"Dram? O, the dramma! that's dramatic literature-plays and acting-poets and histrions."

"Sure I'm bother'd. I know nothing of history, only the history of St. Patrick, and Bryan O'Neil.”

"You don't read much then?" "It's not the fashion wid us. The priest reads for us, and that saves a mighty deal of trouble; but I'm still bother'd" said Dennis, " about your saying you loved the dram.”

"The dramma, Dennis, the dramma,-the art dramatic and histrionic; histrion means player or actor. I have talent for the stage, myself,-I could act, but somehow or another I don't like to have such folks as I see in the gallery, or the pit sometimes, and always in the upper boxes, put in power to hiss or clap me, when I can't get at them to give them my hand in return, if I think them saucy. But to please a friend, I can enact a tragedy-part to the life. Did you ever hear me take off Mr. Cooke? Just give me his wig, and I'll put on his coat, and give you Penruddock to a T. I'll show you that I could

be his substitute."

Dennis assisted the actor. the thing, after all!"

"By the powers, but the wig is

"The wig fits very well, but the coat is not long enough, especially in the sleeves. Now for one of his grand croaks."

While the yankee traveller was exerting himself, to the great edification of Dennis, braying in discordant tones, which he thought an imitation of Cooke, Spiffard again descended from his dressing-room, to inquire for the veteran tragedian, and met Cooper ascending from the green-room, on the same quest. "Has he come ?"

"I think I hear him ;-yes, he is rehearsing. Let us go in end see what state the old man is in."

"Bad enough, by the sound of his voice," said the manager. They entered, much to the discomfiture of the traveller and his hibernian admirer. Davenport stood towering, six feet two inches, at his utmost height, with his enormous long arms outstretched, his bony wrists, as well as fists, thrust several inches beyond the cuffs of Penruddock's coat, which was ludicrously projecting, its square skirts; not much below his hips the wig but partly covering his stubborn bristly hair, gave as grotesque an appearance to his sallow face, as the coat imparted to his gigantic figure. The expression of the detected hero's countenance, between surprise, shame, and archness, was so comi

cally equivocal, that it produced an effect on Spiffard more allied to mirth, than any sensation he had felt for some days past. The Manager's disappointment at not finding Cooke, and his chagrin at the consequences which his imagination presented as likely to occur from the absence of the veteran at this critical moment, caused a burst of angry words on the traveller, whose change from the heroic action, was a sheepish attempt to crouch his long figure behind the short, square form, of the Irishman.

"What are you about, you awkward booby?"

Trusty made no answer, but Dennis undertook his excuse, "O, Mister Cooper, sir, don't be angry with Mister Devilsport, he's only preparing himself to be Mister Cooke's prostitute."

The ludicrous now prevailed. With another exclamation, which was more than half smothered by a laugh, the Manager abruptly turned from the place to go in search of the incorrigible truant. We need not say that the travelling yankee soon doffed his borrowed feathers. Cooper found Cooke at Hodgkinson's public house, with an empty decanter before him, and was received with, "Ah, Tom!-let's have another bottle."

With great difficulty, the intended representative of Penruddock was removed to the theatre, and prevailed upon to suffer Dennis and Davenport to array him for the character which he was utterly incompetent to perform. Cooper determined to let him begin the play, as the time of commencement was already past, and retired to his room to dress for the part, and wait the determination of the audience.

The play had been long delayed, the gallery had long been uproarious, and the pit had become noisy. All the time-outof-mind overtures had been played, and apologies offered, until the house would hear no more. Cooke was conducted to the scene of action, and mounted, by the aid of Trusty, Dennis, and Concklin, the head-carpenter, upon a platform behind the cottage scene," through the window of which he was first to speak to Weazle.

66

ter.

"Is all ready behind?" asked Oliff, the unintelligible promp

"No, sir!" shouted Cooke. "What do you mean by placing me here, with my back to the audience?"

"The audience are there, sir,” said Concklin. "There, sir! Where, sir?"

"There, Mr. Cooke, in front."

"In front, you yankee scoundrel, I know they are in front, but the front is there, sir," pointing to Theatre Alley. " Do you pretend to tell me where the front is! Me! George Frederick Cooke, tell me, sir! that have fronted the audience of the British metropolis, and the Majesty of Britain;-would you tell me when and where to face an audience? Change the scene, sir, put it here!" and he turned his back upon the pros

cenium.

66

Rut, Mr. Cooke-"

"Don't speak to me, sir!"

"Mr. Cooke is right!" said Trustworthy Davenport. "Ha! are you there, little goodfellow?"

"Mr. Cooke is right!" repeated Davenport.

"To be sure I am!

Am I to be taught my O. P.'s and P.

S.'s by a block of a carpenter?"

sir."

"I'll change the scene, Mr. Concklin," said Trusty; "please, sir, to stand still, as the platform is unsteady-steady, And suddenly seizing Cooke in his long arms, he lifted him from his feet, and whirling him round with the velocity of a teetotum, replaced him on the platform as he was before; at the same time shaking the scene, Trusty cried, "There, sir, now all is changed, the audience are where they ought to be. Don't you hear them, sir?"

"To be sure I do. Very well, my good fellow,—I knew they were there. Prompter! all's ready."

The curtain rose. The first scene passed off without any disclosure of the grave Penruddock's most unsteady state, as he spoke through a window, and was supported by his aids on the platform; but as the play proceeded, Penruddock "stuck." Mr. Cooke's old complaint was pleaded, and the manager being ready, was joyfully received by the audience as the substitute, instead of Trustworthy Davenport.

In the course of this evening's entertainment at the theatre, Spiffard, on going to the door of the dressing-room occupied by his wife, and her mother, with intent to speak through the key-hole to Mrs. Spiffard, (for such was the etiquette of the house, and is, of course, the custom of all well-regulated theatres,) as he approached the door, saw the female dresser coming up stairs bearing something of most suspicious appearance. The woman knocked at the door, and before she could be answered, he asked "Who is that for?" "Mrs. Spiffard, sir."

This moment was decisive of his future peace. The first

impulse was to dash the hated object to the floor. The next moment caused hesitation; and reason came to his aid. He turned, sorrowing from the door, before the knock of the dresser could be answered, and supporting himself by the ballusters, he slowly gained his room, and sunk in a chair, hopeless and tortured by images, to him, of the most distressing nature. We will not attempt to depict the misery of this ill-fated young man, who felt himself the doomed victim of that vice in another, which of all vices, he most abhorred.

He had previously engaged himself for the next day to a dining party at Cato's, and had agreed to be the companion of Cooke to the spot appointed. He willingly fulfilled the engagement—it took him from home. In the next chapter we will accompany them.

CHAPTER XIII.

A walk out of town.

"I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching."-Shakspeare.

"Twenty more, kill them too."-Ben. Johnson.

"These lies are like the father that begets them.'

"I'll after him, and see the event of this."

"Wit, and't be thy will, put me into good fooling."

"I knew ye, as well as he that made ye."

"Sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d.-Bread, a halfpenny."-Shakspeare.

Thus have I triumph'd over death and fate!

And to his lips he rais'd the fatal bowl.

*

* * *

The dreadful liquor works the will of fate."-Southey.

SPIFFARD found the veteran waiting for him, in full spirits, and seemingly none the worse, at least to a casual observer, for the excesses of yesterday. The colour of his cheeks was

a little heightened, but his skin, otherwise gave no indication of intemperance. There was, however, a something in the expression of his eye, that rivetted Spiffard's attention. He had noted it before, and it brought to him recollections of his childhood, but not of its joys. To-day, there was a brilliancy, a sparkling lustre in the dark grey iris, (almost converted to black by the expansion of the pupil,) that arrested the eye of Spiffard, and although it brought the sharpest pain to his breast, by the mournful images recalled of what he had seen at home, without understanding then the meaning of the appearance; yet, even this pain and these reminiscences, attached him the more to his aged companion by a species of fascination.

Cooke had slept a death-like sleep after the excess of the preceding day, and the exertions of the evening at the theatre; and although he awoke with feverish symptoms, they were only such as seemed, to him, to require drink, and that of no feeble character. He had taken a bottle of brown-stout with his breakfast, or rather for his breakfast, it being in the toper's creed both meat and drink, and bread was as little in demand with him as with Falstaff.

Remembering his engagement to dine at Cato's, he had been in good time dressed for the occasion, and then taking a glass of stiff brandy and water, he awaited his young companion with all the gaiety of renewed youth. Thus is the path to ruin strewed with seeming flowers.

It may be observed, of the unhappy subjects to habitual ebriety, that they have intervals free from delusion, during which rational conduct is continued, for a longer or shorter period, according to the circumstances in which the person is placed. When the desire for the unnatural excitement occurs, and is yielded to, it grows by what it feeds on, for a time, and the victim of depraved appetite, glorying in his shame, goes on from one stage of disease to another, each one rising above the preceding, in symptoms of madness ;-madness, hailed as health, until nature fails, and the degraded being sinks, crying for aid to the physician or the friend, to save him from the yawning grave he suddenly sees open before him; or the racking pains which awakened reason, tells him are the fruits of misconduct, and the precursors of death. Then comes that pitiful repentance which knows not amendment, and that forced abstinence, in which is no merit. Cooke was at this time approaching the pitiable state above described, and had attained its immediate fore-runner, that stage of the self-inflicted dis