SECOND SERIES OF SKETCHES BY B 0 Z.

No writer ever attained general popularity so instantly as Boz ; and certainly no one has made such industrious use of his advan- tage. Like the " wag " in society, he is seized by the multitudi- nous hands of the public, and meets with a spontaneous and uni- versal welcome. The secret of his extraordinary success is, that he exactly hits the level of the capacity and taste of the mass of readers. He furnishes, too, that commodity which mankind, in all ages and countries, most eagerly seek for and readily appre- ciate—amusement. He skims lightly over the surface of men and manners, and takes rapid glances at life in city and suburb, indicating the most striking and obvious characteristics with a ready and spirited pencil, giving a few strokes of comic humour and satire and a touch of the pathetic with equal effect, and intro- ducing episodical incidents and tales to add life and interest to the picture. Boz is the CRUIKSHANK of writers: like this popular caricaturist, a ho illustrates his descriptions, he can be grave as well as droll, literal as well as fanciful ; like him, too, his style is smart, lively, pointed, not overlaboured, though sometimes as forcible as at others it is slight. Reading Boz's Sketches is like rattling through the streets of London in a cab: the promi- nent features of the town strike upon the eye in rapid succession, new objects perpetually effacing the impression of the last ; all is bustle and movement, till the jerk of the stoppage announces that the "fare" or the "sketch" is ended. So with his charac- ters: you get that sort of acquaintance with them that a ride in an omnibus or a meeting at a social party affords you of people, where the peculiarities of person, dress, and manner, serve as de- notements of the idiosyncracies of the individual. This is just as much as the readers for mere pastime and present excitement require : the camera at a fair, with its ever-shifting groups, the magic-lantern, with its grotesque shadows, are types of Boz's views of common life and character. What wonder, then, that Boz's Sketches are in constant demand at the circulating libraries; that they find a place in the travelling-carriage, the steam-boat, the stage-coach, and the road-side inn ; that Pickwick is the idol of the watering-places and the travellers'-room? This second series of Sketches have, like the first, mostly ap- peared before in print in the columns of the Evening Chronicle, whence they have been transferred to those of the Morning Chro- nicle. They are neither better nor worse than the first; • the only difference being, that the writer's manner of viewing his subject having become more familiar to us, we are let into the secret of his art; and thus we are disposed to become more critical on the de- gree of his success. The pair of pictures of "The Streets by Morning" and the "Streets by Night," "Vauxhall Gardens by Day,""" The First of May," "Doctors' Commons," and " Seven Dials, are as fresh and true, as lively and graphic as ever. The sketch of the Parlour Orator, one of the oracles ofa public-house- that of Mr. John flounce, one of those animals who vegetate in an atmosphere of tobacco-smoke and live in a perpetual state of fuddled intellect—and the other of Mr. Augustus Minns, a formal old bachelor, who lives in a world 1. ounded by his lodg- ings and the public office in which he is a clerk, and whose sym- pathies do not extend beyond himself in any direction—are capital. The "Drunkard's Death" is the best serious sketch; and the picture of vice and squalid wretchedness is the more hideous for its truth. The "Criminal Courts," however, with the trial of the urchin thief', who to the cunning and callousness of the hardened rogue joins the reckless audacity of the schoolboy, is no less striking, and not so hackneyed a subject.

Here is a street Scene, in Boz's best manner.

SEVEN mats.

In addition to the numerous groups who are idling about the gin-shops and squabbling in the cer.tre of the road, every post in the open space has its occupant, who leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance. It is odd enough, that one class of men in London appear to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts. We never saw a regular bricklayer's labourer take any other recreatioses-fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles's in the evening of a week-day : there they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick•dust

and white-wash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on a Sunday morning : there they are again—drab or light corduroy tsousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats—leaning against posts. The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes to lean against a post all day !

The peculiar character of these streets, and the close resemblance each one bears to its neighbour, by no means tend to decrease the bewilderment in which the inexperienced wayfarer through "the Dials" finds himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty straggling houses, with now and then an unex- pected court, composed of buildings as ill-proportioned and deformed as the half-naked children that wallow in the kennels. Here and there a little dark chandler's shop, with a cracked hell hung up behind the door, to announce the entrance of a customer or betray the presence of some young gentleman in whom a passion for shop-tills has des-eloped itself at an early age ; others lean, as if for support, against some handsome lofty building, 'which usurps the place of a low dingy public-house ; long rows of broken and patched windows expose plants that may have flourished when " the laials woe built, in vessels as dirty as " the Dials" themselves; and shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen-stuff, vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers' and rabbit dealers', which one might fancy so many arks, but for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them, would ever come back again. Brokers shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with an- nouncements of day-schools, penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the "still life " of the subject ; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad frost, more than children, oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.

If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance at their inhabitants, present but few attractions, a closer acquaintance with either is little calculated to alter one's first impression. Every roam has its separate tenant ; and every tenant is, by the same mysterious dispensation which causes a country curate to "increase and multiply" most marvellously, generally the head of a numerous family.

The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked " jemmy" line, or the fire-wood

and hearth-stone line, or any other line which requires a floating capital of eighteenpence or thereabouts; and he and his family live in the shop and the small back parlour behind it. Then there is an Irish labourer and his family in the back-kitchen ; and a jobbing-man—carpet-heater and so forth—with his family in the front one. In the front one-pair, there's another man with another wife and family ; and in the back one-pair there's "a young ooman as takes in tambour work, and dresses quite genteel "—who talks a good deal about "my friend," and "can't abear any thing low." The second floor front, and the rest of the lodgers, are just a second edition of the people below ; except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has his half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-shop next door but one, which boasts a little front den called a coffeeroom, with a tire-place, over which is an inscription, politely re- questing that "to prevent mistakes," customers will " please to pay on de- livery." The shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery ; but as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to buy any thing beyond an occasional pen, except half-pints of coffee, penny-loaves, and ha'portlis of ink, his fellow- lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an author ; and rumours are current in the Dials that be writes poems—for Mr. Warren.

This "interior, with figures," is a view of the kitchen of Bel- larny's, the refectory of the Monastery of St. Stephen's, with two portraits, that no one who has ever seen the originals can fail to recognize.

Now, when you have taken your seat in the kitchen, and duly noticed the large fire and roasting-jack at one end of the room, the little table for washing glasses and draining tugs at the other, the clock over the window opposite St. Margaret's Church, the deal-tables and wax- candles, the damask table-cloths and bare floor, the plate and china on the tables, and the gridiron on the fire, and a few other anomalies peculiar to the place, we will point out to your no- tice two or three of the people present, whose station or absurdities render them the most worthy of remark.

It is half-past twelve o'clock ; and as the division is not expected for an hour or two, a few Members are lounging away the time here, in preference to stand- ing at the bar of the House, or sleeping in one of the side-galleries. That sin- gularly awkward and ungainly-looking man, in the brownish-white hat, with the straggling black trousers, which reach about half-way down the leg of his boots, who is leaning against the meat screen, apparently deluding himself into the belief that he is thinking about something, is a splendid sample of a Member of the House of Commons concentrating in his own person the wisdom of a constituency. Observe the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable colour ; for if it be naturally brown, it has acquired a black tint by long service; and if it be naturally black, the same cause has imparted to it a tinge of rusty brown ; and remark how very materially the great, IlMker-like spectacles mint the expres- sion of that most intelligent face. Seriously speaking, did you ever ses countenance so expressive of the most hopeless extreme of heavy &Mem, or behold a form so strangely put together ? He is no groat speaker ; but wbm he does address the House, the effect is absolutely irresistible.

The small gentleman with the sharp nose, who has just saluted him, ii • Member of Parliament, an ex-Alderman, and a sort of amateur fireman. He and the celebrated fireman's dog were observed to be remarkably active at the conflagration of the two Hmses of Parliament ; they both ran up and down, and in and out, getting under people's feet and into everybody's way, fully ha- pressed with the belief that they were doing a great deal of good, and barking tremendously. The dog went quietly back to his kennel with the engine; but the other gentleman kept up such an incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence, that he became a positive nuisance. As no more Parliamentary fires have occurred, however, and he has consequently had no more opportuni- ties of writing to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures, he cut them out of their frames, and performed other great national services, he has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness and obscurity.

As a specimen of the Sketchers serious vein, we give the last scene of the " Drunkard's Death."

At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door-step in Piccadilly, faint and ill. The premature decay of vice and profligacy had worn him to the bone. Ilis cheeks were hollow and livid ; his eyes were sunken, aml their sight was shins. Ilis legs trembled beneath his weight, and a cold shiver ran through every limb.

And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent life crowded thick and fast upon him. He thought of the time when he had had a home, a happy, cheer- ful home, and of those who peopled it and flocked about him then, until the forms of his elder children seemed to rise from the grave and stand about him ; so plain, so clear, and so distinct they were, that he could touch and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten were fixed upon him once more; voices long since hushed in deaths sounded in his ears like the music of village-bells : but it was only for an instant. The rain beat heavily upon him ; and cold and hunger were gnawing at his heart again. • •

Ile raised his head, and looked up the long, dismal street. He recollected that outcasts like himself, condemned to wander day and night in those dreadful streets, bad sometimes gone distracted with their own luneliness. Ile remem- bered to have heard many years before, that a homeless wretch had once been found in a solitary corner sharpening a rusty knife to plunge into his Own heart ; preferring death to that endless, weary, wandering to and fro. In an instant his resolve was taken ; his limbs received new life ; he ran quickly from the spot, and paused not for breath until he reached the river-side. He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that lead from the commencement of Waterloo Bridge to the water's level. He crouched into a corner, and held his breath as the patrol passed. Never did prisoner's heart throb with the hope of liberty and life half so eagerly as did that of the wretched Inv n at the prospect of death. The watch passed close to him, but he remained unob- served; and, after waiting till the sound of footsteps had died away in the dis- tance, he cautiously descended, and stood beneath the gloomy arch that forms the landing-place from the river. The tide was in, and the water flowed at his feet. The rain had ceased, the wind was lulled, and all was, for the moment, still and quiet—so quiet that the slightest sound on tile opposite bank, even the rippling of the water against the barges that were moored there, was distinctly audible to his ear. The stream stole languidly and sluggishly on. Strange and fantastic forms rose to the sur- face and beckoned him to approach; dark gleaming eyes peered from the water, and seemed to mock his hesitation ; while hollow murmurs from behind urged him onwards. Ile retreated a few paces, took a short run, a desperate leap, and plunged into the river. Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the water's surface ; but what a change had taken place in that short time in all his thoughts and feelings Life, life in any form, poverty, misery, starvation, any thing but death ! He fought and struggled with the water that closed over his head, and screamed in agonies of terror. The curse of his own son rang in his ears. The shore, but one foot of dry ground—he could almost touch the step. One hand's-breadth nearer, and he was saved : but the tide bore lam onward under the dark arches of the bridge, and he sank to the bottom. Again he rose, and struggled for life: for one instant, for one brief instant, the buildings on the river's banks, the lights on the bridge through which the current had borne him, the black water, and the fast-flying clouds, were dis- tinctly visible : once more he sank, and once again he rose : bright flames of fire shot up from earth to heaven, and reeled before his eyes, while the water thun- dered in his ears and stunned him with its furious roar.

GEORGE CRUIESHANK is the best illustrator that Boz could possibly have. His picture of the saloop-stall has that quality of distinctness which characterizes the descriptions : the silent and empty street, which the solitary policeman makes to appear more deserted than if it were entirely unpeopled ; the pieman swallow- ing his saloop, which is evidently scalding his throat ; the action of the sweep lugging out his penny, and the mechanical intent- ness of the old woman serving the smoking liquid, are delineated with the completeness and force of a cabinet-picture; even the fresh clearness of the morning atmosphere is expressed. The two scolds of Seven Dials, the jovial coalheavers in their blazing snuggery in Scotland Yard, the scene in Monmouth Street, and the Vauxhall orchestra, are capitally done too; but they have not the identity and individuality of the morning scene.