That eminent lawyer, John Duke Coleridge, returned home from a concert on the night of December 4, 1868, to find—as he records in his diary—“Gladstone’s messenger waiting with an offer of the S.G., Collier to be A.G.” The letter of the Prime Minister was written from “11 Carlton House Terrace,” and marked “Most Private.” “I need not spend words,” said Gladstone, “in assuring you that I anticipate great advantage to the new Government from your most valuable aid, and that I look forward with great pleasure to the relations which will, I hope, be established between us.” Coleridge sent the messenger back with a note refusing the post absolutely. He doubted whether, as Solicitor-General, he could serve with satisfaction under the proposed Attorney-General, Sir Robert Collier. “I know well,” he wrote, “that a man who once puts office by puts it by probably for ever; and you will not suppose that I send this answer without regret and a considerable struggle. But I am sure it is my duty to do it.” Next morning Coleridge received another letter inviting him to come to 11 Carlton House Terrace. “So I had to go to him,” Coleridge writes on December 5th. “He was most kind, and urged me to accept.” Two days later he says: “So the deed is done, and I suppose in a few days I shall be Minister.” On Saturday, December 10th, he went down to Windsor, “with a lot of Ministers coming in and going out,” had luncheon, saw the Queen, and was knighted. “I could not help it,” he adds. What chance had his weak human disinclination for office against the working of resistless, inevitable Fate? At a Press Club dinner in London, John Morley related the circumstances in which he received and accepted in 1886 the offer of the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, with a seat in the Cabinet. “It was whilst I was writing a leading article for a certain periodical,” said he, “that I received a letter from an illustrious statesman, who was then forming a Government, offering me a post in his Cabinet.” “Gentlemen,” he added, amid the cheers and the laughter of the company, “so strong in me was the journalistic instinct that, after accepting the illustrious statesman’s offer, I went back and finished that leading article. And I can assure you that neither the grammar nor the style of the latter half of the article fell short of my usual standard.” One of the most humanly interesting books dealing with public life in England is _From a Stonemason’s Bench to the Treasury Bench_, in which Henry Broadhurst tells the story of his career. In 1886 he was Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and a Member of Parliament. One busy day at his office a letter was handed to him by a messenger, and, opening the envelope, he found the following communication: (Secret) 21 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, S.W. _February 5, 1886._ DEAR MR. BROADHURST,