warned Pepys senior against the sin of extravagance, and that with such unction that both counsellor and counselled and domestic listeners were melted to tears. The end of the advice thus given was that the sartorius emeritus should keep the expenses of himself and family "within the compass of £50 a year,”—no very princely income, it must be confessed, and one that ought to have saved them from the subsequent reproach of the official son, or rather of his lady wife, touching "the ill, improvident, disquiet, and sluttish manner that my father, and mother, and Poll do live in the country, which troubles me mightily, and I must seek to remedy it." The remedy adopted to restore gentility to the hearth of the old tailor was one of some singularity. "All the morning," says Pepys, under the date of September 4, 1664, "all the morning looking over my old wardrobe, and laying by things for my brother John, and my father, by which I shall leave myself very bare of clothes, but yet as much as I need, and the rest could but spoil in the keeping." Magnificent benevolence! But the old man doubtless looked modish in the son's cast-off suit, and the influence it had on the locality is perhaps seen in the subsequent offer of marriage made to "Poll," the tailor's daughter, by one who had "seven score and odd pounds land per annum in possession, and expects £1000 in money upon the death of an old aunt." This expectation was, I suppose, never realized, for "old aunts" are proverbially immortal, or given to cheat, after tormenting, their heirs, when they do condescend to pay the long-standing debt of nature. The wooer had however some positive advantages, for he possessed neither father, mother, sister nor brother; and the value of such a man cannot be too strongly impressed upon speculating young ladies. To balance these advantages he had the slight drawback of being "a drunken, ill-favored, ill-bred country fellow." On the strength of a prospect of increased gentility, the elder Pepys, now halfblind and parcel-deaf, rode up to town on horseback, and saw the glories of the city, and had his picture taken, to hang in the dining-room of his illustrious son, who enthusiastically records of

him that he loved that son, "and hath ever done so, and is at this day one of the most careful and innocent men in the world." Pepys sent him back on a new horse, and with £20 for the general use of the family. "It rejoiceth my heart," says the journalist, "that I am in a condition to do anything to comfort him,—he is such innocent company." The old house of business in Fleetstreet perished in the Great Fire; and up rode the ancient occupier of it on his new horse, to view the spot where he had long toiled and which he could no longer recognize. The journey was too much for the man of fine feeling, and he returned home only to wrestle with long illness; but we find him again in town in the following year, where, with his son and daughter-in-law, he dined at no less a table than "Sir W. Pen's, which they invited us to out of respect to my father, as a stranger, though I know them as false as the devil himself." By which remark we may see that society, two centuries ago, was not better than it is now, which must be a vast comfort to all who make the reflection. As Pepys records of his father that he was the simplest of men, we may fairly wonder that in the year of troubles, present and expectant, 1667, he entrusted the old gentleman and his own wife with the mission of privately burying his gold. "My father's method made`me mad,” says the son. "My father and my wife did it on Sunday, when they were gone to church, in open daylight, in the midst of the garden, where, for aught they knew, many eyes might see them." But Pepys found remedy for this exquisite process; and he afterwards spent some happy hours in the low-roofed cottage at Brampton, wherein the secretary expected to pass his own days of retirement, and therefore loved to adorn it and to see it growing in prettiness.

Finally, the honest old tailor made a will, in which he wrote himself "Gent"," as though he were too modest to make the assertion in the full dignity of the complete word. And in this will, which could not have been drawn up by a lawyer, for it is easily understood and leaves no openings for legal objections, he

bequeaths the lands and goods to which he succeeded at Brampton, to his son "Samuel Pepys, Esq." He left seven pounds to the poor; ten pounds to each of his two grandsons; his largest silver tankard to Pauline, an appropriate legacy, for "Pall" married the toper; a gold seal-ring to his son John; and if anything remained over and above these bequests, he left the same to be divided among his three children, amicably. He left no debts; and on that score, the honest old tailor of Brampton may rank before many a baron, who neither paid his tailor's bills when living, nor left wherewith to honestly discharge them, after his decease.

If there was one thing Pepys loved best, next to good wine and good company, it was the stage. Let us see if we cannot find him a brother among the actors.

DIGNUM and Moses Kean, the latter the uncle of Edmund Kean, were one day standing employed in jovial converse under the Piazza in Convent Garden, when Charles Banister passed by with a friend. Dignum and Moses had been but indifferent tailors, before the one turned vocalist and the other mimic. "I never see those two fellows together," said Charles, "without thinking of one of Shakespeare's plays." "And which is that?" inquired his friend. "Measure for Measure," said Charles.

It is a custom with some Arab tribes for a man, when he becomes a father, to take his name from his son. Thus the bachelor Mahmoud ben Youssef, or Mahmoud son of Joseph, if he marries, no sooner has a boy, whom we will call Taleb, than he becomes Mahmoud Abu Taleb, or Mahmoud father of Taleb. In some such fashion the poor tailor Aaron Kean has no other name in history than that of the father of Edmund-the greatest of our actors since the days of Garrick. The family of the Trees has, from as humble a source, been as bountiful, in its way, to the stage.

The ever-youthful Harley-who looks almost as young now as

he did when in 1815 he first appeared in London, at the Lyceum, as Marcelli in the 'Devil's Bridge,'—is not far removed from the profession on which I have been touching. His sire was a draper, and he himself is said to have been initiated into the mysteries of stay-making, and to have tried those of physic and the law, ere he settled down to comic acting and delighting the town.

But I must go farther back than this, for my illustration of one who passed from a humble calling to add dignity to and gain credit in the exercise of a difficult vocation. When the manager was busy "casting" a new tragedy called 'Cato,' written by a gentleman about town, whose name is connected with the 'Spectator,' and lives in the "Addison" roads and terraces about Kensington, there was some hesitation as to the actor who should represent Marcus. A youthful and aspiring player looked blushingly on as the hesitation occurred. "There is hope, ah, and promise too, in that blush," said Addison; "Dick Ryan shall be my lover." "Why, a year ago he was only a tailor," whispered Booth, who played the principal character. "A London tailor," said the manager, Syphax Cibber. "And a present pretty fellow," murmured Maria Oldfield. "And my Marcus," said Addison, "or I do not make over the profits to the house." And it was so. It may be a legitimate boast for the profession, that Addison selected a young tailor to play Marcus in his tragedy of 'Cato,' and that Garrick took from the same source some hints for the improvement of his Richard.

In the latter case, Garrick and Woodward went together to see Ryan's Richard, thinking to be merry at witnessing such a character played by such a person. Ryan was then ungraceful in carriage, slovenly in style, and exceedingly ill-dressed; but Garrick discerned, in spite of all, some original ideas, to which he gave development, and therewith he struck out new beauties which he perhaps fairly claimed as his own. Foote alluded to this in a prologue spoke by him at Ryan's benefit in 1754, in which he said, in allusion to Ryan himself,