arrested her.’ How inimitable it is! And yet Mr. Oscar Browning prefers ‘Daniel Deronda.’ It is a comforting reflection that whether you write well or whether you write ill, you have always an audience. But Mrs. Linnet’s deep-rooted popularity proves how fond we all are of escaping from abstractions and predictions, and seizing hold of the things about which we really feel ourselves entitled to an opinion. Mrs. Linnet would have read a great part of the Report to which I have referred with much interest. It is full of most promising nouns. Mrs. Linnet’s opinion as to a _bonâ-fide_ traveller would be quite as valuable as Lord Balfour of Burleigh’s. But who is a _bonâ-fide_ traveller? He is a person who seeks drink on Sunday during hours when by law public-houses are closed. He has therefore to make out a special case for being supplied with drink. The fact that he is thirsty counts for nothing. Everybody is thirsty on Sunday. His special case is that he is not a resident, but a traveller, and wants refreshment to enable him to go on travelling. But here the law steps in, ‘big-wigged, voluminous-jawed,’ and adds this qualification--that nobody shall be considered a _bonâ-fide_ traveller who is not three miles away from his last bed. An attorney’s clerk of three months’ standing could have foretold what has happened, namely, that everybody who is three miles from home becomes at once and _ipso facto_ a _bonâ fide_ traveller. You rap with your knuckles at the door of the shut inn; it is partially opened, and the cautious publican or his spouse inquires of you where you come from; you name a city of the plain four miles off, and the next moment finds you comfortably seated in the bar-parlour. Falsely to represent yourself as a _bonâ-fide_ traveller is a misdemeanor, but assuming you are three miles away from home, how can such a representation be made falsely? We are all pilgrims in this world. If my sole motive for walking three miles on Sunday is to get a pint of beer at the Griffin, doubtless I am not a _bonâ-fide_ traveler, but if my motive be to get both the walk and the beer, who dare asperse my good faith? Should I have taken the walk but for the beer, or should I have taken the beer but for the walk? are questions far too nice to be made the subject of summary process.