night in March, 1867, and that while Bright flung his taunts at Disraeli, not a muscle of the latter moved: there he sat, with his lower jaw dropped, and his eyes glassy and stiff; maintaining the same listless look when he was described as 66 issuing flash political notes which would not pass at the bank, however they imposed on the inexperienced." When, again, Bright, pointing at him with his finger, said: "Look at him! Is he not a marvel of cleverness to have led that party so long, and to mislead it at last, as he is doing now?" all eyes were turned on Disraeli, amid roars of laughter; but no effect was produced on the outward look of the sphinx - not so much as an eyelash gave way. It is a very great advantage to a pub

lic man if he can sustain a hail-storm of chaff as if he were made of heated iron, and even laugh when he is " scraped with moral oyster-shells." On the stump, a man may as well lose his tongue as his temper. Generally, a man who has a genius for sarcasm, which he delights in exercising, is exceedingly sensitive when he is himself ridiculed; but Disraeli was either an exception to the rule, or had a remarkable ability to conceal his feelings.

Better even than this real or feigned insensibility is the ability to keep one's good-humor when attacked, as did Lord Ashley at a certain English election some years ago, when, having received the back-handed benedictions of a part of the mob, he observed very calmly, that he "had received many compliments in the course of that meeting; one gentleman had called him 'long-nosed rascal.' Now, as to the nose part of the compliment I will say nothing, because that is a matter of fact; but as to the rascal part of the appellation, that is a matter of opinion." At another election, a young candidate, while addressing his constitu

ents, tried hard, but tried in vain, to remember the speech which lay written out in his hat. "Get it out of your hat, governor," roared a voice in the crowd. "Thank you, gentlemen, so I will,” replied the orator, and proceeded to pick out the speech and read it, amid much applause, not for his ability, but for his good-humor. A spirit like this is invaluable in a public speaker. Many a man whose skull is impregnable to argument is vulnerable to the charm. of manner.

What a blessing it would be to some of our public men especially the members of Congress if they had the coolness and self-possession of Disraeli or the good-humor of Lord Ashley! Americans have been called a thin-skinned people; but many of our politicians seem to have no skin whatever. They are "raw" all over; and instead of meeting the attacks of opponents with good-humored banter or dignified silence, they reply with coarse personalities and superlatives of abuse. It has been justly said that no man should think of going into public life unless he can patiently bear abuse, unless in fact he has a cuticular relationship to the "armed rhinoceros," a hide against which rifle-balls may be flattened almost without attracting his attention, and a sensibility so obtuse that the thrust of a lance may be mistaken for a mosquito bite. "Never until a man can smile with indifference while his finest sensibilities are rudely scraped with metaphysical sandpaper and moral oyster-shells, need he regard himself as qualified for lofty station. The Indian composedly sings the death-song when tortured at the stake; but the politician should be able to fiddle when not only himself but all his Rome is burning."

Our School- THE illusions of memory and distance have boy Days. often been descanted upon; and one of them is that by which we are led to believe that the happiest period of life was our bare-footed, bread-and-butter days. People may talk as eloquently as they please about the pleasures of after-life; but there are times when, weary of its "carking cares," they feel that they were blithest and most joyous of spirit in their schoolboy days. Never since have they felt that triumphant sense of life, that exultant transport of soul, in which they "reeked and rioted" when they first vaulted from their swaddling clothes into short coats, and strutted in boots. Few, then, were the ingredients necessary to their cup of happiness; they could carve felicity from a bit of pine wood, or fish for it successfully in a millpond. It is true that there was little agreeableness in hard lessons, less still in being scolded or flogged by frowning pedagogues for not getting them; but the play-ground and the holidays, what is there com

parable with them afterward?

Reader, have all the games, sports, and recreations of your melancholy manhood yielded you half the delight you once derived from kite-flying, marbles, ball-playing, and leap-frog? Have the most gorgeous and enchanting spectacles you have beheld at the theatres or elsewhere filled your soul so brimful of ecstasy as the first sight of Jack-o'-Lantern? Can you ever forget the violent throbbing of the heart with which you welcomed the metaphysical stranger; how you chuckled and crowed and clapped your hands with glee, as your dazzled eyes followed him through all the changeful figures of his fantastical harlequinade? Has any meteor, the most resplendent, since danced and gambolled over your head that was "any pump

kins" in comparison? Have the most bewitching novels of Sir Walter Scott or Dickens or Collins thrilled and fascinated you with such strange, mysterious, entrancing delight as the stories of Bluebeard and Jack the GiantKiller? Can you forget the curious wonderment with which you gazed on the Man in the Moon, how you queried whether he, too, was made of green cheese, and with what absolute precision you made out his face? Would you not gladly go back to the period when the rise of the green curtain revealed to you a real world; when the jokes of the clown at the circus were not stale, flat, and unprofitable, and the tricks of the juggler and the ventriloquist had not lost half their interest by being learned to be deceptions? Is it any satisfaction to you that you have read history till you doubt everything; that you no longer believe that Romulus was suckled by a wolf, and that Richard the Third was a monster of iniquity; that you know Robinson Crusoe to be a fiction? Are you a whit the happier because you have learned that William Tell did not shoot at the apple, and that he himself was probably a myth?

Ah, reader! we know full well your answer. Gladly would you command the secret of feeling as you once did; but, alas! every day has taken from you some happy error, some charming illusion, never to return. You have been reasoned or ridiculed out of all your jocund mistakes, till now, a full-grown man, you see things as they are, and are just wise enough to be miserable. Well might Lady Mary Wortley Montagu exclaim: "There is nothing that can pay one for that valuable ignorance which is the companion. of youth; those sanguine, groundless hopes, and that lively vanity which makes up all the happiness of life.

To my extreme mortification, I find myself growing wiser and wiser every day."

The Credulity IT is said that when Marshal Duroc, an of Scepticism. infidel, once told a tough story to Napoleon, expressing the opinion that it was true, the Emperor said: "There are some men who are capable of believing everything but the Bible."

Who does not to-day see all around him melancholy illustrations of this saying? There are hundreds of men among us who strain out the most microscopic gnats of Scriptural marvel, yet swallow the hugest camels of profane history without a qualm or objection. No juggleries of "spiritualism" stagger their credulity; but the miracles of the Bible are more than they can swallow. On the other hand, there are over-credulous people who are ready to believe any story or statement, provided it supports what they regard as orthodoxy. Motley tells us that, in the time of Philip II. of Spain, a so-called Revelation of James was proved to be spurious because it contained a large sprinkling of modern Spanish phrases; but a learned ecclesiastic contended that the Apostle, clearly foreknowing the date of the disinterment of his manuscript, had employed the language which would then be in fashion. There is another class of persons whose mental condition is more pitiful, perhaps, than that of the foregoing, — viz. "those inquisitive and restless spirits that take refuge from their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bring themselves to worship a wafer."

The Pleasures CHARLES LAMB, kind-hearted as he was, of the Table. hated a man who could eat of dainties and