whether this district is within the range of the regular twopenny post. I am, Sir, yours in affliction, JOHN TROT. To John Bull, Esq. THE MARCH OF INTELLECT. It happened on the 31st of March, 1926, that the then Duke and Duchess of Bedford were sitting in their good but old house, No. 17, Liberality-place (the corner of Riego-street), near to where old Hammersmith stood before the great improvements, and, although it was past two o'clock, the breakfast equipage still remained upon the table. It may be necessary to state that the illustrious family in question, having embraced the Roman Catholic faith (which at that period was the established religion of the country), had been allowed to retain their titles and honourable distinctions, although Woburn Abbey had been long before restored to the Church, and was, at the time of which we treat, occupied by a worshipful community of holy friars. The duke's family estates in Old London had been, of course, divided by the Equitable Convention amongst the numerous persons whose distressed situation gave them the strongest claims, and his grace and his family had been for a long time receiving the compensation annuity allotted to his ancestors. "Where is Lady Elizabeth?" said his grace to the duchess. "She is making the beds, duke," replied her grace. "What, again to-day?" said his grace. "Where are Stubbs, Hogsflesh, and Figgins, the females whom, were it not contrary to law, I should call the housemaids?" "They are gone," said her grace, "on a sketching tour with the manciple, Mr. Nicholson, and his nephew." "Why are not these things removed?" said his grace, eyeing the breakfast-table, upon which (the piece of furniture being of oak without covering) stood a huge jar of honey, several saucers of beet-root, a large pot of half cold decoction of sassafrage, and an urn full of bean-juice, the use of cotton, sugar, tea, and coffee, having been utterly abolished by law in the year 1888. "I have rung several times," said the duchess, "and sent Lady Maria up-stairs into the assistants' drawing-room to get some of them to remove the things, but they have kept her, I believe, to sing to them; I know they are very fond of hearing her, and often do so." His grace, whose appetite seemed renewed by the sight of the still lingering viands which graced the board, seemed determined to make the best of a bad bargain, and sat down to commence an attack upon some potted seal and pickled fish from Baffin's Bay and Behring's Straits, which some of their friends who had gone over there to pass the summer (as was the fashion of those times) in the East India steamships (which always touched there) had given them; and having consumed a pretty fair portion of the remnants, his favourite daughter, Lady Maria, made her appearance. "Well, Maria," said his grace, "where have you been all this time?"