Hook was of course In no way implicated in so scandalous and slanderous a publication! On one occasion there appeared among the answers to correspondents a paragraph purporting to be a reply from Mr. Theodore Hook, "disavowing all connection with the paper." The gist of the paragraph was this:--"Two things surprise us in this business: the first, that anything we have thought worthy of giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. Hook's; and secondly, that _such a person as Mr. Hook_ should think himself disgraced by a connection with 'John Bull.'" Even now, at this distance of time, few of the contributors are actually known; among them were undoubtedly John Wilson Croker, and avowedly Haynes Bayly, Barham, and Dr. Maginn. In 1836, when I had resigned the "New Monthly" into the hands of Mr. Hook, he proposed to me to take the sub-editorship and general literary management of the "John Bull." That post I undertook, retaining it for a year. Our "business" was carried on, not at the "John Bull" office, but at Easty's Hotel, in Southampton Street, Strand, in two rooms on the first floor of that tavern. Mr. Hook was never seen at the office; his existence, indeed, was not recognized there. If any one had asked for him by name, the answer would have been that no such person was known. Although at the period of which I write there was no danger to be apprehended from his walking in and out of the small office in Fleet Street, a time had been when it could not have been done without personal peril. Editorial work was therefore conducted with much secrecy, a confidential person communicating between the editor and the printer, who never knew, or rather was assumed not to know, by whom the articles were written. In 1836, some years before, and during the years afterwards, no paragraph was inserted that in the remotest degree assailed private character. Political hatreds and personal hostilities had grown less in vogue, and Hook had lived long enough to be tired of assailing those whom he rather liked and respected. The bitterness of his nature (if it ever existed, which I much doubt) had worn out with years. Undoubtedly much of the brilliant wit of the "John Bull" had evaporated, in losing its distinctive feature. It had lost its power, and as a "property" dwindled to comparative insignificance. Mr. Hook derived but small income from the editorship during the later years of his life. I will believe that higher and more honorable motives than those by which he had been guided during the fierce and turbulent party-times, when the "John Bull" was established, had led him to relinquish scandal, slander, and vituperation, as dishonorable weapons. I know that in my time he did not use them; his advice to me, on more than one occasion, while acting under him, was to remember that "abuse" seldom effectually answered a purpose, and that it was wiser as well as safer to act on the principle that "praise undeserved is satire in