A Palace reared! and lo! _in quest_ of gin, Thousands, _sans_ scruple, pass for drams within; Water they'd spurn, e'en from Geneva's lake, _Gin ever_—not Geneva's—they _will_ take: _In quest_ of _that_, when they no more can run, Wakley _his inquest_ holds, and all is done! JUNE.—STRIKING A BALANCE. Next door to us, in Portland-place, lived the Right Honourable the Earl of Kilblazes, of Kilmacrasy Castle, county Kildare, and his mother, the Dowager Countess. Lady Kilblazes had a daughter, Lady Juliana Matilda Mac Turk, of the exact age of our dear Jemimarann; and a son, The Honourable Arthur Wellington Anglesea Blucher Bulow Mac Turk, only ten months older than our boy, Tug. My darling Jemmy is a woman of spirit, and, as became her station, made every possible attempt to become acquainted with the Dowager Countess of Kilblazes, which her ladyship (because, forsooth, she was the daughter of the Minister, and the Prince of Wales's great friend, the Earl of Portansherry) thought fit to reject. I don't wonder at my Jemmy growing so angry with her, and determining, in every way, to put her ladyship down. The Kilblazes' estate is not so large as the Tuggeridge property, by two thousand a-year, at least; and so my wife, when our neighbours kept only two footmen, was quite authorized in having three; and she made it a point, as soon as ever the Kilblazes' carriage-and-pair came round, to have her own carriage-and-four. Well, our box was next to theirs at the Opera; only twice as big. Whatever masters went to Lady Juliana, came to my Jemimarann; and what do you think Jemmy did? she got her celebrated governess, Madam de Flicflac, away from the Countess, by offering a double salary. It was quite a treasure, they said, to have Madame Flicflac; she had been (to support her father, the Count, when he emigrated) a _French_ dancer at the _Italian Opera_. French dancing, and Italian, therefore, we had at once, and in the best style: it is astonishing how quick and well she used to speak—the French especially. Master Arthur Mac Turk was at the famous school of the Reverend Clement Coddler, along with a hundred and ten other young fashionables, from the age of three to fifteen; and to this establishment Jemmy sent our Tug, adding forty guineas to the hundred and twenty paid every year for the boarders. I think I found out the dear soul's reason, for, one day, speaking about the school to a mutual acquaintance of ours and the Kilblazes, she whispered to him, that "she never would have thought of sending her darling boy at the rate which her next-door neighbour paid; _their_ lad, she was sure, must be starved: however, poor people! they did the best they could on their income."