than sufficient for one: and yet, bitter mockery! I was to support abroad the farce of a cheerful and respectable professional exterior.

FAME v. USEFUL TOIL.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

[The most popular romancist of the New World. His works comprise "The House with the Seven Gables,' ""The Scarlet Letter," "The Blithedale Romance," "Our Old Home," "Twice-told Tales," and "Mosses from an Old Manse." Born 1804. Died 1864. His son, Julian Hawthorne, is well known as a novelist, and a contributor of social sketches to the London periodicals.]

IT contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. The accidents of my life have often afforded me this advantage, but never with more fulness and variety than during my continuance in office. It is a good lesson-though it may often be a hard onefor a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognised, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. I know not that I especially needed the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; but, at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be thrown off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it is true, the Naval Officer-an excellent fellow, who came into office with me and went out only a little later would often engage me in a discussion about one or the other of his favourite topics, Napoleon or Shakspeare. The Collector's junior clerk, too, a young gentleman who, it was whispered, occasionally covered a sheet of Uncle Sam's letterpaper with what (at the distance of a few yards) looked very much like poetry,-used now and then to speak to me of books, as matters with which I might possibly be conversant. This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was quite sufficient for my necessities.

No longer seeking nor caring that my name should be blazoned abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think that it had now another kind of vogue. The Custom-House marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, I hope, will never go again.

MODERN GALLANTRY.

CHARLES LAMB

[The "gentle Elia," as this delightful essayist has been fondly called, was born in London, 1775, and educated at Christ's Hospital. He held for many years an appointment in the East India Company's offices in Leadenhall-street, retiring on a handsome pension in 1825. He wrote occasionally for periodicals, published a small volume of "Album Verses," a tragedy, not very successful, called "John Woodvil," and a volume of Tales founded on the plays of Shakspeare. It is by his "Essays by Elia," originally published in the "London Magazine," that his posthumous reputation is sustained. He died 1834, and is buried in the churchyard at Edmonton, near London.]

IN comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females as females.

I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct when I can forget that, in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders.

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasionally-hanged.

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen.

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fishwife across the kennel; or assists the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated."

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not known, or think themselves not observed when I shall see the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain -when I shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest, significantly declares "she should be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury.

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be performed by

women.

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up

between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account equally.

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear-to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title.

I shall believe it to be something more than a name when a welldressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting and intending to excite a sneer; -when the phrases "antiquated virginity," and such a one has "overstood her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken.

Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of the Directors of the South Sea Company-the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet-was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bareheaded-smile, if you please-to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street-in such a posture of unforced civility as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before nim, womanhood. I have seen him-nay, smile not-tenderly escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow cheeks.

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley-old Winstanley's daughter of Clapton-who, dying in the early days of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches-the common gallan

tries-to which kind of thing she had hitherto manifested no repugnance- -but in this instance with no effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding her a little better humoured to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments, that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sorts of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women: but that a little before he had commenced his compliments-she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman who had not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed time, and she thought to herself, As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady-a reputed beauty, and known to be a fortune-I can have my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is courting me-but if I had been poor Mary Such-aone (naming the milliner)--and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour-though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward them-what sort of compliments should I have received then? And my woman's pride came to my assistance, and I thought that if it were only to do me honour, a female, like myself, might have received handsomer usage: and I was determined not to accept any fine speeches to the compromise of that sex the belonging to which was, after all, my strongest claim and title to them."

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I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover; and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain of courtesy which through life regulated the actions and behaviour of my friend towards all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress.

I wish the whole female world would entertain the same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man-a pattern of true politeness to a wife of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister-the idolator of his female mistress-the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate-still female-maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in whatever condition placed her handmaid or dependent-she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should de mand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first-respect for her as she is a woman;-and next to that to be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions incident to individual

preference, be so many pretty additaments and ornaments-as many, and as fanciful, as you please-to that main structure. Let her first lesson be-with sweet Susan Winstanley-to reverence her sex.

LESSONS OF CREATION.

JOHN RUSKIN.

[See page 39.]

It has always appeared to me that there was, even in healthy mountain districts, a certain degree of inevitable melancholy; nor could I ever escape from the feeling that here, where chiefly the beauty of God's working was manifested to men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the enduring of His indignation against sin.

It seems one of the most cunning and frequent of self-deceptions to turn the heart away from this warning, and refuse to acknowledge anything in the fair scenes of the natural creation but beneficence. Men in general lean towards the light, so far as they contemplate such things at all, most of them passing "by on the other side," either in mere plodding pursuit of their own work, irrespective of what good or evil is around them, or else in selfish gloom, or selfish delight, resulting from their own circumstances at the moment. Of those who give themselves to any true contemplation, the plurality, being humble, gentle, and kindly-hearted, look only in nature for what is lovely and kind; partly, also, God gives the disposition to every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or even harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too great to be borne; and humble people, with a quiet trust that everything is for the best, do not fairly represent the facts to themselves, thinking them none of their business. So, what between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, and cheerfully-minded people-giddiness of youth, and preoccupations of age-philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly-priest and Levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their own side of the way-the evil that God sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that he sends to be mended by us gets left unmended. And then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of No sin? Can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? Has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying -measured the work it has done, and the reward it has got, put his hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones are piercing, and so looked up to Heaven with an entire understanding of Heaven's ways about the horse? Yet the horse is a fact-no dreamno revelation among the myrtle-trees by night; and the dust it dies