This remarkable quadruped must have been, in his interesting lifetime, a most rare and wonderful creature, at least, if he at all resembled his portrait, which hung creaking on a species of jovial gibbet in front of the hostelrie bearing his name. The picture certainly _may_ have been a likeness, but as it represented the bovine original got up, regardless of expense, in richly-gilt hoofs and horns, with his tail twisted over his back in the shape of a horizontal figure of eight, ending in a bright golden flame, while such a cluster of Hyperion curls waved over his massive-brow, as involuntarily to suggest the idea of his wearing one of those false fronts, paraded by self-deluding old ladies in the forlorn hope of deceiving society on the score of their undesirable longevity, we can scarcely conceive the artist to have adhered to nature with a proper degree of pre-Raphaelite severity. Be this as it may, the present proprietor of the Bull had exerted all his energies to provide a supper commensurate with the dignity and gullibility of the givers of the feast; and Hugh Colville’s eyes sparkled with delight, when the goodly array of nice things first met his gaze; for, though by no means greedy, he was still almost a child, and was a hungry school-boy into the bargain--need we say more? Then arrived Courtenay Trevanion (_alias_ Jack Sprattly) and the young ladies, who from a strict sense of propriety, which was one of their marked characteristics, had refused to come unless they might be allowed to bring with them Mrs. Belvidera Fitz-Siddons as _chaperone_. This great lady, for such she was in every sense of the word, had done the heavy tragic business for many years with immense _éclat_, until latterly she had grown too heavy even for that, which fact had been painfully impressed upon her by reason of her constantly, at harrowing moments of heart-rending despair, disappearing suddenly from before the streaming eyes of the astonished audience down traps calculated to support mortals of moderate (but not immoderate) weight. Finding that these unexpected disappearances tended to impart a burlesque character to her acting, rather than to increase the pathos thereof, Mrs. B. Fitz-Siddons had wisely restricted herself to such parts as suited her advanced years; and now having, by the trifling addition of sixpence weekly to his salary, bribed the call-boy to chalk B. T. (beware traps!) upon all dangerous footing, she still shone in the elderly comic line, and played Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. Backbite to delighted audiences. For the rest, this illustrious woman rejoiced in a pair of large, bold, uncomfortable black eyes; a man’s voice, slightly the worse for wear, and----and a little failing she had in regard to liquor; stiff horse-hair-like curls, which might have been her own only that she had a harmless scruple against wasting money on paying her bills; and a generally hooked outline, so essentially Israelitish, that