that he fell into delirium, and in an unwatched moment he sprang from his bed, cut his throat, and expired almost instantly. Nowadays briefless barristers utilize their legal knowledge as financiers and company promoters; before those two honest pursuits had been invented they had to turn their attention to other specs. Thus Francis Forcer the younger, the son of Francis Forcer, a musician, had received a liberal education, and, on leaving Oxford, entered Gray’s Inn, and was afterwards called to the Bar, where he practised for a short time. He was very gentlemanly in his manners, and in person remarkably tall and athletic. In 1735, having been disturbed by legal interference, or some other cause, he petitioned Parliament for a license for Sadler’s Wells, which application, we are told, was rejected at first, but in the end it must have been granted, for we are informed that he was the first who exhibited there the diversions of rope-dancing and tumbling, and performances on the slack wire. It is doubtful whether the speculation paid, for at the time of his death (he died in 1743) he directed by his will that the lease of the premises, together with the scenery, implements, stock, furniture, household stuff and things thereunto belonging, should be sold for the purpose of paying his debts, which direction was carried out soon after his decease. This seems as if the refreshment bar, for which Mr. Forcer had left the legal Bar, had not proved very remunerative; perhaps he had better have stuck to the litigation oyster, than to the native he dispensed at Sadler’s Wells. *XVIII.* *THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS.* The last two centuries were very prolific in the production of clubs, founded to gratify rational purposes or fanciful whims. In those days, as soon as a set of men found themselves agree in any particular, though ever so trivial, they immediately formed themselves into a fraternity called a club. The Apollo Club, which held its meetings at the Devil tavern in Fleet Street, comprised all the wits of Ben Jonson’s day; the Cauliflower in Butcher Hall Lane was the sober symposium of Paternoster Row booksellers. Humdrum clubs were composed of peaceable nobodies, who used to meet at taverns, sit and smoke and say nothing. A few of these latter clubs survive. But Addison, who knew something of the club life of his day, said: ’All celebrated clubs were founded on eating and drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon can all of them bear a part.’ Just so, though not every club would acknowledge it; but the Beefsteakers boldly proclaimed their object in the name they assumed; theirs was the worship of beef-steaks.