Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who certainly cannot help themselves.

In the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid poverty and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self-denial as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great -a heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many or the admiration of the few, yet flourishing amidst ruins and on the confines of the grave; a spectacle as stupendous in the moral world as the falls of the Missouri in the natural; and, like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnifi

cence.

There is this difference between those two temporal blessings, health and money: money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but that the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail our pride supports us, when we succeed it betrays us.

After hypocrites, the greatest dupes the devil has are those who exhaust an anxious existence in the disappointments and vexations of business, and live miserably and meanly, only to die magnificently and rich. For, like the hypocrites, the only disinterested action these men can accuse themselves of is, that of serving the devil, without receiving his wages; for the assumed formality of the one is not a more effectual bar to enjoyment than the real avarice of the other. He that stands every day of his life behind a counter, until he drops from it into the grave, may negotiate many very profitable bargains; but he has made a single bad one, so bad indeed that it counterbalances all the rest; for the empty foolery of dying rich, he has paid down his health, his happiness, and his integrity; since a very old author observes, that " as mortar sticketh between the stones, so sticketh fraud between buying and selling." Such

VOL. IV.

who should put a rich cargo into a vessel, embark with it himself, and encounter all the perils and privations of the sea, although he was thoroughly convinced beforehand that he was only providing for a shipwreck at the end of a troublesome and tedious voyage.

Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels; first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.

It is an unfortunate thing for fools, that their pretensions should rise in an inverse ratio with their abilities, and their presumption with their weakness; and for the wise, that diffidence should be the companion of talent, and doubt the fruit of investigation.

Were a plain unlettered man, but endowed with common sense and a certain quantum of observation and of reflection, to read over attentively the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, without any note or comment, I hugely doubt whether it would enter into his ears to hear, his eyes to see, or his heart to conceive the purport of many ideas signified by many words ending in ism, which nevertheless have cost Christendom rivers of ink and oceans of blood.

Should the world applaud, we must thankfully receive it as a boon; for, if the most deserving of us appear to expect it as a debt, it will never be paid. The world, it has been said, does as much justice to our merits as to our defects, and I believe it; but, after all, none of us are so much praised or censured as we think; and most men would be thoroughly cured of their self-importance, if they would only rehearse their own funeral, and walk abroad incognito the very day after that on which they were supposed to have been buried.

Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive.

We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions, when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions, when performed by ourselves.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Few things are more destructive of the best interests of society than the prevalent but 90

mistaken notion that it requires a vast deal of talent to be a successful knave. For this position, while it diminishes that odium which ought to attach to fraud in the part of those who suffer by it, increases also the temptation to commit it on the part of those who profit by it; since there are so many who would rather be written down knaves than fools. But the plain fact is, that to be honest with success requires far more talent than to be a rogue, and to be honest without success requires far more magnanimity; for trick is not dexterity, cunning is not skill, and mystery is not profoundness. The honest man proposes to arrive at a certain point, by one straight and narrow road, that is beset on all sides with obstacles and with impediments. He would rather stand still, than proceed by trespassing on the property of his neighbour, and would rather overcome a difficulty than avoid it by breaking down a fence. The knave, it is true, proposes to himself the same object, but arrives at it by a very different route. Provided only that he gets on, he is not particular whether he effects it where there is a road, or where there is none; he trespasses without scruple, either on the forbidden ground of private property, or on those by-paths where there is no legal thoroughfare; what he cannot reach over he will overreach, and those obstacles they cannot surmount by climbing, he will undermine by creeping, quite regardless of the filth that may stick to him in the scramble. The consequence is that he frequently overtakes the honest man, and passes by him with a sneer. What then shall we say? that the rogue has more talent than the upright? let us rather say that he has less. For wisdom is nothing more than judgment exercised on the true value of things that are desirable; but of things in themselves desirable, those are the most so that remain the longest. Let us therefore mark the end of these things, and we shall come to one conclusion, the fiat of the tribunal both of God and of man;-That honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that virtue has no other reward, because they have heard that she is her own.

Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves, founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas

vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary. Vanity can also feed upon externals, but pride must have more or less of that which is intrinsic; the proud therefore do not set so high a value upon wealth as the vain, neither are they so much depressed by poverty. Vanity looks to the many and to the moment, pride to the future and the few; hence pride has more difficulties, and vanity more disappointments; neither does she bear them so well, for she at times distrusts herself, whereas pride despises others. For the vain man cannot always be certain of the validity of his pretensions, because they are often as empty as that very vanity that has created them; therefore it is necessary for his happiness, that they should be confirmed by the opinion of his neighbours, and his own vote in favour of himself he thinks of little weight, until it be backed by the suffrages of others. The vain man idolizes his own person, and here he is wrong; but he cannot bear his own company, and here he is right. But the proud man wants no such confirmations; his pretensions may be small, but they are something, and his error lies in overrating them. If others appreciate his merits less highly, he attributes it either to their envy, or to their ignorance, and enjoys in prospect that period when time shall have removed the film from their eyes. Therefore the proud man can afford to wait, because he has no doubt of the strength of his capital, and can also live, by anticipation, on that fame which he has persuaded himself that he deserves. He often draws indeed too largely upon posterity, but even here he is safe; for should the bills be dishonoured, this cannot happen until that debt which cancels all others shall have been paid.

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;-all that runs over will be yours.

When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.

Many schemes ridiculed as utopian, decried as visionary, and declaimed against as impracticable, will be realized the moment the march of sound knowledge has effected this for our species: that of making men wise enough to see their true interests, and disinterested enough to pursue them.

There is this of good in real evils, they deliver us while they last from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.-Lacon: or Many Things in Few Words.

LOVE'S PERVERSITY.

[Coventry Kearsey Dighton Patmore, born at Woodford, Essex, 2d July, 1823. He was some time assistant-librarian in the British Museum. His works are: Tamerton Church Tower, and other Poems; The Angel in the House, a domestic poem in four parts: The Betrothal; The Espousal; Faithful for Ever; and The Victories of Love. Mr. Ruskin says this poem "is a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet, modern, domestic feeling." Mr. Patmore also edited A Garland of Poems for Children, and contributed to the Edinburgh and North British Reviews. A complete edition of his poems has been issued by Macmillan.]

How strange a thing a lover seems
To animals that do not love!
Lo, where he walks and talks in dreams,
And flouts us with his Lady's glove;

How foreign is the garb he wears;

And how his great devotion mocks Our poor propriety, and scares

The undevout with paradox!
His soul, through scorn of worldly care,
And great extremes of sweet and gall,
And musing much on all that's fair,

Grows witty and fantastical;
He sobs his joy and sings his grief,
And evermore finds such delight

In simply picturing his relief,

That 'plaining seems to cure his plight; He makes his sorrow when there's none; His fancy blows both cold and hot; Next to the wish that she'll be won,

His first hope is that she may not; He sues, yet deprecates consent; Would she be captured she must fly; She looks too happy and content,

For whose least pleasure he would die; Oh, cruelty, she cannot care

For one to whom she's always kind! He says he's nought, but, oh, despair, If he's not Jove to her fond mind! He's jealous if she pets a dove,

She must be his with all her soul; Yet 'tis a postulate in love

That part is greater than the whole, And all his apprehension's stress, When he's with her, regards her hair, Her hand, a ribbon of her dress,

As if his life were only there; Because she's constant, he will change, And kindest glances coldly meet, And, all the time he seems so strange, His soul is fawning at her feet; Of smiles and simple heaven grown tired, He wickedly provokes her tears, And when she weeps, as he desired, Falls slain with ecstasies of fears; He blames her, though she has no fault,

Except the folly to be his; He worships her, the more to exalt The profanation of a kiss; Health's his disease; he's never well But when his paleness shames her rose; His faith's a rock-built citadel,

Its sign a flag that each way blows; His o'erfed fancy frets and fumes; And Love, in him, is fierce like Hate, And ruffles his ambrosial plumes Against the bars of time and fate.

The Angel in the House.

THE AUTHORESS.

BY AMELIA OPIE.

A young lady, who valued herself on her benevolence and good breeding, and had as much respect for truth as those who live in the world usually have, was invited by an authoress, whose favour she coveted, and by whose attention she was flattered, to come and hear her read a manuscript tragi-comedy. The other auditor was an old lady, who, to considerable personal ugliness, united strange grimaces: and convulsive twitchings of the face, chiefly the result of physical causes.

The authoress read in so affected and dramatic a manner, that the young lady's boasted benevolence had no power to curb her propensity to laughter; which being perceived by the reader, she stopped in angry consternation, and desired to know whether she laughed at her or her composition. At first she was too much fluttered to make any reply; but as she dared not own the truth, and had no scruple against being guilty of deception, she cleverly resolved to excuse herself by a practical lie. She therefore trod on her friend's foot, elbowed her, and, by winks and signs, tried to make her believe that it was the grimaces of her opposite neighbour, who was quietly knitting and twitching as usual, which had had such an effect on her risible faculties; and the deceived authoress, smiling herself when her young guest directed her eye to her unconscious vis à vis, resumed her reading with a lightened brow and increased energy.

This added to the young lady's amusement; as she could now indulge her risibility occasionally at the authoress's expense, without exciting her suspicions; especially as the manuscript was sometimes intended to excite smiles, if not laughter; and the self-love of the writer led her to suppose that her hearer's mirth was

MY MOTHER'S GRAVE.

My mother's grave, my mother's grave! Oh! dreamless is her slumber there, And drowsily the banners wave

O'er her that was so chaste and fair; Yea! love is dead, and memory faded! But when the dew is on the brake,

And silence sleeps on earth and sea, And mourners weep, and ghosts awake, Oh! then she cometh back to me, In her cold beauty darkly shaded!

I cannot guess her face or form;

But what to me is form or face?

I do not ask the weary worm

To give me back each buried grace Of glistening eyes, or trailing tresses! I only feel that she is here,

And that we meet, and that we part; And that I drink within mine ear,

And that I clasp around my heart, Her sweet still voice, and soft caresses!

Not in the waking thought by day, Not in the sightless dream by night, Do the mild tones and glances play

Of her who was my cradle's light! But in some twilight of calm weather, She glides, by fancy dimly wrought, A glittering cloud, a darkling beam, With all the quiet of a thought,

And all the passion of a dream, Linked in a golden spell together!

W. M. PRAED.

TEN YEARS AGO.

Ten years ago ten years ago—

Life was to us a fairy scene;

And the keen blasts of worldly woe

Had seared not then its pathway green.
Youth and its thousand dreams were ours-
Feelings we ne'er can know again-
Unwithered hopes, unwasted powers,
And frames unworn by mortal pain.
Such was the bright and genial flow
Of life with us-ten years ago.

Time had not blanch'd a single hair
That clusters round thy forehead now;
Nor had the cankering touch of care
Left even one furrow on thy brow.
Thine eyes are blue as when we met,

In love's deep truth, in earlier years;
Thy cheek of rose is blooming yet,

Though sometimes stained by secret tears. But where, O where's the spirit's glow, That shone through all-ten years ago?

I too am changed-I scarce know why;
Can feel each flagging pulse decay,
And youth, and health, and visions high,
Melt like a wreath of snow away.
Time cannot, sure, have wrought the ill;
Though worn in this world's scheming strife
In soul and form-I linger still

In the first summer month of life;
Yet journey on my path below,-
O! how unlike ten years ago!

ALARIC A. WATTS.

THE MARCH OF INTELLECT.

BY THEODORE HOOK.

It happened on the 31st of March, 1926, that the then Duke and Duchess of Bedford were sitting in their good but old house, No. 17 Liberality Place (the corner of Riego Street), near to where old Hammersmith stood before the great improvements, and, although it was past two o'clock, the breakfast equipage still remained upon the table.

It may be necessary to state that the illustrious family in question, having embraced the Roman Catholic faith (which at that period was the established religion of the country), had been allowed to retain their titles and honourable distinctions, although Woburn Abbey had been long before restored to the church, and was, at the time of which we treat, occupied by a worshipful community of holy friars. The Duke's family estates in Old London had been, of course, divided by the Equitable Convention amongst the numerous persons whose distressed situation gave them the strongest claims, and his grace and his family had been for a long time receiving the compensation annuity allotted to his ancestors. "Where is Lady Elizabeth?" said his grace to the Duchess.

"She is making the beds, Duke," replied her grace.

"What, again to-day?" said his grace. "Where are Stubbs, Hogsflesh, and Figgins, the females whom, were it not contrary to law, I should call the housemaids?"

"They are gone," said her grace, on & sketching tour with the manciple, Mr. Nicholson, and his nephew."

"Why are not these things removed?" said his grace, eyeing the breakfast-table, upon which (the piece of furniture being of cak without covering) stood a huge jar of honey, several saucers of beet-root, a large pot of halfcold decoction of sassafrage, and an urn full of bean-juice, the use of cotton, sugar, tea, and