on the
re-assembling of Parliament; and as an assurance that we do not speak upon
conjecture only, we beg to subjoin a portrait of the delinquent.

[Illustration: THE MODERN GUY VAUX.]

* * * * *

THE RIVAL CANDIDATES.

Be not afraid, gentle reader, that, from the title of our present article,
we are about to prescribe for you any political draught. No! be assured
that we know as little about politics as pyrotechny--that we are as
blissfully ignorant of all that relates to the science of government as
that of gastronomy--and have ever since our boyhood preferred the solid
consistency of gingerbread to the crisp insipidity of parliament. The
candidates of whom we write were no would-be senators--no sprouting
Ciceros or embryo Demosthenes'--they were no aspirants for the grand
honour of representing the honest and independent stocks and stones of
some ancient rotten borough, or, what is about the same thing, the
enlightened ten-pound voters of some modern reformed one--they were not
ambitious of the proud privilege of appending for seven years two letters
to their names, and of franking some half-dozen others _per diem_. No! the
rivals who form the theme of our present paper were emulous of obtaining
no place in Parliament, but, what is far more desirable, a place in the
affections of a lovely maid. They sought not for the suffrages of the
unwashed, but for the smiles of a fair one,--they neither desired to be
returned as the representative of so many sordid voters for the term of
seven years (a term of transportation common alike to M.P.s and
pickpockets), but for the more permanent honour of being elected as the
partner of a certain lady for life.

Georgiana Gray was the lovely object of the rivalry of the above
candidates; and a damsel more eminently qualified to be the innocent cause
of contention could not be found within the whole catalogue of those dear
destructive little creatures who, from Eve downwards, have always
possessed a peculiar patent for mischief-making. Georgiana was as handsome
as she was rich. She was, in the superlative sense of the word, a beauty,
and--what ought to be written in letters of gold--an heiress. She had the
figure of a sylph, and the purse of a nabob. Her face was lovely and
animated enough to enrapture a Raffaelle, and her fortune ample enough to
captivate a Rothschild. She had a clear rent-roll of 20,000l. per
annum,--and a pair of eyes that, in