th."

"This extraordinary talent for personating every age and character,"
said the manager, "he learned (or improved however) whilst he was
in my troop. He was the best actor I ever had: nothing came amiss to
him--Richard the Third, or Aguecheek; Shylock or Pistol--Romeo or the
Apothecary--Hamlet or the Cock[2]: for by the way he once took it into
his head to play the Cock in the first scene of Hamlet; and he crowed
in so very superior a style that the oldest cock in the neighbourhood
was taken in, and got to answering him; and the crowing spread from one
farm-house to another till all the cocks in Carnarvonshire were
crowing."

"Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Manager, and what said the audience to this?"

"What said the audience? Why they encored him--pit, boxes, and gallery:
and the ghost was obliged to come on again, that he might be crowed off
again. But all this was when he was a boy of 17: for he soon got tired
of the stage."

"Aye, he grows tired of every thing," said some of the company: "and by
this time, I'll be bound for it, he's grown tired of smuggling: and, if
it be true that he has had any thing to do with Thistlewood, that's the
reason."

"No," said another, "that's _not_ the reason; tired of smuggling, I
dare say he was; for a man, like Nicholas, could never have liked it
for any thing but its active life, and its danger and its difficulties.
But, if any thing has brought him connected with Cato-street, it is
love."

"Love! what love for Lord Londonderry?"

"No, no, you guess what I mean; there are few in this room but know
pretty well what I mean; love for a young lady in the neighbourhood."

"Miss Walladmor, I suppose?"

"Hush! hush!" said the landlord,--"let us name no names."

"Well! no matter for the name: but we all know that love had turned his
brain: he was desperate; and for this last year and a half it's
notorious that he has been as mad as a March hare."

"Nicholas in love!" said Mr. Bloodingstone, "well, now that sounds as
comical to me as if I should say, that my bull-dog Towser was in love
with a bull."

"Why, God bless my soul! haven't the Rotterdam merchants turned him out
of their service for that very reason? I know it to be a fact that, no
farther back than last February, when one of them was promising him 400
guineas if he'd do this and that,--'Damn your guineas!' says he, 'if it
were not for a fairer face than ever I saw on a guinea, I would never
set foot in Wales again.' And he