EXPRESSION IN MUSIC. 195 



This unexpected, unparalleled circumstance filled with delight 

 the good people of Market Mowbray, and especially all those who 

 were to be admitted within the four walls of the high and virtuous 

 lady patroness. Happy Peregrine ! heroes only make sensations. 

 Mr. Peascod was a nice-looking piece of pale-faced sensuality ; his 

 portrait was drawn by Mnemosini at full length ; and, as the public 

 papers, some months after this celebrated concert, advertised, under 

 the cdcaphonic title " Beware," that Peregrine Peascod was a young 

 man of a possessing look, whose back was formed for coats of all sizes, 

 whose feet fitted to any shaped shoe, whose head was equally accom- 

 modating, and who strived to get a character, but was nonsuited — 

 he was a tall, short, no-sized, thin, fat, serious, funny, sleepy, always 

 awake, good-natured, selfish person, who invariably asked after the 

 children. Peregrine was a compound of mighty opposites, a riddle 

 to the good people of Market Mowbray, but who was said to have 

 nothing in him, when he was found out. 



The evening of the concert advanced ; the young ladies were 

 surprised, charmed, delighted. There was Miss Jane Verismall, 

 the three Miss Shrimpingtons, the two Miss Trumps, and the four 

 Miss Crumps ; and then the beaux were most select : there was Mr. 

 Acteon Snaggs, a very dear among the ladies, Mr. Dominic Fox, 

 Dr. Mellitung and his daughter. Miss Mellitung, and, though last, 

 not least. Bob Salter, the wit of Market Mowbray, and who, it is said, 

 had even once composed an ode, which treated of several subjects, 

 such as negro flogging, the sublime in music, the price of soap, 

 with some fine allusions to the Fancy. Bob Salter was an ingenious 

 person ; he was a virulent pundit, and had made considerable ])ro- 

 ficiency on the Jew's-harp, which he maintained was the instru- 

 ment which David played on before Saul. 



It was on the sunny morning of the 4th of July that the good 

 and industrious people of Market Mowbray had scarcely opened 

 their shop windows and rubbed up their counterpanes when, to 

 their amazement, they observed the head of Miss Martha Tibbs 

 voluminised and ensepulchered in her frilled night-cap, gently in- 

 sinuated between the folds of the white window curtains : the cir- 

 cumstance was remarkable, and excited no little inqiiiry as to the 

 cause of such a phenomenon, whether or no it proceeded from a 

 mental solecism, or the more probable effects of green gooseberry 

 pie. But through the day, what was their surprise to see the door 

 of Miss Tibbs thrown wide open ! a circumstance that had not been 

 known since the death of Mrs. Margaret Tibbs, some fifteen years 

 back. So it was : wide open was the door, and servants were seen 



