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company. Since then, within comparatively a few short months, what changes the great Scene-shifter has brought about in the lifedrama of Whitefriars! The two commercial chiefs of the classic land behind Fleet Street, the founder of the Punch firm (Bradbury and Evans) and their editor and contributor of the golden days, have all made their exits and disappeared from the stage for ever. Three men who knew each other intimately in the early times of Punch died within a few months of each other-Mark Lemon first, then Charles Dickens, and last, Frederick Mullett Evans, who, with his late partner, undertook Punch when it was in difficulties, and who published the most important of Charles Dickens's works. The shadows come and go in the firelight. They make the quiet of a quiet room, with flickers of red and yellow on the pictureframes, seem almost oppressive, these shadows of past actors so recently in the flesh gathering

amongst the more accustomed tenants of memory. How silently the great Scene-shifter works! He obeys no noisy signal. You cannot tell when he will begin to move in his everlasting drama. He needs no prompter. His scenes never hitch. He makes no mistakes, though we are sometimes tempted, like Tennyson's Farmer, to question the wisdom of His irrevocable decrees. He works by inscrutable laws. It is for us humbly to accept the inevitable, with a firm and lively faith in the mercy and wisdom of Him "whom time can never change."

CHAPTER VI.

THE LAST.

T is many years ago since I struck up a

brief epistolary acquaintance with Mark Lemon, though I met him for the first time in

1863. He came into the north of England to read "Hearts are Trumps," and was introduced to me by Tom D. Taylor, one of the most genial of west country journalists. I was living in the Bailey, at Durham, beneath the shadow of the Cathedral, and overlooking the river Wear. Mark Lemon accepted an invitation to stay with me here during his visit to Durham, Newcastle, and Sunderland. My house was a small old fashioned place. It had an ancient

garden, full of old-fashioned flowers and oldfashioned ivy. At the end of the walled-in walks there was a terrace and summer-house, literally covered with luxurious creepers. From this vantage ground we overlooked the pleasant gardens of Mr. Wooler and Colonel Chayter, whose lawns and flower-beds sloped down in picturesque terraces, tier upon tier, to the very edge of the river. Coming from London to so quiet a spot, Mark Lemon was charmed with the beauty and repose of the place. In many letters afterwards he frequently referred to "that Paradise at the bottom of your garden." We smoked in the old summer-house and talked of London. There was with us on one of these days a ripe Shakespearian scholar, overflowing with literary enthusiasm, who had just completed a romantic play entitled "Passion and Parchment." was full of poetic fancy, and in admirable blank The gentleman to whom I allude is

verse.

It

well known in the north. I mean my old friend, James Gregor Grant, author of "Rufus the Red King," and several volumes of poems. The son of an actor, Mr. Grant sat and listened to Mark Lemon's talk of plays and players with almost as much rapture as Prospero's daughter experienced in listening to the prince. The editor of Punch was like a messenger from afar, coming into this out-ofthe-way city with news of the world. I see them now, these two old men, the river rolling by, and the rooks calling to each other. I see the beaming face of the north countryman who had not been in London for years, looking up at the robust editor leaning upon the back of a chair and making smoke-rings with a meerschaum pipe. On this same day we walked to Finchale Abbey, and back again to the cathedral. Mark Lemon was almost boyish in his delight with all we saw and everything we did. In these days I was editing the Durham County Advertiser and writing stories. My

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