o offend the irascible old gentleman so utterly,
that the latter suddenly withdrew his allowance of L1000 per annum, and
left our friend to shift for himself. His own means, never very great,
were entirely exhausted. He knew too well the impracticable temper of his
father-in-law to waste time in attempting to soften him. He also knew that
by his wife's settlement he should be rich at the death of the old man,
who had already passed his seventieth year. He could not borrow money, for
he had been severely wounded in Syria, and the insurance-offices refused
him: but he felt a spring of life and youth within him that mocked their
calculations. He took things cheerfully, and resolved to work for his
living. He answered unnumbered advertisements, and made incessant
applications for all sorts of situations. At length matters came to a
crisis: his money was nearly gone; time pressed; his wife and child must
be supported. A seat--not in parliament, but on the box of an omnibus, was
offered him. He accepted it. The pay was equivalent to three guineas a
week. It was hard work, but he stuck to it manfully. Not unfrequently it
was his lot to drive gentlemen who had dined at his table, and drunk his
wine in former days. He never blushed at their recognition; he thought
working easier than begging. For nearly ten years he endured all the ups
and downs of omnibus life. At last, the tough old father-in-law, who
during the whole interval had never relented, died; and our hero came into
the possession of some L1500 a year, which he enjoys at this present
moment. Suppose he had borrowed and drawn bills instead of working during
those ten years, as many have done who had expectancies before them, where
would he have been on his exit from the Queen's Bench at the expiration of
the period? In the hands of the Philistines, or of the Jews?

Our next specimen is that of a now successful author, who, owing to the
peculiarity of his style, fell, notwithstanding a rather dashing _debut_,
into great difficulty and distress. His family withdrew all support,
because he abandoned the more regular prospects of the legal profession
for the more ambitious but less certain career of literature. He felt that
he had the stuff in him to make a popular writer; but he was also
compelled to admit that popularity was not in his case to be the work of a
day. The _res angustae domi_ grew closer and closer; and though not
objecting to dispense with the supposed necess