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James Beal was born in Chelsea (Sloane Square) in February, 1829. His father was a respectable old Tory tradesman, who had originally come from Yorkshire. He died before Beal had completed his seventeenth year, living long enough, however, to satisfy the subject of this memoir that he and his male parent possessed few or no sympathies in common. It was different with Beal's mother. She was a woman as remarkable for vigor of mind as of body, and from her her son inherited most of his mental and physical characteristics. Without brothers, and without access to his father's sympathies, Beal naturally enough "took after" this strong-minded mother, whose memory he still reverently cherishes.

There was no London School Board in those times, and young Beal's education was accordingly of a somewhat meagre kind. He attended several local schools kept by private teachers, but never got beyond the "beggarly elements" of the three R's. He was eventually put to business in his fourteenth year, the consequence being that Mr. Beal is substantially a self-taught man. No one who has gone through the regular scholastic mill could doubt this for a moment. The matter of his writings is always excellent; but the manner is generally very rugged. His arrows have terrible barbs, but no feathers. They do not kill at long range; but they are very formidable in a hand-to-hand encounter. As a journalist, the directness, not to say the