since those later days when keen satirists described Mr. Curll's authors in such fashion as the following: 'At the Bedstead and Bolster, a musick-house in Moorfields, two translators in a bed together.' Two translators would scarcely sleep amicably in one bed, since the battle of the English hexameter began. How would Mr. Ichabod Wright get on with Mr. Matthew Arnold?

Mr. Campkin's monograph on Grub Streetnow absurdly called Milton Street is very interesting. I could wish that competent archæologists would do more in this way. London is full of minor histories which are rapidly dropping into oblivion. I have drunk port at the Chapter Coffee House, the favourite haunt of Tom Ingoldsby. I have known Peele's when it was the rendezvous of quidnunes and gossips. There was a curious old gentleman at Peele's about twenty years ago. He slept in Essex Street; he came in at nine to breakfast on fish (preferably shellfish) and a bottle of sparkling hock; he spent the day in the reading-room of the British Museum, a

very close, uncomfortable place in those times: he returned to dine at six on rump-steak and a bottle of port-they had capital port there in 1848; and at ten, or thereabout, after smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of some spirituous mixture, he toddled off to his solitary Essex Street chamber. This he had done for years beyond the recollection of landlord and waiters-indeed the former assured me that when he took the place he paid for him in the goodwill! I wonder whether the old gentleman lived to see his favourite haunt metamorphosed-and if so, how it affected him.

Aug. 26.

Ladybirds (place aux dames!) and the

British Association have been the chief excitement of the past week. The B.A. have been doing their itinerant science at Exeterand I confess I should like to have been with them. Not to hear their papers; for of a truth they seem to me to write very learnedly about questions which every sensible man has settled quietly in his own mind. But I like Exeter I like all Devon, indeed.

And

Devon's metropolis is really a charming city. Hence, if I wanted a scientific picnic, I know few places more pleasant than Exeter at which to enjoy it—the cathedral, the river, the Devonshire cream, the Devonshire maidens, the divine sea-margin within a few miles, combine to produce the perfection of delight. Concerning the actual doings of the Association I know little; but there is a gentleman who has been recording them en amateur in the Globe, to whose pugillaria I can conscientiously refer any inquisitive reader. He tells excellent well the story of how Sir John Lubbock's paper, designed to prove that men are monkeys improved, received curious comment.

A brilliant thought,' he writes, occurred to the sympathising president of the section. Ex-Governor Sir George Grey was in the room. What might the pacificator of the Caffres and the Maories think of his old acquaintance? The veteran did not care to speak, but gallantly mounted the platform on a second call, and soon made it plain that his captors had got hold of a Tartar. He spoke

with the more hesitation, he said, as he hardly knew in what civilisation or savagery consisted. Since he had lived in London, under the walls of the Queen's palace, he had heard brutal words, and marked deeds done, such as no foreign barbarian could equal. He knew that by the side of all the polish of ancient Rome flourished the abomination of gladiatorial sports. He had never seen a people pure or gentle, or truthful, except so far as religious principles were known and valued among them. He judged, therefore, that faith in a Supreme Maker and Governor, not mere superficial refinement, was the real test of civilisation.' I fear the Darwinites and Lubbockites did not particularly like this bit of præ-scientific commentary; but it is just as well that the voice of common sense should now and then be heard in the halls of science. To turn to the ladybirds whose true name is the harvest-bug. The pretty little. insects came across Channel in miraculous multitudes on the shores of Kent and Sussex : I am told by eye-witnesses that in many of

the hop-gardens the bine is scarcely visible for the swarms of them which are devouring the aphides. I can bear witness that, a hundred miles from the sea, these insects are doing excellent work in the destruction of various forms of blight; and that the flowers in a myriad parterres are blooming delightfully, because this invading army has destroyed insects more noxious. However, there seem to be people to whom ladybirds are an intolerable nuisance. Here is an example, taken from a patrician periodical :- We will just mention where insects are getting extremely troublesome. We allude to the row of trees destined at some distant day to o'ershadow the Thames Embankment. These diminutive specimens of our native timber have been of late literally covered with ladybirds, many of which keep constantly alighting on passers-by, much to their annoyance and disgust. These little insects may be all very well when employed in cleansing the hop-bines of Kent from aphides, but they are decidedly out of place in London.' No doubt we wonder that