at present from your afflickted friend, JOHN THE FOOTMAN. * * * * * "I declare I never knew a _flatter_ companion than yourself," said Tom of Finsbury, the other evening, to the lion of Lambeth. "Thank you, Tom," replied the latter; "but all the world knows that you're a _flatter-er_." Tom, in nautical phrase, swore, if he ever came athwart his _Hawes_, that he would return the compliment with interest. * * * * * MY FRIEND TOM. --"Here, methinks, Truth wants no ornament."--ROGERS. We have the happiness to know a gentleman of the name of Tom, who officiates in the capacity of ostler. We have enjoyed a long acquaintance with him--we mean an acquaintance a long way off--i.e. from the window of our dormitory, which overlooks A--s--n's stables. We believe we are the first of our family, for some years, who has not kept a horse; and we derive a melancholy gratification in gazing for hours, from our lonely height, at the zoological possessions of more favoured mortals. "The horse is a noble animal," as a gentleman once wittily observed, when he found himself, for the first time in his life, in a position to make love; and we beg leave to repeat the remark--"the horse is a noble animal," whether we consider him in his usefulness or in his beauty; whether caparisoned in the _chamfrein_ and _demi-peake_ of the chivalry of olden times, or scarcely fettered and surmounted by the snaffle and hog-skin of the present; whether he excites our envy when bounding over the sandy deserts of Arabia, or awakens our sympathies when drawing sand from Hampstead and the parts adjacent; whether we see him as romance pictures him, foaming in the lists, or bearing, "through flood and field," the brave, the beautiful, and the benighted; or, as we know him in reality, the companion of our pleasures, the slave of our necessities, the dislocator of our necks, or one of the performers at our funeral; whether--but we are not drawing a "bill in Chancery." With such impressions in favour of the horse, we have ever felt a deep anxiety about those to whom his conduct and comfort are confided. The breeder--we envy. The breaker--we pity. The owner--we esteem. The groom--we respect. AND The ostler--we pay. Do not suppose that we wish to cast a slur upon the latter personage, but it is too much to require that he who keeps a caravansera should look upon every wayfarer as a brother. It is thus with the ostler: _his_ feelings are never allowed to twine "Around one object, till he feels his heart Of its sweet being form a deathless part." No--to rub them down, give them a quartern and three pen'orth, and not too much water, are all that he has to connect him with the offspring of Childers, Eclipse, or Pot-8-o's; ergo, we pay him.