When we hear a man proud of the Smith nose, the mouth of the Browns, the forehead of the Joneses, or the hereditary squint or wall-eye of the Williamses, we may set him down as a fool; but when we meet with a man who finds it incumbent on him to act well and honourably, because his family always did so before him, we are delighted with that honourable respect which he pays to the virtue of his family. And such hereditary virtues are not uncommon. "My father," said a tradesman, the other day, "always paid his rent at twelve o'clock on quarter-day, and I will always do so;" and the man, through life, had made great struggles to keep up to that excellent virtue of punctual payment. So we have an hereditary forwardness in brave actions: some families in out-lying villages are always ready to head the list of Christmas benevolences; some are devoted to a life at sea; some to the army and to particular service therein; all through family pride. Certain regiments, as the "Fighting Fiftieth," having once earned a reputation, dower every private soldier in their ranks with a family pride in their good name, which makes him all the better man. Reputation continues to act long after the particular deed that won it is forgotten.

There is, then, even a very beautiful side from which we may regard this foolish pride. When pride in ancestry came up we hardly know; for certainly all the ancients did not look, as we do, to a man's family, since the Romans could adopt

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a total stranger, who, thereon, had all the merit of blooddescent. Some people think that the lineage of our Saviour, given in the commencement of two of our Gospels -and given for an especial purpose-set men's minds, always prone to self-flattery, upon the utter vanity of birth. But certainly the ancients did refer to paternal acres, and the deeds of their ancestors, as well as we do; and Plutarch, in his familiar, easy way, lets us see that the pride of ancestry was no stranger to him. In the life of Brutus, who slew Cæsar, and who is one of Plutarch's great favourites, he lets us into the secret at once: The great ancestor," says he, "of Marcus Brutus, was that Junius Brutus to whom the Romans erected a statue of brass, and placed it in the Capitol among their kings." Again, speaking of his hero, he says that "he was formed for virtue, both by nature-i.e., descent and education;" and he further on tells us that the partisans of Cæsar would not have it that Marcus Brutus was descended from Junius Brutus, whose family, they said, was extinct with his two sons. Marcus Brutus was, according to them, a mere plebeian, the son of a steward, who was 66 one Brutus, of mean extraction." What does it matter to us now who did the noble action? What do we care if the Bruce came of a line of kings, or if Wallace was a mere common fellow? Nelson, Blake, Cromwell, have served their country; we hardly want to know whether they were of noble blood or not. How many disputes have

we had about Shakspere !—some saying that he was the son of a wool-stapler and butcher, who was of mere common and puddle blood; and others that his lineage, like his name, was knightly. Certainly he himself paid for his father's grant of arms, that well-known spear on a bend; but surely no one would have cared to ask whether he was well-born or not, if he had been as undistinguished as the thousands of fine-blooded noblemen who lived and died while he was writing plays! There is this strange peculiarity about family pride, which is indicative of weakness-it likes to claim all great people as of a great race. We are Chinese in our sympathies. A great man in China ennobles his ancestors; he cannot do a great deed without very properly reflecting a lustre on his father and mother and grandfather -the reverse way to our own, but nevertheless the wiser way.

"Everything in this world," said a great philosopher, "has two handles ;" and if we take hold of the right one we shall do well. The man who prides himself upon the worth of his family may himself become worthy even by that weakness. But woe to the man who has nothing to boast of but the position of his father, the beauty or riches of his mother, and the virtues of his ancestors! "He is," said Sir Thomas Overbury, "very much like a potato-the best part of him is underground." Even Lord Lyndsay, in his "Lives of the Lyndsays," is obliged to resort to a senti

mental regard to ancestry, rather than a pride in it, of which he is half-ashamed, and talks of the "additional energy which the precepts of a father should inspire us with, when we trace the transmission of those precepts from father to son through successive generations." Alas! such tracing is a difficult task. We cannot honour a man who stands for merit merely "on his forefather's feet, by heraldry proved valiant and discreet;" for we must in our heart of hearts believe with Young that self-help and merit arising from our own virtues and actions are the things to be looked at.

"Men should press forward in the glorious chase;
Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.

Let high birth triumph! What can be more great?
Nothing,-but merit in a low estate."

X.

SNEERS AND ILL-NATURE.

Ir is a great deal more easy to hurt than it is to please and gratify a man. The Emperor who offered a reward for a new pleasure, would have been quite satisfied with an old pain; a kick on his august shins, for instance, would have roused his ire sooner than the sweetest sauce would have stirred his jaded appetite.

Recognizing and illustrating the above truth, the fools of the human family take to jeering, sneering, and ill-nature, as the readiest way of making their weight felt. A gnat would perhaps sink into the insignificance of being forgotten, if he did not make himself felt by his sting; and the thrusting out of the bayonet of a wasp is no doubt a sudden pleasure to it. Moreover there is an immense power in a laugh, especially when raised at the right time. Few persons, unless they are exceedingly strong-minded, can stand against it; and when a fashion or a mode of thought is overgrown and old, a sound honest laugh will often knock it down.