to satiety, not to nausea, on the part of their recipient. To him it is very good and pleasant to think that some familiar words on an old English theme can interest cultivated and thoughtful men. It is doubly pleasant to be convinced that he was not in error when, in the first section of these essays, he alluded to the favour with which William Hogarth had ever been held by the clergy of the Church of England. Yes, I have come into a fine fortune, and the balance at the banker’s is prodigious. But how if the cheque book be lost? if the pen sputter, if the ink turn pale and washy, or thick and muddy? Alnaschar! it is possible to kick over that basket full of vitreous ware. Rash youth of Siamese extraction, it may have pleased your imperial master to present you with a white elephant. Woe! for the tons of rice and sugar that the huge creature consumes, the sweet and fresh young greenstuff for which he unceasingly craves;—and you but a poor day labourer? You must have elephants, must you? Better to have gone about with a white mouse and a hurdy-gurdy: the charitable might have flung you coppers. Shallow, inept, and pretentious, to what a task have you not committed yourself! Thus to me have many sincere friends—mostly anonymous—hinted. These are the wholesome raps on the knuckles a man gets who attempts without being able to accomplish; who inherits, and lacks the capacity to administer. Many a fine fortune is accompanied by as fine a lawsuit—remember the legatee cobbler in _Pickwick_—and dire is the case of the imprudent wight who finds himself some fine morning in contempt, with Aristarchus for a Lord Chancellor! But I have begun a journey. The descent of Avernus is as facile as sliding down a _Montagne Russe_;—_sed revocare gradum_:—no, one mustn’t revoke, nor in the game of life, nor in the game of whist. We will go on, if you please; and I am your very humble servant to command.