pots, out of the cans, out of the pails. Beer,
beer everywhere, not only to drink but to stand
in, sit in, swim in, if any one had been so
inclined. Beer, too, was going on outside. The
hilarity was becoming fast and furious. Mr.
Brown was delighted. He put himself in the
position of a host giving an al fresco nocturnal
fête. He was glad to see everybody; anxious
to make everybody happy. Music was suggested.
Mr. Brown procured a boy with a tin whistle.
The tin whistle being voted weak and inadequate
to the occasion, Mr. Brown sent to some
neighbouring depôt of music and secured the services
of a band, consisting of a cornet-à-piston, a
trombone, and a drum. Beer having been
administered to the band, it was hoisted up on to
the roof of the gate, from which elevated
position it played many favourite selections, while the
mob below danced a sort of Carmagnole round
the toll-house. A stranger coming up at that
moment would have found it difficult to say, in
view of the buckets of beer which still
continued to be carried across, whether the
occasion were a fire; or, in view of the wild
revolutionary dance, whether the toll-house were a
sort of Bastille, and the people were taking it
by assault! Every vehicle that arrived was
immediately surrounded by the mob, who seemed
to derive some sort of savage satisfaction from
seeing the last tolls paid. Wild shouts hailed
the surrender of every twopence, as if (taking
the revolutionary view of the matter) the coins
were the heads of tyrants falling under the
stroke of the guillotine. Heavily laden
omnibuses dashed through the crowd in triumph,
the drivers flourishing their whips, the occupants
of the knife-board standing up and waving hats
and handkerchiefs, while the conductors, with
that politeness which distinguishes them, took
sights at Mr. Brown, and shouted "Ya-ah!" at
him as if he had been a wild beast having his
teeth filed and his claws cut.

Time advances. Beer is hoisted up to the
band in a bucket, and in a moment of
impatient waiting for music, when all eyes are
directed to the elevated orchestra, the trombone
is seen upon all fours drinking like a horse.
Inside the house Mr. Brown's friends, too
numerous for the limited accommodation, are
beginning to drop and drag themselves among
the beer, suggesting bluebottles on a sloppy
public-house counter. Considering that before
the close of the proceedings beer actually found
its way through the roof, it was a mercy some
of them were not drowned.

"A quarter to twelve. Hurrah! Ten minutes
to twelve. Hurrah!" A cab comes up with
an unprotected female in it. The cab is
immediately surrounded by the mob, and the
unprotected female turns pale and shrieks. She is
assured that it is not her life that is wanted,
but only her twopence. A hundred hands are
held out for the money, and though it is taken
by strangers, it is immediately handed over to
Mr. Brown. "Five minutes to twelve! Only
five minutes more, Brown; suppose we burn
the gate, and finish up with a bonfire!" Mr.
Brown is so good humoured, and so thoroughly
enjoying his " breaking-up," that I really believe
he would have made no objection to this
proposition if it could have been carried into
execution without immolating his friends. I doubt,
however, if the toll-house in its then saturated
state would have burned readily.

"One minute to twelve. Hurrah! hurrah!!
hurrah!!!" A tremendous shout this time;
the band, with a dim apprehension of the nature
of the occasion, fatuously playing the Death of
Nelson. A cab appears with another
unprotected female, who, amid frantic acclamations,
pays the last toll. "Twelve!" The protection
and countenance of the law being withdrawn
from the toll-house, crash goes a shower of
Macadam through its windows. Happily Mr.
Brown's friends are all prostrate, and the
consequences are not tragic. Another shout, to
which Mr. Brown responds by taking off and
waving his white apron. And all is over.

Passing along a day or two after, I found
nothing to mark the spot where the gate had
stood but a little blue patch of Macadam, under
which one might have supposed the toll-house to
be buried. I hear, however, that the gate is
not dead yet; that it has had another shove;
and that, while being dragged bodily up the
Euston-road by two horses, for whose strength
and spirits it was a great deal too much, it was
given into custody by a member of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

AN AMAZONIAN NATURALIST.

THIS does not mean the fly catching of one of
those hybrid beings, neither man nor woman,
whom it is the custom to call Amazons, but
the adventurers of Mr. Walter Henry Bates on
the borders of the river Amazon, where he
lived for nine years, hunting for all manner of
creatures, " with a view towards solving the
problem of the origin of the species" as his final
and philosophic aim; but with, what is more to
our purpose, the practical result of a very
charming book, full of pleasant details relating
to the " eight thousand species new to science,"
which he introduced to the European world
among the fourteen thousand seven hundred and
twelve that made the sum of his discoveries.

It was a pleasant life that he led, if at times
a dreary, rambling through the virgin forests
where the long lines of trailing parasites swung
to and fro, as heavy-bodied toucans and pretty
little marmoset monkeys sprang nimbly from
bough to bough, where the hot moist air came
upon his face like the air of an English stove-
house, and where the days were loud, and the
nights tumultuous, with the roar of animal life
peopling the human solitude; and many were
the strange and beautiful things he saw. And
first what struck him was, that in South
America everything climbs. The trees climb,
and so become parasites, when elsewhere they
are independent and self-supporting; and not
only one special kind of tree, but all kinds, even