and aimless saunterings, such as we have described, many of his London walks during the first week or two of his stay at Shoreditch must have been direct visits from spot to spot, and from person to person. By no means diffident or bashful, and, so far as we can see, perfectly heart-whole in respect of all the Bristol beauties he had left, he probably wasted less time than many others with less genius would have wasted in useless regrets and pointless reveries. Compared with his life at Bristol, where he had been the miserable drudge of a lawyer's office, his present life, now that he was a rover in London, appeared to him, doubtless, all but paradisaic. To work in the morning in his lodging in Shoreditch, with sometimes a saucy word for his landlady's niece; then to go out to make calls, and see sights in various quarters, buying a tart at a pastrycook's for his dinner, spending a shilling or two in other little indulgences, and quite alive always to the distraction of a pretty face wherever he chanced to be; then to come home again at an earlier or a later hour, and to sit up half the night writing and tearing papers, greatly to the bewilderment and alarm of that very ill-used boy, Master Walmsley-here was happiness, here was liberty, here was a set of conditions in which to begin the process of setting fire to the Thames ! So, at least, it seemed to Chatterton himself during his first fortnight in London; for, when Mrs. Ballance,

at the end of that period, ventured to suggest that he should try to get into some office, we have seen what thanks the poor woman got. To be sure, had Mrs. Chatterton sent her word beforehand what a great man Cousin Tommy was, she would have humoured the gentleman accordingly! But how was she to know? Ah! how indeed?

CHAPTER II.

TOWN TALK LONG AGO.

IN coming to London, Chatterton, of course, came into the midst of all the politics and current talk of the day. Bristol, indeed, as a bustling and mercantile place, had had its share of interest in the general on-goings of the nation; and regularly, as the coach had brought down the last new materials of gossip from London, the politicians of Bristol had gone through the budget, and given the Bristol imprimatur, or the reverse, to the opinions pronounced by the metropolitan authorities. Sometimes, too, Bristol, from its western position and its extensive shipping connexions, might have the start even of London in a bit of American news. On the whole, however, going from Bristol to London was like going from darkness into light, from the suburbs to the centre, from the shilling gallery to the pit-stalls. Let us see what were the pieces (small enough they seem now) in course of

performance on the stage of British life when Chatterton had thus just shifted his place in the theatre-in other words, what were the topics which afforded matter of talk to that insatiable gossip, the Town, towards the end of April and during the whole of May, 1770.

First, monopolising nearly the whole ground of the domestic politics of the time, was the everlasting case of Wilkes and Liberty, begun seven years before, when Chatterton was a boy at Colston's school, but still apparently far from a conclusion. There had been a change, however, in the relative situations of the parties.

Among the most earnest defenders of Wilkes and advocates of the right of free election were the authorities of the Corporation of the City of London, then under the mayoralty of the celebrated Beckford. With other corporations and public bodies, they had sent in petitions to the King on the subject. on the subject. These petitions having been ungraciously received, Beckford and his colleagues had had the boldness to wait on the King (March 14th) and address a personal remonstrance to him. The King's reply was as follows:

"I shall always be ready to receive the requests and to listen to the complaints of my subjects; but it gives me great concern to find that any of them should have been so far misled as to offer me an address and re

monstrance the contents of which I cannot but consider as disrespectful to me, injurious to my parliament, and irreconcilable to the principles of the constitution."

Having read this speech, the King gave the Lord Mayor and others of the deputation his hand to kiss; after which, as they were withdrawing, he turned round to his courtiers and laughed. "Nero fiddled whilst Rome was burning" was the grandiloquent remark of Parson Horne on the occasion; and, though this was a little too strong, it is certain that the City people were very angry. So, out of revenge, and partly as a compensation to Wilkes for his exclusion from the House of Commons, they made Wilkes an alderman. The patriot had hardly been out of prison a week when, on 24th of April-the day on which Chatterton left Bristol-he was sworn in as alderman for the ward of Farringdon Without and received a magnificent banquet on the occasion. This accession of Wilkes to the Corporation of the City of London was not only a defiance to the Court and the ruling party; it was also intended to increase the power of the City to annoy these enemies in future. With such a man as Beckford for mayor, and with such men as Wilkes, Sawbridge, Townshend, and Crosby, on the bench of aldermen-all popular men and of strong liberal opinions-what might the Corporation not do?

The same part which was being acted in the City