construction; but solely because the situations in which the characters are placed appeal to the hearts of every husband and every wife in the theatre. In this aspect of it, and in this only, the play is a study to any young writer; for it shows on what amazingly simple foundations rest the main conditions of the longest, the surest, and the widest dramatic success. It is sad, it is almost humiliating, to be obliged to add, in reference to the early history of Jerrold's first dramatic triumph, that his share of the gains which Black-Eyed Susan poured into the pockets of managers on both sides of the water was just seventy pounds. Mr. Elliston, whose theatre the play had raised from a state of something like bankruptcy to a condition of prosperity which, in the Surrey annals, has not since been paralleled, not only abstained from presenting Jerrold with the smallest fragment of anything in the shape of a token of gratitude, but actually had the pitiless insolence to say to him, after Black-Eyed Susan had run its three hundred nights, "My dear boy, why don't you get your friends to present you with a bit of plate?"[C] The extraordinary success of Black-Eyed Susan opened the doors of the great theatres to Jerrold, as a matter of course. He made admirable use of the chances in his favour which he had so well deserved, and for which he had waited so long. At the Adelphi, at Drury Lane, and at the Haymarket, drama after drama flowed in quick succession from his pen. The Devil's Ducat, the Bride of Ludgate, the Rent Day, Nell Gwynne, the Housekeeper--this last, the best of his plays in point of construction--date, with many other dramatic works, from the period of his life now under review. The one slight check to his career of prosperity occurred in eighteen hundred and thirty-six, when he and his brother-in-law took the Strand Theatre, and when Jerrold acted a character in one of his own plays. Neither the theatrical speculation nor the theatrical appearance proved to be successful; and he wisely abandoned, from that time, all professional connection with the stage, except in his old and ever-welcome character of dramatist. In the other branches of his art--to which he devoted himself, at this turning-point of his career, as faithfully as he devoted himself to the theatrical branch--his progress was not less remarkable. As journalist and essayist, he rose steadily towards the distinguished place which was his due among the writers of his time. This middle term of his literary exertions produced, among other noticeable results, the series of social studies called Men of Character, originally begun in Blackwood's Magazine, and since republished among his collected works.