crowd, and from the exclamations I overheard
I perceived I had before me the great
Mr. Slockum.

"I may, perhaps, have recourse to the law
afterwards," I said; "but in the meantime
I'll show that inhospitable fool, Mr. Smith,
that he has no right to shut his door in the
face of a respectable man, who can pay for
his entertainment. Where is the landlord?"
A very small, dark-haired individual, dressed
in black, and rejoicing in a stiff white neck-
cloth, here stepped timidly forward, and said,
"I am Mr. Smith." To look at the man, you
would have thought him a curate after Dr.
Pewsey's own heart, for his collar was very low,
and his neck very strongly enveloped in white
cambric; his hair also was demurely parted on
the top of his left temple, projecting a long
deciduous lock over his right eye; altogether
it was difficult to make out whether he was
one of the Neo-Anglican clergy, or a waiter
dressed for duty at the London Tavern.

"Oh, you're Mr. Smith," I said; "and
what do you mean, sir, by pretending to keep
an hotel and refusing admittance to any one
who chooses to come in?" Before Mr. Smith
had time to answer, a fat, strong-looking man
laid his hand on the landlord's shoulder.

"Let me answer him, Smith," he said.
"I'm sure, sir," he continued, addressing
me, " you will at once pardon poor Smith's
oversight in having locked his door, if you
take any interest in the progress of
knowledge or the triumph of eloquence and wisdom.
Our learned friend, Mr. Slockum, was in the
middle of a fascinating lecture at the time
you made your appearance; and I confess we
were all so carried away by his oratory that
we were very ill-pleased at the interruption.
If you will kindly forgive the rudeness of
your first reception, I feel sure you will
be highly gratified if we can prevail on
Mr. Slockum to resume his discourse. He is
great—immensely great"—added the gentleman
in a lower key—"and you will be
delighted, I am sure."

"I had heard Mr. Slockum's name before,"
I answered, "from my friend, Miss Gawker."

"A friend of Miss Gawker"— cried the
assemblage unanimously— "of the great
Arabella. Do pray come into the Hall of
Eloquence." And in the friendliest manner
possible I was admitted to the lecture; and
my new friend, the stout man, who had acted
as champion for Mr. Smith, conducted me to
a chair in the front rank of the audience.

"I take a deep interest in the prosperity of
the hotel," he continued, while Mr. Slockum
mounted the rostrum, "and, indeed, of the
whole estate. I am proprietor of it. Ignatius
Queeker."

This, then, was the chief of the family—of
the great family of the Queekers, furnishing
the heraldic emblems to the sign-board of
the Queeker Arms! I sat silently down, and
the lecture recommenced. I was rather
curious to hear how the author would proceed,
for I remembered that he had taken several
years to write two lines of an epigram, and of
course I gave him credit for having devoted
a long time to the composition of his present
essay. In this I was not far mistaken, for
before he had proceeded a page, I discovered
he was lecturing in the future tense on the
probable effect of a Reform in Parliament, as
proposed by Lord Grey and Lord John
Russell. The picture he drew of the results
of that measure made my hair stand on end.
Five years would not elapse before the
guillotine would be in full play in the middle
of Fleet Street. He gave a description of the
heroic death of an imaginary Lord Mayor,
which made several of us burst into tears.
Then the description he gave of the
degradation of the Commons was most appalling.
Instead of the honourable ambition which now
prompted the pure and lofty to bestow their
hundreds and thousands in support of poor
voters, in order, by their disinterested assistance,
to obtain a seat in the great council of
the nation, he foresaw a time when election
contests would be at an end; when the only
struggle would be to avoid being chosen as
representative of county or borough; when the
only expense entailed on the elected would be
—as in the ever estimable militia ballot—the
payment of a substitute. "Gatton and
Sarum," he said, "are still the twin stars
that guide the weary mariners on their voyage
of patriotism and honour. Extinguish Castor,
extinguish Pollux, what will be left to direct
the steersman's way? The smoke of a thousand
factories in Manchester and Birmingham
will blacken with pestiferous pall the heaven
in which Pitt read the signs of the times.
Life and dignity will equally expire. A headless
monarch will sit on a legless throne; and
the monster Reform will insultingly blow the
trumpet—or, like Nero, play the fiddle—
among the ruins which it made."

This peroration was nearly drowned in
the shout with which it was received. When
the raptures that filled us had subsided, he
announced that in a few years he hoped to
deliver a lecture on the proofs, from internal
evidences, that Walter Scott wrote the
Waverly Novels. We were all enchanted
with the prospect of future enjoyment; and
I began to think I had got embarked by some
means on what Alfred Tennyson would call
"the backward flowing flood of time," and
that the Butts was a quiet village still situated
on the shores of 1820—but the audience were
all in the dress of 1852, and the railway was
within six miles.

Sitting within two or three of me were two
remarkably pretty girls, the only faces, indeed,
in the room that did not seem of the same
pre-Adamite date with the lecture. They
laughed behind their handkerchiefs till I
thought they would offend the dignity of the
assemblage, but, somehow, when they caught
my eye, their mirth was greatly increased.
Whether it was from sympathy with my