in the theory of thermo-dynamics; and who dip into Jean Paul Richter for a little light reading;--all excellent accomplishments, and thoroughly useful in the Tin-Tax Office. It is half-past twelve on a fine Saturday morning in the beginning of October, and the six occupants of room No. 120 are all assembled, and all at work; that is to say, four of them are writing, one is looking vacantly out of the window, and one is reading the _Times_. No. 120 is at the top of the building; a pleasant room when you reach it, looking on to the river, but up four flights of steep stone stairs. No. 120 has always its regular number of occupants; for when the chief clerk learns that a young gentleman has an undue number of friends calling upon him during official hours, he causes the popular man to be removed to No. 120, and after two trials of the stairs the visitors prefer meeting their friend in the evening at some less Alpine retreat. So also, when a young gentleman is in the habit of being perpetually waited upon by duns, he makes interest to get moved into No. 120, and finds that his creditors simultaneously urge their demands not in person, but through the medium of the Post-Office. The head of the room is Mr. Kinchenton, that tall man with the rounded shoulders, and grizzled head ever bent over his desk. Hard work has bowed Mr. Kinchenton's back and silvered his hair; for he has been in the Tin-Tax Office since he was sixteen years old, and though promoted under the old system of seniority and length of service, no one could ever say that he had not fairly won every step he got. Before he was sixteen, he was the hope and pride--the prize scholar--of the Heckmondike Grammar-School, his father being head-keeper to Lord Heckmondike, who placed the boy on the foundation of the school, and, finding him apt and studious, obtained for him his appointment from the Government of the day. No Adelphi at half-price, no Cider Cellars or Coal-Hole, for young Kinchenton, who had a little bedroom in a little terrace close by Kennington Common, where he was to be found every night, book in hand, and happy as a prince. A poor little bedroom enough!--a wretched little bedroom, with a white-dimity-covered tester-bed, two rush-bottomed chairs, a painted chest of drawers, a rickety washhand-stand, and a maddening square of looking-glass hanging against the wall. But to that garret came Sancho Panza and the gaunt Don his master; came Gil Blas, and the beggar with his arquebuse, and the Archbishop of Grenada; came cringing Tartuffe, and preposterous Sganarelle; came wandering Rasselas and sage Imlac; came Ferdinand Count Fathom, swearing Tom Pipes, and decorous Mr. Blifil. There the hard-working clerk laughed over Falstaff's lovemaking and Malvolio's disgrace, or wept over Sterne's dead ass and Le Fevre's regained sword; while his comrades Mace and Flukes were ruining each other at billiards, and Potter and Piper were hiccuping noisy applause to indecent songs.