this read like 'England in the nineteenth century,' I wonder? Or need we go to the Alfred Hardys and Mrs. Archbolds of Charles Reade to tell us again that fiction is not so strange as truth? He imagined; I describe. Which is the stronger? When I first broke silence on this communication from the outer world--it was from a club friend, I remember, giving me some account of old literary and dramatic mates, who seemed to have passed into another sphere for me--I was stupidly observing my surroundings from the depths of an old armchair. The 'Dowager Gibbs' was shuffling and chanting up and down the room; the patriarch was puffing at his screw; the man-monkey was howling and gesticulating, and tearing up the 'Illustrated;' the postman was grinding out indecencies, which haunt me, in a harsh strident voice; the good fellow, who is safe in harbour now, was muttering a series of prescriptions of potassium, bromides, and iodides, and other kindred horrors (he had been an eminent man in his time, I heard, and had suddenly broken down--how I hated the warders for their patronage of him!); the lawyer was making notes in a red pocket-book, or stealing from a plate surreptitious gingerbreads, of which he was very fond; and the whole Witches' Sabbath was in full play. The keepers told off to watch us were holding more consecutive, but not more edifying, conversation about horses and bets and races, which appear to absorb their faculties much as they do those of many higher minds, varying it with local gossip and bad language, and much rough horse-play at our crazy expense. I wonder sometimes what effect it might have had upon them, if it had dawned upon them that among their unconscious charges there was a 'chiel amang them takin' notes,' quite involuntary, but photographic in truth at least.