ad! Oh, my dear
earl! Oh, my dear lord, you'll be the death of me!" "It seemed as if he
wished everybody to know," writes Harry sagaciously to Mrs. Mountain,
"that his friend and companion was an Erl!"

There was, indeed, a great variety of characters who passed. M.
Poellnitz, no finer dressed than he had been at dinner, grinned, and
saluted with his great laced hat and tarnished feathers. Then came by
my Lord Chesterfield, in a pearl-coloured suit, with his blue ribbon and
star, and saluted the young men in his turn.

"I will back the old boy for taking his hat off against the whole
kingdom, and France either," says my Lord March. "He has never changed
the shape of that hat of his for twenty years. Look at it. There it goes
again! Do you see that great, big, awkward, pock-marked, snuff-coloured
man, who hardly touches his clumsy beaver in reply. D---- his confounded
impudence--do you know who that is?"

"No, curse him! Who is it, March?" asks Jack, with an oath.

"It's one Johnson, a Dictionary-maker, about whom my Lord Chesterfield
wrote some most capital papers, when his dixonary was coming out, to
patronise the fellow. I know they were capital. I've heard Horry Walpole
say so, and he knows all about that kind of thing. Confound the impudent
schoolmaster!"

"Hang him, he ought to stand in the pillory!" roars Jack.

"That fat man he's walking with is another of your writing fellows,--a
printer,--his name is Richardson; he wrote Clarissa, you know."

"Great heavens! my lord, is that the great Richardson? Is that the man
who wrote Clarissa?" called out Colonel Wolfe and Mr. Warrington, in a
breath.

Harry ran forward to look at the old gentleman toddling along the walk
with a train of admiring ladies surrounding him.

"Indeed, my very dear sir," one was saying, "you are too great and good
to live in such a world; but sure you were sent to teach it virtue!"

"Ah, my Miss Mulso! Who shall teach the teacher?" said the good, fat old
man, raising a kind, round face skywards. "Even he has his faults and
errors! Even his age and experience does not prevent him from stumbl---.
Heaven bless my soul, Mr. Johnson! I ask your pardon if I have trodden
on your corn."

"You have done both, sir. You have trodden on the corn, and received the
pardon," said Mr. Johnson, and went on mumbling some verses, swaying to
and fro, his eyes turned towards the ground, his hands behind him, and
occasionally endangering with his great s