RICHARD DEWLAP, ESQ. TAKING a stroll the other morning in the Regent's Park, with the intention of visiting the grounds of the Zoological Society, whom should I espy, sitting disconsolately on a bench not far from the entrance to that interesting emporium, but my old friend Dick Dewlap, whom I had not been able to meet, either at home or abroad, for the previous six weeks. Dic s taste for solitude arises from a circumstance ser us enough to himself, but also suthciently comic to every body else. Poor Dewlap, in short, though no glutton, is troubled with an unlucky tendency to corpulence, which he finds exceedingly difficult to be kept within tolerable bounds, as he is simultaneously plagued with an excellent appetite, which punctually reminds him of meal times, and, like the hungry demon of Poor Tom, often "croaks in his belly for the white herring," or, for some other digestible plaything at least equally substantial. Dewlap is thus placed in a pitiable predicament. He has a lurking notion that there is a natural dignity in fat (which indeed seems to be an instinctive feeling in all men); moreover, he does not at all relish the attempt, either to starve out the oily devil, or to eject him by persevering and violent exercise; but, at the same time, he no less deprecates the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," particularly the aptitude of obesity to make his victim look older than he actually is-no trifling annoyance to a bachelor of five and thirty, who would still fain pass in the world for a young and interesting sentimentalist. Beyond all other calamities, however, Dick execrates his office of butt to every witling and joker, friend or foe, wherever and whenever he becomes visible to human ken: so large a mark the most stupid archer cannot miss, and Dick thinks that even his acquaintance sometimes shoot with poisoned arrows; but he generally suffers in patient acquiescence, and sometimes (probably with the view of deprecating hostility) even volunteers a watery joke on the subject himself; albeit, by no means inclined to triumph, like Falstaff, in the consciousness that "men of all sorts take a delight to gird at him," and that, on this theme," he is not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in others." Indeed, he has a sort of settled spleen towards his male acquaintance generally on this particular account, and luxuriates in the gentler society of females, under whose soothing influence he has gradually become as plump and tender as a pet rabbit, and usually takes his walk solus, unless triumphantly caracolling, as the escort of some genteely-shaped damsel; for he does not care to have a Venus of the Hottentot school, as a memento, at his elbow. When thus honoured, Dick always, with great gallantry, gets to windward in cold weather, and effectually protects his charmer from the ruder breezes of Boreas; he is, however, exceedingly tenacious of allowing the like privilege to male applicants; and confessed to me that he was never so shocked at his own enormity as once (going over Blackfriars' bridge in a storm of wind and rain) when a little shrivelled dwarf of a fellow got under his lee, and whatever pace Dick went, would follow him up, and use his overshadowing figure as a penthouse. But although my fat friend is too indolent to make any regular or scientific effort to shake off the enemy who sticks so perseveringly to every part of his person, he yet confesses to making a modest attempt to run away from it, now and then, |