the ladies, and only superintended the accounts of the concern). "It's this very night at Devonshire 'Ouse, with four hostrich plumes, lappets, and trimmings. And now, Mr. Woolsey, I'll trouble you to apologise."

Mr. Woolsey did not answer, but walked up to Mr. Eglantine, and snapped his fingers so close under the perfumer's nose that the latter started back and seized the bell-rope. Mossrose burst out laughing, and the tailor walked majestically from the shop, with both hands stuck between the lappets of his coat.

"My dear," said he to Morgiana a short time afterwards, “you must not encourage that husband of yours in his extravagance, and sell the clothes off your poor back, that he may feast and act the fine gentleman in prison."

"It is his health, poor dear soul !" interposed Mrs. Walker: "his chest. Every farthing of the money goes to the doctors, poor fellow !"

"Well, now listen: I am a rich man (it was a great fib, for Woolsey's income, as a junior partner of the firm, was but a small one); I can very well afford to make him an allowance while he is in the Fleet, and have written to him to say so. But if you ever give him a penny, or sell a trinket belonging to you, upon my word and honour I will withdraw the allowance, and, though it would go to my heart, I'll never see you again. You wouldn't make me unhappy, would you?"

"I'd go on my knees to serve you, and Heaven bless you," said the wife.

"Well, then, you must give me this promise." And she did. "And now," said he, "your mother, and Podmore, and I, have been talking over matters, and we've agreed that you may make a very good income for yourself; though, to be sure, I wish it could have been managed any other way; but needs must, you know. You're the finest singer in the universe."

"La!" said Morgiana, highly delighted.

"I never heard anything like you, though I'm no judge. Podmore says he is sure you will do very well, and has no doubt you might get

very good engagements at concerts or on the stage; and as that husband will never do any good, and you have a child to support, sing you must."

"Oh! how glad I should be to pay his debts and repay all he has done for me," cried Mrs. Walker. "Think of his giving two hundred guineas to Mr. Baroski to have me taught. Was not that kind of him? Do you really think I should succeed?"

"There's Miss Larkins has succeeded."

"The little, high-shouldered, vulgar thing!" says Morgiana. "I'm sure I ought to succeed if she did."

"She sing against Morgiana?" said Mrs. Crump. "I'd like to see her, indeed! She ain't fit to snuff a candle to her."

"I dare say not," said the tailor, "though I don't understand the thing myself; but if Morgiana can make a fortune, why shouldn't she?"

"Heaven knows we want it, Woolsey," cried Mrs. Crump. "And to see her on the stage was always the wish of my heart :" and so it had formerly been the wish of Morgiana; and now, with the hope of helping her husband and child, the wish became a duty, and she fell to practising once more from morning till night.

One of the most generous of men and tailors who ever lived now promised, if further instruction should be considered necessary (though that he could hardly believe possible), that he would lend Morgiana any sum required for the payment of lessons; and accordingly she once more betook herself, under Podmore's advice, to the singing school. Baroski's academy was, after the passages between them, out of the question, and she placed herself under the instruction of the excellent English composer Sir George Thrum, whose large and awful wife, Lady Thrum, dragon of virtue and propriety, kept watch over the master and the pupils, and was the sternest guardian of female virtue on or off any stage.

Morgiana came at a propitious moment. Baroski had launched Miss Larkins under the name of Ligonier. The Ligonier was enjoying considerable success, and was singing classical music to tolerable audiences, whereas Miss Butts, Sir George's last pupil, had

turned out a complete failure, and the rival house was only able to make a faint opposition to the new star with Miss M'Whirter, who, though an old favourite, had lost her upper notes and her front teeth, and, the fact was, drew no longer.

Directly Sir George heard Mrs. Walker, he tapped Podmore, who accompanied her, on the waistcoat, and said, "Poddy, thank you; we'll cut the orange-boy's throat with that voice." It was by the familiar title of orange-boy that the great Baroski was known among his opponents.

“We'll crush him, Podmore," said Lady Thrum, in her deep hollow voice. "You may stop and dine." And Podmore stayed to dinner, and ate cold mutton, and drank Marsala with the greatest reverence for the great English composer. The very next day Lady Thrum hired a pair of horses, and paid a visit to Mrs. Crump and her daughter at "Sadler's Wells."

All these things were kept profoundly secret from Walker, who received very magnanimously the allowance of two guineas a-week which Woolsey made him, and with the aid of the few shillings his wife could bring him, managed to exist as best he might. He did not dislike gin when he could get no claret, and the former liquor, under the name of "tape," used to be measured out pretty liberally in what was formerly her Majesty's prison of the Fleet.

Morgiana pursued her studies under Thrum, and we shall hear in the next chapter how it was she changed her name to RAVENSWING.

CHAPTER VII.

IN WHICH MORGIANA ADVANCES TOWARDS FAME AND HONOUR, AND IN WHICH SEVERAL GREAT LITERARY CHARACTERS MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE.

“WE

E must begin, my dear madam," said Sir George Thrum, "by unlearning all that Mr. Baroski (of whom I do not wish to speak with the slightest disrespect) has taught you!"

Morgiana knew that every professor says as much, and submitted to undergo the study requisite for Sir George's system with perfect good grace. Au fond, as I was given to understand, the methods of the two artists were pretty similar; but as there was rivalry between them, and continual desertion of scholars from one school to another, it was fair for each to take all the credit he could get in the success of any pupil. If a pupil failed, for instance, Thrum would say Baroski had spoiled her irretrievably; while the German would regret "Dat dat yong voman, who had a good organ, should have trown away her dime wid dat old Drum." When one of these deserters succeeded, Yes, yes," would either professor cry, "I formed her, she owes her fortune to me." Both of them thus, in future days, claimed the education of the famous Ravenswing; and even Sir George Thrum, though he wished to écraser the Ligonier, pretended that her present success was his work, because once she had been brought by her mother, Mrs. Larkins, to sing for Sir George's approval.

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When the two professors met it was with the most delighted cordiality on the part of both. "Mein lieber Herr," Thrum would say (with some malice), "your sonata in x flat is divine." "Chevalier," Baroski would reply, "dat andante movement in w is worthy of Beethoven. I gif you my sacred honour," and so forth. In fact, they loved each other as gentlemen in their profession always do.

The two famous professors conduct their academies on very opposite principles. Baroski writes ballet music; Thrum, on the contrary, says "he cannot but deplore the dangerous fascinations of the dance," and writes more for Exeter Hall and Birmingham. While Baroski drives a cab in the park with a very suspicious Mademoiselle Léocadie, or Aménaide, by his side, you may see Thrum walking to evening church with his lady, and hymns are sung there of his own composition. He belongs to the "Athenæum Club," he goes to the levée once a-year, he does everything that a respectable man should, and if, by the means of this respectability, he manages to make his little trade far more profitable than it otherwise would be, are we to quarrel with him for it?

Sir George, in fact, had every reason to be respectable. He had

been a choir-boy at Windsor, had played to the old King's violoncello, had been intimate with him, and had received knighthood at the hand of his revered sovereign. He had a snuff-box which his Majesty gave him, and portraits of him and the young princes all over the house. He had also a foreign order (no other, indeed, than the Elephant and Castle of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel), conferred upon him by the Grand Duke when here with the allied sovereigns in 1814. With this ribbon round his neck, on gala days, and in a white waistcoat, the old gentleman looked splendid as he moved along in a blue coat with the Windsor button, and neat black small-clothes, and silk stockings. He lived in an old, tall, dingy house, furnished in the reign of George III., his beloved master, and not much more cheerful now than a family vault. They are awfully funereal those ornaments of the close of the last century,-tall, gloomy, horse-hair chairs, mouldy Turkey carpets, with wretched druggets to guard them, little cracked sticking-plaster miniatures of people in tours and pig-tails over high-shouldered mantelpieces, two dismal urns on each side of a lanky sideboard, and in the midst a queer twisted receptacle for worn-out knives with green handles. Under the sideboard stands a cellaret that looks as if it held half a bottle of currant wine, and a shivering plate-warmer that never could get any comfort out of the wretched old cramped grate yonder. Don't you know in such houses the gray gloom that hangs over the stairs, the dull-coloured old carpet that winds its way up the same, growing thinner, duller, and more threadbare, as it mounts to the bed-room floors? There is something awful in the bed-room of a respectable old couple of sixtyfive. Think of the old feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats, pomatumpots, spencers, white satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid, boneless stays tied up in faded riband, the dusky fans, the old forty-years-old baby-linen, the letters of Sir George when he was young, the doll of poor Maria, who died in 1803, Frederick's first corduroy breeches, and the newspaper which contains the account of his distinguishing himself at the siege of Seringapatam. All these lie somewhere, damp and squeezed down into glum old presses and wardrobes. At that glass the wife has sat many times these fifty years; in that old morocco