nicate him for the term of his natural life instead, it would be much more convenient to him, for he never went to church at all. To this appeal the gentleman in the spectacles made no other reply than a look of virtuous indignation, and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man with the silver staff informed us that the Court was on the point of rising, we retired too; pondering, as we walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of these ancient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighborly feelings they are calculated to awaken, and the strong attachment to religious institutions which they can not fail to engender. We were so lost in these meditations, that we had standing, poring over large volumes. As we knew that they were searching for wills, they attracted our attention at once. It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of the attorneys' clerks who were making a search for some legal purpose, with the air of earnestness and interest which distinguished the strangers to the place, who were looking up the will of some deceased relative; the former pausing every now and then with an impatient yawn, or raising their heads to look at the people who passed up and down the room; the latter stooping over the book, and running down column after column of names in the deepest abstraction. turned into the street, and run up against a door-post, before we recollected where we were walking. On looking upward to see what house we had stumbled upon, the words "Prerogative Office," written in large characters, met our eye; and as we were in a sight-seeing humor and the place was a public one, we walked in. The room into which we walked was a long, busylooking place, partitioned off on either side into a variety of little boxes, in which a few clerks were engaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the centre of the room were several desks nearly breasthigh, at each of which three or four people were There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron, who after a whole morning's search, extending some fifty years back, had just found the will to which he wished to refer, which one of the officials was reading to him in a low, hurried voice from a thick vellum book with large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first CITY RECREATIONS. two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of complicated trusts, and he was regularly at sea. As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent that it was a hopeless case, and the little man, with his mouth open and his eyes fixed upon his face, looked on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity irresistibly ludicrous. A little farther on, a hard-featured old man with a deeply-wrinkled face was intently perusing a lengthy will with the aid of a pair of horn spectacles; occasionally pausing from his task, and slyly noting down some brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it. Every wrinkle about his toothless mouth and sharp, keen eyes told of avarice and cunning. clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that he wore them from choice, and not from necessity; all his looks and gestures, down to the very small pinches of snuff which he every now and then took from a little tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and avarice. His 123 aristocrats-of the middle classes. Tradesmen and ject of our present sketch, in the hope that it may possess some amusement for our readers. As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spectacles, and folded his scraps of paper in a large leathern pocket-book, we thought what a nice hard bargain he was driving with some poverty-stricken leg-ed us amusement; and we have chosen it for the subatee, who, tired of waiting year after year until some life-interest should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth. It was a good speculation -a very safe one. The old man stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph. That will had made him ten years younger, at the lowest computation. Having commenced our observations, we should certainly have extended them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting-up and putting-away of the worm-eaten old books warned us that the time for closing the office had arrived; and thus deprived us of a pleasure, and spared our readers an infliction. We naturally fell into a train of reflection, as we walked homeward, upon the curious old records of likings and dislikings; of jealousies and revenges; of affection defying the power of death, and hatred pursued beyond the grave, which these depositories contain; silent but striking tokeus, some of them, of excellence of heart and nobleness of soul; melancholy examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature. How many men, as they lay speechless and helpless on the bed of death, would have given worlds but for the strength and power to blot out the silent evidence of animosity and bitterness which now stands registered against them in Doctors' Commons! If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd's at five o'clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stamford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He never does any thing to it with his own hands; but he takes great pride in it notwithstanding; and if you are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression compel you to make any distinction between the two, we would certainly recommend your bestowing more admiration on his garden than his wine. He always takes a walk round it before he starts for town in the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair on the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, reading a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are loitering in one of the side walks accompanied by a couple of young gentlemen, who are holding parasols over them-of course only to keep the sun off-while the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are strolling listlessly about in the shade. Beyond these occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise more from the consciousness of possession than actual enjoyment of it. When he drives you down to dinner on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupations of the morning, and tolerably cross into the bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has drunk three or four glasses of his favorite port, he orders the French windows of his dining-room (which of course look into the garden) to be opened, and throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and leaning back in his arm-chair, descants at considerable it. length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining | ly than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope not. This is to impress you-who are a young friend of the family-with a due sense of the excellence of the garden, and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted the subject he goes to sleep. There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class resides some short distance from town-say in the Hampstead Road, or the Kilburn Road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. He and his wife-who is as clean and compact a little body as himself-have occupied the same house ever since he retired from business, twenty years ago. They have no family. They once had a son, who died at about five years old. The child's portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw about is carefully preserved as a relic. In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out of the window at it by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight. In springtime, there is no end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only other recreation he has is the newspaper, which he peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to his wife during breakfast. The old lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlor - window, and geranium-pots in the little front court, testify. She takes great pride in the garden, too; and when one of the four fruit-trees produces rather a larger gooseberry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-glass on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a summer's evening, when the large watering-pot has been filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting about, you will see them sitting happily together in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall upon the garden, and, gradually growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers-no bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled over their heads, deadening in their course the brightest hues of early hopes and feelings which have long since faded away. These are their only recreations, and they require no more. They have within themselves the materials of comfort and content; and the only anxiety of each is to die before the other. This is no ideal sketch. There used to be many old people of this description; their numbers may have diminished and may decrease still more. Whether the course female education has taken of late days— whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities and empty nothings has tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life in which they show far more beautiful Let us turn now to another portion of the London population, whose recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be conceived-we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to imagine themselves stationed by our side in some wellknown rural "Tea-gardens." The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women-boys and girls-sweethearts and married people-babies in arms, and children in chaises— pipes and shrimps-cigars and periwinkles-tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats and steel watch - guards, promenading about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or, as the gentleman in the next box facetiously observes, "cutting it uncommon fat!")-ladies, with great, long, white pockethandkerchiefs like small table-cloths in their hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid gentlemen-husbands in perspective ordering bottles of ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of "shrimps" and "winkles," with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and subsequent comfort-boys, with great silk hats just balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they liked them-gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting either themselves or somebody else with their own canes. Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all clean and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those two motherlylooking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so confidentially, inserting a "ma'am" at every fourth word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an hour ago: it originated in admiration of the little boy who belongs to one of them-that diminutive specimen of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and drab trousers, who are walking up and down, smoking their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the opposite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality of the visitors. These are the father and mother, an old grandmother, a young man and woman, and an individual addressed by the euphonions title of “Uncle Bill," who is evidently the wit of the party. They have some half-dozen children with them, but it is scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for that is a matter of course here. Every woman in "the gardens," who has been married for any length of time, must have had twins on two or three occasions; it is impossible to account for the extent of juvenile population in any other way. Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grandmother at Uncle Bill's splendid joke of “tea for four, bread-and-butter for forty;" and the loud explosion of mirth which follows his wafering a paper "pig NO SUCCESSFUL WATER-PARTY POSSIBLE. tail" on the waiter's collar. The young man is evi- | It is getting dark, and the people begin to move. The field leading to town is quite full of them; the little hand-chaises are dragged wearily along; the children are tired, and amuse themselves and the company generally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant expedient of going to sleep-the mothers begin to wish they were at home again; sweethearts grow more sentimental than ever, as the time for parting arrives; the gardens look mournful enough by the light of the two lanterns which hang against the trees for the convenience of smokers; and the waiters, who have been running about incessantly for the last six hours, think they feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their gains. CHAPTER X. THE RIVER. "ARE you fond of the water en is a question by 125 ing over on the backs of their heads with startling violence, and exhibiting the soles of their pumps to the "sitters" in the boat in a very humiliating man ner. We grant that the banks of the Thames are very beautiful at Richmond and Twickenham, and other distant haveus, often sought, though seldom reached; but from the "Red-us" back to Blackfriars Bridge the scene is wonderfully changed. The Penitentiary is a noble building, no doubt, and the sportive youths who "go in" at that particular part of the river, ou a summer's evening, may be all very well in perspective; but when you are obliged to keep inshore coming home, and the young ladies will color up and look perseveringly the other way, while the married dittoes cough slightly, and stare very hard at the water, you feel awkward-especially if you happen to have been attempting the most distant approach to sentimentality for an hour or two previously. Although experience and suffering have produced in our minds the result we have just stated, we are by no means blind to a proper sense of the fun which a looker-on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What can be more amusing than Searle's yard on a fine Sunday morning? It's a Richmond tide, and some dozen boats are preparing for the reception of the parties who have engaged them. Two or three fellows in great rough trousers and Guernsey shirts are getting them ready by easy stages; now coming down the yard with a pair of sculls and a cushionthen having a chat with the "jack," who, like all his tribe, seems to be wholly incapable of doing any thing but lounging about-then going back again, and returning with a rudder-line and a stretcherthen solacing themselves with another chat-and then wondering, with their hands in their capacious pockets," where them gentlemen's got to as ordered the six." One of these, the head man, with the legs of his trousers carefully tucked up at the bottom, to admit the water, we presume-for it is an element in which he is infinitely more at home than on land —is quite a character, and shares with the defunct oyster-swallower the celebrated name of “Dando." Watch him, as, taking a few minutes' respite from his toils, he negligently seats himself on the edge of a boat, and fans his broad busby chest with a cap scarcely half so furry. Look at his magnificent though reddish whiskers, and mark the somewhat native humor with which he "chaffs" the boys and 'prentices, or cunningly gammons the gen❜lm'n into the gift of a glass of gin, of which we verily believe he swallows in one day as much as any six ordinary men, without ever being one atom the worse for it. frequently asked, in hot summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. "Very," is the general reply; "ain't you ?"--"Hardly ever off it," is the response, accompanied by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heart-felt admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of society in general, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest that some of the most painful reminiscences in the mind of every individual who has occasionally disported himself on the Thames, must be connected with his aquatic recreations. Who ever heard of a successful water-party?—or, to put the question in a still more intelligible form, who ever saw one? We have been on water excursions out of number, but we solemnly declare that we can not call to mind one single occasion of the kind which was not marked by more miseries than any one would suppose could be reasonably crowded into the space of some eight or nine hours. Something But the party arrives, and Dando, relieved from has always gone wrong. Either the cork of the his state of uncertainty, starts up into activity. They salad-dressing has come out, or the most anxiously approach in full aquatic costume, with round blue expected member of the party has not come out, or jackets, striped shirts, and caps of all sizes and patthe most disagreeable man in company would come terns, from the velvet skull-cap of French manufactont, or a child or two have fallen into the water, or ure to the easy head-dress familiar to the students the gentleman who undertook to steer has endan- of the old spelling-books, as having, on the authorigered every body's life all the way, or the gentle-ty of the portrait, formed part of the costume of the men who volunteered to row have been "out of practice," and performed very alarming evolutions, putting their oars down into the water and not being able to get them up again, or taking terrific pulls without putting them in at all; in either case pitch Reverend Mr. Dilworth. This is the most amusing time to observe a regular Sunday water-party. There has evidently been, up to this period, no inconsiderable degree of boasting on every body's part relative to his knowledge of navigation: the sight of the water rapidly cools their courage, and the air of self-denial with which each of them insists on somebody else's taking an oar is perfectly delightful. At length, after a great deal of changing and fidgeting, consequent upon the election of a stroke-oar; the inability of one gentleman to pull on this side, of another to pull on that, and of a third to pull at all, the boat's crew are seated. "Shove her off!" cries the cockswain, who looks as easy and comfortable as if he were steering in the Bay of Biscay. The order is obeyed; the boat is immediately turned completely round, and proceeds toward Westminster Bridge, amidst such a splashing and struggling as never were seen before, except when the Royal George went down. "Back wa'ater, sir!" shouts Dando, "Back wa'ater, you sir, aft!" upon which every body thinking he must be the individual referred to, they all back water, and back comes the boat, stern first, to the spot whence it started. "Back water, you sir, aft! pull round, you sir, for'ad, can't you?" shouts Dando, in a frenzy of excitement. "Pull round, Tom, can't you?" re-echoes one of the party. "Tom ain't for'ad," replies another. "Yes, he is," cries a third; and the unfortunate young man, at the imminent risk of breaking a bloodvessel, pulls and pulls, until the head of the boat fairly lies in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge. "That's right-now pull, all on you!" shouts Dando again, adding, in an under-tone, to somebody by him, "Blowed if hever I see sich a set of muffs!" and away jogs the boat in a zigzag direction, every one of the six oars dipping into the water at a different time; and the yard is once more clear, until the arrival of the next party. A well-contested rowing-match on the Thames is a very lively and interesting scene. The water is studded with boats of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions; places in the coal-barges at the different wharfs are let to crowds of spectators; beer and tobacco flow freely about; men, women, and children wait for the start in breathless expectation; cutters of six and eight oars glide gently up and down, waiting to accompany their protégés during the race; bands of music add to the animation, if not to the harmony, of the scene; groups of watermen are assembled at the different stairs, discussing the merits of the respective candidates; and the prize wherry, which is rowed slowly about by a pair of sculls, is an object of general interest. Two o'clock strikes, and every body looks anxiously in the direction of the bridge through which the candidates for the prize will come-half-past two, and the general attention which has been preserved so long begins to flag, when suddenly a gun is heard, and a noise of distant hurraing along each bank of the river; every head is bent forward-the noise draws nearer and nearer-the boats which have been waiting at the bridge start briskly up the river, and a well-manned galley shoots through the arch, the sitters cheering on the boats behind them, which are not yet visible. "Here they are!" is the general cry-and through darts the first boat, the men in her stripped to the skin, and exerting every muscle to preserve the advantage they have gained: four other boats follow close astern-there are not two boats' length be tween them: the shouting is tremendous, and the interest intense. "Go on, Pink!""Give it her, Red!"-"Sulliwin forever!"-"Bravo, George!""Now, Tom! now-now— now! why don't your partner stretch out ?"-"Two pots to a pint on Yellow!" etc., etc. Every little public-house fires its gun and hoists its flag; and the men who win the heat come in, amidst a splashing and shouting, and banging and confusion, which no one can imagine who has not witnessed it, and of which any description would convey a very faint idea. One of the most amusing places we know, is the steam-wharf of the London Bridge, or St. Katharine's Dock Company, on a Saturday morning iu summer, when the Gravesend and Margate steamers are usually crowded to excess; and as we have just taken a glance at the river above bridge, we hope our readers will not object to accompanying us on board a Gravesend packet. Coaches are every moment setting down at the entrance to the wharf, and the stare of bewildered astonishment with which the "fares" resign themselves and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who seize all the packages at once, as a matter of course, and run away with them, Heaven knows where, is laughable in the extreme. A Margate boat lies along-side the wharf; the Gravesend boat (which starts first) lies along-side that again; and as a temporary communication is formed between the two by means of a plank and hand-rail, the natural confusion of the scene is by no means diminished. "Gravesend !" inquires a stout father of a stout family, who follow him, under the guidance of their mother and a servant, at the no small risk of two or three of them being left behind in the confusion. "Gravesend?" "Pass on, if you please, sir," replies the attendant "other boat, sir." Hereupon the stout father, being rather mystified, and the stout mother rather distracted by maternal anxiety, the whole party deposit themselves in the Margate boat, and after having congratulated himself on having secured very comfortable seats, the stout father sallies to the chimney to look for his luggage, which he has a faint recollection of having given some man something, to take somewhere. No luggage, however, bearing the most remote resemblance to his own, in shape or form, is to be discovered; on which the stout father calls very loudly for an officer, to whom he states the case, in the presence of another father of another family-a little thin man--who entirely concurs with him (the stout father) in thinking that it's high time something was done with these steam companies; and that as the Corporation Bill failed to do it, something else must; for really people's property is not to be sacri- . ficed in this way; and that if the luggage isn't restored without delay, he will take care it shall be put in the papers, for the public is not to be the victim of these great monopolies. To this, the officer, in his turn, replies, that that company, ever since it has been St. Kat'rine's Dock Company, has protected life and property; that if it had been the London Bridge Wharf Company, indeed, he shouldn't have wondered, seeing that the morality of that company (they being the opposition) can't be answered for by no |