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Royal Exchange, what could put it into your head to drag us four miles off, to cut your mutton in Marybone parish?" Mr. Chapman now retired, and Mr. Partington took his advice as children take physic, by canting if out of the window the moment the apothecary's back is turned. The lease was executed that very morning, and Mr. Partington, notwithstanding a strong internal aversion to the hot chalky dusty corner of the Portland-road, became tenant of the house in Upper Harley-street for twenty-one years, from Christmas-day then last past. Men in the spirit line are not to be advised with impunity.

Whilst this affair was transacting in the small back apartment behind the dining-room (the only one in the whole house which a married man can call his own, and even this is apt to be invaded by hats, canes, and umbrellas out of number), advice was going on at a great rate in the front drawing-room upstairs. Mrs. Chambers was full tilt at Mrs. Partington, adyising her how to manage her family. "My dear Mem, (for to this diminutive is our French madame humbled since the Revolution)—my dear Mem," said this matronly Mentor, "only conceive that you should never have heard of Doctor Level. I've got three of my irls down under his hands, and I hope to get Julia down the moment she comes from school."—"Down! Mrs. Chambers, I don't quite understand you."—"No! only conceive how odd! By down, I mean own flat upon their backs upon three sofas. Doctor Level says it's the only way to bring up girls straight. All depends upon the spine: nerves, bile, tooth-ache, asthma, and every thing of that kind: all springs from the spine."—"Well! but, Mrs. Chambers, is not horse exercise a better thing? my girls ride in St. James's Park now and then, with their brother Charles, as a make-weight. I can assure you, several young men of very considerable property ride there; and, according to my calculation, men are more apt to fall in love on horseback than on foot."—"Horseback! only conceive how dreadful! Doctor Level won't hear of it: he says girls should be kept quiet—quite quiet: now you know Anna is short and rather thick in her figure: the poor girl burst into tears on reading that Lord Byron hated a dumpy woman: I was quite in despair about her: only conceive! no more figure than my thumb! I spoke to Doctor Level about it, and he said, 'It's no matter, she must have the long gaiters.'"—"Long gaiters, Mrs. Chambers! a very pretty appurtenance to a grenadier, but surely for a diminutive young lady—."—"Oh, Mem, I beg your pardon; it's the best thing in the world: let me advise you as a cane to try the long gaiters.^[1] I'll venture to say, that in six years he would make little Crachami as long as the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. How he manages it I don't know: but there are two long straps that keep down the shoulders and flatten the ankles; then he turns a sort of screw, under the sofa, which sets the straps in motion, and pulls out the body just for all the world, as if he were rolling out paste for a gooseberry-pie crust. Well, my dear Mem, would you believe it? we have already gained two inches; and Doctor Level promises me, if I keep Anna quite quiet for three years and seven months, she may get up quite a genteel figure—Jemima and Lucy are rather better figures: I hope to have them up and about in a twelve-