vacant, and if you'll give it to Alfred, why then, Lord Eldon, we shall marry before the end of the year." Is there need to say that the Chancellor forthwith summoned his Secretary, that the secretary forthwith made out the presentation to Bessie's lover, and that having given the Chancellor a kiss of gratitude, Bessie made good speed back to Herefordshire, hugging the precious document the whole way home? A bad but eager sportsman, Lord Eldon used to blaze away at his partridges and pheasants with such uniform want of success that Lord Stowell had truth as well as humor on his side when he observed, "My brother has done much execution this shooting season; with his gun he has _killed a great deal of time_." Having ineffectually discharged two barrels at a covey of partridges, the Chancellor was slowly walking to the gate of one of his Encome turnip-fields when a stranger of clerical garb and aspect hailed him from a distance, asking, "Where is Lord Eldon?" Not anxious to declare himself to the witness of his ludicrously bad shot, the Chancellor answered evasively, and with scant courtesy, "Not far off." Displeased with the tone of this curt reply, the clergyman rejoined, "I wish you'd use your tongue to better purpose than you do your gun, and tell me civily where I can find the Chancellor." "Well," responded the sportsman, when he had slowly approached his questioner, "here you see the Chancellor--I am Lord Eldon." It was an untoward introduction to the Chancellor for the strange clergyman who had traveled from the North of Lancashire to ask for the presentation to a vacant living. Partly out of humorous compassion for the applicant who had offered rudeness, if not insult to the person whom he was most anxious to propitiate; partly because on inquiry he ascertained the respectability of the applicant; and partly because he wished to seal by kindness the lips of a man who could report on the authority of his own eyes that the best lawyer was also the worst shot in all England, Eldon gave the petitioner the desired preferment. "But now," the old Chancellor used to add in conclusion, whenever he told the story, "see the ingratitude of mankind. It was not long before a large present of game reached me, with a letter from my new-made rector, purporting that he had sent it to me, because _from what he had seen of my shooting he_ supposed I must be badly off for game. Think of turning upon me in this way, and wounding me in my tenderest point."