very little schooling, but a great deal of bad example, which happily did not destroy him. He was early in life set to labor with an uncle, a tavern-keeper in Clerkenwell, under whom he bottled, corked, and binned wine, for more than five years. His health failing him, his uncle turned him adrift in the world, with only two guineas, the fruits of his five years' service, in his pocket. During the next seven years of his life he endured many vicissitudes and hardships. Yet he says, in his autobiography, "in my poor and obscure lodgings, at eighteen pence a week, I indulged in study, and often read in bed during the winter evenings, because I could not afford a fire." Travelling on foot to Bath, he thereobtained an engagement as a cellar-man, but shortly after we find him back in the metropolis again, almost penniless, shoeless, and shirtless. He succeeded, however, in obtaining employment as a cellar-man at the London Tavern, and it was his duty to be in the cellar from seven in the morning until eleven at night. His health broke down under this confinement in the dark, added to the heavy work; and he then engaged himself, at fifteen shillings a week, to an attorney,—for he had been diligently cultivating the art of writing during the few spare minutes that he could call his own. While in this employment, he devoted his leisure principally to perambulating the bookstalls, where he read books by snatches which he could not buy, and thus