, Lacepede, Lamark, were soldiers
in the early part of their respective lives.

In our own country, many men now known by their writings, earned their
living by their trade. Lillo spent the greater part of his life as a
working jeweller in the Poultry; occupying the intervals of his leisure
in the production of dramatic works, some of them of acknowledged power
and merit. Izaak Walton was a linendraper in Fleet Street, reading much
in his leisure hours, and storing his mind with facts for future use in
his capacity of biographer. De Foe was by turns horse-factor, brick and
tile maker, shopkeeper, author, and political agent.

Samuel Richardson successfully combined literature, with business;
writing his novels in his back-shop in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street,
and selling them over the counter in his front-shop. William Hutton, of
Birmingham, also successfully combined the occupations of bookselling
and authorship. He says, in his Autobiography, that a man may live half
a century and not be acquainted with his own character. He did not know
that he was an antiquary until the world informed him of it, from having
read his 'History of Birmingham,' and then, he said, he could see
it himself. Benjamin Franklin was alike eminent as a printer and
bookseller--an author, a philosopher and a statesman.

Coming down to our own time, we find Ebenezer Elliott successfully
carrying on the business of a bar-iron merchant in Sheffield, during
which time he wrote and published the greater number of his poems; and
his success in business was such as to enable him to retire into the
country and build a house of his own, in which he spent the remainder
of his days. Isaac Taylor, the author of the 'Natural History of
Enthusiasm,' was an engraver of patterns for Manchester calico-printers;
and other members of this gifted family were followers of the same
branch of art.

The principal early works of John Stuart Mill were written in the
intervals of official work, while he held the office of principal
examiner in the East India House,--in which Charles Lamb, Peacock the
author of 'Headlong Hall,' and Edwin Norris the philologist, were also
clerks. Macaulay wrote his 'Lays of Ancient Rome' in the War Office,
while holding the post of Secretary of War. It is well known that the
thoughtful writings of Mr. Helps are literally "Essays written in the
Intervals of Business." Many of our best living authors are men holding
important public offic