In the narrowest part of the narrow precincts of Cloth Fair there once stood a long, rambling, low-roofed, gable-fronted hostelrie, with carved monsters frightfully deformed, and of hideous obesity, grinning down upon the passengers from every side. Its exterior colour was a dingy yellow; it had little antique casements, casting “a dim,” if not a “religious light,” within; the entrance was by a low porch, with seats on each side, where, on summer days, when leaves are green, the citizen in the olden time might breathe the fresh air of the surrounding meadows, and rest and regale himself! The parlour was panelled with oak, and round it hung The March to Finchley, the Strolling Players, and Southwark Fair, half obscured by dust, in narrow black frames, with a tarnished gold beading. An ancient clock ticked (like some of the customers!) in a dark corner; on the high grotesquely carved mantelpiece piped full-dressed shepherds and shepherdesses, in flowery arbours of Chelsea china; from the capacious ingle projected two wooden arms, on which the elbows of a long race of privileged old codgers had successively rested for more than three centuries; the egg* of an ostrich tattooed by the flies, and a silent aviary of stuffed birds, (monsters of fowls Î) which had been a roost for some hundreds of generations of spiders, depended from a massy beam that divided the ceiling; a high-backed venerable arm-chair, with Robin Hood and his merry men in rude effigy, kept its state under an old-fashioned canopy of faded red arras; a large fire blazed cheerfully, the candles burned bright, and a jovial party, many of whose noses burned blue, were assembled to celebrate for the last time their nocturnal merriments under the old roof, that on the morrow (for improvement had stalked into the Fair!) was to be levelled to the ground.

“Gentlemen,” said the President, who was a rosy evergreen, with “fair round belly,” and a jolly aspect, “a man and boy, for forty years, have I been a member of the Robin Hood, and fanned down my punch in this room! What want we with mahogany, French-polished, and fine chim-ney-glasses? Cannot every brother see his good-looking face in a glass of his own? Or a gas-lamp before the door, with a dozen brass burners? Surely our 'everlasting bonfire lights' will show us the way in! This profanation is enough to make our jovial predecessors, the heroes of the Tennis Court, the Mohocks, and Man-hunters of Lincoln's Inn Fields tremble in their tombs!—But I don't see Mr. Bosky.”

It would have been odd if the President had seen Mr. Bosky; for he sat wedged betwixt two corporation members, whose protuberances, broad shoulders, and dewlaps effectually obscured him from view.

“Here am I, Mr. President.”

“But where is Uncle Timothy?”

“That,” replied the LaurÉat, “can my cousin's wife's uncle's aunt's sister best say. Three hours ago I left him on the top of St. Paul's; by this time he may be at the bottom of the Thames Tunnel, or at Madame Tussaud's, tÊte-À-tÊte with Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon, and Young Oxford.” A murmur of disappointment rose from the brethren, with a benediction on distant relations that did not keep a hundred miles off.

“Gentlemen,” resumed the President, “'if sack and sugar be a sin, God help the wicked!' Since we cannot have Uncle Timothy's good company, we will have his good health. Uncle Timothy, with three!”

A heartfelt cheer made the old hostelrie ring again.

Uprose the LaurÉat—but a twinkle from the eye of the President to a covey of intelligent cronies, on whom the scarlet rays of his countenance more intensely fell, produced a supplementary cheer that shook the Cloth-quarter.

Mr. Bosky was thrown a little off his balance. He paused—flushed—but his heart having left his mouth, he replenished the vacuum with a bumper, assuring the company that they might as soon expect from him a long face as a long speech. For their kind wishes to Uncle Timothy he thanked them from the bottom of his soul—and glass!

“Gentlemen, when the money-grub retires, no regrets follow him to his unsociable crib; nothing misses him but the everlasting counter, to which cupidity has so long nailed his bird-limed fingers. How different with a generous spirit! with whom are associated the remembrance of happy hours snatched from the dull realities of life! This day terminates the mercantile career of our worthy President. May he be blest in his retirement! Gentlemen, the health of Mr. Deputy Doublechin—(no skylights, Brother Blizzard!)—upstanding, with all the honours!”

The two corporation members having taken “their whack,” were not to be roused without a smart thump on the shoulder. The deputy returned thanks in a pleasant vein.

“My friends,” he added, “short reckonings—you know the old adage—I am a song in your debt, and as the one I now volunteer will be the last of the many I have sung in this cosey corner, my vocal Vale shall be our tutelary freebooter.”

And with “full-throated ease” this jovial impersonation of John Bull chanted—

ROBIN HOOD.

Robin Hood! Robin Hood I a lawgiver good.

Kept his High Court of Justice in merry Sherwood.

No furr'd gown, or fee, wig, or bauble had he;

But his bench was a verdant bank under a tree!

And there sat my Lord of his own good accord,

With his Peers of the forest to keep watch and ward;

To arbitrate sure between rich and poor,

The lowly oppress'd and the proud evil doer.

His nobles they are without riband or star,

No 'scutcheon have they with a sinister bar;

But Flora with leaves them a coronet weaves,

And their music is—hark! when the horn winds afar.

The chaplain to shrive this frolicsome hive

Is a fat curtail Friar, the merriest alive!

His quarter-staff, whack! greets a crown with a crack!

And, 'stead of rough sackcloth, his penance is sack!

The peerless in beauty receives their fond duty,

Her throne is the greensward, her canopy flowers!

What huntress so gay as the Lady of May?

The Queen of the Woodlands, King Robin's, and ours!

His subjects are we, and'tis centuries three

Since his name first re-echo'd beneath this roof-tree!

With Robin our King let the old rafters ring!

They have heard their last shout! they have seen their

last spring!

And though we may sigh for blythe moments gone by,

Yet why should we sorrow, bold foresters, why?

Since those who come after their full share of laughter

Shall have, when death's sables have veil'd you and I.

As the club was literary as well as convivial, such of the members as the gods had made poetical, critical, or historical, favoured the company at these appointed meetings with their lucubrations. Uncle Timothy's had been antiquarian and critical, Mr. Bosky's facetious and vocal:—

A merry song is better far

Than sharp lampoon or witty libel.

One brother, Mr. Boreum, who had got the scientific bee in his bonnet, was never so happy as when he could detect a faux pas in the sun's march, discover a new mountain in the moon, or add another stick to the bundle that has been so long burthensome to the back of the man in it! and Mr. Pigtail Paddlebox, a civil engineer, maintained, by knock-me-down-proof-positive, that Noah's Ark was an antediluvian steamer of some five hundred horse-power! The evening's contribution was Uncle Timothy's, The Second Part of the Merrie Mysteries of Bartlemy Fair, which Mr. Bosky having promised to read with good emphasis and discretion, the President's hammer commanded silence, and he proceeded with his task.