“‘Major Monsoon’ was Commissary-General Mayne.... When he entered a town,” Lever declared, “he hastened to the nearest church and appropriated whatever plate or costly reliquaries he could seize. He once had a narrow escape from hanging, after having actually undergone a drum-head court-martial. When the allied armies entered Paris, Wellington was of course the constant figure of attraction. At a grand fête he took wine (or went through the form of it) with any officer whose face was remembered by him. The Commissary-General was a guest at this entertainment, and Wellington’s eye rested on him. Up went the hand and glass as a signal, and bows were wellnigh exchanged, when the Duke thundered out, ‘Oh! I thought I had hanged you at Badajoz. Never mind, I’ll do it next time. I drink your health.’”--Fitzpatrick’s ‘Life of Lever.’ Of Frank Webber I have said elsewhere that he was one of my earliest friends, my chum at college, and in the very chambers in Old Trinity where I have located Charles O’Malley. He was a man of the highest order of abilities, with a memory that never forgot; but he was ruined and run to seed by the idleness that came of a discursive uncertain temperament. Capable of anything--he spent his youth in follies and eccentricities, every one of which, however, gave indications of a mind inexhaustible in resources and abounding in devices and contrivances. Poor fellow! he died young; and perhaps it is better it should have been so. Had he lived to a later day, he would most probably have been found a foremost leader of Fenianism; and from what I knew of him, I can say that he, would have been a more dangerous enemy to English rule than any of those dealers in the petty larceny of rebellion we have lately seen amongst us. Of Mickey Free I had not one, but one thousand, types. Indeed I am not quite sure that in my late visit to Dublin, I did not chance on a living specimen of the “Free” family, much readier in repartee, quicker at an _apropos_, and droller in illustration, than my own Mickey. The fellow was “boots” at a great hotel in Sackville Street; and he afforded me more amusement and some heartier laughs than it has always been my fortune to enjoy in a party of wits. His criticisms on my sketches of Irish character were about the shrewdest and the best I ever listened to; and that I am not bribed to this opinion by any flattery, I may remark that they were often more severe than complimentary, and that he hit every blunder of image, every mistake in figure, of my peasant characters with an acuteness and correctness which made me very grateful to know that his daily occupations were limited to the blacking of boots and not to the “polishing off” of authors. I should like to own that ‘Charles O’Malley’ was the means of according me a more heartfelt glow of satisfaction, a more gratifying sense of pride, than anything I ever have written. My brother, at that time the rector of an Irish parish, once forwarded to