BY THE AUTHOR OF

THE following conversation took place lately amongst certain friends who have been called "Friends in Council."

As I have often before described these personages, it will not be necessary for me to do so now; and, without further preface, I will introduce my readers into their circle, and narrate the conversation which thus abruptly commenced.

Ellesmere. Mauleverer and I have had a long walk together, this morning. We went as far as Speenham Ponds. We talked incessantly; and I am proud to say that there was not one minute of our talk during which we agreed upon any point of any single subject-not even when we abused the absent, who are now present. And if there is any subject on which two people can agree, it is in the depreciation of their common friends.

Mauleverer. Ellesmere takes such shallow views. He is always on the surface of things.

Ellesmere. It is better to swim than to sink.

Sir Arthur. I suppose the controversy was upon the old subject-the misery of mankind?

Ellesmere. It was.

Mauleverer. Ellesmere does not seem to see that man is a wretched creature in himself. He makes the silly excuse for him, that it is always the unfortunate circumstance, and not the man himself, who is to blame.

Ellesmere. There is one thing which Mauleverer and the misery-mongers always forget. People talk a great deal about Hope as being the chief solace of

"FRIENDS IN COUNCIL."

mankind: I believe that if Hope alone had been at the bottom of Pandora's box, the Mauleverers would have prevailed, and the human race would soon have come to an end. But there is something in praise of which no Poetry is made, and to express which, indeed, there is no single word that I know of, but which performs as great a part in comforting and encouraging mankind as Hope itself.

Sir Arthur. What can he mean?

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Ellesmere. Well, he is beating his brains to invent a word. Shall we say "excusativeness?" That is not a pretty word that won't do. Perhaps there is some word in Greek; but that is a doubly dead language to me now. certain learned man, however, was expounding Aristotle to me the other day; and it seemed to me that Aristotle was one of the most skilful wordmongers that has ever appeared. Is there any word in Greek which means putting a good face upon it, or putting quite another face upon it?

Cranmer. This is rather hazy. I do not begin to find myself consoled for the miseries of life by what Ellesmere has hitherto said.

Ellesmere. I think I shall call my twin-brother of Hope, the power of making a judicious statement.

The best illustration that I can take is from the language of military despatches. For instance: "The enemy crossed the bridge, and our advanced guard fell back upon the right wing." Or thus: "We deployed from the heights and occupied a favourable position in the valley."

In civil as well as in military life, in

private as well as in public life, our advanced guard is constantly falling back upon our right wing; and we deploy from the heights to occupy a favourable position in the valley. Stupid and envious bystanders, or nasty, spying, troublesome historians, say that our advanced guard was nearly cut to pieces, and that our deploying from the heights was the inevitable result of a tremen

dous strategical blunder. But our power of judicious statement enables us to bear up against any amount of hostile criticism, and is, I believe, the great comfort of our lives.

Observe this, too, that the power of making judicious statements increases in due proportion with the facility for committing errors. For example: I have no doubt (whatever may be said to the contrary) that imaginative men are more prone to commit errors than other people, and they would descend into depths of despair if they had not an extra power of making judicious statements. With the imaginative man, the advanced guard does not merely fall back upon the right wing; but he says, "We threw back our advanced guard upon the right wing;" clearly indicating a voluntary operation. Again: he does not make his forces deploy from the heights in the way that ordinary men do. He adds several fine touches, and says: "Exactly at the right moment, in accordance with the highest strategical considerations, our forces, in admirable order, deployed from the heights, in order to occupy a most commanding position in the valley."

Milverton. Ellesmere has occupied some time in explanation; but what he says is perfectly true, and it may be doubted whether hope for the future would be sufficient to console men if they could not gloss over the past.

Ellesmere. What I complain of Mauleverer, is, that he is so detestably consistent. He does not seem to improve at all by the good conversation he hears from us. Now, I change a little ; but always, I trust, in the right direction. I have become a mass of tolerance. large and varied survey of the miseries

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of mankind has led me to conclude that every man is a being much to be pitied. One cannot be angry with men, or be otherwise than tolerant of all their errors and shortcomings, when thinks that most men have teeth-that some men shave-that we have to get up and go to bed (both of them detestable operations) every day-that there is hardly any place, however remote, in which there is not more than one delivery of letters in the course of the twenty-four hours that any human being, however foolish, can annoy any other human being, however sensible (though thousands of miles should separate them), by informing him abruptly, in a brutal telegram, of all the unpleasant things that can happenthat pleasures are taken in such large doses as to become rather like poisons, dinners lasting sometimes three hours that we have to live with creatures, very like and yet very unlike ourselves, who are strangely attractive to us, and whom we fondly and vainly endeavour to manage (they every day in these times becoming more unmanageable) that children will scream at the top of their voices, and wear out shoes in the most reckless manner that most of our abodes are but vertical continuations of sewers-that there is no good weather anywhere; it is always too hot, or too cold, or too rainy, or too shiny, or too misty, or too dazzling-that old ladies will have the windows up in a railway carriage when the wind is south, and young ladies the windows down when the wind is east-that there is such a thing as public speaking, and that no one can say or write anything with reasonable brevity-I say again that a male human being is a creature whom one cannot regard but with the utmost pity; and even his slight aberrations from perfect virtue are results which may naturally be expected to follow from the adverse circumstances that surround him.

Cranmer. It does not seem to me that in this talk which Mauleverer and Ellesmere had this morning, either of them could have been doing more than bring