presently one of them will speak, and the whole House will be in a roar at his vinous oratory; out in the Lobby we catch faint echoes of the mirth. The House is in committee on the Cab Act, and are now enacting a clause relative to drunken and disorderly cabmen. Our friend is vehement, inconclusive, and indistinct. Happily the reporters will merely mention that he addressed the House amidst considerable laughter. As we leave the Lobby, we hear hints about “physician, heal thyself.” OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT. Where’s Eliza? Who was the man in the iron mask? Who was Junius? Whose were the bones discovered last year in a carpet-bag under Waterloo-bridge? You cannot tell. Neither can I tell you who is our London Correspondent. Yet he exists. I find traces of him in the most Bœotian districts of England. “Caledonia, stern and wild, Fit nurse for a poetic child,” knows him. In “Tara’s halls” he has superseded the harp, and is a presence and a power. Before newspapers were, when Addison was writing the “Spectator,” and Dick Steele “Tatlers” innumerable, and De Foe his Review and all sorts of romances, in Grub-street there was an immense deal of activity in the way of letter writing. Country gentlemen wanted news, and were willing to pay for it. When there was a frost or when it was wet, when the nights were long or amusements few, when the squire was laid up with the gout or when my lady had the vapours, it was pleasant to read who ate cheesecakes and syllabubs at Spring Gardens, who drank coffee at Button’s or chocolate at the Cocoa Tree, what was the gossip of the October or Kit Kat clubs, what had become of Mrs. Bracegirdle, and how Mrs. Oldfield triumphed on the stage. Nor did the letter-writer stop here. In those days courtiers had two faces. There was one King _de facto_, and another _de jure divino_. There was a Court at St. Germains as well as at St. James’s. There were Jacobites as well as Hanoverians. There were plots and intrigues—Popish and Protestant—and in the dark days before Christmas, in old country houses, letters full of all the rumours thus created were welcomed. But the age made progress. Newspapers were established in all the leading towns of the country, and the need of the letter-writer vanished, but only for a while. In his desire to cater for the public, and to outbid his competitors, the country newspaper revived the London correspondent, but on an extended scale. Now scarce a country newspaper exists that does not avail itself of his services.