There, too, on the whitewashed walls, were admitted the portraits of ruder rivals in the arena of fame--yet they, too, had known an applause warmer than his age gave to Shakespeare; the champions of the ring--Cribb, and Molyneux, and Dutch Sam. Interspersed with these was an old print of Newmarket in the early part of the last century, and sundry engravings from Hogarth. But poets, oh! they were there, too: poets who might be supposed to have been sufficiently good fellows to be at home with such companions. Shakspeare, of course, with his placid forehead; Ben Jonson, with his heavy scowl; Burns and Byron cheek by jowl. But the strangest of all these heterogeneous specimens of graphic art was a full-length print of William Pitt!--William Pitt, the austere and imperious. What the deuce did he do there amongst prize-fighters, and actors, and poets? It seemed an insult to his grand memory. Nevertheless there he was, very erect, and with a look of ineffable disgust in his upturned nostrils. The portraits on the sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary men--very like the motley pictures of the FAMOUS hung up in your parlour, O my Public! Actors and prize-fighters, poets and statesmen, all without congruity and fitness, all whom you have been to see or to hear for a moment, and whose names have stared out in your newspapers, O my Public! And the company? Indescribable! Comedians from small theatres, out of employ: pale haggard-looking boys, probably the sons of worthy traders, trying their best to break their fathers' hearts; here and there the marked features of a Jew. Now and then you might see the curious puzzled face of some greenhorn about town, or perhaps a Cantab; and men of grave age, and gray-haired, were there, and amongst them a wondrous proportion of carbuncled faces and bottle noses. And when John Burley entered there was a shout, that made William Pitt shake in his frame. Such stamping and hallooing, and such hurrahs for "Burly John." And the gentleman who had filled the great high leathern chair in his absence gave it up to John Burley; and Leonard, with his grave observant eye, and lip half sad and half scornful, placed himself by the side of his introducer. There was a nameless expectant stir through the assembly, as when some great singer advances to the lamps, and begins "_Di tanti palpiti_." Time flies. Look at the Dutch clock over the door. Half-an-hour! John Burley begins to warm. A yet quicker light begins to break from his eye; his voice has a mellow luscious roll in it. "He will be grand to-night," whispered a thin man who looked like a tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard.