Jack Beaupeep, _ætatis_ twenty-five, was a clerk in a public office with a salary of £150 per annum, on which, by means of his talents, he contrived to live at the rate of----anything under a thousand. As, however, we shall not have very much to do with him in the course of this history, we will spare the reader further details by summing up his character in the two expressive words, “fast” and “funny.” Everybody knows a fast, funny man; and his was a bad case of the complaint. At a quarter to eight, P.M., on the day in question, this excellent young buffoon of private life betook himself to Lord Alfred’s lodgings, and finding himself first in the field, looked around with a practised eye for the best means of turning the situation to comic effect. First he perceived a valuable statuette of Venus, as she appeared before the discovery of the art of dress-making, for which his innate sense of propriety led him to improvise a petticoat, by means of a doyley and a small portion of the red tape of old England, purloined from her Britannic Majesty’s stores that morning, and secreted by the delinquent for any possible exigencies of practical jesting. Having attired this young lady to his satisfaction, he obligingly bestowed on her a real Havannah cigar, which, thrust through an opening left by the sculptor in her clenched hand, with the end resting against her ambrosial lips, resembled a speaking-trumpet, and gave her that “ship-ahoy!” kind of appearance with which early engravers were pleased to endow Fame. He then wrote and watered on the pedestal of the statuette thus embellished a label, bearing the inscription, “_Eugénie_, Empress of the French,” murmuring to himself, “Delicate little compliment to the illustrious foreigner who is coming.” Next he availed himself of a pair of boxing-gloves; “unearthing,” as he termed it, the rolls inserted in two of the dinner napkins, and substituting for them these elementary instructors in the noble art of self-defence; and, lastly, espying the cruet-stand, he had just time to reverse the contents of the pepper and sugar casters, and confuse _all_ the sauces, when to him entered Lord Alfred Courtland.