with samples of the new gum for sale; the
reply which he received from drysalters and
the managers of print-works, was either that
they would have nothing to do with his
samples, or an admonition to go home for the
present, and return when he was sober. His
fellow-workmen, hearing of his non-success
and fearing the escape of the secret, sent
another of their number to his aid with more
money. The two had no better success than
the one. The remaining four, after a time,
left their work at Dublin, and joined the two
in Manchester. They now tried to sell their
secret. Before this was effected, one died;
two were imprisoned for a share in some
drunken riots; and all were in extreme
poverty. What the price paid for the secret
was, is not likely to be revealed now. Part of
it was spent in a passage to New Orleans,
where it is supposed the discoverers of British
gum did not long survive their arrival.

The secret was not at first worked with
success. It passed from its original Lancashire
possessor to a gentleman who succeeded in
making the article of a sufficiently good
quality; and at so low a price that it found a
ready introduction in the print-works. But
he could not produce it in large quantity
without employing assistants, whom he feared
to trust with a knowledge of a manufacture
so simple and so profitable. In employing
men to assist in some parts of the work, and
shutting them out from others, their curiosity,
or jealousy, could not be restrained. On one
or two occasions they caused the officers of
Excise to break in upon him when he was
burning his starch, under the allegation that
he was engaged in illicit practices. His
manufactory was broken into in the night by
burglars, who only wanted to rob him of
his secret. Once the place was maliciously
burned down. Other difficulties, far too
numerous for present detail, were encountered.
Still, he produced the British gum in sufficient
quantities for it to yield him a liberal income.
At last, in a week of sickness, he was pressed
by the head of a well-known firm of calico-
printers for a supply. He got out of bed;
went to his laboratory; had the fire kindled;
put on his vessel of plate-iron; calcined his
starch, added the water, observed the
temperature; and all the while held conversation
with his keen-eyed customer, whom he
had unsuspectingly allowed to be present.
It is enough to say that this acute calico-
printer never required any more British gum
of the convalescent's making. Gradually the
secret spread, although the original purchaser
of it still retained a share of the manufacture.

When penny postage came into operation,
it was at first doubtful whether adhesive
labels could be made sufficiently good and
low-priced, which would not have been the
case with gum-arabic. British gum solved
the difficulty; and the manufacturer made a
contract with Messrs. Perkins, Bacon, and
Heath, to supply it for the labels. In the
second year of his contract, a rumour (alluded
to in our article on Queen's Heads) was
spread, that the adhesive matter on the postage
stamps was a deleterious substance, made of the
refuse of fish, and other disgusting materials.
The great British gum secret was then spread
far and wide. The public was extensively
informed that the postage-label poison was
made simply of—potatoes.

CHIPS.
PRIVILEGES OF THE FRENCH NOBILITY.

A RECENT decree of the President of the
French Republic has restored their titles to
the nobility of France; but, judging from the
lion's share of power which the Restorer has
taken for himself, it does not seem likely that
the privileges enjoyed by that once highly
favoured class are likely to be superadded,
by way of making the titles of any real
value. So much the better; for it must be
confessed that those privileges were, according
to all reasonable notions of liberty,
tyrannically excessive both in number and degree.
Happening to fall in with an unpublished
document (copied about five years since from
the "Archives du Royaume") bearing upon
the subject of "privileged nobility," we
thought we might as well add this mite of
information to the general stock.

It was not simply in the affairs of this
world that privilege was claimed by and
conceded to those of royal or noble lineage:
their "great greatness"—as Jonathan Wild
would have called it—could only be satisfied
by spiritual as well as by temporal advantages.
An amusing instance of the liberal view
which the higher classes in France were in
the habit of taking of the excesses of their
royal masters, is given in the following
anecdote related in the Mémoires de Dangeau.

On the 27th of September, 1693, Prince
Philip, one of the "hopes" of France,
suddenly departed this life, after having
diversified his career by every vice that could
deform it. A knot of courtiers were moralising
on the event in one of the ante-chambers
of Versailles, and expressing their doubts of
His Royal Highness's fitness for the celestial
spheres, when they were interrupted by
Madame la Maréchale de la Mailleraye, who,
with an air of profound conviction, observed,
with no wilful intention to utter blasphemy—
"I assure you God thinks twice before he
condemns persons of the Prince's quality."

These royal personages were also prepared
for Heaven after a fashion of their own. In
taking the Sacrament the Princes and the
Princesses of the blood did not communicate
with the common wafer such as the people
swallowed, but had a kind manufactured for
themselves; and the Memoirs above cited
tell us that the Dauphine was once "put to
much inconvenience "by having to wait, the
priest who officiated having forgotten to