know the person who pays it does not think we deserve. Every man and woman can digest a certain amount of flattery, and the difficulty the professional payers of compliments are in is to adapt the dose to the constitution. This difficulty trips up the flatterers, and makes them sometimes more contemptible than the boors.

COMMERCIAL GODLINESS.

The picture of profitable piety is a satanic device. No bad heart was ever purified by the sight of a golden blessing for the convert. Lure sinners to Heaven by love, drive them by the idea of Divine wrath, but tempt them not by promises of present worldly advantages, or you are in danger of making religious infidels. Virtue's highest reward is peace.

PORTRAITS.

It is a pity portraits are ever sold. The sale of them is like the sale of old letters and autographs-an outrage upon sentiment. What

do

you care for what you have bought? Can you love it? 'Tis but a curiosity. A bullet

from Waterloo, or a cinder from Etna, or a Chinese toy, excites no affection. A portrait ought to be a gift, for it is valueless to every one except friends. It is the most delicate kind of gift, and the best aid to personal memories. A man may properly enough sell his own tables or his own broadcloth, or even his own books or his own music; but how ridiculous it would seem for him to go about selling his own likeness! It would be more out of order than a devotee selling his prayers. A portrait is the type of a gift-worth nothing but in memory of the giver.

DISAPPOINTMENT.

Some pretendedly philosophical comforters of people in trouble are always ready with their pitiful suggestions of how much worse things might have been than they are. They tell you that if you had won your wish perhaps you would have gained a loss; but that, being disappointed, it may be you have escaped an unforeseen evil. 'Tis a cowardly consolation: and there is something so selfish and conceited about it too. Why should not

one admit, without hesitation, that one does sometimes meet with rebuffs and grievances? It is not as though the whole world were made simply and solely for the delight of our individual selves: there are a few other people who have hopes and projects, and who are as susceptible as we of pain and pleasure. "Whatever is is" not "best," in the sense that it might not be better for us, or else we should all be so jolly that it would never have occurred to anyone to make that commonplace reflection of Pope's. I have a much better opinion of a man who, without any affected equanimity, honestly confesses that what has happened really has pained him very much than of one who, under the like unpleasant circumstances, talks with the air of a Stoic, as though he would not permit this trifling mischance to disturb for a moment the current of his most serene and profound thought. The world has an amazing respect for lucky men, and a heartless contempt for disappointed men; but beware of people who never meet with failures, and whose desires are never baulked. In the first place, they are sure to be

uncharitable; for, living in such palmy days, how is it possible that they can have any sympathy for common men and women who have to encounter the frowns and rubs of this turbulent life? In the next place, they are certainly insincere; for a mind that has never been tried by trouble, a temper that has never been discomposed by ill-fortune, must have the elasticity of air and the fickleness of the wind. Now candour and kindness are the first requisites of happy society, and persons who pretend not to know disappointment may well be suspected of wanting both truthfulness and sensibility. Impassibility is a sham. If we were never grieved we should never rejoice. Disappointment is sometimes advantageous in the end; but don't pretend to be sufficiently relieved in your concern by that thought, for there is nothing manly in the egotism that behaves as though some subtlety of logic were a cure for the heart-ache. Regrets are vain troubles; what's done is done, what's left undone is past doing; resolve and try again; take a fresh draught of hope:- that's my philosophy in disappointment-not the shabby

sagacity that compares troubles that are with heavier troubles that might be, and pictures tremendous ills escaped from by the sheer luck of being unlucky.

LOOKING FORWARD.

Hope and fear are two domestic sprites often troubling us with their quarrels, and never both together out of the way when anything pleasant is going forward. Scrutinize any of the happiest scenes of your life, and you will find either one or both of these two ghostly attendants guarding a gap in the picture. Is there not a good argument for a life to come to be drawn from this perpetual presence of the Future with us?

FLATTERERS.

Flatterers, like usurers, generally reclaim their own with interest. If you desire to be quits with them on the score of their investment, add twenty per cent. to what you have received and return it: the flatterer will not be staggered by a return of a fifth more than he has given. If you cannot with a good con