22 MR. sponge's sporting tour. 



on the panel — made him think it belonged to some bulky cit, taking 

 the air with his rib, but who, unfortunately, turned out to be no less a 

 person than Sir Giles Nabem, Knight, the great police magistrate, 

 upon one of whose myrmidons in plain clothes, who came to the 

 rescue, Peter committed a most violent assault, for which unlucky 

 casualty his worship furnished him with rotatory occupation for his 

 fat calves in the " H. of C," as- the clerk shortly designated the House 

 of Correction. Thither Peter went, and in lieu of his lace-bedaubcd 

 coat, gold-gartered plushes, stockings, and buckled shoes, he was 

 dressed up in a suit of tight-fitting yellow and black-striped worsteds, 

 that gave him the appearance of a wasp without wings. Peter 

 Leather then tumbled regularly down the staircase of servitude, the 

 greatness of his fall being occasionally broken by landing in some 

 inferior place. From the Duke of Dazzleton's, or rather from the 

 treadmill, he went to the Marquis of Mammon, whom he very soon 

 left because he wouldn't wear a second-hand wig. From the marquis 

 he got hired to the great Irish Earl of Coarsegab, who expected him 

 to wash the carriage, wait at table, and do other incidentals never 

 contemplated by a London coachman. Peter threw this place up 

 with indignation on being told to take the letters to the post. He 

 then lived on his " means " for a while, a thing that is much finer in 

 theory than in practice, and having about exhausted his substance 

 and placed the bulk of his apparel in safe keeping, he condescended 

 to take a place as job coachman in a livery-stable — a " horses let by 

 the hour, day, or month " one, in which he enacted as many charac- 

 ters, at least made as many different appearances, as the late Mr. 

 Matthews used to do in his celebrated "At Homes." One day Peter 

 would be seen ducking under the mews' entrance in one of those 

 greasy, painfully well-brushed hats, the certain precursors of soiled 

 linen and seedy, most seedy-covered buttoned coats, that would puzzle 

 a conjuror to say whether they were black, or grey, or olive, or invis- 

 ible green turned visible brown. Then another day he might be seen 

 in old Mrs. Gadabout's sky-blue livery, with a tarnished, gold-laced 

 hat, nodding over his nose ; and on a third he would shine forth in 

 Mrs. Major-General Flareup's cockaded one, with a worsted shoulder- 

 knot, and a much over-daubed light drab livery coat, with crimson 

 inexpressibles, so tight as to astonish a beholder how he ever got into 

 them. Humiliation, however, has its limits as well as other things; 

 and Peter having been invited to descend from his box — alas ! a 

 regular country patent leather one, and invest himself in a Quaker- 

 collared blue coat, with a red vest, and a pair of blue trousers with a 

 broad red stripe down the sides, to drive the Honourable old Miss 

 Wrinkle ton, of Harlcy-street, to Court in a " one oss pianoforte-case," 

 as he called a Clarence, he could stand it no longer, and, chucking 

 the nether garments into the fire, he rushed frantically up the area- 

 steps, mounted his box, and quilted the old crocodile of a horse all 



