ly more than
ample: however, some thirsty souls wanted more wine for the great
occasion, and the complaint found utterance ludicrously thus. When the
National Anthem was sung, some young lawyer who gave the solos, with a
good tenor voice and no end of dry humour, raised a gale of laughter and
applause by singing very devoutly--

"Long to reign over us
_Happy and glorious,_
_Three half-pints 'mong four of us,_
God save the Queen!"

Of course, plenty more bottles were the result,--and the genial Prince
Albert laughed as heartily as the rest of us.

8. Yet another anecdote, in these days of professional mendicancy not
uninstructive. One day when calling on the Rev. Robert Anderson, at
Brighton, a begging visitor came in, calling himself a Polish refugee,
and speaking broken English: Mr. Anderson in his kindness was just about
to open his purse, when I said to both of them, "I happen to know a
little Polish, and wish to ask a few questions:" accordingly, I rapped
out at intervals, with an interrogating air, the opening lines of the
Antigone of Sophocles! on which that "banished lord," stammering out
that he had been out of Poland so many years that he had forgotten the
language, bowed himself from the room as a--discovered, impostor.

9. The recent lamentable fire at Kegan Paul's, wherein so much authorial
wealth was cremated,--and especially no fewer than six of the works of
that clever authoress, Emily Pfeiffer,--reminds me of an irrevocable
loss sustained by "Proverbial Philosophy" owing to Oudinot's capture of
Rome in 1849: for it so happened that the Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna
had, as instructress to his nieces, a lady who afterwards became Mrs.
Robinson of South Kensington Museum: she, a great admirer of the work,
translated my book for them into Italian, and had it printed at Rome,
where unluckily both the whole MS. and the finished sheets were all
burnt in the city's bombardment. I have since asked Mrs. Robinson if she
could possibly reproduce it: but--the occasion passed, there is now
neither time nor need for it, and so my Italian version has no
existence, except possibly as photographed on the "blue ether" whither
Professor Tyndall hopes to go. A similar fatality, we may remember,
affected Sir Isaac Newton through his little dog Diamond: and my friend
in old days, Gilbert Burnett, the botanist, had to rewrite his index, a
heartrending labour, because a careless housemaid lit