Star.
London, England, 1826-08-11 00:00:00

mot TOE Nam' hteNTITLY MAGatimit.
The personage who last employed my (ma had in
old head upon young shoulders. I have had a subs:-
quent sitter in an opposite predicament.
into the magniScent eating-room of the Union Club
House, on 'Wednesday last, at half-past seven o'clock,
there entered 'one of those very numerous people whom
we middle-aged Gentlemen about town have known by
sight for the last five and twenty years, and whom we
always accost with a melual ejaculation of 14 Who is
that man?" The stranger had a lean long body,which,
-in the wend course of events, would have been cased
in fleecy hosiery, but which, upon the present occasion,
was arranged in an olive brown Wellington frock-coat
and white jean waistcoat and trousers. His cravat was
of light-blue silk, his back was as stiff as a Peer at a
Bedford-square dinner-table, and a small moss rose
bloomed i.) his bosom. Every member of the Union
Club is requited 'by its Regulations to writ, his name
upon the small piece of ruled paper upon which he in-
scribes the particulars of his proposed repast. I over-
looked on of the (.1,1 shoulders of the unknown, while

in the act of performing that operation, and read to
myself, " Sir Jerk Withers." Fortunately for the wold
of Paul Plyhood, and equally unfortunately for Sir
Jerk,the new bo..k of Peerage includes the Baronets.
The precious volume, hound in red morocco, lay in the
newspaper-coons. 1 crossed the hall to inspect it, and
turning to the W.'s read as follows: "Sir JerkWithers,-
son of S'r Jerom and Dame Arabella, born the 14th off
Jaunary, 1765." Good, thought 1: this makes him
sir/ years old in January last. —A now returned to the
diming-roofn ; and wtile Sir Jerk 'Withers was paying
his respects to a ragout of veal and a'pint of burgundy,
I availed myself of that opportunity to re-peruse his face
and person.
Time sometimes makes his chief inroads upon the
face, sometimes ueyon the figure, and sometimes, like
bidders at an auction, in two places at once. When he
helps us to fat, the face continues to look young and the
body gets old. When he helps us to lean, the hods
continues to look young and the face gets old. A bulky
body is not easily managed: for fat, if dislodged from
one station takes refuge in another ; and tight lacing
only makes the matter worse. As Swift says " You
lose in coach hire what you save in wine." I could
name an actress, who, on dropping her fan as a lure to
Archer, would be terribly puzzled how to pick it up
again, if that seeming serving-man should fail so to do.
Now Sir Jerk Wi hers having been complimented by
old Scythe-and•h•iurglass, with a lean body, ought in
equity to have had a yoting lo king one. but a tropical
climate has given it a bend. Still be carries it jauntily
with an air, as who should say " Iley, daytime."
Which of us semi-centenarians does not remember
fly Lawis the Comedian? There was a man for a
fight with Time! He drew up his chest, grasped the
flaiii of his coat. d tergo, strutted from one stage-door
to the other, with a stuff knee and a harlequin head, and
teem-d, like old /Eon, to shake forty winters from i.is
stoulders in less time than it would take a stuttering
man to ejaculate Jack Robinson. " Even such a man"

is Sir Jerk Withers ; rather older, indeed, in the body,
but proportionally younger in the head. I will not
positively assert that tine Gentleman rouges. Certain,
lv.wever, it is, that whilst he was in the act of giving
directions to one of the dome-buttoned waiters to pull
down a window -bliad, in order to put out of view the
circuitous stand of hackney-coaches, which was per-
forming a hippodrome revolution, in_what once was the
Mews, I could not but remark that his shirt
collar was slightly tinged wi.h vermilion. Nature
made the eyebrows and whiskers of Sir Jerk, what
Mothers call auburn, and all the rest of the world red.
These have been cautiously dyed of a sort of mahogany
colour./ So, too, he intended to dye thee hair of his
head, as I h eve been credibly, info, med. Ti. process
was terrific : few more so since the days of the Martyrs.
Sir Jerk's head was rubbed with a magical composition,
and he was e joined to sleep three nights with a huge.
cabbage-leaf bttween his scalp and his night-cap, to
awaken the virtues of the fluid. He adjourned to the
inn at Salt-hill during the experiment, that nobody in
St. James's-street might be privy to it. He arose on
morning ensuing his arilval, with high expectations of
his own irresistibility. He unbarred his window, like
a male Aurora; and, after taking a peep at the little
green hillock on the opposite side of the road to which
the triennial highway-robberies of the Eton boys have
given a celebrity rather disproportionate to its bulk, he
preceded is his minor, and cautiously removed the
cap and cabbage-leaf, in the full hope of finding his
grey noddle transformed to a beautiful chestnut-brown.
Alas.! the virtues of the fluid were not awakened, but
those of the cabbage-leaf were! Sir Jerk's hair had
become pea-green ! Half distracted, he drove home
in a hack-chaise at night, hoping in the recesses of
his lodgings in Charles-street to be the Green Man and
Still. Fate ordered it otherwise: ill alarm of fire
hurried him from his bed at three o'clock in the morn-
ing: he bolted out at the street door with such grecipi-
tation,. that his night-cap fell from his heed. A P cenix
fireman, who had dipped into the classics, qualified in
the dead languages by a new system of instantaneous,
education, espying his virid apex, mistook him for old
father Tuames, and exclaimed, with a Latin oath—
•' All's right—here's Rex Fluviorum come to put out
the flames!" Sir Jerk Withers has since taken refuge
in a %sig. and cautiously abstains from visiting the ex-
hibition of the Royal Academy in Somarsti House, as
the bronze figure in the quadrangle, pouring water from
his urn, would excite an unpleasant association.
Is it not a matter of wonder, that all men who wear
wigs wear such young ones ? The pat attorney's clerk
cf twenty-fire, the portly merchant of forty, the gouty
county member of fifty, and the Sir Jerk Withers of
sixty, have not one of them a single grey hair in their
wig. This is what the Lawyers call proving too much.
Ever while you live *d Eye Nature's walks, and where
she has planted grey ash trees, or cleared the ground by
drnuding the top of the head, do not fly in her face by
"rdiinghome a hyacinthine cause, with one of those
curls, sometimes called love-locks, and sometimes heart-
breakers, playing carelessly over a forehead, where the
crow has been busily treading beforehand. One would
think th it this mode of making bad worse would be a
matter of rare oecurrence.—quite the contrary. No
sooner does a man take to a wig than he forthwith re-
solver to clap a yoUng head upon his old shoulders, and
Sir Jerk Withers is too modish a man to be second in,
the races to fact, his wig is juvenility itself, not a hair
of it being yet out of its teens. The outside of the head
it, in that particular, as remote from the age of discre-
tion as is the inside of it.
When Sir Jerk Withers had dispatched his dinner, be
adjourned up stairs fc tt:e library, and I did the same.

YCHIN"..m"7/==lZ.