m various criticisms showing that Lady Carbury's book was
about the greatest historical work which had emanated from the press
in the present century. With this object a passage was extracted even
from the columns of the 'Evening Pulpit,'--which showed very great
ingenuity on the part of some young man connected with the
establishment of Messrs. Leadham and Loiter. Lady Carbury had suffered
something in the struggle. What efforts can mortals make as to which
there will not be some disappointment? Paper and print cannot be had
for nothing, and advertisements are very costly. An edition may be
sold with startling rapidity, but it may have been but a scanty
edition. When Lady Carbury received from Messrs. Leadham and Loiter
their second very moderate cheque, with the expression of a fear on
their part that there would not probably be a third,--unless some
unforeseen demand should arise,--she repeated to herself those
well-known lines from the satirist,--

'Oh, Amos Cottle, for a moment think
What meagre profits spread from pen and ink.'

But not on that account did she for a moment hesitate as to further
attempts. Indeed she had hardly completed the last chapter of her
'Criminal Queens' before she was busy on another work; and although
the last six months had been to her a period of incessant trouble, and
sometimes of torture, though the conduct of her son had more than once
forced her to declare to herself that her mind would fail her, still
she had persevered. From day to day, with all her cares heavy upon
her, she had sat at her work, with a firm resolve that so many lines
should be always forthcoming, let the difficulty of making them be
what it might. Messrs. Leadham and Loiter had thought that they might
be justified in offering her certain terms for a novel,--terms not very
high indeed, and those contingent on the approval of the manuscript by
their reader. The smallness of the sum offered, and the want of
certainty, and the pain of the work in her present circumstances, had
all been felt by her to be very hard. But she had persevered, and the
novel was now complete.

It cannot with truth be said of her that she had had any special tale
to tell. She had taken to the writing of a novel because Mr Loiter had
told her that upon the whole novels did better than anything else. She
would have written a volume of sermons on the same encouragement, and
have gone about the work exactly after the same fashion. The