ort
of London, clerk of the council to the Prince of Wales, and secretary
of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor. Hughes was secretary
to the Commissioners of the Peace. Ambrose Phillips was judge of the
Prerogative Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and of
the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior
were employed in embassies of high dignity and importance. Gay, who
commenced life as apprentice to a silk-mercer, became a secretary of
Legation at five-and-twenty. It was to a poem on the death of Charles II.,
and to "the City and Country Mouse," that Montague owed his introduction
into public life, his earldom, his garter, and his auditorship of the
Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice of the queen,
would have been a bishop. Oxford, with his white staff in his hand,
passed through the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that
ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a Commissioner of
Stamps, and a member of Parliament. Arthur Mainwaring was a Commissioner
of the Customs, and Auditor of the Imprest. Tickell was secretary to the
Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison was Secretary of State.

But soon after the succession of the throne of Hanover, a change took
place. The supreme power passed to a man who cared little for poetry
or eloquence. Walpole paid little attention to books, and felt little
respect for authors. One of the coarse jokes of his friend, Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams, was far more pleasing to him than Thomson's _Seasons_
or Richardson's _Pamela_.

* * * * *

LEARNING FRENCH.

When Brummell was obliged by want of money, and debt, and all that, to
retire to France, he knew no French; and having obtained a grammar for
the purpose of study, his friend Scrope Davies was asked what progress
Brummell had made in French. He responded, that Brummell had been
stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the _Elements_.

"I have put this pun into _Beppo_, (says Lord Byron), which is a fair
exchange and no robbery, for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners,
(as he owned himself,) by repeating occasionally, as his own, some of
the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the morning."

* * * * *

JOHNSON'S CLUB-ROOM.

In a paper in the _Edinburgh Review_, we find this cabinet picture:--The
club-room is before us, and the table, on which stands the omelet for
Nuge