you like, and that is a blessing enjoyed by the literary man alone. The parson in the pulpit has to think of the pew, and if a Dissenter, of his deacons. The medical man must not shock the prejudices of his patients if he would secure a living. The lawyer must often speak against his convictions. An M.P. dares not utter what would offend his constituents if he would secure his re-election. The pressman alone is free, and when I knew him, led a happy life, as he wrote in some old tavern, (Peele’s coffee-house in Fleet Street was a great place for him in my day), or anywhere else where a drink and a smoke and a chat were to be had, and managed to evolve his “copy” amidst laughter and cheers and the fumes of tobacco. His clothes were shabby, his hat was the worse for wear; his boots had lost somewhat of their original symmetry, his hands and linen were—but perhaps the less one says about them the better. He had often little in his pocket besides the last half-crown he had borrowed of a friend, or that had been advanced by his “uncle,” but he was happy in his work, in his companions, in his dreams, in his nightly symposium protracted into the small hours, in his contempt of worldly men and worldly ways, in his rude defiance of Mrs. Grundy. He was, in reality, a grander man than his cultured brother of to-day, who affects to be a gentleman, and is not unfrequently merely a word-grinding machine, who has been carefully trained to write, whereas the only true writer, like the poet, is born, not made. We have now an Institute to improve what they call the social status of the pressman. We did not want it when I began my journalistic career. It was enough for me to hear the chimes at midnight, and to finish off with a good supper at some Fleet Street tavern, for as jolly old Walter Mapes sang— Every one by nature hath a mould that he was cast in; I happen to be one of those who never could write fasting.