44 A FLY-LEAF. 



A FLY-LEAF. 



That 



" Great events from little causes spring" 



is a truth which we have all learnt fifty times over from 

 book and from experience. Pope Adrian the 4th, under his 

 plain English name of Nicholas Breakspear, is recorded to 

 have been choked, while drinking, by a Fly, which, says old 

 Fuller, " in the large territory of St. Peter's patrimony had no 

 other place to get into." "Now since a real Fly stands thus 

 chronicled, in history, as having marred the golden fortunes 

 of a mighty prince, surely we may be permitted (in romance) 

 to make an imaginary Fly a grand agent in mending the iron 

 luck of an humble Poet. 



Our friend H had the misfortune to be cast up a poet on 

 the stream of Life, since, in this age of mechanism, it has been 

 turned into a mill-stream. Consequently, he found himself held 

 as a mere bubble in the froth or scum of society, and his resi- 

 dence accorded perfectly with such estimation. He was the 

 highest occupant of a house in a low London neighbourhood, 

 where, nevertheless, he was looked down upon as a nobody ; and 

 no wonder, for next beneath him, in descending order, a dan- 

 cing master demonstrated for sixpence a lesson the position, 

 that "manners make the man;" under him, albeit above him, a 



