mous spurs, and carried a gigantic whip in one hand, and a portmanteau in the other. entered the stable, remained there about three minutes, and came out leading forth his fiery steed thoroughly accoutred. In the twinkling of an eye he got upon his back, waved his hand to the company, who were surveying him through the window, and, clapping spurs to his charger, gallopped off furiously, with a hideous and unnatural laugh, through the midst of the storm.

On going up stairs to the room which the devil had honoured with his presence, the landlord found that his infernal majesty had helped himself to every thing he could lay his hands upon, having broken into his desk and carried off twenty-five guineas of king's money, a ten pound Bank of England note, and sundry articles, such as seals, snuff-boxes, &c. Since that time he has not been seen in these quarters, and if he should, he will do well to beware of Doctor

Poundtext, who is a civil magistrate as well as a minister; and who, instead of exorcising him to the bottom of the Red Sea, may perhaps exorcise him to the interior of Leicester gaol, to await his

trial before the judges of the midland circuit.

A MODERN PYTHAGOREAN.

THE SPLENDID ANNUAL.

My name is Scropps-I am an AldermanI was Sheriff-I have been Lord Mayor-and the three great eras of my existence were the year of my shrievalty, the year of my mayoralty, and the year after it. Until I had passed through this ordeal, I had no conception of the extremes of happiness and wretchedness to which a human being may be carried, nor ever believed that society presented to its members an eminence so exalted as that which I once touched, or imagined a fall so great as that which I experienced.

I came originally from that place to which persons of bad character are said to be sentmean Coventry, where my father for many years contributed his share to the success of parliamentary candidates, the happiness of new married couples, and even the gratification of ambitious courtiers, by taking part in the manufacture of ribands for election cockades, wedding favours, and cordons of chivalry; but trade failed, and, like his betters, he became bankrupt, but, unlike his betters, without any consequent advantage to himself; and I, at the age of fifteen, was thrown upon the world with nothing but a strong constitution, a moderate education, and fifteen shillings and eleven pence three farthings in my pocket.

With these qualifications I started from my native town on a pedestrian excursion to London; and although I fell into none of those romantic adventures of which I had read at school, I met with more kindness than the world generally

gets credit for, and on the fourth day after my departure, having slept soundly, if not magnificently, every night, and eaten with an appetite which my mode of travelling was admirably calculated to stimulate, reached the great metropolis, having preserved of my patrimony no less a sum than nine shillings and seven pence.

The bells of one of the churches in the city were ringing merrily as I descended the heights of Islington; and were it not that my patronymic Scropps never could, under the most improved system of campanology, be jingled into any thing harmonious, I have no doubt I, like my great predecessor Whittington, might have heard in that peal a prediction of my future exaltation; certain it is I did not; and, wearied with my journey, I took up my lodging for the night at a very humble house near Smithfield, to which I had been kindly recommended by the driver of a return postchaise, of whose liberal offer of the