monkeys; and nearly universal is the popular belief that the potentate with the tail travels by way of a tunnel passing under the Straits.

Having yet some weeks at my disposal, I crossed from Gibraltar to Oran, in Algeria, my travelling companion being a son of the late Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A., the distinguished Gothic architect. Thence I took a run by rail to Algiers; whence I crossed to Carthagena, in Spain, and so made headway to Marseilles; but we were nine days accomplishing the short voyage, in a succession of positively horrible storms.

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CHAPTER LVI.

ANOTHER EXPEDITION TO RUSSIA.

Death of Shirley Brooks-His Editorship of Punch-Lord Beaconsfield as a Patron of Men of Letters-The Difficulty of Saving on £2,000 a YearDemolition of Temple Bar: Daily Telegraph Victory-The Griffin--To Russia again-The Flower of Russian Society-Denounced as a Turkish Spy-An Ill-tempered Courier and his Peculiarities-The Monotony of Russian Life-The American Minister-The Russian Climate-Adelina Patti and her Chasseur-Odessa.

I SHOULD have said, some pages back, that on the day when the Claimant was sentenced to his double dose of penal servitude, took place the funeral of my old friend, Charles Shirley Brooks-he dropped his first surname in signing his letters; and was always known among his friends as "Shirley." He was the third editor of Punch: having succeeded Tom Taylor in that prominent, if somewhat invidious, position. He was verging on his sixtieth year when he was with apparent suddenness snatched from a host of attached friends.

He

Shirley Brooks had not been a member of the original staff of Punch: in fact, for a considerable time he was a militant member of the opposite camp. had always been on friendly terms with Thackeray and with A'Beckett; but he had some kind of grudge against Douglas Jerrold, who returned the inimical feeling with interest. Shirley, I think, was bred to the law, whence he drifted into literature and

journalism. So early as 1845, he was writing short humorous stories in Bentley's Miscellany, and in 1847 I first made his acquaintance, as I have already set forth, in connection with The Man in the Moon, to which he was a copious and welcome contributor.

He was also one of the staff of the Morning Chronicle; and when Henry Mayhew suggested that his great work on "London Labour and the London Poor" should be extended by cognate researches into the conditions of labour and poverty in continental countries, Shirley Brooks was despatched on a mission of inquiry in the provinces of European Russia. Some of his observations, full of brilliant description and witty comment, were embodied in an entertaining book called "The Russians of the South." On his return he was appointed to write, during the session, the Parliamentary summary in the Morning Chronicle, and eventually made up his quarrel with Punch, or rather with one or two of the Punchites, and contributed to the pages of that periodical-in which in the course of fifty years not one unseemly word or impure thought has found a place—a vivacious tale of modern life, called Miss Violet and Her Offers." He was also the author of a novel, not published in Punch, but in three-volume form, called "The Silver Cord," which was illustrated by Sir John Tenniel.

As an editor of Punch, Shirley Brooks was perhaps not quite so diplomatically opportune as Mark Lemon, but he was a much more brilliant man at the helm in

Whitefriars than Tom Taylor had been. Tom Taylor was a ripe, classical scholar, and an admirable playwright; he was essentially clever, just, and upright, but he was not very much gifted with either wit or humour in the true sense of the term. Beyond his exceedingly droll" Adventures of an Unprotected Female,” I cannot recall any Punch contributions of his which were absolutely comic; and, being altogether bereft of an ear for music, the poetry on which he occasionally ventured was, as a rule, deplorably cacophonous. Shirley Brooks, on the other hand, was a born poet. Whether the brilliant verse with which he copiously enriched the columns of Punch has ever been reprinted in a form even approximating to completeness, I am not aware; but he was the author, to my knowledge, of scores of graceful lyrics, which, to my mind, posterity should not willingly let die. I had known his pleasant and naturally humorous wife ever since I was a boy. She was a Miss Walkinshaw :-one of two good-looking sisters, who, as I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, had their miniatures painted about 1843, as "Night" and Morning," by that Mr. Carl Schiller, of whom I was at the time a pupil. As a further illustration of the world being after all not such a very big village, I may here say that about 1864 I found Carl Schiller engaged in the comparatively humble, but useful, task of converting photographic portraits into miniatures at the studio of a well-known photographer in Regent Street. He was overjoyed to meet me again, and painted, in miniature, a little

portrait of myself, to fit into a gold locket, which I gave to my wife.

It would be unjust were I to omit to put on record another instance of the constant and thoughtful kindness invariably shown to men of letters by the Earl of Beaconsfield. When Shirley Brooks died, Lord Beaconsfield was Prime Minster. The editor of Punch did not pass away in absolutely straitened circumstances; he left a policy of insurance, the realisation of which placed a considerable sum of money at the disposal of his widow; but she had only attained middle-age, and she had two sons growing up, the completion of whose education was indispensable. One day, passing through Cavendish Square, I met Alderman Sir Benjamin Phillips, some time Lord Mayor of London, the worthiest and most generous of Hebrews, who had shown very many kindnesses to Shirley. In the course of conversation, he asked confidentially how the widow and her sons were getting on; and I told him frankly the whole state of the case, so far as I knew it; explaining to him how sorely difficult it was for a modern English man of letters, even with an income amounting to £2,000 a year, to save anything substantial for those whom he left behind. The prominent literary man of the existing era, now that Bohemia has become, so far as literature is concerned, an almost mythical land, does not find it so very easy to lay by a competence for his widow, even if he enjoys an income in excess of that I have set down. He is largely asked out into society; and, unless he be a curmudgeon, he must himself