But the day of the marriage was fixed; and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy bought a new curricle. By Apollo, how handsome he looked in it! A month before the wedding day the uncle died. Miss Helen Convolvulus was quite tender in her condolences--"Cheer up, my Ferdinand," said she, "for your sake, I have discarded Lord Rufus Pumilion!" "Adorable condescension!" cried our hero;--"but Lord Rufus Pumilion is only four feet two, and has hair like a peony." "All men are not so handsome as Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy!" was the reply. Away goes our hero, to be present at the opening of his uncle's will. "I leave," said the testator (who I have before said was a bit of a satirist,) "my share of the bank, and the whole or my fortune, legacies excepted, to"--(here Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy wiped his beautiful eyes with a cambric handkerchief, exquisitely _brode_) "my natural son, John Spriggs, an industrious, pains-taking youth, who will do credit to the bank. I did once intend to have made my nephew Ferdinand my heir; but so curling a head can have no talent for accounts. I want my successor to be a man of business, not beauty; and Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy is a great deal too handsome for a banker; his good looks will, no doubt, win him any heiress in town. Meanwhile, I leave him, to buy a dressing-case, a thousand pounds." "A thousand devils!" said Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, banging out of the room. He flew to his mistress. She was not at home. "Lies," says the Italian proverb, "have short legs;" but truths, if they are unpleasant, have terrible long ones! The next day Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy received a most obliging note of dismissal. "I wish you every happiness," said Miss Helen Convolvulus, in conclusion--"but my friends are right; you are much too handsome for a husband!" And the week after, Miss Helen Convolvulus became Lady Rufus Pumilion. "Alas! sir," said the bailiff, as a day or two after the dissolution of parliament, he was jogging along with Mr. Ferdinand Fitzroy, in a hackney coach bound to the King's Bench,--"Alas! sir, what a pity it is to take so handsome a gentleman to prison!" The MS. found in a Madhouse, by the same author, is perhaps too horrific for this terror-loving age; but it is by no means less clever on that account; _toute en huile_ would not do. Among the other tales are the Rock of the Candle, Irish, by the author of Holland-Tide,--nearly forty pages; and the Queen of May and Bridget Plantagenet,--of the olden time--which would be spoiled by abridgment for our present purpose. The same reason prevents our giving more than our commendation of Miss Mitford's General and his Lady, who, we think are new company for our fair authoress. In the Vision of Purgatory, by Dr. Maginn, (Irish, of course,) the serious and ludicrous are mixed up with an abundance of skill and humour; this piece should be read after the Madhouse sketch.