the founts by which they live. And all their thoughts are grey and melancholy in anticipation of the imminent catastrophe. When eventually the long-anticipated doom is announced, the sensation of the reader is that of relief. The chapter in which the disaster is set forth is, as a piece of writing, so forcible and so convincing that one is driven to the conclusion that the writer is describing an actual occurrence. And the victims? Does their conduct under the final stroke evoke our sympathy as their apologist evidently means that it should? Personally I am conscious of no sentiments other than those of pity and contempt. When the proprietor makes the announcement that he has gone the limit, and that no further issue of his costly and ill-fated paper will be made, some of the men are described as weeping; all are more or less hysterical. The busy builders of an overturned ant-heap arouse our admiration by their courage and capacity and resource. The pitiable creatures who crawl out into the night from the crumbling press-heap of Fleet Street can but provoke a gibe. Some of them seek the oblivion purchasable in public-houses—for the journalist in “The Street of Adventure” understands a tavern only as a place in which to get drunk—others seek consolation in the flats of the lady members of the staff, an expedient more sober at once and more economical. I quit their society with pleasure. They belong to a marrowless, joyless, invertebrate breed; seedy, selfish, but superior persons, affording at all times a safe medium for maleficent mind-microbes on the prowl after a reliable culture.