metropolis is a purgatory. They sicken of the life of lounging through London, where they are nothing, and long to get back to the country where they are "magistrates;" generally too old to dance, the fashionable season has no charms for them: even the clubs seem to them a sort of condemned cell, where the crowd, guilty of unpardonable idleness, cluster together with no earthly resource but gazing into the street, or poring over a newspaper. If this service is severe enough to shake their philosophy during the sleety showers of February, and the withering blasts of March; the first break of sunshine, and the first streak of blue sky, makes their impatience amount to agony. The rest of the season only renders their suffering more inveterate; until at last the discharge of cannon from the Park, and the sound of trumpets at the doors of the House of Lords, a gracious speech from the throne, and a still more gracious smile from the sitter on it, let them loose from their task, and they are free, facetious, and foxhunters once more. There are still half-a-dozen other classes, "fine by degrees, and beautifully less," which may be left to the imagination of the reader, and the experience of the well-bred world. Addington soon made himself useful on committees. The strong necessities of the case, much more than the Reform Bill, have remarkably shortened the longevity of election committees. The committee, in general, was fortunate, which could accomplish its business within three months. Some took twice the number, some even crossed over from session to session. The first committee on which Addington was engaged had this unfortunate duration, and he was re-appointed to it in the second session of the parliament of 1785. At this period, whether from a sense of disappointment, or from the silent dulness of this drudgery, his health appears to have been in a feeble state. In a letter to his father, he apologises for listlessness and stupidity by illness, and says, "that he does not come up to the definition of man as a risible animal." Yet the man who could live to eighty-seven, and retain his health in a retirement of nearly a quarter of a century, could not complain of his constitution.