est point I could to the coffee-room fire. It is to be recollected
that in those days one had but _four_ chances in his favour, against
perhaps forty applicants for the interior of the mail--and he who was
driven in winter, by necessity of time, to the top of a coach in
Liverpool, and from thence to Lad Lane, and found himself in the
coffee-room there unfrozen, might be well contented. So felt I,
then,--and doubly so now, as I think of the dangers of flood, and road,
and neck, which I encountered in a twenty-six hours' journey, exposed to
the "pelting of the pitiless storm,"--for it snowed half the way.

Dinner discussed, and its etceteras having been partaken, in full
consciousness of the comforts which surrounded me, contrasted with the
discomforts, &c. from which I had escaped,--I sank into an agreeable
reverie; and during a vision,--I must not call it a doze,--composed of
port wine and walnuts--the invigorating beams of Wallsend coal--an
occasional fancied jolt of the coach--the three mouthfuls of dinner, by
the name, I had gotten at Oxford--and the escape of my one neck, when,
goose as I was, I presented it where two seemed to be an essential by
the sign of the habitation and the dangers of the gate,--I was aroused
by a crash, something like the noise of the machine which accompanies
the falling of an avalanche or a castle, or some such direful affair at
"Astley's;" and starting up, I thought,--had the coach upset? but, much
to my gratification, found myself a safe "inside." Still came crash
after crash, until I thought it high time to see as well as hear. "What
on earth is the matter?" said I to the first waiter I met, as I
descended from the coffee-room, and got to the door of the "tap," or
room for accommodation of the lower grade of persons frequenting the
establishment. "Oh! sir," said he, "it is two dreadful Irishmen
fighting: one has broken a table on the other's head; the other smashed
a chair." I stopped short, and well do I recollect that the blood
rushed to my face as I turned away; I confess, too, that while
returning to the coffee-room, when the waiter followed and asked, should
he bring tea, I "cockneyfied" my accent as much as possible, in the hope
that he should not know I was an Irishman:--such was my shame for my
country at the moment.

Many minutes, however, had not elapsed until I felt shame another
way--namely, that I should for a moment deny the land which gave me
birth;--and I at once determ