would have been a much more serious loss had it come forty years before. You are not anxious, now, about making a good appearance on any important occasion. That is outgrown. No one, beyond those very near, will care whether you do or not. You desire quietly and faithfully to do your duty, and have no expectation of extended fame. It may be confessed, that it is very pleasant if before you begin to fall off much in body and mind, you have reached such a place in your worldly calling as makes sure that no one can dream that when vacancies occur, you are looking for further preferment. To get to the end of your tether, though its length be modest, is well. It cuts off all temptation to incur the risk of occasional seasons of feverish anxiety, to be followed by defeat and mortification. One thinks of the counsel given to an Anglican clergyman who had reached a considerable elevation but was destined to a much higher, by a venerable dignitary approaching the confines of this life: Always have an eye to preferment.' No more disquieting counsel could be given to man. It must cause, to the average mind, a certain fever, to know that it is likely one may be appointed to the highest place. It is better, far better, to know that the temptation and fever will never come one's way. Dr. Barry tells that after his father had sent in his design for the Houses of Parliament, he remained quite cool and peaceful 'till rumours began to ooze out that No. 64 was among the first, and not unlikely to be the chosen design. Then followed a short time of vehement excitement, till the award was published, and the first premium assigned to Mr. Barry.' A wise man, knowing how vehement might be the excitement of ambition, may well turn into a path which affords no room for it. Let us keep out of the strife and the race, and 'study

VOL. VIII.-NO. XLIV. NEW SERIES.

to be quiet.' It is not worth while to fret one's-self into a nervous fever.

There is an inconsistency about the estimate of human nature (including your own) into which you grow. You bear patiently with almost anything; you are charitable towards your fellow-creatures; but you do not think highly of them. It does not do to look too closely and nearly into poor humanity. It is because you know yourself much better than you know any one else, that you are well aware that you are yourself the greatest fool you have ever known. You are aware of the peculiar estimate of needy people that is gained by a poor-law inspector. It will clash sadly with the warm confidence wherewith you believe needy people's stories in your unsophisticated days. There are very many who are always ready to tell a falsehood to cloak a misdeed, or to obtain some small advantage. It was a miserable view of human nature that the eccentric wealthy man reached, who devoted his days to riding in London omnibuses, and eagerly volunteering to hand change from the conductor to the passengers. He had with him great store of pence, and always added a penny or two to the change. The passenger received it: saw he had got too much; and (sad to say) in the majority of cases, eagerly put it in his pocket. A fair per centage of honest men and women handed back the over payment. But the wealthy cynic held by the conclusion, that a very small temptation would make many human beings thieves. Let us not be cynical; but we cannot shut our eyes to facts. A specially kind and generous man lately encountered a signal instance of ingratitude from one whom he had served very kindly and materially. His only remark (uttered in my hearing), was Just the usual thing. Even Arnold, with all his nobleness and trustfulness of nature,

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now and then wrote in his diary awful passages about the depravity of even school-boy humanity. And I fear that many experienced folk, always smooth and courteous, have come to act on the principle of treating every friend as membering that some day he may be an enemy, and every enemy as remembering that some day it may be expedient to receive him as a friend. I have heard a fellowmortal complain that owing to his having disobliged one who may be called Y, Y had cut him. I ventured to suggest to the fellow-mortal that he should not complain. It was well to know that henceforth Y was an enemy, and to calculate accordingly. Whereas, had Y been more a man of the world, he would have treated my fellow-mortal with unabated suavity, till the day came when (still with the suave countenance) he could return the blow he had received, with crushing effect. Always be most afraid of the man to whom you know you have behaved badly, but who ever receives you with unruffled courtesy. He may be a thoroughly high-principled man who bears no malice, and who is resolved to overcome evil with good. But he may be a man who keeps his rod in pickle against the day when he can give you a signally vicious cut with it; when he can prevent your getting something on which you had set your heart, or say a bad word of you which may blight the toils and hopes of years.

One thing to which experience reconciles you, or (to speak more accurately) which experience teaches you to expect with certainty, is Unpunctuality in completing all work. From the sending home of a pair of shoes to the publication of a great book or the making ready of a great Exhibition, it is still the same. It appears to be the condition of our being here, that everything shall not be ready till later than it was promised; also, that everything

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shall cost a great deal more than you were assured it would. The sanguine soul miscalculates what its powers can do in a given time. The obliging soul pleases a customer by assurances which will never be realised. No doubt there are exceptions: rare and noble exceptions. I could name about half-a-dozen, among all I know, who, if they undertake to do a thing by such a day, are ready to the hour. I should like here to eternize their names, but it would not do to turn my essay into an advertising medium. Medium, I observe, is the word. The other day I was upbraiding a remarkably intelligent workman for having failed to come and do some needful piece of work at the time he promised. It was impossible to be angry with one so good-natured though impenitent in his dilatoriness, when he asked, not without a touch of natural indignation, ‘Are ye so foolish as to believe a word a tradesman says?' In early youth, {: we have not attained the cynical incredulity which is sure to come. A little boy has just entered my room, boiling with just wrath. years are seven. He stated that Mr. Snooks had told a downright lie.' Snooks had stated the day before that certain repairs had been made on a large wooden horse; but the little man, having just gone to bring home his horse, had found it untouched by the mender's hand. The experience will become very common in after years. Many a time will he return home from a brief absence, hoping to find some work about his house completed, whose completeness by that day had been solemnly promised, to find that it had never been touched. It is an always jarring and irritating experience. Of course, it implies unfaithfulness to a bargain: and it implies, further, a selfish and coarsegrained disregard of the annoyance others may undergo through your neglect. And these are two very

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bad things. Then, friendly reader of past years, have you learned never to expect that the average human being will deliver any message accurately? Likewise, that many mortals, through stupidity or inattention, will not understand what you say to them: misunderstanding indeed to the degree of thinking (and saying) that you said exactly the opposite of what you said?

After all, a growing charitableness comes through the conviction that people are working out the nature that is in them. Not that they cannot help it; but it is difficult to them to help it. Where many years have gone over, you find the man again still with the same oddities and faults as in the old time. You have not seen him for a decade, but you find yourself in his company; and there is the old violence, or pettedness, or vapouring. And you may have known one possessing many good qualities: able, conscientious, hard-working, God-fearing; yet some little irritability of nervous system, continually manifesting itself year after year, has gone far to neutralize all. He could not help it: : expose him to provocation, and he could no more help flaring up than a man dipped in water can help being wet. Yet the course of Providence has punished the involuntary fault: has held him back from eminence and honour, otherwise well-merited. If a preacher, every now and then you will hear of his breaking out upon the congregation for coughing or inattention; if a judge, there is an occasional scene in court with some pugnacious counsel; if a shopkeeper, he will drive away an occasional customer. And it will be so from youth to age. Twenty years ago, the writer, a youthful clergyman, abode in a little country manse: it should rather be styled suburban. One morning, hearing a noise, he abandoned the page of sermon in progress, and hastened to the front

door. A very bumptious and illnatured beggar-man was loudly abusing a harmless maid servant. The cause of offence is neither here nor there. The servant was not in fault, and I ordered the beggar off. He departed, firing a parting salute of bad language. Six years afterwards, a hundred miles off, as the writer walked round to his stableyard, he heard a roaring. And, sure enough, there was the selfsame beggar, quarrelsome as of yore, in the height of an altercation. Poor fellow, he had doubtless spent these years, and many more, in the atmosphere of controversy. Time and place were changed, but my old acquaintance was still the same. Only at two points in his life did that fellow-creature enter my field of view, each time for two minutes; yet in these brief seasons his nature asserted itself. But let us not think of the faults of others. Don't you know, my brother, that our own faults are never cured? Year after year, spite of many a setting-down, the foolish or evil tendency abides. The child is father of the man. Circumstances change, and the development of evil alters; but the selfsame thing is there, essentially unchanged. The shuffling, tricky, lying school-boy, is lacking through all life in the ingenuousness of moral courage. And he cannot reach it, any more than he can reach the stature of Goliath. Probably we are not such fools as not to know what are our own faults. Whatever they are, it is vexing how they keep by us. The old enemies, oftentimes smitten on the head, will not be killed. 'I would need to be made over again to do that,' said an old Scotch woman to me long ago, when I counselled her to leave off vexing herself with needless fears of coming evil. Almost the only fault which I have seen thoroughly got rid of, more than once or twice, is that of untidiness. Give the slatternly boy or girl an

exclusive room to inhabit and take care of, and a new leaf is turned over (in some cases) straightway. As he who gets something to conserve, becomes conservative, so does the average human being grow tidy, when he has something of his own to keep tidy. No doubt there are hopeless slatterns, the curse of all around them, who are slatterns to the last.

Did you wonder sometimes, long ago, how you could manage to break off some usage or acquaintance that you had grown tired of, but did not see how you could get free from? You have learned that things break themselves off. Don't be afraid. One understands well David Copperfield's burden of mind as to the helpless page who could neither

work nor go away: how poor David perplexed himself with apprehensions as to what should be done with the page when he had grown an old grey-headed man. You learn that these are needless fears. Somehow or other, as time goes on, all things are brought to a close. In this world, try your hardest, you will not very long keep things going on in the same way. You thought you would have your pages in every number of the magazine as long as you lived; but by insensible degrees that wears to an end. You grow out of things. out of things. The old order, in things lesser and greater, must give place to the new. And there need not be any violent breaking-off. Time is on the side of him who desires change. A. K. H. B.

FRASER'S

MAGAZINE.

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-a policy. The Tories have none. The Liberals have exhausted theirs. There fore Mr. Disraeli is unable to take office; and Mr. Gladstone cannot appeal to the country. Statesmen must have a policy now-a-days, and it appears there is none to be found. If policy mean what it used to mean, and our leading politicians are really deficient in the art of governing, devoid of principles to guide them in administering the affairs of the State, then the charge is indeed a serious one; and it is to be hoped that we are not in such an evil case. But in truth we seem to have got into a way of thinking, that by a policy is intended a programme of changes more or less revolutionary in their nature or extent; and, accordingly, when a policy is demanded, it is considered an appropriate answer to point to a list of measures upon which the decision of the country will be sought. Legislative measures cannot be in themselves a policy, though they may embody and give effect to it; and it is perfectly possible that such measures may leave in doubt the question, upon what principles they are based and advocated.

It may therefore not be too late even now-and if it be not too late, it is certainly not too soon-to demand, what is really the policy of English statesmen with reference to Ireland? We never hear of a Scotch policy or a Welsh policy; and a

VOL. VIII.NO. XLV. NEW SERIES.

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colonial policy or a foreign policy is talked of only when the relations between England and her neighbours or dependencies seem to be in doubt. Why, then, this constant demand for an Irish policy? It is not enough to point to the unsettled state of Ireland, or the discontent of a portion of the people. real explanation, let it be denied or forgotten as it may, depends upon the fact that the character of the union between the two countries remains at this moment doubtful. Is Ireland a conquered country, to be held by force of arms? an independent state, bound by treaty to Great Britain? Ought she to be ranked among the number of the colonies? or is the island really an integral part of a united kingdom? In a word, what is the relationship in which Ireland stands to England? Here is a question which meets us at the threshold, when we seek to fix upon a policy for Ireland; a question surely of paramount importance; a question, moreover, the authoritative settlement of which would go far to put an end to Irish agitation.

In truth, a policy for Ireland is an urgent want, the history of the last five years notwithstanding. The only statesmanlike utterance (whether right or wrong) on the subject, during all the Irish debates of recent sessions, was Mr. Gladstone's announcement that Ireland must be governed according

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