yet, the gist of the alleged libel is contained in the word 'orgie.' The learned counsel for the prosecution said that he had looked into a dictionary for a definition of the word, and had found orgie' to mean 'a drunken revelry carried on by night.' I don't know what the learned gentleman's lexicographical authority may have been, but as a matter of fact there is no such word as orgie' in the English language, any more than there is such a word as 'wage,' the singular of a plural noun wages,' the latter being itself a noun singular. Orgies' is in our language a noun plural without singular, taken direct from the French form of the Greek pya, also a plural noun without singular, and there is no idea of by night' contained in the word at all. A curious question thereupon arises whether it be possible to libel a man by using in reference to him a word which does not exist in the English language, or further whether a charge of libel can be sustained upon a definition of the word for which there is clearly no etymological warrant whatever. I commend this point to the attention of the counsel for the defence (the case is a theatrical one) as an ingenious argument in support of his view of the alleged libel. Journalists have a slovenly habit of putting lax interpretations upon words, and perhaps it is only right that they should suffer sometimes for their laxity; but if the dictionary is to be brought into court as a witness its evidence should surely be governed by the strictest rules of the science of grammar and language. Otherwise, if every man is to give his own definition of the meaning of words, which of us literary crafty

men, however innocent his intent, is safe from an accusation of libel?

On what principle, I wonder, do juries assess damages for injuries received in railway accidents ? Here was a successful London physician crippled not long since in a collision; his health is irretrievably gone, his nerves are shattered beyond repair, his existence can for the future be little more than a living death prolonged indefinitely. He is only forty-seven years of age; his average income for the last four years has been 6400l. per annum, and the jury award him 16,000l. The newspapers speak of this sum as 'extraordinarily heavy damages.' I cannot see that. The unfortunate physician has been awarded less than three years' income. Is three years' purchase, so to speak, a fair valuation for the surrender of health, professional prospects, and all that makes life worth living for? Supposing, now, that Charles Dickens had been cruelly mangled in that terrible Staplehurst accident, from which he providentially escaped unhurt, how would a jury have assessed the damages which he would have claimed from the railway company? Would they have thought three years' purchase a just award? I suppose they would; perhaps even less than that. The question is one which deeply concerns all men who are dependent upon their professions for their bread, and though the reflections it invites are somewhat ghastly, I don't think it is out of place to raise them here, seeing how many of those on whom London society depends for its welfare and amusement are in that predicament.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE MORNING TWILIGHT.

MANY years before Mr. Seaton left London, before he had even taken the house in Palace Gardens, very early upon a summer's morning a gentleman was walking towards London, along that great eastern thoroughfare, then called indifferently the Norwich, the Ilford, or the Romford-road, but now generally distinguished by the latter name.

Of the suburbs situated in Essex, the gentleman who was walking towards London had literally no knowledge whatever; indeed his knowledge of most of the metropolitan districts lying outside a certain very narrow radius could not but be considered limited in the extreme. His tastes had not led, neither had circumstances compelled him to wander far afield, and, though many years a resident in London, he was still as ignorant of its less frequented environs—well, as most persons are who live within the bills of mortality.

Had he been aware of the fact, he was passing through a county which, flat and uninteresting though it may be to the outward

VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXVI II.

eye, is yet full of strange associations and historical memories for the man who has intelligently walked through the storehouses of history; but so far in his life this well-dressed individual had devoted his attention more to the present than the past, and, consequently, he was rather less acquainted with the notable events that have occurred in that part of Essex than he was with the wide, flat, treeless road, along which he was hastening.

He had been to a party.

In those days people who were people' still resided in the wide rich country lying east and north-east of the City, so close to the great Babylon, and yet still so far off.

The time was gone by, it is true, when those who helped to make history, whose names will never be forgotten, had their pleasant homes and haunts in neighbourhoods now given over to the demon of smoke and his twin brother, the fiend Vile Odours; but a quarter of a century ago, though the roses themselves might be dead and gone, their scent hung round many a stately mansion and fair broad park, and merchants who stood high in the

H

City, and who were known in lands beyond the sea, lived in those great houses, of which too few now remain, holding themselves aloof from more newlyrisen men in the City, and residing in dignified seclusion near the wide-spreading marshes, which which brought no ague to them; or the 'Flats,' across which the wind howled on the dark winter nights, when it was very bad for ships tossing about the German Ocean; or under the shelter of the forest trees, which they cut and lopped as though Epping belonged to them, when they wanted timber or took a fancy for correcting Nature's over-luxuriance of growth.

Some of those immense mansions still remain to tell of the state once held in them; great houses, that one laments to see, pass away under the auctioneer's hammer and become devoted to uses their builders never dreamed they would be put to.

They are to be met with, or perhaps it would be more correct to say they were to be met with (for the things which were yesterday are often not to-day, in modern London) all round and about the forest-Snaresbrook, Wanstead, Leytonstone, Leyton, Whip's Cross, and Walthamstow, also leaving the wood country and getting down towards the marshes, at Ilford, Barking, West and East Ham, Forest Gate, and Upton.

It was from Upton the gentleman who walked Londonward came- -Upton, then a most lonely little corner of the world, where lived, in some very large houses, some very wealthy people; but now, since West Ham House and grounds have been converted into a people's park, a mere collection of dwellings, run up by contract, with a station hard by, workmen's trains at convenient hours, and

London, like the water and the gas, brought to its very door. Until lately there was no station nearer than Forest Gate, and but few trains stopped there for the benefit of the Uptonians. From Plaistow the Tilbury railway ran through without stop or thought of stop till the train reached Barking; but in those days the lack of railway accommodation was not felt so much as is the case at present. People who were making fortunes had not then forgotten how to walk; people who had made their fortunes liked to drive to their accustomed haunts, and many a man who now lives in one of the fashionable squares or terraces out due west holds in his heart pleasant memories of the morning of life which he spent due east when he was familiar with every glade in Epping Forest, and could have found his way blindfold to the 'preserved water' at Barking.

In Upton, then, not at the Cross but near it, resided a merchant, known to the gentleman who walked westward in the cold gray light of a summer's morning before the break of day, after the fashion in which so many business people in London are known to each other.

They met on 'Change; they exchanged greetings cordially; they had commercial transactions. Number one understood pretty well the amount number two was 'good for,' and number two comprehended that, concerning the financial position of number one, there could be no doubt.'

Much more than this, however, they did not know. The one, it is true, understood that the other was neither an adventurer nor a man risen from the gutter. He was well aware that he had a father living in Lancashire, whom his neighbours respected, and of