There

old Tory aversion of old times was not hard to bear. was something even refreshing in it. But," he adds, "it will take Great Britain a long time to get over her patronizing ways towards us. Our common language is a fatal instrument of misapprehension." And, talking to "dear old mother-in-law" (why not "mother"?), "England,” he concludes: "Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we have grown, and changed likewise. You would not let us darken your doors if you could help it. We know that perfectly well. But, pray, when we look to be treated as men, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us any longer

"Do, child, go to it grandam, child;

Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will

Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig!'"

These instances will be sufficient, we think, to show the dire effects of the "snub" in political life. In social life the practice has effects as bad. Perhaps the things which most bitterly hurt us are the slights and snubs which we have submitted to, although they who insulted us had, perhaps, not the slightest intention of so doing; for one of the peculiarities of the practice is that it is most effectively indulged in without the artist knowing or intending that he or she snubs. Smith is left out of Brown's party-snub No. I. Brown intended to ask him, and his wife apologizes; she is "so sorry," and she was aware, she tells a third person,

how glad Mrs. Smith would have been to come, and how she would have enjoyed herself”—snub No. 2, and more bitter. Brown hopes Smith is not offended-snub No. 3. Why should he be offended? One might aggravate 'the snubbing, and lengthen the list almost indefinitely. And one remembers a snub through life. We knew an eminent lawyer, a man of many triumphs, whose most poignant hatred was against the junior partner of the firm he was articled to, for once telling him to enter at the clerk's door. The old gentleman of eighty thrilled with an insult sixtyfour years old.

Women are perhaps quite unaware how often they sever friendships and make enemies of their husbands' friends by unconscious snubbing. We all of us remember the old gentleman who, when we were boys, always shook hands by extending two fingers only; and the kindly Mentor who assured us that we were "boys, and boys were always silly." It is to be hoped that we have long since forgiven both. Did Lord Byron ever pardon his mother for not discovering that he was a genius almost before he left off pinafores? Alas, no! One remembers these trifles with bitterness; and perhaps the only way to excuse the feeling is to reflect upon the littleness of poor Human Nature, while we determine never ourselves to depress or outrage the feelings of others.

XXII.

GENEROUS APPROVAL.

THERE is a great deal of the child yet remaining in every and that singular animal Man has a habit of being governed by his weaknesses.

man,

It is a common observation this. All truth is common enough if we could but see it; but this truth forces itself upon us at a very early period. The mother praises and chirrups to her child to keep it in a good humour, though it has not had many months of life; and the old nurse flatters her patient with some tender gossip, some familiar assertion of being and looking better, although she well knows that he has not a month to live. Soldiers or sailors, young curates or students of chemistry, students of poetry or the exact sciences, love to find out that their conduct has at least merited approval.

This desire of pleasing and of receiving a delightful sensation from the knowledge of having pleased is very beneficial, and is not altogether a weakness. "We are

all excited by the love of praise," says Cicero, "and it is the noblest spirits that feel it most." If it be a vice, it is one of those which Rochefoucauld has said is very much like a virtue. Peel asked to be remembered as one whose life of statesmanship had culminated in the one fact that he had "brought a cheap loaf to the cottage of the poor man ;" and Hood tenderly wished that on his tombstone should be inscribed but one sentence "He sang the Song of the Shirt." Of course the truest philosophy, and the truest or noblest form of religion, do equally bid us be silent about ourselves. What we have done, we have done. Human approval !—the mistaken good opinion, it may be, of A, B, and C, matters little to any one of us. What does matter is, the unmistakable approval of our own conscience—and of God. But we are not all philosophers, and human approval will always have its effect upon the young, and even upon the stern middle-aged and the old. Not every one of us is strong enough-so weak a thing is poor humanity— to know when he is right, unless somebody else tells him so; or he fancies that he does not know, which amounts to the same thing.

This humiliating confession is quite true, yet not so very humbling to the young as it is to the old. The young confessedly want guidance; and in spite of the imprudence and inaptitude of what is called a "fast," but which will, by posterity, be stigmatized as a very slow and dull age,

in spite of this, they naturally look for it from the old. You may depend upon it that in those countries where the old are despised and treated with rudeness and levity, as some travellers say they are in America, the old people first began the downward march by spoiling the young, and themselves abdicating their self-respect. Out of the Ten Commandments, which we know to be inspired and to be true, let the young remember that there is one-" Honour thy father and thy mother ;" and that no nation, no people, ever grew or continued to be great, without due respect being shown to the old. Age and experience are not to be bought. The young man feels that he cannot have known so much nor have felt so much as the old. It was a pretty sight when all the valiant warriors-Achilles, the wise Ulysses, the king of men, Agamemnon, and the rest, arose and stood uncovered before Nestor, the wisest, because the oldest of the Greeks.

It was a wise and gracious thing for our Sovereign and the Prince Consort to rise and stand, with deep respect upon their countenances, before the many years of the great Duke of Wellington; great in council, great in war; whose eighty summers had been spent in fighting more than one hundred pitched battles for the English crown and the English people, and of whose eighty winters very few had not been given to thought for the cause of that land he loved so well. And a good white head it was; very white, bent