Macaulay cleared a fine sum by his History, and so did the publishers. During the nine years, ending with the 25th of June, 1857, Messrs. Longman disposed of 30,978 copies of the first volume of the History; 50,783 copies during the nine years ending with June, 1866; and 52,392 copies during the nine years ending with June, 1875. Within a generation of its first appearance, upwards of 150,000 copies of the History will have been printed and sold in the United Kingdom alone. It is to be questioned, when her life comes to be written, whether any author has been more successful, in a pecuniary point of new, than Miss Braddon, whose “Lady Audley’s Secret” at once placed her on the pinnacle of fame and fortune, and yet she began the world as a ballet-girl. Few Irishmen, in a literary and political point of view, did better than the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker. In his “Memoirs,” Charles Mayne Young thus speaks of his rise and progress:— “I suspect few people now alive are aware of the commencement of Croker’s career in London. Horace Smith, James’s brother, and one of the joint authors of ‘Rejected Addresses,’ told me that he, his brother, and Cumberland, formed the staff of the _Morning Post_ when Colonel Mellish was its sole proprietor. On a certain quarter-day, when he was in the habit of meeting them at the office and paying them their salary, he took occasion to pass them unqualified commendation for the great ability they had brought to bear upon his journal. He assured them that the circulation of the paper had quadrupled since their connection with it; ‘but—but—that he was, nevertheless, under the necessity of dispensing with their pens for the future.’ The two Smiths were so utterly unprepared for such a declaration, that they were tongue-tied. Not so the testy Cumberland, who took care to make himself as clearly understood as if he had been the veritable Sir Fretful Plagiary. “‘What,’ he asked his employer, ‘the d—l do you mean? In the same breath in which you laud your servants to the skies, and express your sense of obligation to them, you discharge them oven without the usual month’s warning!’ “Mellish, quite unmoved, replied—‘You must know, good sirs, that I care for my paper, not for its principles, but as an investment; and it stands to reason, that the heavier my outgoings, the less my profits. I do, as I have said, value your merits highly; but not as highly as you charge me for them. Now, in future, I can command the services of one man, who will do the work of three for the wage of one.’ “‘The deuce you can,’ said Cumberland. ‘He must be a phœnix. Where, pray, may this omniscient genius be met with?’ “‘In the next room! I will send him to you.’ “As he left, a young man entered, with a well-developed skull, a searching eye, and a dauntless address.