appalling absence of a legitimate possessor of the throne; and just when we had nearly resolved to proceed to use the ancient privilege of the English people and elect a king, an uncle of mine, a merchant in Swithin's Alley, interfered with my royal candidature, and I became a clerk in his counting-house, at a hundred a-year." Here Mr Catsbach, or rather Mr Tooks, refreshed himself with the whole remainder of his tumbler; made himself another with the utmost expedition, and proceeded. "I need a little support," he said, "for I am now coming to a period when I fell in love. I will be very brief in my account of the interesting event, for it sticks in my throat, and has made me miserable for many months. She was the prettiest girl that ever was seen--of course they are all that when we see them through the spectacles of admiration and vanity; for a girl's principal beauty consists in the willingness, more or less, with which she reciprocates your feelings. That's the reason why misogynists are all ugly fellows--it's the reason also why old men think the average amount of beauty fallen off. The prettiest creature in the world was Ellinor Bones, a niece of my aunt; so, in a sort of way, we were cousins. She was a ward of my uncle's, with three thousand pounds in the four per cents; and the moment I saw her, I said there's my destiny. There have been few books, and no play of my acquaintance, without a young fellow marrying his uncle's ward; so I made up my mind at once, and had no doubt of converting the beautiful Ellinor into Mrs Tooks. The course of true love never did run smooth, our immortal friend says. Doesn't it?--ours flowed like a mill-pond; so either ours was not true love, or William for once is wrong. A divided allegiance now held my whole being, the beauty of Ellinor and the political condition of Jack. There was no room for bills of lading, and I hated the very sight of a ledger, unless under its canonised form, when I betted on it at Doncaster. I made love--I thought politics--I neglected my three-legged stool. My love was reciprocated. Jack improved very much; and my uncle shook his head with more ominous wisdom than the Earl of Burleigh. Ellinor was the strangest character I ever knew--a sort of miniature in enamel of Jack himself. She had all his honesty and openness--his self-reliance and fixed determination. She said she would marry me, and I defied the Spanish Inquisition to torture her into a recantation. But how was the ceremony to be achieved? We put up the banns in Mary-le-Bone church. The number of matrimonial candidates is infinite. The curate speaks as if his mouth were full of hot potatoes; and you are at perfect liberty to marry any of the lot, for there is no distinction made between 'any of these parties respectively.' We had made calculations as to the expense of housekeeping, and many plans for enlarging our income. I had always one resource. Jack is the most generous of patrons, and very fond of music.