Hudson Gurney, at one time M.P. for Newport, Isle of Wight, was also a frequenter of the snug club-room of the Hole-in-the-Wall, and used to bask in the sunshine of Sayers’s festive conversation. His own heart, too, at that time beat high with frolic and hilarity. Hudson’s was, from his earliest prime, a clear, distinguishing intellect. He was a well-read man, and his poetry, no fragment of which is in print, except his admirable translation of the Cupid and Psyche of Apuleius into English verse, was by no means of a secondary kind. At this club William Taylor smoked his evening pipe, and lost himself in the cloudier fumes of German metaphysics and German philology. Taylor’s translation of Bürger’s “Leonore,” though apparently now forgotten, was said to be better than the original. While his erudition was unlimited, however, it was principally concerned with books that were not readable by others. His most amusing quality (and it was that which kept an undying grin upon the laughter-loving face of Sayers) was his everlasting love of hypothesis, and it was impossible to withstand the imperturbable gravity with which he put forth his wild German paradoxes. He proved, to the thorough dissatisfaction of those who knew not how to confute him, and to the unspeakable amusement of those who thought it not worth their while—and that, too, by a chemical analysis of colours, and the processes by which animal heat and organic structure affect them—that the first race of mankind was green! Green, he said, was the primal colour of vegetable existence—the first raiment in which Nature leaped into existence; the colour on which the eye loved to repose; and, in the primeval state, the first quality that attracted man to man, and bound him up in the circles of those tender charities and affinities which kept the early societies of the race together. At one time Edinburgh was celebrated for its quaint clubs, one of which was the Soaping Club, the motto of which was, that “Every man should soap his own beard”—that is, “indulge his own humour.” The Lawn-market Club was an association of dram-drinking, gossiping citizens, who met every morning early, and, after proceeding to the post-office to pick up letters and news, adjourned to the public-house to talk and drink. The Edinburgh, a “Viscera” club, flourished till quite a late date; the members of this were pledged to dine off food from the entrails of animals, such as kidneys, liver, and tripe. This club seems to have rather resembled the more modern Haggis Club. There were at one time a number of parochial clubs in London. That of the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, which still exists, and which consists of “Past Overseers,” possesses a unique heirloom, which is at the same time an important chronological record of public events. In 1713 a small fourpenny tobacco-box, bought at Horn Fair, Charlton, Kent, was presented by Mr. Monck, a member of the Society of Past Overseers, to his colleagues.