here I stand, all London roaring by at the street's end, as impotent as any baby. I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture. I begin to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to the bottom - were it only literature. And yet, sir, the man of the world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at home; he has seen life in all its phases; and it is impossible but that this great habit of existence should bear fruit. I count myself a man of the world, accomplished, cap-a-pie. So do you, Challoner. And you, Mr. Desborough?'

`Oh yes,' returned the young man.

`Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world, without a trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of the universe (for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in the midst of the chief mass of people, and within ear-shot of the most continuous chink of money on the surface of the globe. Sir, as civilised men, what do we do? I will show you. You take in a paper?'

`I take,' said Mr. Godall solemnly, `the best paper in the world, the Standard.'

`Good,' resumed Somerset. `I now hold it in my hand, the voice of the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants. I open it, and where my eye first falls - well, no, not Morrison's Pills - but here, sure enough, and but a little above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of society. Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude: ``TWO HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD. - The above reward will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green Park. He was over six feet in height, with shoulders disproportionately broad, close shaved, with black moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat.'' There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.'

`Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?' inquired Challoner.

`Do I propose it? No, sir,' cried Somerset. `It is reason, destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands and imposes it. Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers of conversation, vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we are and have builds up the character of the complete detective. It is, in short, the only profession for a gentleman.'

`The proposition is perhaps excessive,' replied Challoner; `for hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking, and ungentlemanly trades, the least and lowest.'

`To defend society?' asked Somerset; `to stake one's life for others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a better cause, is in form and essence a more noble hero than the soldier. Do you, by any chance, deceive yourself into supposing that a general would either ask or expect, from the best army ever marshalled, and on the most momentous battle-field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham Rye?'

`I did not understand we were to join the force,' said Challoner.

`Nor shall we. These are the hands; but here - here, sir, is the head,' cried Somerset. `Enough; it is decreed. We shall hunt down this miscreant in the sealskin coat.'

`Suppose that we agreed,' retorted Challoner, `you have no plan, no knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.'

`Challoner!' cried Somerset, `is it possible that you hold the doctrine of Free Will? And are you devoid of any tincture of philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded fallacies? Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole reliance. Chance has brought