sudden, and so we forced to lie altogether in a little chamber, three stories high." The old tailor moreover was a matchmaker, in his way, for in August we find him "propounding Mr. John Pickering for Sir Thomas Honeywood's daughter;" a propounding that was certainly made by one of the most singular of agents that ever undertook the business of the old firm of Cupid, Hymen, and Co. The father too appears to have been employed by the son; the latter got him to make "a black cloth coat out of a short cloak, to walk up and down in," when London was in mourning, in September, for the Duke of Gloucester; and in October we find him again patronizing the paternal establishment, where he calls on a Sunday" to change my long black cloak for a short one (long cloaks being now quite out), but, he being gone to church, I could not get one." When the old house was broken up, Pepys consented to take his sister from off the now ex-tailor's hands. "I told him plainly," he says, " that my mind was to take her not as a sister, but as a servant, which she promised me that she would, and with many thanks did weep for joy," though it may have been for something else. Pepys was more generous to the old man himself. "My father," he writes in December of this year, "did offer me six pieces of gold in lieu of six pounds that he borrowed of me the other day, but it went against me to take of him, and therefore did not." He seems to have occasionally had a joyous dinner or two out of his ancient sire to compensate for the sacrifice. The death of Uncle Robert in the following year made a sort of country gentleman of our tailor, who needed the advancement, for the son, on balancing his father's affairs as a tradesman, found £45 due to him, with debts to the same amount, and the balance of zero showing all that he possessed of his own in the world; and yet the good old workman had sent his sons to college, and that may account for his poverty. In his retirement the elder Pepys exercised his taste on alterations of his

house at Brampton,-changes which his son speaks of as being "very handsome:" in other respects he was like great men in their retirement, and amused himself by writing letters, which appear to have been real "letters of news:" having his crosses however, as country gentlemen will have, and those chiefly from legal disputes touching his inheritance, which happily came, nevertheless, to a favourable conclusion. Pepys the junior 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-favoured, ill-bred country fellow." On the strength of a prospect of increased gentility, the elder Pepys, now half-blind 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 Fleet-street 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-inlaw, 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, Esqre.' 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.

RICHARD RYAN,

THE THEATRICAL TAILOR.

"Honest man;

Here's all the words that thou art worth."

DAVENPORT: The City Nightcap.

DIGNUM and Moses Kean, the latter the uncle of Edmund Kean, were one day standing employed in jovial converse under the Piazza in Covent Garden, when Charles Bannister 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 Shakspeare'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, then 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 touch