Wilson, and many others, cleaning their windows and sweeping their shops, than to remark that such avocations, in the present day, had ceased to be incumbent on even the junior apprentices, and had devolved upon menial servants. One evening he was enjoying the society of two or three convivial friends. He had taken a drive that day, accompanied by me, and had halted so long in Christ Church Place, that the hackney carmen might almost have suspected that he meditated an invasion of their stand. He enjoyed his drive and his dinner, and having attained to his second glass of whiskey-punch, he commenced, at the instance of his companions, the narration of one of his "Skinner Row" reminiscences. Dick Tudor was a goldsmith and jeweller. He had the reputation of being the wealthiest man in the locality. He neither lent nor borrowed. His intercourse with his neighbours was very limited. He was a widower, and had an only child, of whom he was excessively fond. His tastes were in his business; he had a love for his art, and would execute a beautiful design for a smaller comparative profit than would satisfy him for second-hand plate or mere repairs; but his affections excluded every other worldly object, and were concentrated in his daughter, Mary Tudor. She was about eighteen years of age at the time to which the commencement of the narrative refers, and although reared in a city, was as simple and unaffected in her manner as if her life had previously been passed on mountain heather or in mossy dell. She was a brunette of perfect features, and small but symmetrical figure. Her disposition appeared to be gay, and almost puerile, and none would suppose that in a trader's daughter, whose jocund smile and sparkling eyes seemed to seek and spread mirth around her, there was a latent intensity of feeling, and a determination of character, worthy of the noblest cause or of the highest lineage.