give my daughter twenty thousand pounds--or you shall have
the dust-heap. Choose!"

Mr. Waterhouse was puzzled and amused, and referred the matter entirely
to the young lady. But she was for having the money, and no trouble. She
said the dust-heap might be worth much, but they did not understand the
business. "Very well," said her father, laughing, "then there's the
money."

This was the identical dust-heap, as we know from authentic information,
which was subsequently sold for forty thousand pounds, and was exported
to Russia to rebuild Moscow.

SKETCHES OF ENGLISH CHARACTER.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

THE OLD SQUIRE.

The old squire, or, in other words, the squire of the old school, is the
eldest born of John Bull; he is the "very moral of him;" as like him as
pea to pea. He has a tolerable share of his good qualities; and as for
his prejudices--oh, they are his meat and drink, and the very clothes
he wears. He is made up of prejudices--he is covered all over with them.
They are the staple of his dreams; they garnish his dishes, they spice
his cup, they enter into his very prayers, and they make his will
altogether. His oaks and elms in his park, and in his woods--they are
sturdy timbers, in troth, and gnarled and knotted to some purpose, for
they have stood for centuries; but what are they to the towering
upshoots of his prejudices? Oh, they are mere wands! If he has not stood
for centuries, his prejudices have; for they have come down from
generation to generation with the family and the estate. They have
ridden, to use another figure, like the Old Man of the Sea, on the
shoulders of his ancestors, and have skipped from those of one ancestor
to those of the next; and there they sit on his own most venerable,
well-fed, comfortable, ancient, and gray-eyed prejudices, as familiar to
their seat as the collar of his coat. He would take cold without them;
to part with them would be the death of him. So! don't go too
near--don't let us alarm them; for, in truth, they have had insults, and
met with impertinences of late years, and have grown fretful and
cantankerous in their old age. Nay, horrid radicals have not hesitated,
in this wicked generation, to aim sundry deadly blows at them; and it
has been all that the old squire has been able to do to protect them.
Then--

You need not rub them backwards like a cat,
If you would see them spirt and sparkle up.

You have only to give one look at them, and th