exclaimed, "I like this gallery much better than your gallery at Hampton Court;" and thus, talking of pictures, he broke off "the cardinal's displeasant talk." This was a customary artifice with MORE. He withdrew the mind from disturbing thoughts by some sudden exclamation, or broke out into some facetious sally, which gave a new turn to the conversation. Of many, to give a single instance. On the day he resigned the chancellorship, he went after service to his wife's pew; there bowing, in the manner and with the very words the Lord Chancellor's servant was accustomed to announce to her, that "My lord was gone!" she laughed at the idling mockery; but when assured, in sober sadness, that "My lord was gone!" this good sort of lady, with her silly exclamation of "Tillie vallie! Tillie vallie! will you sit and make goslings in the ashes?" broke out into one of those domestic explosions to which she was very liable. The resigned chancellor, now resigned in more than one sense, to allay the storm he had raised, desired his daughters to observe whether they could not see some fault in their mother's dress. They could discover none. "Don't you perceive that your mother's nose stands somewhat awry?" Thus by a stroke of merriment, he dissipated the tedious remonstrances and perplexing inquiries which a graver man could not have eluded. At the most solemn moments of his life he was still disposed to indulge his humour. When in the Tower, denied pen and ink, he wrote a letter to his beloved Margaret, and tells her that "This letter is written with a coal; but that to express his love a peck of coals would not suffice." His political sagacity equalled the quickness of his wit or the flow of his humour. He knew to rate at their real value the favours of such a sovereign as Henry VIII. The king suddenly came to dine at his house at Chelsea, and while walking in the garden, threw his arm about the neck of the chancellor. Roper, his son-in-law, congratulated More on this affectionate familiarity of royalty. More observed, "Son, the king favours me as (much as) any subject within the realm; howbeit I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go!"