friend Featherfinger—he died, poor fellow, having burst a blood-vessel from intense study at Macquarrie Harbour—had a magnificent bronze clock; a superb thing! a thing to make a man value time. Had I not pledged my honour to secrecy, I could write a history touching his possession of that clock, which, of itself, is enough to immortalise any one man. My honour, however, is sacred; and my lips are hushed. This much, probably, I may be permitted to observe: The industry—nay, that is a poor, unworthy term—the genius manifested by the indefatigable Featherfinger to possess that clock—methinks I see him now; poor fellow! seated with his Greek cap, his black satin morning gown figured with pink poppies—an Indian shawl (the _gage d’amour_ of an Italian countess) about his waist—his feet in bead-embroidered slippers, the work, as he protested, of some heart-devoted heiress—his meerschaum in his mouth—in his hand a book, _Satan_ or the _Lives of Highwaymen_ (for he was passionately fond of light literature)—his tiger page, only three feet high, and warranted to grow no taller, in green and gold, with a breast-plate of best double gilt buttons, standing at a reverential distance—whilst the bronze clock on the mantelpiece vibrated with its monitory, moralising—yes, moralising—_tick, tick!_ Methinks I see him as I enter raise one eye from the page, nod, smile—and such a smile!—there was only one shopkeeper, and he was a philosophical member of the Society of Friends and dealer in _virtu_, that ever stood against it—smile, and then cast the other eye towards the clock itself with a look of touching reproach at my delay, or with a glance of approving pleasure at my punctuality. Methinks I see him—Gracious powers! That such a man should die at Macquarrie Harbour, taxed beyond his strength of study, a victim to—but no; loyalty to the Ministry was ever a virtue of the Whitefeathers, and I breathe no word against the Whigs! To hurry from the theme. Much has been said about the boldness, the fine contempt of public opinion shown by Napoleon when he took the horses of St Mark from Venice to place them on his own palace gate in Paris. Well, the act was not without its merit, but did I dare to write the story of Featherfinger’s clock, the theft of Napoleon would, in comparison to the genius manifested by my friend, sink to the petty larceny committed by schoolboys upon apple stalls. But so it is; the finest history remains, and ever will remain, unwritten. The Venice horses have been celebrated by poets and historians, but posterity is left to bewilder itself with guesses on Featherfinger’s clock. Yet—and I am prepared to meet the consequences of such an assertion—I am convinced that great as the conqueror was in all the varieties of the science, Buonaparte’s horses must pass from the recollection of the earth; whereas Featherfinger’s clock, duly chronicled, was a thing for time! It may be cited as an illustration of