first Night of December to account for our exceed-
ings-many a long face did you make over your
puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out
how we had spent so much-or that we had not
spent so much-or that it was impossible we should
spend so much next year-and still we found our
slender capital decreasing—but then, betwixt ways,
and projects, and compromises of one sort or an-
other, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing
without that for the future-and the hope that youth
brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were
never poor till now,) we pocketed up our loss, and
in conclusion, with "lusty brimmers" (as you used
to quote it out of hearty cheerful Mr. Cotton, as
you called him), we used to welcome in the
"coming guest."
Now we have no reckoning at
all at the end of the old year-no flattering pro-
mises about the new year doing better for us."

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most
occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein,
I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help,
however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which
her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear
income of poor hundred pounds a year.
"It is
true we were happier when we were poorer, but
we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we

4

must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened, and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power-those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straitenwith us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where we formerly walked : live better, and lie softer-and shall be wise to do so-than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return-could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a-day-could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see them-could the good old one shilling gallery days return-they are dreams, my cousin, now-but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fire-side, sitting on this luxurious sofa-be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the

poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers-could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours-and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us-I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madona-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer house."

227

POPULAR FALLACIES.

I.

THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD.

THIS axiom contains a principle of compensa-tion, which disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there is no safe trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We should more willingly fall in with this popular language, if we did not find brutality sometimes awkwardly coupled with valour in the same vocabulary. The comic writers, with their poetical justice, have contributed not a little to mislead us upon this point. To see a hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon the stage, has something in it wonderfully diverting. Some people's share of animal spirits is notoriously low and defective. It has not strength to raise a vapour, or furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These love to be told that huffing is no part of valour.

The truest courage with them is that which is the least noisy and obtrusive. But confront one of these silent heroes with the swaggerer of real life, and his confidence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do not uniformly bespeak non-peformance. A modest inoffensive deportment does not necessarily imply valour; neither does the absence of it justify us in denying that quality. Hickman wanted modesty-we do not mean him of Clarissa -but who ever doubted his courage? Even the poets-upon whom this equitable distribution of qualities should be most binding-have thought it agreeable to nature to depart from the rule upon occasion. Harapha, in the "Agonistes," is indeed a bully upon the received notions. Milton has made him at once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Almanzor, in Dryden, talks of driving armies singly before him—and does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder insight into this kind of character than either of his predecessors. He divides the palm more equably, and allows his hero a sort of dimidiate pre-eminence :-"Bully Dawson kicked by half the town, and half the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This was true distributive justice.