inconsistency between temporary poverty and the first efforts of struggling genius. Nor is poverty so fatal to the efforts of genius as a superficial thinker would suppose it to be. To a noble nature it presents no feature of degradation or terror. Its supposed evils are, for the most part, begotten of the pride of those who are its victims. If it forbade Griffin to ask or receive favors from those who were able and willing to help him, it thereby conferred self-independence and ceaseless energy, the constant forerunners of inevitable success. His industry was speedily rewarded, and in a manner which seemed the result rather of good luck than of strenuous effort or personal merit. One day Gerald made bold to write an article after the manner of those in the great reviews. He sent it anonymously to the proprietor of a leading periodical, and in return received unsolicited a cheque for a handsome sum of money, with an invitation to continue sending contributions of a similar kind. This was the first hopeful speck in the horizon of a brilliant future. The benevolence of the kindly publisher did not end here. He sought out the anonymous writer, invited him to dinner, treated him handsomely, and obtained for him the editorship of a new publication. "It never rains but it pours," is a true old maxim attributable with equal propriety to good and evil happenings. Hitherto he had been unable to make his time profitable either in a literary or pecuniary sense. His later contributions had all at once begun to attract attention, and the amount of time at his disposal seemed too short to enable him to satisfy all the requirements of numerous engagements. He was employed as a parliamentary reporter and as a writer of short plays for the English Opera House. He reviewed books which were published, and revised books which were unpublished. He contributed essays, stories and poetry to the _News of Literature_, the _European Review_, and the _London Magazine_, for the smallest one of which he received more money than for the huge translation of Prevot two years previous. He was now enabled to take more comfortable chambers; but he miscalculated his powers of endurance; when in such a stage of mental anxiety and mental application he would remain up at literary work till he heard the church clocks strike four in the morning. The evil results of this abuse of health soon made themselves manifest. He had lost all appetite for food. His rest was broken by fits of insomnia, during which his heart would beat so loud as to be distinctly heard by his brother in the same room. In the streets he would be suddenly attacked by swooning fits, during which he would have to support himself by leaning on gate posts and sitting on door-steps. At the earnest solicitation of his good brother he set out for Ireland with the hope of recruiting his failing energies by a few months' leave of absence. His vacation was productive of literary as well as of sanitary results.