ibras out of the list of my works, I should
be robbed of my last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothing
about this, but keep it secret, lest some worse thing should happen
to me. Besides, I have a great respect for my namesake, and always
say that if Erewhon had been a racehorse it would have been got by
Hudibras out of Analogy. Someone said this to me many years ago,
and I felt so much flattered that I have been repeating the remark
as my own ever since.

But how small are these grievances as compared with those endured
without a murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving than
myself. When I see the scores and hundreds of workers in the
reading-room who have done so much more than I have, but whose work
is absolutely fruitless to themselves, and when I think of the
prompt recognition obtained by my own work, I ask myself what I have
done to be thus rewarded. On the other hand, the feeling that I
have succeeded far beyond my deserts hitherto, makes it all the
harder for me to acquiesce without complaint in the extinction of a
career which I honestly believe to be a promising one; and once more
I repeat that, unless the Museum authorities give me back my Frost,
or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must be extinguished.
Give me back Frost, and, if life and health are spared, I will write
another dozen of volumes yet before I hang up my fiddle--if so
serious a confusion of metaphors may be pardoned. I know from long
experience how kind and considerate both the late and present
superintendents of the reading-room were and are, but I doubt how
far either of them would be disposed to help me on this occasion;
continue, however, to rob me of my Frost, and, whatever else I may
do, I will write no more books.

Note by Dr. Garnett, British Museum.--The frost has broken up. Mr.
Butler is restored to literature. Mr. Mudie may make himself easy.
England will still boast a humorist; and the late Mr. Darwin (to
whose posthumous machinations the removal of the book was owing)
will continue to be confounded.--R. GARNETT.

Ramblings in Cheapside {110}

Walking the other day in Cheapside I saw some turtles in Mr.
Sweeting's window, and was tempted to stay and look at them. As I
did so I was struck not more by the defences with which they were
hedged about, than by the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in at
all which, if hedged thoroughly, must die of its own defencefulness.
The holes for the h