of fact being, as an Edinburgh reviewer alleges, that his own character, tendencies, and aspirations had been invariably opposed to the plans, wishes, and modes of thinking of his family. Mr. Froude has depicted in Edward Fowler a young man who in his dealings with every one except with his own family, was frank, generous, and unselfish; and whose affections, naturally very strong, finding themselves forced out of their proper channel, poured themselves out on any one that happened to attract him. A few kind words from his father, now and then, implying real sympathy and inviting confidence, might, we are given to understand, have averted in this case, as in so many others, a bitter result of estrangement and desolation. Perhaps, as Mr. Disraeli somewhere intimates, with all their anxiety and opportunities for observation, the parent and tutor are rarely skilful in discovering the character of their child or charge. "Custom blunts the fineness of psychological study: those with whom we have lived long and early, are apt to blend our essential and our accidental qualities in one bewildering association." Strange, exclaims Hamilton Aïde, how little we often know of those who are next us in the battle-ranks through this long march of life! Our daily familiar life, as George Eliot has remarked, is but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds; and those who sit with us at the same hearth are often the farthest off from the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good. "Strangers yet," as Lord Houghton has it :—

"After childhood's winning ways,

After care, and blame, and praise,

Counsel asked, and wisdom given,

After mutual prayers to heaven,

Child and parent scarce regret

When they part-are strangers yet."

Or as Chauncy Hare Townshend expresses the same relative

truth, too absolutely true :

"Kindred are oft but kin by name,

Our thoughts they never knew."

MANY YEARS TO ENJOY LIFE: THIS NIGHT TO DIE.

TH

ST. LUKE xii. 19, 20.

HE rich man was getting richer to his heart's content. So plentiful was the produce of his land, that he must needs enlarge his premises. There was not room enough in his barns for those golden harvests; the barns must be pulled down, and greater ones built, wherein to bestow all his fruits and his goods. Happy man he accounted himself that day; happy in a prosperous present, happier still in a promising future. A future of happiness not less prolonged than assured. So he would say to his soul that day, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." That day he said it. Fool! that night his soul was required of him.

Woe was denounced by one of old on another of the Dives family, who said, "I will build me a wide house, and large chambers," and who cut him out windows, and ceiled his house with cedar, and painted it with vermilion. "Shalt thou reign because thou closest thyself in cedar?" Man's sanguine and sure "I will "-how little of the future tense there sometimes is about it after all!

"Tu secanda marmora

Locas sub ipsum funus; et sepulchri
Immemor, struis domos."

In Homer we see from his tall ship the king of men descend, there fondly thinking the gods conclude his toil, where, in fact, awaits him murder most foul and most unnatural. In Homeric figure

"So, whilst he feeds luxurious in the stall,
The sovereign of the herd is doomed to fall."

Bitterly the shade of Atrides repeats his tragic story to Odysseus, telling how, "Alas! he hoped, the toils of war o'ercome, to meet soft quiet and repose at home. Delusive hope!" for at home the hand was already upraised to smite him.

The Turkish prince, Alp Arslan, dying of Joseph's daggerstroke, bequeathed an admonition to the pride of kings, which

Gibbon has preserved. "Yesterday, as from an eminence I beheld the numbers, the discipline, and the spirit of my armies; the earth seemed to tremble under my feet; and I said in my heart, 'Surely thou art the king of the world, the greatest and most invincible of warriors.' These armies are no longer mine; and in the confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the hand of an assassin." The inscription on his tomb invited those who had seen the glory of Alp Arslan exalted to the heavens, to meditate on its present burial in the dust.

Michelet moralises with trenchant irony on the fate which overtook our Henry V. on French soil. It is to the “Dance of Death" he refers in the exclamation, "What sport for death, what a malicious pastime to have brought the victorious Harry within a month's reach of the crown of France! After a life of unremitting toil for that end, he wanted but one little month added to his existence to be the survivor of Charles VI. No! not a month, not a day more was to be his.” Splendid was that festival at Cæsarea at which Herod Agrippa, in the pomp and pride of power, entered the theatre in a robe of silver, which glittered, says the historian, with the morning rays of the sun, so as to dazzle the eyes of the assembly, and excite general admiration. Some of his flatterers set up the shout, "A present god!" Agrippa did not repress the impious adulation which spread through the theatre. At that moment he looked up, and saw an owl perched over his head on a rope, and Agrippa had been forewarned that when next he saw that bird, "at the height of his fortune," he would die within five days. The fatal omen, according to Josephus, pierced the heart of the king, who, with deep melancholy, exclaimed, "Your god will soon suffer the common lot of mortality." He was immediately struck, in the language of the sacred volume, by an angel. Seized with violent pains, he was carried to his palace, lingered five days in extreme agony, being "eaten of worms," and so died.

Fielding forcibly presents a certain sanguine projector, lusty and strong, in the heyday of middle age, who reckons con

fidently on becoming heir to the estate of a senior of immense wealth, and has all his plans elaborately prepared for his disposal of the same. Nothing is wanting to enable him to enter upon the immediate execution of these plans, but the death of the elder man, in calculating which he has studied every book extant that treats of the value of lives, reversions, etc.; from all which he has satisfied himself, that as he has every day a chance of this happening, so has he more an even chance of its happening before long. "But while the captain was one day busied in deep contemplations of this kind, one of the most unlucky, as well as most unseasonable, accidents happened to him. The utmost malice of fortune could, indeed, have contrived nothing so cruel, so mal-à-propos, so absolutely destructive to all his schemes." It was, that just at the very instant when his heart was exulting in meditations on the happiness which would accrue to him by the other's death, he himself was cut off by an apoplexy. As Léontine complains in "Heraclius,"—

"Et lorsque le hasard me flatte avec excès,

Tout mon dessein avorte au milieu du succès."

It was just when Kleber was beginning to reap the fruits of his intrepidity and discretion, that he was cut off by the obscure assassin, Souliman. One is reminded of Thomson on the

massacre of the bees,—

"At evening snatched,

Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night,

And fixed o'er sulphur; while not dreaming ill,

The happy people in their waxen cells,

Sat tending public cares, and planning schemes
Of temperance, for winter poor," etc.

A tory historian, recording the close of the parliamentary session in July 1827, takes occasion to observe that Mr. Canning now saw every wish of his heart gratified, having raised himself to the highest position in the State, and being looked up to in every part of the world as the protector of the oppressed and the advocate of freedom. In the prime of life, "his sway in Parliament was unbounded, and he might hope

for a long career of fame, fortune, and usefulness." Vanitas tanitatum! The hand of fate was already upon him, and he was to be suddenly snatched from the scene of his glory, at the very moment when he seemed to have attained the summit of earthly felicity. Even, however, when death is not concerned, as in his memorable case, in the sudden and final collapse of a great career, and the abrupt extinction of exuberant promise, how often is Cowper's picture realized, where

"Runs the mountainous and craggy ridge
That tempts ambition. On the summit, see,
The seals of office glitter in his eyes ;

He climbs, he pants, he grasps them. At his heels,
Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,

And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down,
And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.”

The picture is, in some sort, and for moral uses, a pendent to that by another poet, of those who are pushing hard up hill the cumbrous load of life; just as they trust to gain the farthest steep, and put an end to strife,

"Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep,

And hurls their labours to the valley deep,

For ever vain."

But this is diverging farther and farther from the direct import of our theme. More to the purpose is the same poet's description of Celadon assuring his betrothed of perfect safety, and triumphantly asserting her absolute immunity from the perils of the storm, and as exultingly inferring his own, from his relationship to her; when,—

"From his void embrace,

Mysterious heaven! that moment to the ground,

A blackened corse, was struck the beauteous maid."

Some innocents, as Cleopatra has it, escape not the thunderbolt. Innocence, as well as iniquity, may know something of that breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.

The loving friends of Charlotte Brontè, after her marriage, are described by one among them as catching occasional