Mr. Poole's house is called Alhambra Villa! Moorish verandahs--plate-
glass windows, with cusped heads and mahogany sashes--a garden behind,
a smaller one in front--stairs ascending to the doorway under a Saracenic
portico, between two pedestalled lions that resemble poodles--the whole
new and lustrous--in semblance stone, in substance stucco-cracks in the
stucco denoting "settlements." But the house being let for ninety-nine
years--relet again on a running lease of seven, fourteen, and twenty-one-
the builder is not answerable for duration, nor the original lessee for
repairs. Take it altogether, than Alhambra Villa masonry could devise no
better type of modern taste and metropolitan speculation.

Mr. Poole, since we saw him between four and five years ago, has entered
the matrimonial state. He has married a lady of some money, and become a
reformed man. He has eschewed the turf, relinquished Belcher neckcloths
and Newmarket coats-dropped his old-bachelor acquaintances. When a man
marries and reforms, especially when marriage and reform are accompanied
with increased income, and settled respectably in Alhambra Villa--
relations, before estranged, tender kindly overtures: the world, before
austere, becomes indulgent. It was so with Poole--no longer Dolly.
Grant that in earlier life he had fallen into bad ways, and, among
equivocal associates, had been led on by that taste for sporting which is
a manly though a perilous characteristic of the true-born Englishman; he
who loves horses is liable to come in contact with blacklegs; the racer
is a noble animal; but it is his misfortune that the better his breeding
the worse his company:--Grant that, in the stables, Adolphus Samuel Poole
had picked up some wild oats--he had sown them now. Bygones were
bygones. He had made a very prudent marriage. Mrs. Poole was a sensible
woman--had rendered him domestic, and would keep him straight! His uncle
Samuel, a most worthy man, had found him that sensible woman, and, having