doctor and nurses in the way of medicine and regimen, and whose recent sulkiness had apparently been converted into practical irascibility by their efforts to control him.

This increased my anxiety to write to Cuthbert; and I resolved that if no letter arrived from him by the next day's post, and Tom continued to go on unfavourably, I would do the douce violence to my feelings, and transmit a report of existing circumstances under cover to the governess, a designation which appeared to me to be equally applicable as regarded her influence over my brother, or her tutelage of his hopeful favourites. When I got back I found Harriet progressing, as the Americans have it, most delightfully. Mrs. Wells' attentions were unremitting, and my gratitude was proportionably sincere. I mentioned that I expected a friend to breakfast, because, considering all the circumstances of my former acquaintance, connexions, and entanglements with Daly, it did not appear to me particularly desirable that any portion of the Wells family should be of the

party. The information produced the anticipated effect; Mrs. Wells would breakfast in Harriet's room, and I should be left as I desired, tête-à-tête with my extraordinary companion.

Daly was punctual, as I expected: he had acquired the air and manner of a gentleman not at all likely to be too late for any meal to which he might happen to be invited; and I received him with a natural warmth not at all qualified by his change of appearance and station, but greatly mystified by finding him where and what he was, and I dismissed the servants as speedily as possible after the "things" were put down, in order to satisfy my curiosity upon the several most obscure points of his history.

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My dear fellow," said he, in answer to my first question as to the cause of his return from his African office, "I couldn't stand it. On my arrival in the infernal place, I inquired what this building was?-the late Governor's housewhat that building was ?-that was the residence of the late Collector of Customs. They told

me the late Secretary was one of the most agreeable men in the world, and that if I had only arrived before the two Judges, the Colonial Chaplain, and the Deputy Inspector of Hospitals had died, I should have found it an admirably agreeable, and sweetly sociable circle of society.

"Well," said I, "but I suppose as these functionaries died off, others succeeded them?"

"Exactly so,” said Daly; "and by that very course of procedure, I lost my appointment. As things were going, and as the people were gone, I thought I might as well die with decency, like Cæsar, as live lowly; so down I sat myself, and wrote a letter to my patron, petitioning for promotion. No reply. Out comes a new cargo of officers, civil and military; for the climate is so uncertain, or rather so certain, that they generally send out functionaries as they do dispatches, in triplicate—and I not noticed—at them again -made a grievance-complained of injusticetalked of my parliamentary interest in England —and wound up all, by distinctly stating that I

would rather resign my office than continue to be

oppressed."

"What effect had that?" said I.

"Quite the reverse from what I intended,"

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said Daly; "a regular recoil-answer came, sure enough. What d'ye think it was? Two lines from an under-secretary-they had taken me at my word. "Have to acknowledge your letter-date so and so-stating so and so-and am directed by his Lordship to inform you that your resignation has been accepted—and Mr. Mumjummy of Aldermanbury is appointed your successor." Having resigned, no passage was found me home-no pay there so I have returned to my native land-which in itself is something— rather worse than I went, and have been forced to avail myself of my little trickeries which used formerly to delight the fashionable world in order to raise the supplies, and get to London with a few pounds in hand to keep the thing going till I can what we call turn round and look about me."

"And does your scheme answer?" asked I. "Never tried it but twice," said Daly: "last

night second appearance-you saw the resultas to finance, 'a beggarly account of empty boxes'-as to the exhibition 'flat, stale, and unprofitable. The absurdities of an amateur are always rapturously received; but the moment a man is called upon to pay for his pleasures, he becomes critical overmuch; and although he declares himself ready to die with laughing at some gratuitous absurdity in a drawing-room, he would pronounce the same performance, if he had to 'fork out,' as uncommonly dull, and deucedly dear at the money."

"Why then it does not answer?" said I. "It answers," replied Daly, "very much as the under secretary of state did-unfavourably to my views-so I mean to discard the dramatic and take to the literary line. I have already made a bargain with a London bookseller to commence to publish a couple of volumes of

Travels in the Interior of Africa,' which I have written, and of which, to tell you truth, I have brought a specimen in my pocket: these things, they tell me, sell admirably well now; and with