said to have any vices at all, perhaps drinking
and cheating are the most conspicuous among them. Their residences are
usually on the outskirts of 'the Rules,' chiefly lying within a circle
of one mile from the obelisk in St. George's Fields. Their looks are not
prepossessing, and their manners are peculiar.

Mr. Solomon Pell, one of this learned body, was a fat, flabby, pale man,
in a surtout which looked green one minute, and brown the next, with a
velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his
face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature,
indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had
given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered. Being short-necked
and asthmatic, however, he respired principally through this feature;
so, perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it made up in usefulness.

'I'm sure to bring him through it,' said Mr. Pell.

'Are you, though?' replied the person to whom the assurance was pledged.

'Certain sure,' replied Pell; 'but if he'd gone to any irregular
practitioner, mind you, I wouldn't have answered for the consequences.'

'Ah!' said the other, with open mouth.

'No, that I wouldn't,' said Mr. Pell; and he pursed up his lips,
frowned, and shook his head mysteriously.

Now, the place where this discourse occurred was the public-house just
opposite to the Insolvent Court; and the person with whom it was held
was no other than the elder Mr. Weller, who had come there, to comfort
and console a friend, whose petition to be discharged under the act,
was to be that day heard, and whose attorney he was at that moment
consulting.

'And vere is George?' inquired the old gentleman.

Mr. Pell jerked his head in the direction of a back parlour, whither
Mr. Weller at once repairing, was immediately greeted in the warmest and
most flattering manner by some half-dozen of his professional brethren,
in token of their gratification at his arrival. The insolvent gentleman,
who had contracted a speculative but imprudent passion for horsing long
stages, which had led to his present embarrassments, looked extremely
well, and was soothing the excitement of his feelings with shrimps and
porter.

The salutation between Mr. Weller and his friends was strictly confined
to the freemasonry of the craft; consisting of a jerking round of the
right wrist, and a tossing of the little finger into the air at the same
time. We once knew two fa