied his needle none the less actively during the other hours of that day. This is the worst feature in the case; but he probably entertained a religious respect for that maxim of St. Augustine which tells us, “qui laborat, orat.” It was his boast that he was the only man in Exeter who could ride forty miles a day and cut out work for forty journeymen besides. This assiduity had its reward, and Brunskill’s business soon returned above £25,000 annually. Of course young heirs and youths rich only in present hopes resorted to him for loans; and Brunskill was as successful as a money-broker as he was in his other vocation. Cent. upon cent. reared the structure of his edifice of fortune; and long before a quarter of a century had elapsed since he commenced his career, he was proprietor of Polsloe Park, and, if not a ’squire himself, training his three lads to take station with ’squires. In the meantime, constant labour was his dear delight, and he was ever at his board or his bank, making men by a double process,—some, by dressing their persons; some, by dressing their credit,—and, in either case, with good security for prompt payment. He was thus hard at work up to one Monday night not many months ago, and on the following Thursday morning he was a dead man. Corporal Trim himself might here have found a theme whereon to deeply philosophize. Leaving that profitable occupation to our old friend the Corporal, let us look at the half pleasant, half stern realities of the case. Brunskill left three sons: to the two younger he bequeathed £10,000 apiece; to the eldest, £200,000 and Polsloe Park.