We have now arrived at an important change in the life of our hero. His father had received a munificent order for three dolls from Prince Gotheoleog, a great patron of the fine arts in all their many branches. The dolls were intended by the prince—he was the best and most indulgent of fathers—as presents for his daughters; and, therefore, no pains, no cost, were to be spared upon them. After a lapse of three months the order was completed; and young Wieland, then in his seventh year, was dressed in his holiday suit, and—the dolls being carried by Peter Shnicht, an occasional assistant of Hans Wieland—he took his way to the palace of the prince. It was about half-past twelve when he arrived there, and the weather being extremely sultry, George sat down upon the palace steps to rest and compose himself before he ventured to knock at the gate. He had remained there but a short time, when he was addressed by a tall, majestic-looking person clothed in a huntsman’s suit, and carrying a double-barrel gun, a weapon used in the neighbourhood of Hildesheim in boar-shooting, who, asking our hero his name and business, was struck with the extraordinary readiness of the boy’s answers, and, more than all, with a certain look of diabolic reverence peeping from his eyes, and odd smiles playing about his mouth. The stranger knocked at the gate, gave his gun to a servant, and bade the little doll-maker follow the domestic, who showed him into a sumptuous apartment. The reader is prepared to find in the man with the gun no other person than Prince Gotheoleog himself, who in a few minutes reappeared to George, asked him in the most condescending manner various questions respecting his proficiency in reading and writing, and finally dismissed him with ten groschen for his extraordinary intelligence. Six months after this Prince Gotheoleog was appointed ambassador to the court of St James’s, and young Wieland attended him in the humble, yet most honourable capacity of page. This appointment Hans Wieland, in his simplicity, believed would effectually win his romantic son from his errant habits, would cure him of day-dreaming, by plunging his neck deep into the affairs of this world. Alas! it had precisely the reverse effect upon the diplomatic doll-maker. From the moment that he found himself associated, though in the slightest degree, with politics, the latent desire to play the devil burst forth with inextinguishable ardour. A sense of duty—a filial regard for the prejudices of his father—did for a time restrain him from throwing up his very lucrative and most promising situation in the household of Prince Gotheoleog, and kept him to the incessant toil, unmitigated drudgery of diplomatic life; but having one luckless night gained admission into the gallery of the House of Commons on the debate of a certain question, to which I shall not more particularly allude, and there having seen and heard a certain member,