examination by which he would have been excluded. Meanwhile he was turned loose in London, and attempted to live like a gentleman on £90 a year. The results are indicated by a couple of anecdotes. A money-lender once advanced him £4, for which, first and last, he paid £200. This person, he says, became so much attached to him as to pay a daily visit at his office and exhort him to be punctual. 'These visits were very terrible, and can hardly have been of service to me in the office.' This mild remark applies also to the visits from the mother of a young woman in the country who had fallen in love with him, and to whom he 'lacked the pluck to give a decided negative.' The mother used to appear with a basket on her arm and an immense bonnet upon her head, and inquire in a loud voice, before all his companions, 'Anthony Trollope, when are you going to marry my daughter?' No wonder that he was miserable; he was hopelessly in debt, and often unable to pay for a dinner; he hated his work, he says, and he hated his idleness; he quarrelled with his superiors, who thought him hopelessly incapable, and felt that he was sinking 'to the lowest pits.' At last he heard of a place in the Irish Post Office, which everybody despised,
