I was busily engaged one morning in writing in my own apartment, when the door was opened, and my servant announced "Mr. Archibald Shortridge, jun." I looked up from my paper, and beheld a young gentleman enter, with his hat in one hand, and the other thrust into his breeches-pocket. He was dressed in leather breeches, and jockey boots, a checked cotton neckcloth, and a short green jacket. A priori, he displayed a prodigious number of gaudy under-waistcoats, and a ponderous bunch of seals depended from what looked like part of a jack-chain, converted into gold by some chance touch of the philosopher's stone. A postericri, he was adorned by the protrusion from his pocket of a Belcher handkerchief, which dangled in graceful negligence to his knee, thus affording relief to what he probably considered the comparative tameness of his personal scenery in that quarter. He entered with an air of swagger, and making me an awkward bow, he jerked himself into a chair with what was evidently intended to pass for elegant nonchalance. It was apparent, however, that the booby laboured under considerable embarrassment in having to address a stranger; and it was not until he had crossed and uncrossed his legs several times, adjusted his neckcloth, and run his fingers through his hair, that he gave any articulate signals of his presence. At length, however, he did so. After a few preliminary observations on the weather, he informed me, that the object of his visit was to present an invitation to dinner, for the Friday following, and stated, that his father would have had the pleasure of calling on me, had his time not been entirely engrossed by his numerous official duties. To these civilities I made an answer as polite as the occasion required, and, in a few minutes, it was evident enough that the evanescent bashfulness of my visiter had entirely disappeared. He sat picking his teeth, lolled in a negligent attitude in his chair, and occasionally diversified the charms of his conversation by spitting on the floor. He first talked of College and the Professors, bespattering them all with his vulgar abuse; and then changing his topic to my uncle,

"Have you seen Mr. Spreull lately?" he proceeded; "you found him a queer chap, I take it-a crabbit auld chiel' ?"

"Perhaps you are not aware, Mr. Shortridge, that the person you speak of is my uncle.”

"Oh, I'm perfectly aware o't; and I wish I had just such another. But he's a rough diamond, as we used to say in Manchester, when I was there in Lees, Cheatham, and Company's counting-house, and he's better kent here by the name of Auld

Girnegogibby than by his own. What lots of cash he has, to be sure! Do you know, Peter MacCormick tells me, he has never less than thirty thousand pounds lying in Robin Carrick's Bank. By Jupiter, I wish I had his name at the tail of a tenshilling stamp.'

I was now thoroughly disgusted with my visiter, and I think it probable my countenance gave some intelligence of the character of my feelings; if so, it was, or appeared to be, unnoticed.

"The Provost and he are hand in glove, but he never visits at our house now; and what's devilish odd, the very sight of me puts him in a passion. To be sure I quizz him a little now and then; but he's slow at a joke, and I dare say never found that out. I offered to dine with him about three months ago, on a day my father was engaged to him, but all the answer I got was, that when he wanted my company he would ask it. He's got a capital cellar of wine too, I'm told, and has some fine Grenada rum that's been about seventy years in bottle."

I had become so tired of this style of conversation, that in order to communicate my feelings in what I thought the least offensive way, I took up the pen that lay before me on the table, and gave evident signs of a desire to resume my occupation.

"Oh, I see you're busy, so I'll not interrupt you," at length said my companion, taking the hint and rising to depart; “but don't forget next Friday at five, and I'll take care to warn some capital fellows to meet you, just to give you a spunk of the way we carry on the war in Glasgow." And so saying, with an air of perfect self-complacency, Mr. Archibald Shortridge, junior, took his departure.

This dapper and facetious personage was no other, as the reader has of course discovered, than the son and heir-apparent of the Lord Provost of Glasgow, or, as it is more commonly designated in the west of Scotland," the second city of the Empire." The invitation was of course accepted; but the dinner of so distinguished a civic dignitary deserves a new Chapter, and it shall have one.

CHAPTER VIII.

Dinner is on table.

My father desires your worship's company.

Merry Wives of Windsor. Give me a good dinner, and an appetite to eat it, and I will be happier than the mightiest potentate which this world can produce, surrounded by his satellites, and rioting in the indulgence of immeasurable power. Satisfied in this respect, I should pass my time in unalloyed happiness, and pity those whom fate had excluded from a similar enjoyment, as the victims of chance, and the slaves of misery.

DR. JOHNSON.

On the day, and precisely at the hour indicated, I was at the door of the Lord Provost. His house was situated in a small square, of a sombre and dreary aspect, the centre of which, instead of being as usual laid out in walks and shrubbery, was, with true mercantile sagacity, appropriated to the more profitable purpose, of grazing a few smoky and dirty-looking sheep. It was certainly not pleasant to approach the house of feasting amid the plaintive bleatings of these miserable starvelings; but there was no time to be sentimental, and, like the Lady Baussiere, I passed on. On being admitted into the hall, I was received by two servants in the Royal livery, a circumstance of magnificence for which I was certainly not prepared. The truth was, however, as I have since discovered, that a male domestic formed no part of the ordinary establishment of the Lord Provost, and these were a couple of the City Guard, or, as they were more generally called, "Town's Officers," admitted pro loco et tempore, to assume the functions of livery ser vants. I was in the act of divesting myself of my hat and greatcoat, when I heard the following question put in a bawling voice from the landing place of the stair above.

"Hector, what ca' ye him ?”

"Iettle he's a young Englishman frae the College,” answered Hector.

"I carena' whare he's frae," returned the other," but I want his name. Didna I tell baith you and Duncan, to cry oot a' the names to me, that they may be properly annoonced?”

Hector lost no time in rectifying his mistake, and I speedily heard my name reverberated in a voice like thunder, through every corner of the mansion. The person from whose lungs

this immense volume of sound proceeded, was a large stout man with a head like a bull's, and a huge carbuncled nose. His dress bespoke him to belong to the same corps with his brethren below, and he was in fact no other than the persoF who officiated as town-crier, commonly known by the familiar soubriquet of Bell Geordy. His duty of announcing the guests being somewhat analogous to his usual avocation, he appeared to discharge it con amore, and proclaimed every successive arrival in the same monotonous and stentorian tones, in which he was accustomed to give public intimation of the arrival of a cargo of fresh herrings at the Broomielaw. Bell Geordy, too, was a wit, and did not scruple occasionally to subjoin in an under tone, some jocular remark on the character or person of the guests as he announced them.

The drawing-room into which I was ushered, was evidently an apartment not usually inhabited by the family, but kept for occasions of display. The furniture it contained was scanty, but gaudy; the chairs were arranged in formal order against the walls; and there were flower-stands in the windows, displaying some half-dozen scraggy myrtles and geraniums, with leaves approaching to the colour of mahogany. The room was cold; for the fire, which had evidently been only recently lighted, sent up volumes of smoke, but no flame; and when I looked on it, I remembered to have passed a dirty maidservant on the stair, with the kitchen bellows in her hand. On my entrance, I found I was the first of the party; and before the attention of the reader is distracted by the arrival of fresh guests, it may be as well to seize the present opportunity of introducing him to the Lord Provost and his family.

His Lordship was a little squab man, with a highly-powdered head and a pigtail, and an air somewhat strutty and consequential. His visage was a little disfigured by the protrusion of an enormous buck-tooth, which, whenever his countenance was wreathed into a smile, overshadowed a considerable portion of his under-lip. One of his legs, too, was somewhat shorter than the other, which, when he walked, occasioned rather a ludicrous jerking of the body, and did by no means contribute to that air of graceful dignity which he was evidently desirous of infusing into all his motions. He was dressed in a complete suit of black velvet, and bore conspicuously on his breast the insignia of his civic supremacy. His lady was a stiff and raw-boned-looking matron, hard in feature, and somewhat marked by the small-pox. She wore a yellow silk-gown, adorned in front with a Scotch pebble brooch, about the size

of a cheese-plate, and on her head a green turban, from which depended on one side a plume of black ostrich feathers. The two daughters, Miss Jacky and Miss Lexy, displayed their young and budding charms by the side of the parent flower. Neither had the smallest pretensions to good looks; but of their character, nothing immediately betrayed itself to the spectator, beyond a certain air of self-complacency, with which they occasionally ragarded their pink dresses. There, too, was Mr. Archibald Shortridge, junior, with his carroty head, and his great red ears, his mouth perked up as if about to whistle, and his mutton-fists in his breeches-pockets, straddling before the fire, with the tails of his coat below his arms, to prevent all possible obstruction to the radiation of the heat. I was welcomed by his lordship with an air of dignified hospitality, saluted with a nod by his son, introduced to, and benignantly received, by the Lady Provost and the young ladies.

The sound of the door-bell now became more frequent, and Bell Geordy's powers were called into full and active employment. I shall venture, even at the risk of being considered a romancer, (a character which more than any other I despise,) to give a specimen or two of the facetious manner in which this functionary discharged the duties of his office. As thus:Door-bell rings-drawing-room door opens-Bell Geordy, in a loud, slow, and sonorous voice," Doctor Struthers." In a low and suppressed key, "Hech, but he's a puir stick in the poopit." Again :-Preparation as before. Bell Geordy

Miss Mysie Yule." In a lower tone, "She's right aneuch to come here, for I'm thinkin' there's no muckle gaun' at hame." Forté-" Major Aundrew MacGuffin. Piano-"Wi' the happety-leg.-Maister Saumul Walkinshaw.-I'se warrant he'll carry awa' a wamefu'."

In vain did the Lord Provost, whose ear these unseemly comments occasionally reached, express his disapprobation of the indecorum, and authoritatively direct him to confine his speech to the mere annunciation of names. Bell Geordy's wit was not thus to be trammelled, especially when he observed it generally followed by a grin and titter through the assembly. Everybody, indeed, appeared to enjoy those jokes which were cut at their neighbours' expense, without reflecting that their own appearance had probably given rise to similar witticisms. At length the company were all assembled, and dinner, after a dreary interval of expectation, announced. The ladies, in solemn dignity, led the way, singly and unescorted by the gentlemen. I observed some little scuffling among the dowagers

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