"And now to right she turned, and now to left,
And found no ease in turning or in rest".

like one of those depicted by Keble

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who darkling and alone,

Would wish the weary night were gone,

Though dawning morn should only show
The secret of their unknown woe."

Shelley sings of the desire "of the night for the morrow" when expressing the devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow. Gray vividly depicts the state of mind of one who

starts from short slumbers, and wishes for morning

To close his dull eyes when he sees it returning."

Of Mrs. Gaskell's Jemima we read, that "the night, the sleepless night, was so crowded and haunted by miserable images, that she longed for day; and when day came, with its stinging realities, she wearied and grew sick for the solitude of night." So with Shenstone's Jessie :

:

"Amid the dreary gloom of night I cry,

When will the morn's once pleasing scenes return?

Yet what can morn's returning ray supply,

But foes that triumph, or but friends that mourn?"

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BUYER'S BARGAIN AND BOAST.

PROVERBS xx. 14.

ONSIDERING what goes to make up a proverb, it would

be strange if, in the book of Proverbs, part though it be of holy writ, there should be no touches of the humorous, however restrained and dignified its manifestation. Shrewd insight into character, finding expression in phrases of homely vigour, or tranquil irony, or two-edged sarcasm,—without much of this, what were a book of proverbs? Assuredly the collected proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, are not careful to eschew a touch of humour when the subject invites,

or allows of, not to say requires it. Such a subject we have, and such a touch of the jocose, in a verse which sets forth so tersely the tactics of traffickers and bargain-makers; how the bidder depreciates the wares he is bidding for, until they are his; and how he alters his tone then, and brags at once of their superior worth, and of his own superior skill in effecting a purchase. He haggles, and beats them down, and poohpoohs them, as all but unsaleable, while yet they are on sale; but so soon as the bargain is struck, he goes on his way rejoicing, and perhaps calls his kinsfolk and acquaintance together, to rejoice with him, for he has bought dirt cheap what was worth its weight in gold. "It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth." The Paris of "Troilus and Cressida" compliments, or, as may be, upbraids a subtle Greek with his dexterity in this line of policy:

"Fair Diomede, you do as chapmen do,

Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy."

In measure with the intending buyer's dispraise, is kept up by the would-be seller a song of praise. As Horace has it, Laudat venales qui vult extrudere merces; and the laudation is apt to be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic worth of his wares. Good wine may need no bush; but bad wine, on that showing, may need one as big as a tree; and the wine merchant is equal to the occasion.

A. K. H. B. has said of men in towns, aware of the value of time, that by long experience they are assured of the uselessness of trying to overreach a neighbour in a bargain, because he is so sharp that they will not succeed. But in agricultural districts such practical essayists in the art of overreaching are declared to be common enough and to spare; and it is one of the Recreations of the Country Parson aforenamed (initially at least) to mark out in detail the course which these bargainmakers are alleged invariably to follow. "If they wish to buy a cow or rent a field, they begin by declaring with frequency and vehemence that they don't want the thing,—that in fact they would rather not have it,—that it would be inconvenient

for them to become possessors of it.

They then go on to say

that still, if they can get it at a fair price, they may be induced to think of it. They next declare that the cow is the very worst that ever was seen, and that very few men would have such a creature in their possession." And so on,-till the strenuous haggler, after wasting two hours, telling sixty-five lies, and stamping himself as a cheat, ends the negotiation, without taking anything at all by his petty trickery, so complicated and so clumsy withal in its convolutions.

It is in his estimate of the real merits of English horses, that Fuller discreetly observes, in meting out temperate but cordial praise of their good points, " And whilst the seller praiseth them too much, the buyer too little, the indifferent stander-by will give them their due commendation." What was true of horseflesh and its breeders and purchasers, in old Fuller's day holds good still. Type of a large class is that manoeuvring major in a popular fiction, of whom, and of his "bargains" in the stable--mostly sedate, elderly animals—we read, that certainly, if the animals could have spoken, they would have expressed their surprise at the difference in the language used by the major when a buyer and when a seller; for while, as a buyer, he made them out to be, like Gil Blas' mule, all faults, as a seller he suddenly came round to believe in them as paragons of perfection.

Leigh Hunt records as his experience of the Italians at home, that to cheat you through thick and thin was the universal endeavour—so that a perpetual warfare was inevitable, in which you were obliged to fight in self-defence. "If you paid anybody what he asked you, it never entered into his imagination that you did it from anything but folly. You were pronounced a minchione (a ninny), one of their greatest terms of reproach. On the other hand, if you battled well through the bargain, a perversion of the natural principle of self-defence led to a feeling of respect for you." Dispute might increase, it is added; the man might grin, stare, threaten; might pour out torrents of argument and of "injured innocence," as they always do; but be firm, and he went away equally angry and admiring. "Did

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anybody condescend to take them in, the admiration as well as the anger was still in proportion, like that of the gallant knights of old when they were beaten in single combat." Such chaffering, or "prigging," as Burns calls it (in his satiric touch at town councillors waddling down the street, in all the pomp of ignorant conceit,—

"Men wha grew wise prigging owre hops and raisins),"

such haggling, and stickling, and demurring, and deferring, are too truly said to distinguish the British system of arranging settlements-in which, embodying completely the Oriental theory of marriage, a woman is dealt with ". as a valuable security, to be exchanged for due consideration." A marriage conducted according to the approved principles is therefore 66 a matter of sharp, close bargaining. No sooner is the romantic part of it over, than it is surrendered to the lawyers, who proceed to chaffer over it and cheapen their adversary's claim, as they might do if they were purchasing a cow." A self-styled Oriental student of the modern Syrians, in a book bearing that title, graphically sketches a representative bargaining scene in a café at Damascus, between a Christian indigo-dealer, in Beyrout costume, and a Jewish dyer; the former pretending to feel insulted at being offered so low a price, and the latter pretending to get into a passion at having his time taken up with a fruitless negotiation. Captain Marryat's Travels in North America supply a plurality of parallel passages; now of two misses "swopping" bonnets, with an assumed indifference and a suppressed ardour almost ridiculous enough to verge on the sublime; and now of a couple of DownEasters, whittling all the while they are bargaining, and doing both with all their might and main. Fiction-writers who make a study of character and manners are fond of introducing scenes of this kind. Scott's Antiquary chuckles over his feats in cheapening old curiosities, and delights to tell how often he has stood haggling on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be led to suspect the value Mr. Oldbuck sets upon the article: "And then, Mr. Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the

consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a cold indif ference, while the hand is trembling with pleasure!" The bargaining match with Maggie, the Fairport fishwife, is one of the gems of the story. Mr. Charles Reade offers a racy pendant in his trafficking encounter between Christie Johnstone, the pride of Newhaven, and the four Irish merchants who have agreed to work together, and to make a show of competition, the better to keep the price down within bounds, but who are no match for woman's wit and woman's tongue, as exercised by Christie. The author of "Doctor Jacob" depicts in Herr Schmidt a rosy, round man, with eyes that were never in tune with his mouth; the former being sharp, Jewish, and speculative; the latter, supine, commercial, and conservative: "He made use of his eyes when he bought, and of his mouth when he sold, giving his customers to understand that he was the easiest going man in the world, only desirous of small profits, and by no means miserable if a gold watch or any other article went for half its value." Canon Kingsley enlivens the adventures of "Hereward" with a certain Dick Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren, who tries to overreach the hero, and fails to his cost; one stage of the transaction taking this turn: "The less anxious the stranger seemed to buy, the more anxious grew Dick to sell; but he concealed his anxiety, and let the stranger turn away, thanking him for his drink," but anon renewing the treaty with as much semblance of disregard as he could put on. The author of "The Gayworthys" works up a clever bit of homely chaffering between Mrs. Vorse and Widow Horke the strawberry-dealer. And we find ourselves between a couple of horse-dealers again in "Silas Marner:' "Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the horse, and Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is only one of many human transactions carried on in this ingenious manner); and they both considered that the bargain was in its first stage, when Bryce replied ironically, [to the other's boast of a recent high bid,] 'I wonder at that now, I wonder you mean to keep him; for I never heard of a man who didn't want to sell his horse, getting a bid of half as