shining black hair, which, being closely cropped, to admit of his occasionally wearing a wig, gave a singular bullet-shape to his head. Taken altogether, his physiognomy resembled one of those vagabond heads which Murillo delighted to paint, and for which Guzman d'Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, or Estevanillo Gonzalez might have sat:--faces that almost make one in love with roguery, they seem so full of vivacity and enjoyment. There was all the knavery, and more than all the drollery of a Spanish picaroon in the laughing eyes of the English apprentice; and, with a little more warmth and sunniness of skin on the side of the latter, the resemblance between them would have been complete. Satisfied, as he thought, that he had nothing to apprehend, the boy resumed his task, chanting, as he plied his knife with redoubled assiduity, the following--not inappropriate strains:-- THE NEWGATE STONE. When Claude Du Val was in Newgate thrown, He carved his name on the dungeon stone; Quoth a dubsman, who gazed on the shattered wall, "You have carved your epitaph, Claude Du Val, _With your chisel so fine, tra la_!" "This S wants a little deepening," mused the apprentice, retouching the letter in question; "ay, that's better." Du Val was hang'd, and the next who came On the selfsame stone inscribed his name: "Aha!" quoth the dubsman, with devilish glee, "Tom Waters _your_ doom is the triple tree! _With your chisel so fine, tra la_!" "Tut, tut, tut," he cried, "what a fool I am to be sure! I ought to have cut John, not Jack. However, it don't signify. Nobody ever called me John, that I recollect. So I dare say I was christened Jack. Deuce take it! I was very near spelling my name with one P. Within that dungeon lay Captain Bew, Rumbold and Whitney--a jolly crew! All carved their names on the stone, and all Share the fate of the brave Du Val! _With their chisels so fine, tra la_! "Save us!" continued the apprentice, "I hope this beam doesn't resemble the Newgate stone; or I may chance, like the great men the song speaks of, to swing on the Tyburn tree for my pains. No fear o' that.--Though if my name should become as famous as theirs, it wouldn't much matter. The prospect of the gallows would never deter me from taking to the road, if I were so inclined. Full twenty highwaymen blithe and bold, Rattled their chains in that dungeon old; Of all that number there 'scaped not one Who carved his name on the Newgate Stone. _With his chisel so fine, tra la_! "There!" cried the boy, leaping from the stool, and drawing back a few paces on the bench to examine his performance,--"that'll do. Claude du Val himself couldn't have carved it better--ha! ha!" The name inscribed upon the beam (of which, as it has been carefully preserved by the subsequent owners of Mr. Wood's habitation in Wych Street, we are luckily enabled to furnish a facsimile) was