first launch of the new man into the ocean of his London life, and we pause upon its shore.  He has but definite ideas of three public establishments at all intimately connected with his professional career—­the Hall, the College, and the Cyder-cellars.  There are but three individuals to whom he looks with feelings of deference—­Mr. Sayer of Blackfriars, Mr. Belfour of Lincoln’s-inn-fields, and Mr. Rhodes of Maiden-lane.  These are the impersonation of the Fates—­the arbitrators of his destinies.

As it is customary that an attendance in the Theatre of Lectures should precede the student’s determination to “have a shy at the College,” or “go up to the Hall,” so is it usual for a visit to one of the theatres to be paid before going down to the Cyder-cellars.  The new man has been beguiled into the excursion by the exciting narratives of his companions, and beginning to feel that he is behind the other “chaps” (a new man’s term) in knowledge of the world, he yields to the attraction held out; not because he at first thinks it will give him pleasure so to do, as because it will put him on a level with those who have been, on the same principle as our rambling compatriots go to Switzerland and the Rhine.  His Mentor is ready in the shape of a third-season man, and under his protecting influence he sallies forth.

The theatres have concluded; every carriage, cab, and “coach ’nhired” in their vicinity is in motion; venders of trotters and ham-sandwiches are in full cry; the bars of the proximate retail establishments are crowded with thirsty gods; ruddy chops and steaks are temptingly displayed in the windows of the supper-houses, and the turnips and carrots in the freshly-arrived market-carts appear astonished at the sudden confusion by which they are surrounded.  Amidst this confusion the new man and his friends arrive beneath the beacon which illumines the entrance of the tavern.  He descends the stairs in an agony of anticipation, and feverishly trips up the six or eight succeeding ones to arrive at the large room.  A song has just concluded, and he enters triumphantly amidst the thunder of applause, the jingling of glasses, the imperious vociferations of fresh orders, and an atmosphere of smoke that pervades the whole apartment, like dense clouds of incense burning at the altar of the genius of conviviality.

The new man is at first so bewildered, that it would take but little extra excitement to render him perfectly unconscious as to the probability of his standing upon his occipito-frontalis or plantar fascia.  But as he collects his ideas, he contrives to muster sufficient presence of mind to order a Welsh rabbit, and in the interim of its arrival earnestly contemplates the scene around him.  There is the room which, in after life, so vividly recurs to him, with its bygone souvenirs of mirth, when he is sitting up all night at a bad case in the mud cottage of a pauper union.  There are its blue walls, its wainscot