writing was illegible, except the signature. He wrote a dismissal to one of his employés who had committed a serious offence, denouncing his misconduct and demolishing his character with unsparing severity ; but the recipient, having the sagacity to foresee that

one would attempt the perusal of a manuscript of which he himself, although it was familiar to his sight, and its intention clearly understood, could only read here and there a word, boldly used it as "a commendatory letter from his dear old friend Horace Greeley" in his application to elective committees, until the usual retribution came. He had obtained an appointment for which he was in every way unfit, when Horace Greeley, by an extraordinary effort, wrote a letter which could be read, and there was a dissolving view of the elect.

In addition to our daily newspapers, we have an abundance of weekly, monthly, quarterly publications, which instruct and entertain us with their clever essays, reviews, stories, and illustrations. I can only remember in the days of my youth the Edinburgh Review, which was the first to

Spread its bright wings of saffron and of blue;

the Quarterly, which John Murray started as an antidote; Blackwood's Magazine (I tried hard to understand Noctes Ambrosiana, but the wit was too strong for my boyish brain, and I betook myself to The Diary of a Late Physician, as one who cannot drink champagne consoles himself with ginger-beer); Fraser's

Magazine; Bentley's Miscellany, of which Charles Dickens was the first editor, and in which was first published his marvellous story of Oliver Twist; Chambers's Journal, and the Penny Magazine. Now there is an embarras des richesses, and he who goes to make choice at a bookstall is like a boy who goes into a kitchen garden when the cherries and the raspberries, the gooseberries and the currants-red, black, and white are all ripe together. Every one who has a hobby-the scientific, the sentimental, the scholar, the sportsman, the naturalist, the artist, the financier, and the cyclist—has a choice of publications on the subject which interests him the most.

The last to join the great mixed multitude of the scribes is the interviewer, male and female. Of these writers I have had a large and pleasant experience, having been visited by two hundred in the United States and by a considerable number on this side of the Atlantic. I have always welcomed as a compliment an intimation from the editor of a popular publication that his readers would be willing to make my further acquaintance, and I have generally derived from the intelligent experts of his staff more interesting information than I was able to impart. There have been a few embarrassments, as when I found five journalists awaiting my arrival at midnight in the hotel of a large American city; when I received an invitation through the keyhole of my bedroom door to commence a conversation with a gentleman outside, who "bid me discourse" just when I had carefully prepared myself to be

invested-or, rather, divested-as a companion of the bath; and some of the inquiries were complicated and required more consideration than the opportunity seemed to suggest, as when the same interrogator asked me in rapid sequence what I thought of New York City, Oliver Cromwell, and the Intermediate State.

CHAPTER XVIII

Parties.-I. Political

The Blues lost no opportunity in opposing the Buffs and the Buffs lost no opportunity in opposing the Blues, and the consequence was that whenever the Buffs and the Blues met together at public meeting, town hall, fair, or market, dispute and high words rose between them.-The Pickwick Papers.

SOME forty years ago I was a guest at a christening party, invited by my friend Mr. Shirley Brooks, who was then the editor of Punch, and at the déjeuner which took place after the ceremony I sat next to Mr. Charles Knight, the historian. We were speaking of the more reverent administration of the Sacrament publicly at the font in our churches, with sponsors who felt their responsibilities, instead of the private performance at one time almost universal with the slop-basin; and he told me that when he was a small child one of his godfathers put a silver coin on the table and said, "Now, my boy, that half-crown is for you when you have said, 'Damn Billy Pitt.'" Let us hope that he who proposed this vile contract really believed that the honour and welfare of his country could only be maintained by the relegation of Mr.

Pitt to the region suggested by his name. These blasphemous condemnations were common, and even now are not entirely unknown, and were rather the expressions of prejudice and personal feeling than of patriotism in a righteous cause. Mr. Knight was many years my senior, but I recalled in response a similar occurrence. A boy of six addressed a gentleman of high position in his county, but of Liberal principles, soon after a great reform riot, in which Nottingham Castle was burnt, with this solemn warning: "If you go about throwing stones, breaking windows, and burning houses, you will go to a bad place."

It is difficult to realise in these days the intensity of political bias; we children would hear in our distant nurseries the strife of tongues after dinner-parties, and we had horrible dreams that the rioters had arrived with torches and surrounded the house.

Among the extremists the Tory regarded the Radical as a Guy Fawkes who was ever making secret preparations to blow up the British Constitution, as a sort of fellow who would rob a church, and was afflicted by a chronic hydrophobia, a dread of cold water, whether for outward or internal use. The Radical, on the other hand, was fully convinced that the Tories were in a state of rapid decomposition, mental and physical, with their vassals dancing like monkeys to a barrel organ, forsaken by all but their fleas.

A lord lieutenant declined to make a magistrate of a gentleman because he was professedly associated