housekeeper, who lived with my grandfather before his marriage, and one other maid-servant, left Lyme in a hack chaise. We were to travel post. But in the general trouble nobody had remembered that some camp was breaking up between Bridport and Dorchester, so that when we reached the latter town we found to our consternation that there was neither room for us at any inn, nor chaise, nor horses to pursue our journey. All that could be done for us, after searching through the place, was a conveyance in a vehicle which was going seven or eight miles our way, and from whence there was a prospect of our getting on in the morning. This machine turned out to be a sort of tilted cart without springs, and the jolting upon the Dorsetshire roads fifty-five years ago was doubtless something sufficiently uncomfortable. The discipline of travel teaches people to think little of temporary inconveniences now-a-days, and doubtless many a fine lady would laugh at such a shift. But it was not as a temporary discomfort that it came upon my poor mother. It was her first touch of poverty. It seemed like a final parting from all the elegances and all the accommodations to which she had been used. I never shall forget her heart-broken look when she took her little girl upon her lap in that jolting caravan (so for the more grace they called the vehicle), nor how the tears stood in her eyes

when we were turned altogether into our miserable bed-room when we reached the road-side alehouse where we were to pass the night, and found ourselves, instead of the tea we so much needed, condemned to sup on stale bread and dirty cheese, as people who arrive in tilted carts have been and will be to the end of the world.

The next day we resumed our journey, and reached a dingy comfortless lodging in one of the suburbs beyond Westminster Bridge. What my father's plans were I do not exactly know; probably to gather together what disposable money still remained after paying all debts from the sale of books, plate and furniture at Lyme, and thence to proceed (backed up by his greatly lessened income) to practise in some distant town. At all events London was the best starting-place, and he could consult his old fellow-pupil and life-long friend, Dr. Babington, then one of the physicians to Guy's Hospital, and refresh his medical studies with experiments and lectures, whilst determining in what place to bestow himself.

In the meanwhile his spirits returned as buoyant as ever, and so, now that fear had changed into certainty, did mine. In the intervals of his professional pursuits he walked about London with his little girl in his hand; and one day (it was my birth-day, and I was ten years old) he took

me into a not very tempting-looking place, which was, as I speedily found, a lottery office. An Irish lottery was upon the point of being drawn, and he desired me to choose one out of several bits of printed paper (I did not then know their significance) that lay upon the counter :

"Choose which number you like best," said the dear papa, "and that shall be your birth-day present."

I immediately selected one, and put it into his hand: No. 2,224.

"Ah," said my father, examining it, "you must choose again. I want to buy a whole ticket; and this is only a quarter. Choose again, my pet." "No, dear papa, I like this one best."

Here is the next number," interposed the lottery office keeper, "No. 2,223."

"No!" returned I, obstinately; "that won't do. This is my birth-day you know, papa, and I am ten years old. Cast up my number, and you'll find that makes ten. The other is only nine."

My father, superstitious like all speculators, struck with my pertinacity, and with the reason I gave, which he liked none the less because the ground of preference was tolerably unreasonable, resisted the attempt of the office keeper to tempt

me by different tickets, and we had nearly left the shop without a purchase, when the clerk, who had been examining different desks and drawers, said to his principal:

"I think, Sir, the matter may be managed if the gentleman does not mind paying a few shillings more. That ticket, 2,224, only came yesterday, and we have still all the shares; one half, one quarter, one eighth, two sixteenths. It will be just the same if the young lady is set upon it."

The young lady was set upon it, and the shares were purchased.

The whole affair was a secret between us, and my father whenever he got me to himself talked over our future twenty thousand pounds—just Alnaschar over his basket of eggs.

like

Meanwhile, time passed on, and one Sunday morning we were all preparing to go to church, when a face that I had forgotten, but my father had not, made its appearance. It was the clerk of the lottery office. An express had just arrived from Dublin, announcing that No. 2,224 had been drawn a prize of twenty thousand pounds, and he had hastened to communicate the good news.

Ah, me! In less than twenty years what was left of the produce of the ticket so strangely chosen? What? except a Wedgwood dinnerservice that my father had had made to comme

morate the event, with the Irish harp within the border on one side, and his family crest on the other! That fragile and perishable ware long outlasted the more perishable money!

And then came long years of toil, and struggle, and anxiety, and jolting over the rough ways of the world, of which the tilted cart of Dorchester offers a feeble type. But it is a subject of intense thankfulness that, although during those long years want often came very close to our door, it never actually entered; and that those far dearer and far better worth than I, were, more than once, saved from its clutches when it seemed nearest by something even more fragile and less durable than Mr. Wedgwood's china or the Irish lottery ticket.

Amongst the consolations and encouragements of those years, I may reckon the partial kindness of the late excellent Mrs. Kenyon, for it is to her fancy for my poor writings that I owe not only her own highly-prized friendship, but the thousand good offices of her accomplished husband.

His poems, full as they are of the largest and most liberal views, of refined taste and of harmonious versification, make but a small part of his reputation. I think he generally intends to publish them, but he does actually disperse them amongst his friends before the public has time to find them out, so that they have the grace, freshness, and rarity