an arrangement, much less anything like consecutive interest.

All that lay in our power was to select from the whole certain portions which, from their length, promised more of care than the mere fragments about them, and present them to our readers with this brief notice of the mode in which we obtained them- our only excuse for a most irregular and unprecedented liberty in the practice of literature. With this apology for the incompleteness and abruptness of 'The O'Leary Papers' - which happily we are enabled to make freely, as our friend Arthur has taken his departure-we offer them to our readers, only adding that, in proof of their genuine origin, the manuscript can be seen by any one so desiring it, on application to our publishers; while, for all their follies, faults, and inaccuracies, we desire to plead our irresponsibility as freely as we wish to attribute any favour the world may show them to their real author; and with this last assurance, we beg to remain your ever devoted and obedient servant,

HARRY LORREQUER.

ARTHUR O'LEARY

CHAPTER I

THE ATTWOOD'

OLD Woodcock says that if Providence had not made him a Justice of the Peace, he'd have been a vagabond himself. No such kind interference prevailed in my case. I was a vagabond from my cradle. I never could be sent to school alone, like other children; they always had to see me there safe, and fetch me back again. The rambling bump monopolised my whole head. I'm sure my godfather must have been the Wandering Jew, or a king's messenger. Here I am again, en route, and sorely puzzled to know whither? There's the fellow for my trunk.

'What packet, sir?'

Eh? What packet? The vessel at the Tower stairs?' 'Yes, sir; there are two with the steam up-the Rotterdam and the Hamburgh.'

'Which goes first?'

'Why, I think the Attwood, sir.'

'Well, then, shove aboard the Attwood.

she for?'

Where is

'She's for Rotterdam.-He's a queer cove, too,' said the fellow under his teeth, as he moved out of the room, and don't seem to care where he goes.'

A capital lesson in life may be learned from the few moments preceding departure from an inn. The surly waiter that always said 'coming' when he was leaving the room, and never came, now grown smiling and

smirking; the landlord expressing a hope to see you again, while he watches your upthrown eyebrows at the exorbitancy of his bill; the Boots attentively looking from your feet to your face, and back again; the housemaid passing and repassing a dozen times on her way nowhere, with a look half saucy, half shy; the landlord's son, an abortion of two feet high, a kind of family chief-remembrancer, that sits on a high stool in a bar, and always detects something you have had that was not 'put down in the bill'-two shillings for a cab, or a 'brandy-andwater.' A curse upon them all! This poll-tax upon travellers is utter ruin; your bill, compared to its dependencies, is but Falstaff's 'pennyworth of bread' to all the score for sack.

us.

Well, here I am at last. Take care, I say! you'll upset Shove off, Bill; ship your oar!' splash, splash. 'Bear a hand. What a noise they make!' bang! crash! buzz! What a crowd of men in pilot coats and caps! women in plaid shawls and big reticules, bandboxes, bags, and babies; and what higgling for sixpences with the wherry

men!

All the places round the companion are taken by pale ladies in black silk, with a thin man in spectacles beside them; the deck is littered with luggage, and little groups seated thereon. Some very strange young gentlemen, with many-coloured waistcoats, are going to Greenwich, and one as far as Margate; a widow and daughters, rather prettyish girls, for Herne Bay; a thin, bilious-looking man of about fifty, with four outside coats, and a bear-skin round his legs, reading beside the wheel, occasionally taking a sly look at the new arrivals. I've seen him before; he is the Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople. And here's a jolly-looking, rosy-cheeked fellow, with a fat, florid face, and two dashing-looking girls in black velvet. Eh! who's this? Sir Peter, the steward calls him; a London alderman going up the Rhine for two months; he's got his courier, and a strong carriage, with the springs

well corded for the pavé. But they come too fast for counting; so now I'll have a look after my berth.

Alas! the cabin has been crowded all the while by some fifty others, wrangling, scolding, laughing, joking, complaining, and threatening, and not a berth to be had.

'You've put me next the tiller,' said one. 'I'm over the boiler,' screamed another.

'I have the pleasure of speaking to Sir Willoughby Steward,' said the captain, to a tall, grey-headed soldierlike figure, with a closely buttoned blue frock. Willoughby, your berth is No. 8.'

'Sir

Eh! that's the way they come it,' whispers a Cockney to his friend. 'That 'ere chap gets a berth before us all.' 'I beg your pardon, sir,' says the baronet mildly; 'I took mine three days ago."'

'Oh, I didn't mean anything,' stammers out the other, and sneaks off.

'Laura-Mariar! where's Laurar?' calls out a shrill voice from the aft-cabin.

'Here, ma,' replies a pretty girl, who is arranging her ringlets at a glass, much to the satisfaction of a young fellow in a braided frock, who stands gazing at her in the mirror with something very like a smile on his lip.

There's no mistaking that pair of dark-eyed fellows with aquiline noses and black ill-shaven beards-Hamburgh or Dutch Jews, dealers in smuggled lace, cigars, and Geneva watches, and occasionally small money-lenders. How they scan the company, as if calculating the profit they might turn them to! The very smile they wear seems to say, 'Comme c'est doux de tromper les Chrétiens.' But, halloa! there was a splash! we are moving, and the river is now more amusing than the passengers.

I should like to see the man that ever saw London from the Thames, or any part of it, save the big dome of St. Paul's, the top of the Monument, or the gable of the great black wharf inscribed with 'Hodgson's Pale Ale.' What a devil of a row they do make! I thought we were into