with Captain Macheath and Cornet O’Gibbet, and Duvalising travellers,—of course confining himself to those who were of the Hanoverian way of thinking. Not the first honest man who has turned highwayman: besides, was it not for the greater glory of Church and King? When the club had its next meeting, it might be in ’16 or in ’46 (for the century was quite gray-headed before the Jacobite clubs quite died out), there would be a lamentable hiatus here and there in the list of members. Where was Sir William Flowerdeluce?—Shot at Sheriffmuir. Where Colonel Belmain?—Hanged at Carlisle. Where young Christopher Layer, the barrister, gallant, devoted, enthusiastic?—His head was rotting on a spike, over Temple Bar, within sight of his old chambers. Where Jemmy Dawson, the pride, the pet, the pearl of the Jacobites, the dashing swordsman of Townley’s ill-fated Manchester Regiment?—Go ask the judge and jury, go ask the hangman, go ask the veiled lady in the black coach, who follows the fatal hurdle to Kennington Common, and sits out the hideous drama, and when she sees the heart of him she loves cast into the flames, and his fair limbs dismembered by the executioner, swoons and dies. I have been reading a little old book, bearing the date of 1725, which professes to give a “Complete Account” of the principal clubs of London and Westminster. Its authorship is anonymous; yet I think I can discern traces of a certain fine Roman hand, well-known to me, in its composition, and I don’t think I am in error in ascribing it to Mr. Ned Ward, the scurrilous though amusing author of the “London Spy.” Its contents must be taken, of course, _cum grano salis_, with the other lucubrations of that diverting vagabond; yet I am ready to believe that many of his clubs were then existent. Some of them, indeed, have come down to our own times. According to the writer of the “Complete Account,” there was the “Virtuous Club,” established as a succursal to the Royal Society (which, indeed, was little more than a club at its commencement), at the Golden Fleece, a tavern in Cornhill, whence they moved to the Three Tuns, in Southwark: a queer locality, indeed, for the white-neckclothed savants, who now have their habitat in Burlington House. The chronicler treats them somewhat contemptuously, as collectors of “pickled maggots and mummies’ toenails,” and seems considerably to prefer the “Surly Club,” held at some out-of-the-way place near Billingsgate Dock, whose members had “a stoker to attend their fire”—I did not know the appellation “stoker” was so old—a skinker to ignify their pipes, and a chalk accountant to keep a trencher register of the club reckoning, lest the landlord below should be tempted to augment the scot by means of a double-notched chalk. The principal feature of the “Surly Club” appeared to lie in the members being all surly, ill-tempered, wrangling chuffs, who were bound to abuse each other and the world generally, at their every time of meeting. I believe that