responds his master, "the journey begins as it should do. Dost know whether they bring all the children with them?"

"Only Squire Humphrey and Miss Betty, Sir; the other six are put to board, at half-a-crown a week a head, with Joan Grouse, at Smokedunghill Farm."

"Dost know when they'll be here?"

"Sir, they'd have been here last night, but that the old wheezy horse tired, and the two fore wheels came crash down at once in Waggonrut Lane. Sir, they were cruelly loaden, as I understand. My Lady herself, he says, laid on four mail-trunks, besides the great deal box which fat Tom and the monkey sat upon behind."

"So."

"Then within the coach there was Sir Francis, my Lady, the great fat lap-dog, Squire Humphrey, Miss Betty, my Lady's maid, Mrs. Handy, and Dolly the cook; but she was so ill with sitting backward that they mounted her into the coachbox."

"Very well."

"Then, Sir, for fear of a famine before they could get to the baiting-place, there were such baskets of plum-cake, Dutch gingerbread, Cheshire cheese, Naples biscuits, macaroons, neats' tongues, and cold boiled beef—and in case of sickness, such bottles of usquebagh, black cherry brandy, cinnamon-water, sack, tent, and strong beer, as made the old coach crack again; and for defence of this good cheer and my Lady's little pearl necklace, there was the family basket-hilt sword, the great Turkish scimitar, the old blunderbuss, a good bag of bullets, and a great horn of gunpowder."

"Admirable."

"Then for band-boxes, they were so bepiled up to Sir Francis's nose that he could only peep out at a chance hole with one eye, as if he were viewing the country through a perspective-glass."

Sir John Vanbrugh, who wrote the above admirable account of a journey to London, was the grandson of a Protestant refugee from the Netherlands, and the son of a wealthy sugar-baker. Little is known of the history of his youth, or of that training which enabled him not only to become one of the most celebrated English architects, but also, in conjunction with Congreve, to produce some excellent comedies. As an architect, he designed Castle Howard and Blenheim; as a dramatist, his most successful plays were "The Relapse" and "The Provoked Wife," and the uncompleted "Journey to London," which was worked up by Colley Cibber into "The Provoked Husband."