great artist was a noble one. "They don't ask you out," said an acquaintance to Dr. Johnson, "these great lords and ladies, like they do David Garrick." "No," said Johnson; "they don't like their mouths stopped, for they are great lords and ladies; besides, Davie amuses them.” Here is the truth roughly told, but all the more poignant. When one can amuse in society, one can count upon being popular, and upon being "asked out." Who dined out so much as Sydney Smith, Tom Moore, and Theodore Hook? And why? Because they were the most brilliant men of the day, and a dinner-party was not a success without them. Sydney Smith's widow kept away from society long after her husband's death; at last she ventured. "How different it was!" she writes. "I could not believe a dinner could have been so dull."

That

Men and women, too, receive in this life much of what they deserve. It is like a looking-glass, this big world ; grin and smile to it, and it will smile back-scowl, and it scowls. It is but a confession of one's own unpleasantness at home if we air our grievances. The nice people are not "nice" without a good deal of trouble on their part. pleasant fellow who always cheers his acquaintances, and who carries an atmosphere of good nature about him, is probably a hero in his way, and most likely a good-natured philosopher, who takes a great deal of trouble to be what he is. That amiable sister, who never complains, has shown

in little things as much bravery as if she had won the Victoria Cross.

On the other hand, those young persons who have always a budget of miseries to pour into the sympathetic ears of their friends, and who are totally, if they are to be believed, unappreciated at home, will be found, if looked into, not so amiable as they might be. Mr. Tom Pinch, who never thought of himself, found even the gross hypocrite Pecksniff a good and kindly creature; while Martin Chuzzlewit, who took care to sit in the very front of the fire, and liked to be read to sleep by Tom, discovered every one to be selfish. Depend upon it, if we try to think more of others than we do of ourselves, we shall seldom have a grievance. We may also rest assured that, if we will dwell upon our sweet selves, and our own merits, we shall doubtless believe those merits to be so great that we shall find the world will always supply an immense and ever-increasing grievance by being blind to them.

L

that is, his brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, grandsons and daughters, and all the rest who brag about him after he has risen.

To vaunt our family is, in a cunning way, indirectly but efficaciously to vaunt ourselves. Yet some of us have portraits in our own family, to which we own a mysterious and perhaps a stupid attachment; we feel that somehow such portraits prove that the family has been compact and known, and rich for some time, although the present representative may be poor. We have one or two old books, heirlooms, a chair or so, and such like wrecks of genteel ancestry, and of course are attached to them. Nay, we do not despise as we ought the genealogical tree; and yet we know that great great grandfathers and uncles did little or nothing save serve in the army, or sit upon the bench as county magistrates, as stupid as the rest. And we know, philosophically, that the meanest beggar is as far descended. as the king, and that the beggar's son could count a roll of ancestry, if he only knew how, longer by one than the beggar; nay, we know that the poor have, as a rule in life, been better and purer than the rich, and that it would be wiser to be proud of being "the son of parents passed into the skies" than of being the descendant of Cæsar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, or any such conquerors. And yet, being men, we and every one of our readers have a certain family pride, although we

XIV.

DELICATE FEELINGS.

VERY sensitive persons are often very selfish, and very selfish persons are not unfrequently quite blind to their own defects. It is usual for them to deprecate any appeal to or any attack upon their feelings, and they talk as if many things done in life were done purposely to upset the delicate organisation they refer to. Sometimes this

selfishness is very apparent, and the persons around are satisfied that there is a good deal of latent hypocrisy, or what the world succinctly terms humbug, conjoined to it. The reader will remember that the rogue Autolycus, in the Winter's Tale, thus appeals to his delicate and noble sensibility, in order merely to conceal for a time his robbery; for, after he has picked the clown's pocket as he lies grovelling on the ground and pretending to be wounded, he rejects any offer of money. "Dost lack any money? I have a little money for thee,"

says the clown,

about to put his hand in his pocket. But Autolycus at once catches his hand and whines out, "No, good sweet