Those who have peeped into the portfolios of Mr. Geoffrey Crayon, will easily remember his graphic sketches of a locality called Little Britain--and his amusing portraits of its two leading families, the Lambs and the Trotters. I imagine the deserved popularity of the draughtsman made him much in request at routs, soirées, and conversazioni, or so acute an observer would not have failed to notice a nocturnal characteristic of the same neighbourhood,--I mean the frequent and alarming glares of light that illuminate its firmament; but in spite of which, no parish engine rumbles down the steps of St. Botolph, the fire-ladders hang undisturbed in their chains, and the turn-cock smokes placidly in the tap-room of the Rose-and-Crown. For this remarkable apathy, my own more domestic habits enable me to account. It is the fortune, or misfortune, of the house where I lodge to confront that of Mr. Wix, “Wax and Tallow Chandler to his Majesty;” and certainly no individual ever burned so much to evince his loyalty. He and his windows are always framing an excuse for an illumination. The kindling aptitude ascribed to Eupyrions, and Lucifers, and Chlorate Matches, is nothing to his. Contrary to Hoyle’s rules for loo,--a single court card is sufficient with him for “a blaze.” He knows and keeps the birthdays of all royal personages, and shows by tallow in tins how they wax in years. As sure as the Park guns go off in the morning, he fires his six-pounders in the evening; as sure as a newsman’s horn is sounded in the street, it blows the same spark into a flame.--In some cases his inflammability was such, he has been known to ignite, and exhibit fire, where he should have shed water. He was once--it is still a local joke--within an ace of rejoicing at Marr’s Murder. During the long War he was really a nuisance, and what is worse, not indictable. For one not unused to the melting mood, he was strangely given to rejoicing. Other people were content to light up for the great victories, but he commemorated the slightest skirmishes. In civil events the same, whether favourable to Whig or Tory. Like the lover of Bessy Bell, and Mary Gray, he divided his flame between them.--He lighted when the administration of the Duke of Wellington came in, and he lighted when it went out,--in short, it seemed, as with the Roman Catholics, that candle-burning was a part of his religion, and that he had got his religion itself from an illuminated missal.