It rejoices my heart to find that retains a foremost rank in the list of London daily papers. I say this because my father, the late Gilbert Abbott & Beckett, metropolitan police magistrate and man of letters, was, so far as I know, and I have seen the assertion also made by a writer not of our blood, the only man who ever wrote the entire series of leaders in one morning issue of Printing House Square. It came about in this way. My father had an agreement with to write a daily article. One of these contributions had been crowded out, and stood over to appear with the copy supplied by him in due course on the following day. At the last moment a subject, of which he had a special knowledge, came to the front--I fancy it was connected with the Andover Union, an institution visited by my father as a poor law commissioner-- and consequently the duty of supplying a commentary fell to him. I have a dim recollection of a waiting in the hall of Hyde Park Gate while my father scribbled sheet after sheet, and then hearing the front door slam as the little messenger started away on his return journey. Thus it was that the three leading articles of on