done wonders. I left her a gauche school-boy; I returned a young man, not encumbered with an excess of bashfulness, with plenty to say for myself, and with a strong determination to get on in the world.

One of the earliest and most efficient promoters of this desire on my part was my godfather, the Hon. Edmund Byng, of whom I have already made casual mention, then nearly seventy, a bachelor, living at No. 10 Clarges Street, and one of the most eccentric of human beings. He was a very handsome and particularly distinguished-looking old gentleman, with fresh complexion and well-cut features, but suffering greatly from an affection of the eyes, which compelled the wearing of colored glasses. Until very late in life he never wore a great-coat, but was always dressed in a dark blue tail-coat, with plain, flat, gold buttons, brown trousers, rather tight, brown gaiters, and shoes. His hat was always a very bad one, and he was never seen in the street without a large gingham umbrella, which he carried horizontally tucked under his arm, and which was always coming into violent contact with animate and inanimate objects. His friends used to say that his defective eyesight never precluded his recognizing the difference between a pretty and an ugly woman, and his great predilection for beauty, which had been a feature in his youth, was one of the few disagreeable characteristics of his old age. He was very clever, well read - his knowledge of Shakspeare was extraordinary -a confirmed cynic, with, as is so often the case, a great deal of practical benevolence, but full of that bitter satirical humor which is so captivating to youth, and in which, wholly unchecked and outspoken as it was in my old friend, I used to revel. He was known to all sorts and conditions of men, and delighted in gathering those most likely to be diametrically opposed in their views at his table, and egging them on to argument, which, on occasion, would wax tolerably warm. He had been in his youth very fond of the theatre, and his was one of the very few houses in those days where actors were invited.

The old gentleman took a great fancy to me, invited

me two or three times a week to his table, where he always placed me opposite to him-a rather trying position for a lad of seventeen, where the guests were nearly all distinguished men-and was always pleased if, after leaving my office, I would call for him, and give him my arm for a tour of visits or card-leaving. He was a somewhat trying companion on such occasions, for his outspokenness and irritability were excessive. I recollect taking him one day to the door of a very great house, and knocking. "Her Grace at home ?" asked Mr. Byng. "Her Grace has gone to Chiswick, sir," replied the hall porter. "What the devil do you mean, sir," burst out the old gentleman, "by telling me your mistress's movements! I don't want to know them! I asked if she were at home, and all I wanted was a plain answer to that question." Then, with a thump of his umbrella on the doorstep, he pulled me away, and we left the man gazing after us, petrified with amazement.

The dinners in Clarges Street were very plain and simple, but very good in their way. Potatoes of extraordinary size and excellence were always served in their “jackets" and in a huge wooden bowl; port and sherry were the only wines; and most of the decanters had their necks filed, the "lip" having been knocked off. The guests varied, but among the most regular were Lord John Fitzroy, a very high - bred - looking old gentleman, a great whist-player, and reminding one altogether of a Thackerayan creation; the late Lord Torrington; John Woodford, of the F.O.; Dr. Dickson, author of "Fallacies of the Faculty;" Mr. Loaden, a smart solicitor in large practice; my colleague, George Harrison; another colleague, Haughton Forrest, a connection of the host; the Hon. and Rev. Fitzroy Stanhope; and John Cooper, the actor. The Earl of Scarborough, Lord Gardner; Horace Pitt, afterwards Lord Rivers; Sir William de Bathe; Mr. Norton, the police magistrate; "Billy" Bennett, actor, and father of Miss Julia Bennett; Planché, Charles Dance, and Robert Keeley came occasionally.

There, too, I met for the first time the Hon. "Jim" Macdonald. He arrived, I remember, after we were all

seated at table, and this, I suppose, annoyed the old gentleman; for when Colonel Macdonald, as he was then, in his airy manner, said, "How d'ye do, Byng? sorry I'm late!" and proffered his hand, our host said, "Sit down, sir! I never shake hot hands! get on with your dinner." Colonel Macdonald smiled and took his seat; but later on, Mr. Byng asking him if he liked the particular dish he was eating, he said it was "very good." "God bless my soul, sir,” cried Byng, "what do you mean by that? Of course it's good, sir; everything that comes to this table is good. What I asked you was whether you liked it !"

Mr. Byng was also always very much "down" upon John Cooper, a tragedian of the old school, pompous, solemn, pretentious, and dull. Cooper was a bit of a miser, and Byng was always delighted when the exercise of this niggardly spirit brought the actor to grief. On one occasion, a close summer's evening, when Cooper was expected to dinner, a violent rain-storm came on, and Mr. Byng confided to me his joy that Cooper, who lived in St. James's Place and generally walked across, would be compelled to take a cab. Presently a cab stopped at the door, and Cooper's sonorous voice was heard from the inside, bidding the cabman to knock at the door. "Not I," said the driver, calmly remaining on his box. "What do you mean?" asked Cooper; "I have paid you your fare already." "Fare!" growled the man, still enthroned;

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you give me a shillin' when you got in that was for drivin' of you, not for knockin'; get out and knock yourself!" And the man remaining obdurate, Cooper had to get out in the pouring rain and knock at the door, which the servant, acting under his delighted master's instructions, did not hurry himself to open.

The most regular habitué of Clarges Street, however, was a very old German gentleman, a certain Baron dereally, I suppose, von-Feilitzer, a bent, shrunken, wizened old fellow, over eighty years of age, who had, according to the generally received legend, been a page to Frederick the Great, but who was only known to us as Mr. Byng's principal butt and toady. Notwithstanding

why, he

his age, he had an enormous appetite, which he used to indulge without stint, his host observing him from time to time, and keeping up a running commentary on his proceedings, which was intended to be sotto voce, but which was distinctly audible round the delighted table. "Look at him, filling his baronial stomach! God bless my soul, was there ever seen anything like it! eats more at one meal than I do in a month! Look at him putting it away!" And the object of his remarks, who knew perfectly what was going on, would look slyly up from his plate, and, without discontinuing operations, chuckle and say, "Ja, der Byng! der is fonny man!" and take no further heed. The baron lived in lodgings over a celebrated baker's in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden-the shop is still there-and from time to time we, who, I suppose, must have been considered our patron's henchmen, were expected, after a heavy dinner in Clarges Street, to go off with Mr. Byng in a body to the Baron's lodgings in Covent Garden, where a large and thoroughly British supper of oysters, lobsters, and cold beef was awaiting us, which we were expected to eat. In deference to Mr. Byng's wishes we used to struggle hard to swallow something, but he always declared that as soon as we were gone the old baron would set to and clear the board.

I owed a great deal to the kindness of my eccentric old godfather, at whose house and through whom I made many useful acquaintances at that time. He did not go to Court, owing to some slight in connection with a dispute in which his intimate friend, Sir John Conroy, was involved, and it was always understood that he had had the temerity to refuse a Royal invitation, which is, of course, a Royal command; but he was remembered by many great ladies, and through one of them, a patroness of Almack's, he obtained for me a card for one of the last balls of that expiring institution of exclusiveness, which was then held in Willis's Rooms. I did not know more than two people in the place, and passed a miserably dull evening; but I was accounted remarkably lucky to have obtained such an entrée, and rather fancied myself accord

ingly. Edmund Byng, who must not be confounded with his brother Frederick, well known as "Poodle" Byng, with whom he had little in common, died at an advanced age in 1854 or '55.

I went occasionally to dinner- parties and frequently to balls in my early days, when the deux temps valse had just been imported into England, and we used to dance it to the inspiriting strains of Jullien's or Weippert's band; but I am afraid my real amusements were of a less sober and more Bohemian character. Dancing was just then commencing to be recognized in England as a national pursuit. The public balls of former days had been confined to the dreary "assemblies" of provincial towns, and in London there was nothing of the kind in winter; while in summer, Vauxhall, the ancient and grievously overrated, and Cremorne Gardens, the creation of which as a place of amusement out of the old finely-timbered pleasaunce I can well remember, were our al fresco resorts. But in the year 1846, while I was in Germany, I had information from friends that one Emile Laurent, a Frenchman, had taken the old Adelaide Gallery, converted it into a paradise, and called it the Casino.

The Adelaide Gallery, which was situated at the northern, or St. Martin's Church, end of the Lowther Arcade (where as a child I used to eat buns at Miss Ehrhardt the confectioner's, and buy toys of John Binge, who combined toy-selling in the daytime with theatrical singing at night, and who was called "The Singing Mouse," owing to the smallness of his sweet tenor voice), was started as a science “show." Its principal attractions were Perkins's steam-gun, which discharged a shower of bullets, but was never adopted in serious warfare; and the gymnotus, or electrical eel, a creature which emitted shocks on its back being touched. Parents and persons in charge of youth were great patrons of the Adelaide Gallery, which flourished until a rival institution appeared in the shape of the Polytechnic, in Upper Regent Street, which speedily and completely took the wind out of the sails of the original establishment.

Ah me! the Polytechnic, with its diving-bell, the de