he fed with, and whose horses he ran after. You will see this spirit a loyal and beautiful spirit in its way—often illustrated in the old Irish and Scotch songs. In the "Groves of Blarney" we are told— "There was Mars, and Vanus, and Nicodamus, And these statues the poet evidently mistakes for some of the family, for he adds, they were— "All blood relations to my Lord Donoughmore." At funerals and births, marriages and deaths, these family ties came out strongly. Second sight and the banshee, a certain kind of private prophecy and a private ghost, belonged to the great family; but the poor man had his share in them. But these now live no longer in the faith of reason. These opposing circles everywhere did little good to the nation. The love which was abundant in the family was cold and thin out of it. "Blood was thicker than water," said such people; and all out of the family was regarded as so much dirty ditch-water. So the circles or septs, like separate globules of quicksilver which are separated by dust, never ran together; and what made the strength of the individual chieftain was the weakness of the nation. Although there is much that is romantic in those old times, when family love was strong, and family hate made a perfect vendetta if any of the Joneses injured any of the Smiths, when there was common cause in a family if any one was injured, without too strictly inquiring into the justice of the case, it became a necessity, as civilization advanced, that ties of this sort should end. As nation after nation emerged into the light of Christian civilization, it found justice and charity-that is, universal affectionfar above individual fondness. Because Jones was the head of our family, we had no call to wink at his sins, to put up with his enormities, and to pour all our favours into the pockets of Jones. Our duty was to be just to all men, and to love Brown, who was a good man, but not our own, as well as Jones, who was not a good man, but our own. Gradually, as the dust fell off, these little globules of quicksilver began to form a solid and compact mass, and to merge into each other. The influence of universal learning, of a religion which was as catholic as the sun which shone, and the atmosphere which transmitted and diffused its light, melted away the differences of man. It was found that not only to one especial family had God spoken, but to all the world-to the Jew first, and afterwards to the Gentile; that He was no respecter of persons, and that He lighteneth every man that cometh into the world with a human heart susceptible of human love. So the little families break up into one great family, and the sept into universal brotherhood. We are all brothers and sisters from Adam; and in the second Adam justice supersedes favour. We cannot do more than is right; and if we are right and true to all men, all men will be our brothers. If we only knew this properly, all wars, all evils, all local miseries and want would be regarded as sore evils in the family of man; and all men who tried to draw others together, and to make men better than they are, would be regarded as the true heroes; not those who thunder out dissension, and who slay others. And yet the man of peace is rarely honoured. Lawyers and soldiers make our peers, and are clothed with the robe and the coronet. The truth is, we are still far from the magic circle of the universal family. Therefore, until we enter that, we had better perhaps cherish the relations we have. We can hardly extend love to them without some bettering of ourselves. The critical and sceptical spirit which has of late years been so prevalent, and which some people, generally very young men, think so clever, has done much to separate us from family ties, without making us love mankind a whit the better. We are told in a hundred ways that country cousins are bores, rude, uncultivated, and that uncles are only fit to be looked to for the purpose of getting money from. Everywhere there is a sad rude spirit of selfishness inculcated. Sisters are bores on the one hand, and mothers-in-law and aunts objectionable "old parties," whom we are enjoined to be rude to and get out of the way if poor, and to cajole and get out of the way if rich. All this is as "snobbish" as it is false, and as false as it is mean and despicable. God only can know the patient, kindly goodness which relations, especially female relations, show to us-how they amuse us when babies, or when sick; how they shield our faults and magnify our virtues; how they believe in us when no one else does, watch the rising genius, cherish our first scrap of poetry or wretched sketch, and stick to us at the last when others desert us. Blood is, after all, in its best sense, thicker than water, often sharing our hereditary idiosyncracies. In good truth there are no people in the world who can so fully and truly appreciate us, and who are, on the whole, so true and generous to us, as our blood relations. VI. FEELING FOR OTHERS. IT is astonishing how much even the most selfish people like others to feel for them, little as they may feel for others. Mr. Greville tells us in his memoirs that George IV., than whom "a more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog does not exist," yet was fond of being pitied, and was never so much hurt as by some caricature of his wig or his whiskers. Perhaps the wonder is that with the persons around him he had any feeling at all. The way to make a man know and despise mankind, is, they say, to make him a Prime Minister. What must he feel, then, if a King? Happily there are so many millions of us without that trial—but for king or beggar sympathy is equally needful. The word is hardly so homely as we should like, since a Greek derivative poorly expresses an English word, because to nine-tenths of our people it must be a mere sign, a shibboleth which some thoroughly understand, and some but lamely. For we, who have been accustomed to address |