my own experience of the curious pleasure and satisfaction left by the performance of this unfamiliar actor, who suggested so much more than the rather meagre character itself conveyed. I found myself drawn to see it several times, and still the feeling was always that of some secret undeveloped power in the clever, yet unpretending, performer. Irving can tell a story in the pleasantest “high comedy” manner, and without laying emphasis on points. In May last, being entertained by the “Savages,” he made a most agreeable speech, and related this adventure of his early Bohemian days, in illustration of the truth that “it is always well to have a personal acquaintance with a presiding magistrate.” “I had driven one night from the Albion to some rooms I occupied in old Quebec Street, and after bidding the cabman farewell, I was preparing to seek repose, when there came a knock at the door. Upon opening it I found the cabman, who said that I had given him a bad half-crown. Restraining myself, I told him ‘to be—to begone.’ I shut the door, but in a few moments there came another knock, and with the cabman appeared a policeman, who said, with the grave formality of his office, ‘You are charged with passing a bad half-crown, and must come with me to the police-station.’ I explained that I was a respectable, if unknown, citizen, pursuing a noble, though precarious, calling, and that I could be found in the morning at the address I had given. The policeman was not at all impressed by that, so I jumped into the cab and went to the station, where the charge was entered upon the night-sheet, and I was briefly requested to make myself at home. ‘Do you intend me to spend the night here?’ I said to the inspector. ‘Certainly,’ he said; ‘that is the idea.’ So I asked him to oblige me with a pencil and a piece of paper, which he reluctantly gave me. I addressed a few words to Sir Thomas Henry, who was then presiding magistrate at Bow Street, and with whom I had an intimacy, in an unofficial capacity. The inspector looked at me. ‘Do you know Sir Thomas Henry?’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have that honour.’ The officer suddenly turned round to the policeman and said, ‘What do you mean by bringing such a charge against this gentleman?’ Then he turned fiercely on the cabman, and nearly kicked him out of the office. I returned home triumphantly in the cab. I cannot give a young ‘Savage’ first starting on his career a sounder piece of advice than this—‘Always know your own mind, and also a magistrate.’” We practised _littérateurs_ might well envy the pleasant facility and point with which this is told.