if he escapes with only a belaboring from | surmounted by fantastic, triple-roofed, the fasces of the shrieking lictors. No one is supposed even to look through the little diamond-shaped holes. As a matter of fact they do; but by way of condoning for the offence, they render it more difficult by planting flowering shrubs between the bamboo houses and the lattice-work.

From The Spectator. THE CONSTITUENTS OF "PLEASANT

NESS."

ting higher than the king. The English carriages presented at various times to different Burmese monarchs met with little approval. At first it was thought MR. LOWELL, the American minister, that the king was to sit on the box; but who generally contrives to beat his Enthen it was found that with this arrange-glish friends in saying the happiest thing ment there was nothing for it but that the at meetings where nothing is so desirable driver should run by the side. When it as to say what will diffuse a sense of was found that the king was supposed to pleasure over all who are present, said on sit inside with the driver four or five feet Tuesday, in speaking of Dean Stanley, above him, a burst of indignation sug- that the feeling which was prevalent congested that it was an insidious plot to put cerning him, brought back to his memory an insult on the majesty of the lord of the an epitaph on a wife and mother, in the unbrella-bearing chiefs. For a time the neighborhood of Boston, "She was. So vehicles were put away as lumber; but an pleasant." Considered as an epitaph on ingenious handicraftsman adorned them a wife and mother, we are not sure that with payah thats-five-roofed ecclesias- that was exactly what one could have tical or royal spires. They were now, wished. It is hardly the mere pleasantwhen drawn by men, suitable for royal ness of one so close that we should wish Occupation; but unfortunately the solid to think of first and chiefly, though one teak spires made them top-heavy and would, of course, desire to feel that it was especially unstable on rough Mandalay there. But for the common impression roads. They have therefore degenerated made upon a large number of friends, we into paraphernalia for exhibition on a do not know that any description could Kadaw day, or gauds for a procession at be more grateful. For it implies, of Tawadehntha feast time. The king con- course, a number of qualities that are es sequently returns in his gilt carriage, re-sential to constitute this apparently suclining on a mattress placed on the floor. perficial pleasantness. There must be He is now dressed in the ordinary national sweetness, there must be vivacity and way, with a light linen jacket, and a slen- some exuberance of nature, there must be der paulohn (a fillet of book-muslin wound serenity, there must be no root of absorbround his head) showing the thin, white ing restlessness in the nature itself; there hair tied up in a little knot on the top of must be ease, and even gladness, in going his head. The chief ministers are round out to meet the nature of others; and about fanning him assiduously; and he is there must not be any excess of sensitivein extreme good-humor, chaffing the Kin ness. If any of the constituents of such Woon-gyee, the astute prime minister, on graciousness were weaker than the others way he let his bullocks straggle away in the late dean, it was perhaps, the neg at random and the difficulties he got into ative condition we mentioned last. Some in trying to turn them at the end of the might have thought him a little too sensifield; while the stout old Naingan-gyah tive for the maximum of pleasantness in Woondouk is joked about the absurd all kinds of society. Charming in his state of heat he was brought into by his own world, he was hardly the kind of exertions. Possibly, if a venturesome man, perhaps, to diffuse sunshine where and inquisitive subject were to be seen the inclemency of the conditions made now, the king might pardon him for his him shrink. He had all the spontaneous. rude gaping. But nobody knows in what ness and impulse to go out of himself to temper the king is; and the silence is as meet others, which is a sine qua non death-like as when the party moved out. of the higher pleasantness. But if he As soon, however, as the great procession found himself misinterpreted or unfairly has passed and has wound its way into treated, he was hardly the man to take it the palace, the hitherto deserted streets with the cheerful, airy unconcern of one are crowded again. Pwehs begin with who felt that that, too, might be rather a startling suddenness at every corner. subject for humorous amusement than for Bands strike up; long lines of candles annoyance. Possessing in the highest illuminate the streets at nightfall; rockets degree every other constituent of pleasare let off, fire balloons ascend, and every- antness, Dean Stanley's sensitiveness thing is given up to rejoicing; for the Let-prevented him, perhaps, from overcoming dau-gyee has been graciously ploughed, by his pleasantness as much of the unand the Let-twin Mingala is a presage of pleasantness of the world at large, as he abundant crops.

the

SHWAY YOE.

otherwise might have done. He shone delightfully on those who were grateful

for his rays, but he was not one of the very few who can shine down the squalls which approach them. The buoyancy of his nature was great, but not great enough to overcome what depressed his fastidious susceptibilities, and this often put a stop to their overflow. There is pleasantness which is in great measure dependent on external conditions, and pleasantness which is almost marvellously independent of them; and the dean had the last only where the hostile external conditions were not of a kind to jar his own refined and sensitive sympathies. The unpopularity of his proposal to put a memorial of Prince Louis Napoleon into the Abbey, evidently harassed and distressed him, till he did not see how to maintain his benignity under the painful surprise. But then, the pleasantness which is easily jarred by the unresponsiveness of the outside world is often richer and riper in its kind than the pleasantness which is not jarred by anything of the sort, but which sustains its brightness till it dissipates the alien elements. There is, probably, a finer and more delicate organization about the first species of pleasantness than there is about the second. The mind which shrinks sensitively from misinterpretations responds equally sensitively to every sign of sympathy, while the mind whose pleasantness outshines all storms, will not so often surprise us with the curious beauty of its variable tints. Genius is always a vast addition to pleasantness. And it is rarely indeed that genius is found without a sensitiveness that renders the pleasure it gives us liable to sudden wreck.

whose pleasantness is as steady as that of soft lamplight when all around is dark. And no doubt, it springs from a positive pleasure in shedding light on that which is in want of light, while the pleasantness of men usually likes to see itself reflected, as the sunlight is reflected, from every part. of the surrounding atmosphere. This is another way of saying that one of the steadiest of the constituents of pleasantness is pure self-forgetfulness, which is certainly rarer in men than it is in women. On the other hand, that buoyancy, that spontaneous and radiant vitality which kindles others most effectually, is certainly more masculine than feminine. For that, you need an insight into others' natures, not merely as tact enters into them, so as to avoid instinctively what is a false note, but as a positive power discerning what there is special and original in them, enables you to enter into them; and that, as yet at least, is even rarer with women than with men. We say even rarer, because it is so excessively rare even in men. Pleasant men who can show themselves off to great advantage are not very few; and while the process of showing themselves off is quite fresh and new to you, and they often do it with the simplicity and naïveté of a child,

- they are delightful. But when that enjoyment palls upon you, you find sometimes that you have come to an end of their pleasantness, that they cannot make you feel a new creature, as they made themselves seem new to you. And where this is so, the buoyancy and spontaneousness which are so essential to pleasantness are too apt to become fatiguing And that is, perhaps, one reason why before long. The late Dean of Westminpleasantness in its surest and less fragile ster's pleasantness was far higher than form is much commoner among women this. It was precisely in stirring and than among men, for sunshiny women are kindling the nature of others, when that not unfrequently as sunshiny, we were nature was in moral sympathy with his going to say under the rack, which would own, that his charm consisted. Only the be a great deal too strong an expression, limits were well marked beyond which the as we have not much experience of their deficiency of such moral sympathy exbehavior under such an application as hausted his genial power. He combined that, but certainly under toothache, and rather remarkably the disinterested sweeteven under suffering which arises from ness of women, with that redundant life something which jars their feelings, as of the fancy and imagination that enters they are when the external world is in into and vivifies the nature of others; harmony with their own inner world. only, he had not quite as much of the Pleasant men rarely attain to such pleas power of shining steadily into unanswerantness as this, and if they do, their ing darkness as pleasant women generally pleasantness is apt to be of that ungraded have; he was oppressed by the gloom, till kind to which we have referred as a little his own light began to dwindle. Still, it less pleasant, though more uniform, than was not wounded vanity, as it so often the pleasantness which depends more is, which caused this depression, for he wholly on sympathetic companions. never sought to show himself off, only There are plenty of pleasant women to kindle others. It was rather jarred

nerves, the shrinking of a sensitive plant | drink;" but that the last few words were from rough handling. read "in the Isle of Drink," and that this On the whole, we should say that for led to "indignant protests on the part of the lower degrees of true pleasantness, certain citizens." This is quoted as a there is needed only genuine disinterest-"warning to those who will not take the edness combined with a vital pleasure in trouble to write legibly," but it is equally imparting happiness to others, a qual- a warning to readers of handwriting to ty, by the way, which does not at all use what brains they may happen to posnecessarily accompany disinterestedness, sess. All who have had much experience indeed, in persons of low general elasticity in the performances of printers and copyof nature, you often find a very great dis-ists know very well that, though misreadinterestedness that hardly shines at all. ings are fewest when the original manuFor the higher kinds of pleasantness, you script is good, some of the most irritating want these qualities, combined with a blunders are extracted from the fairest touch of imagination and genius that " copy, those, namely, which make a really divines what there is in others to wretched, bastard sense, that perverts the be stirred and kindled. And for the meaning, or enfeebles the style. The highest of all, you need all these qualities, reason is obvious; a less strenuous attenwith a deep and serene benignity that is tion is paid to good handwriting than to independent even of an atmosphere of bad. Even in "setting up" from plain sympathy; and of men or women who print, strange mistakes are made; for have attained anything like this, there are instance, in setting up the last line of probably not so many as two or three in a "Guinevere" in a review of the "Idylls century, and for a very good reason, of the King," the printers of the review, that it wants something like both saintli- having the book before them, printed, ness and genius, while saintly genius is "To where beyond these vices there is necessarily rare. peace," for "voices."

From The Spectator. BAD HANDWRITING AND STUPID

READERS.

ANECDOTES of ludicrous, or worse than ludicrous mistakes occasioned by bad handwriting are numerous enough. Some of them are as obviously invented as Moore's "freshly-blown noses," for "freshly-blown roses," and others tell strongly of the stupidity of the readers. One of the best, true or false, is that of Horace Greeley, and some other editor. Greeley, as the tale goes, wrote, in his usual scrawl, a letter to this gentleman. The latter wrote an answer, but in his haste put into the envelope for Greeley, Greeley's own letter just received. Greeley, after studying it some time, wrote again to say that as he was quite unable to read it, would his friend kindly repeat his answer in a more legible form? This is an extreme case; but it is a fact that some of our best judges have been unable, after a short time, to read the manuscript of their own judgments.

A small case of the stupid sort comes to us from Jersey. It is said that the lieutenant-governor, General Nicholson, in apologizing for his absence from a temperance meeting, referred to "the need of further restrictions on the sale of

Handwriting bears much blame that does not belong to it. Of course, a man's writing ought to be legible, but allowance must be made for idiosyncracy, fatigue, illness, or haste. A handwriting without peculiarities is a handwriting without landmarks, or checks upon false reading; and, as absolutely good writing is not to be looked for in the business of life, the dull, schoolboy hand, with no special character in it, is not without its dangers.. The very worst manuscript may be made out by a reader who can and will analyze, but those who can and will analyze, are few. Here, as elsewhere, there are not many who find a pleasure in taking trouble, and applying obvious general rules. Take the subject of spelling, for instance. The rule which decides in certain words whether, when the sound is ee, the word shall be spelt ei or ie, is so short and easy, that any one who had no previous knowl edge of human dulness would think it utterly impossible that a mistake should ever be made by a writer who had once cast his eye upon the rule; but what the fact is, we have some of us melancholy reasons for knowing. Now, take the case of a badly-written manuscript. You will find a whole group of people fumbling at a sentence, and making, as to one particu. lar obscure word, guesses upon guesses, all of which are simply absurd. When it is demonstrably clear that the missing link must be an adverb, you may hear six

sane men trying nouns or verbs. It may gency, according to the amount of work be clear that the dark word must be one that presses on the producer of the manof strong praise of a given kind, the dicuscript, his health, his preoccupation, and tionary possibilities of the case lying the activity of his self-consciousness. within narrow compass; but scores of false shots will be made, because nobody has the brains or the will to say to himself, "Whatever this word may be, we can positively determine what it is not, and so limit our range of guessing." In making out bad manuscript, it is more than half the battle to be able to determine at a glance what the word neither is, nor can by any possibility be.

The "personal equation" in these matters is quite a curious little study. Mr. Cox, of Nottingham, in his manly and every-way beautiful preface to Mr. Lynch's posthumous "Services," tells us that, in spite of what the preacher used to suffer from the peine forte et dure of his malady, and the interruptions it brought, the whole service (sermon and prayers) was sometimes written in a single day. "In copying them out for the press," says Mr. Cox, "I have found that each of them furnishes, in the mere penmanship, a long and hard day's work for a man in good health." Well, supposing the service pretty well composed beforehand, the preacher might, of course, write it out more easily than any one could copy it, unless the latter were a penman practised in swift work. Such a copyist (not a mere

There are here and there human beings who are by nature incapable of writing a good hand, just as there are others who cannot draw a straight line or a true circle, or even recognize one. But the ugly man uscript of the clumsy-fisted struggler after form is usually very clear. Haste, uneasiness, excessive work, nervous preoccupation, these are the chief causes of obscure handwriting, with most of us. But when a man's manuscript has once made law-stationer's man) could do one of these for itself a fixed character of its own, neither printers nor expert copyists would like it to come round to tame simplicity and correctness. It would be, in another way, the case of the lover with a squint, who ruined his suit by going to the oculist and getting his eyes put straight; the lady could no longer meet his eye in the old, affectionate way, and she dismissed him. Still, there are faults of handwriting which are inexcusable in themselves, and which neither compositor nor copyist can possibly like to see. One of the worst of these is lax practice in putting the strokes to such letters as " and ". There is no harm in cutting down certain syllables, such as ment and ing, to mere lines or twirls, but where an attempt is made to express the characters, the number of strokes ought to be uniform. Another practical observation is that flurried handwriting gains no time for the writer. A downright lazy scrawl is another matter, and so is that kind of bad writing in which we can see in the badness egotistic self-assertion, or disregard of the eyes and wits of others. It may be laid down that there is much egotism (associated, it may be, with much kindness) in the man who writes a bad hand which never strives to pick itself up. But, of course, the rule must be applied with greater or less strin

services in five hours; some could do it in four; and the copy would be perfectly fair and clear. Still, the majority of copyists think they have done well when they have got through fifteen folios an hour (a folio is seventy-two words), and at that rate one of these services would take about seven hours to write out. Charles Dickens would certainly have found four hours enough, and we have known clever reporters who were fully up to that, the copy being in every way clear and good. Now, it would take a great deal of overwork, worry, and confusion, to break down into illegibility a handwriting which was capable of that. It is, in good part, a question of physical energy, and something depends upon the question whether the penman works more from the wrist or more from the shoulder. However, in course of time, under the pressure of hard work, every handwriting will come show scars. Often, the hand of a strong, broad-shouldered man will break down before that of his slighter brother. So long as the scars are honorable scars, got in fair fight with the difficulties of the bureau, the study, or the editor's room, the handwriting will remain legible to all but dull or inattentive eyes, because the characteristic portions of the words will be retained by the penman.

to