suggestions for a substitute more comfortable to himself, to keep his head warm, while the children once or twice attempted to remove the hat in order to place a more seemly and agreeable covering upon his head; and poor Bannister sat in the midst of his family like a "fretful porcupine," with quills upreared, armed at all points to resist the threatened invasions of torturing, though well-meant kindness.

When the children had retired and the visitor departed, Bannister laid bare his distress to his wife, who, as it has been explained, was the only person of his family cognisant of the artifice he had so long practised; and exposing his bald head, pathetically appealed to her candour to pronounce whether it did not make him look, at least, ten years older? Mrs. Bannister could not deny the fact. The next question was, what he could do until the lost toupée was replaced by the one making? What was to become of him till re-covered from his distressing accident?

"It was so very awkward," he said, "to confess to the children that he had practised such a deceit ; they would naturally laugh, too, at his present distress, and his altered looks would seem so ridiculous to young people. In short, he had not nerve to encounter the remarks of his children; and if the fact could be kept from their knowledge but one day longer, all would be well;" under these feelings, it was eventually agreed between him and his wife, that he should be confined to his room the whole of

the following day by a severe cold in his head. Ac cordingly, he appeared the next morning in his dressing-gown and slippers, and his pericranium enveloped in one of Mrs. Bannister's shawls; in which he might have been supposed to be adorned as some Eastern monarch, feeling himself, very much like Mahomet the impostor. Thus he sat, to the infinite amusement of one or two of his younger children, who made several sportive snatches at his turban, which, they said, "made papa look so funny," and which playfulness it required all the sufferer's dexterity to evade.

Thus circumstanced, it proved a balmy moment when the servant announced that "The hair-dresser had come to dress master's hair."

The children were now taken out of the room, and the artiste admitted with the expected toupée, which was presented in due form; but, oh! who shall describe this second shock, at finding that it not only did not fit, but that it was so ill-contrived and so little conducive to Bannister's usual effect of head, as to be simultaneously pronounced by Mr. and Mrs. Bannister unwearable! This was "the most unkindest cut of all!" Poor Bannister was completely upset; but at length Mrs. Bannister reasoned with him upon the inevitable necessity of the case-no virtue like necessity,-and strenuously recommended him to make up his mind at once to a disclosure of his past assumption; at the same time assuring him that his present situation was no

otherwise disadvantageous to his appearance than by rendering him a little older; in short, her sensible arguments finally prevailed over her husband's shyness; she kindly undertook to break the delicate affair to their children and friends; and by explaining his previous deception, prepare them for his present change. How "young Bannister" became ultimately reconciled to his privation, was never ascertained; and the only remarkable public result was to be perceived in the Drury Lane play-bills the following season, wherein he was for the first time announced as "Mr. Bannister!" who duly received the congratulations of his theatrical brethren, as well as of his private friends, upon the lucky accident which had revealed one of the most intelligent and benevolent heads ever seen, without lessening the manly beauty of the honestest face in the world.*

DOWTON AND RUSSELL.†

Mr. Russell was the Prince of Oral Hoaxers. His natural voice and expression of face favoured any desire which he conceived, of persuading

The foregoing pages, with some of the following, appeared in an anonymous form, in "Fraser's Magazine," three years ago, and are now re-published by the kind permission of G. W. Nickisson, Esq.

† Mr. Samuel Russell, the celebrated "Jerry Sneak."

his victims, of his own belief of whatever he wished them to believe. His calm, dispassionate, and persuasive manners and tones never failed to produce whatever was his object, no matter upon whom he practised his end was always attained. Mr. Russell's waggaries were continually in progress in the Green-Room, and he had the skill to adapt them to divers subjects according to his fancy, and with an absolute dominion over himself, he could scarcely fail to rule those upon whom he exercised his power; his quiet and seemingly unconscious mind, the guileless expression of his face and voice, his words and demeanour, were so apparently candid, while carrying on his jokes, and the impassibility of his features so entire, his temper so imperturbable, that these combined characteristics gained him from Mr. Mathews, the fitting sobriquet of "His Innocence."

Mr. Dowton and Mr. Russell had been brother actors from their earliest years-and malgré their differing temperaments and habits, always fast friends. Never were two people more opposite; no contraries held more antipathy than the humour of each to the other; the one all quietness, quirk, and quiddit the other single-minded and straightforward, quick and combustible; in effect, an imbodied firework, ready to crack and split into a thousand little snapping sparks at the slightest touch of the match; and though its blusterings made every body stand aside for a moment, it soon expended itself

without doing harm to any. Indeed, Mr. Dowton might have reminded one very often of the fabled fountain of antiquity, whose water, it was said, bubbled as if boiling, yet never ran over, but always fell back again, perfectly cool, upon itself.

"His Innocence" had a wicked pleasure in troubling the fountain of his friend's natural impatience ;-Dowton was, in fact, an instrument that Russell loved to play upon for the amusement of others—he was acquainted with all his stops from the lowest note to the top of his bent, and was continually sounding his compass even till discord followed, which, however, he knew how to quell with a note of a very different texture; and as kindling of fires is said to purify the air, so getting a rouse out of Dowton, was the sure means of reducing his elemental heat to wholesome temperature-as will appear.

Part of Mr. Russell's system of hoaxing his friend, was by exciting his anger by an invariable calm contradiction of every thing he advanced— however indisputable in itself, and palpable to every other person. Dowton, in his upright simplicity of character, never detected this affectation of contrariety in his friend, but met it with honest rejoinder and an uneven attempt at sustaining his own positions, which only drew upon him a fresh difficulty, and ended in a complete failure-for what could stand firm before the immoveable self-assured manner of his skilful adversary!

Russell, as it seemed, always carried about him