Rolls, who was making his way at the Bar, but who had not then arrived at the dignity of Q.C.

It was at Seaton that I first explained to my mother what had happened to me in connection with the Garrick Club. Living very much out of the world as she did, she had heard nothing of it, and knowing how much she would be distressed, I had not the heart to tell her, though I fully felt the necessity of doing so; but I was in the habit of receiving at Seaton the weekly numbers of a new publication, the Welcome Guest, of which more anon, where were then appearing Mr. Sala's articles, "Twice Round the Clock," and I took advantage of an allusion to me which was made in one of these essays to explain the whole matter to her.*

*Here is the allusion: "The great Mr. Polyphemus, the novelist, is bidden to the Duke of Sennacherib's, and as he rolls to Sennacherib House in his brougham, meditates satiric onslaughts on 'Tom Garbage' and 'Young Grubstreet'-those Tom Thumb foes of his-in the next number of the Pennsylvanians. Mr. Goodman Twoshoes is reading one of his own books to the members of the Chawbacon Athenæum, and making, I am delighted to hear, a mint of money by the simple process. Goldpen, the poet, has taken his wife and children to Miss P. Horton's entertainment; Bays, the great dramatist, is sitting in the stalls of the Pontoppidan Theatre, listening with rapt ears to the jokes in his own farce; and Selwyn Cope, the essayist, is snoring snugly between the sheets, having to rise very early to-morrow morning, in order to see a man hanged. And where are the working men of literature, the conscripts of the pen, doomed to carry Brown Bess for sixpence a day all their lives? Where are Garbage and Grubstreet? In the worst inn's worst room, with racing prints half hung, the walls of plaster and the floors of sand, at once a deal table, but stained with beer, sits Garbage playing four-handed cribbage with an impenitent hostler, a sporting man who has sold the fight, and a potboy who is a returned convict? Sits he there, I ask, or is he peacefully pursuing his vocation in country lodgings? And Grubstreet, is he in some murky den, with a vulture's quill dipped in vitriol, inditing libels upon the great, good, and wise of the day? Wonder upon wonders, Grubstreet sits in a handsome study, listening to his wife laughing over her crochetwork at Mr. Polyphemus's last attack on him, and dandling a little child upon his knee! Oh, the strange world in which we live, and the post that people will knock their heads against!"

And again, in the same periodical, in writing of clubs, “G. A. S.” says: "I fear the awful committee, with a dread complacency, can unclub a man for a few idle words inadvertently spoken, and blast his social position for an act of harmless indiscretion."

The Welcome Guest, in which these admirable essays— now in their Heaven knows how many hundredth edition -originally appeared, was started by Mr. Henry Vizetelly in the spring of 1858, and was one of the most excellent of cheap magazines. In it appeared, in serial form, an excellent translation, I believe by Mr. J. V. Bridgman, of Gustave Freytag's novel, "Debit and Credit ;" a capital romance, Under a Cloud," by Messrs. Frederick and James Greenwood; many of Mr. Sala's best stories and essays, besides those already mentioned, including a very laughable one-it was in the time of Mr. Rarey-called, "How I tamed Mrs. Cruiser." Mr. Vizetelly being the editor, it is unnecessary to say that Mr. Sutherland Edwards and Mr. Augustus Mayhew were among the contributors; and there were clever novelettes, stories, and poems by various hands. The sub-editing was excellently done certain pages were avowedly supplied by the scissors, but these weapons were plied with such taste and judgment as to render their product not the least interesting portion of the miscellany.

In the second year of its existence the Welcome Guest was purchased by Mr. Maxwell, and by him issued at an advanced price in a different shape, and under the editorship of Robert Brough, and without the illustrations, but with much the same staff of authors.

My dramatic work, which, in collaboration with Herbert Harrington, had been so successful, afforded me employment from time to time. For the first season of Miss Louisa Swanborough's management of the Strand Theatre we wrote a broad, bustling farce, turning on the adventures of a cheap photographer, and called "Your Likeness, One Shilling ;" while the last piece produced at the Princess's Theatre under Mr. Charles Kean's management was from our pen. It was played after the revival of "Henry V.," and had its effect in somewhat lightening the spirits of the audience before their departure. The management, and apparently the public, were thoroughly satisfied with it; it was pronounced by the press to be "extremely neat," with dialogue "written with smartness beyond the average," and it was certainly excellently acted. In the

present days of a genuine heroine-worship, with recollections full upon us of Beatrice, Viola, Olivia, and Camma, it seems odd to read in connection with this slight comedietta that "Miss Ellen Terry is worthy of a special word of praise for the spirit and point with which she played the part of a youthful groom or tiger."

For the opening of the new Adelphi Theatre, erected on the site of the little building with which my name had been so long connected, I, at Mr. Webster's request, wrote an introductory sketch. I have forgotten all about it now, save that it was a dialogue in verse, introducing all the members of the company, with special reference to them, their position, and peculiarities; and that on the first night the whole effect of this was marred through the crass stupidity of Mr. Paul Bedford, who did not know one line which had been set down for him, and who, to my horror, adopted an improvisation of his own, beginning, "Stop the cart, stop the cart, dear kids, stop the cart! Let old Paul have something to say to you."

Also, in collaboration with Harrington, I wrote an entertainment for Mr. George Case, a well-known musical man and player of the concertina, who retired from the orchestra on his marriage with a Miss Grace Egerton, a pretty and uncommonly sprightly and clever little actress, who ought to have done better things.

In buying a pair of horses from a dealer, the experienced purchaser is generally aware that he will become the owner of a good animal and a bad one, and the writer of entertainments for a married couple is very often in an analogous position. In the present instance we soon found that Mr. Case could only be intrusted as feeder to his wife; but that the lady's pluck, energy, and talent enabled her to undertake anything we chose to give her. There were two or three "bits" of character in which she reminded me strongly of Mrs. Keeley; and a song which I wrote for her, full of patriotic clap-trap, which she sang in the character of a Volunteer at the close of the entertainment, invariably brought down the house.

For this was the beginning of the Volunteer movement, which was causing a stir throughout the length and breadth

gowns, gazing at the intruders in astonishment. "Codd Colonel was among them; for, after looking on for a few minutes, he stole away, and when he returned I saw that he had affixed his Waterloo medal on his faded coat, and his bearing was once again upright and martial. The worthy head master of Charter-house, Archdeacon Hale, took an interest in us, would come and watch us drill, and I think on one occasion devoted a sermon to the furtherance of the cause, which progressed with but little let or hinderance.

In its earliest days a thoughtless sketch in Punch supplied the youthful population with the sarcastic cry of "Who shot the dog?" with which the Volunteers were for a long time chaffed on their public appearances, and much cynical wit was expended upon us. One regiment, possessing a brownish gray uniform with red facings, was known as the "pauper lunatics with their throats cut." We, the Post-office companies, were once turned into horrible ridicule by a small and preternaturally sharp boy, who, standing in the middle of the crowd as we marched by, amid expressions of admiration, hit the fatal blot by exclaiming, in a shrill key, "Ain't they all of a size neither!" which, it is needless to say, we were not. Stories were invented of Volunteer colonels on the line of march, after frantically exclaiming, "Right wheel! left wheel!" and having got their men horribly clubbed, ended by roaring out, “D—n it, turn up Fetter Lane!" and the members of the new force were general victims of chaff and fun.

Still we prospered. On the 7th of March, 1860, the Queen held a levée in St. James's Palace, for the purpose of receiving the officers of the newly-formed rifle corps, which I attended. Her Majesty's courtesy, doubtless well-intentioned, was much minimized by a snub received from the always agreeable Lord Chamberlain's department, in a notice to the effect that attendance at this levée "6. was not to count as a presentation to the Queen." It was reckoned that about two thousand five hundred Volunteer officers passed before her Majesty, representing an effective force of seventy thousand men.