th to two hundred and fifty a year. Himself a small and
slow person, he had every reason to be satisfied with this progress, and
hoped for no further advance. He was of eminently sober mind, profoundly
conscientious, and quite devoid of social ambition,--points of character
which explained the long intimacy between him and Stephen Lord. Yet one
habit he possessed which foreshadowed the intellectual composition of
his son,--he loved to write letters to the newspapers. At very long
intervals one of these communications achieved the honour of type, and
then Mr Barmby was radiant with modest self-approval. He never signed
such letters with his own name, but chose a pseudonym befitting the
subject. Thus, if moved to civic indignation by pieces of orange-peel on
the pavement, he styled himself 'Urban Rambler;' if anxious to protest
against the overcrowding of 'bus or railway-carriage, his signature was
'Otium cum Dignitate.' When he took a holiday at the seaside, unwonted
leisure and novel circumstances prompted him to address local editors at
considerable length. The preservation of decency by bathers was then
his favourite topic, and he would sign 'Pudor,' or perchance
'Paterfamilias.' His public epistles, if collected, would have made an
entertaining and instructive volume, so admirably did they represent
one phase of the popular mind. 'No, sir,'--this sentence frequently
occurred,--'it was not thus that our fathers achieved national and civic
greatness.' And again: 'All the feelings of an English parent revolt,'
&c. Or: 'And now, sir, where is this to end?'--a phrase applied at one
moment to the prospects of religion and morality, at another to the
multiplication of muffin-bells.

On a Sunday afternoon, Mr. Barmby often read aloud to his daughters, and
in general his chosen book was 'Paradise Lost.' These performances had
an indescribable solemnity, but it unfortunately happened that, as his
fervour increased, the reader became regardless of aspirates. Thus, at
the culmination of Satanic impiety, he would give forth with shaking
voice--

'_Ail, orrors, ail! and thou profoundest Ell, Receive thy new
possessor!'_

This, though it did not distress the girls, was painful to Samuel
Bennett, who had given no little care to the correction of similar
lapses in his own speech.

Samuel conceived himself much ahead of his family. Quite uneducated, in
any legitimate sense of the word, he had yet learnt that such a thing as
educa