of a spider, for the coming of a customer ; the barrister may sell his eloquence, and be satisfied if he gains a cause and earns the applause of the judge; the inventor may be satisfied with an ample fortune; but the woman who loves, and the artist who works for the good of the world and the love of his work, can only be satisfied, the one with the approbation of those whom she loves, the other with the evanescent and shadowy thing called fame.

It was ordained from the beginning, no doubt, that poor humanity should count amongst its bitterest disappointments and trials those borne by these two classes. How many women are there now suffering from the want of a kindly love, a sweet appreciation of their goodness and their selfsacrifice. How often will not wives do tender and grateful offices, adorn the home with flowers, and make the cottage as neat as the nest of a bird; dress their persons with elegance, and their faces with smiles, and find, as a reward for this, the stolid indifference of the block, or the stupid insensibility of the lower animal. "She was a woman," wrote one who knew her sex well, "a woman down to the very tips of her finger-nails, and what she wanted was praise from the lips that she loved. Do you ask what that meant? Did she want gold, or dress, or power? No; all she wanted was that which will buy us all, and which so few of us ever get; in a word, it was LOVE."

Yes, that is just it. It is these little signs, the fore

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running of kindness, the timely notice, the generous appreciation, the wise and kindly method of observing, that prove love. Else, without these, it is a caput mortuum. When the Grande Duchesse wishes Fritz, whom she has so madly fallen in love with, to reciprocate her passion, and that stupid corporal is blundering about the royal apartment in search of a hat peg whereon to place properly his cocked hat and feather, "Mon Dieu!" cries the duchess, in an agony of jealous chagrin, "comme il aime son chapeau." That is the reflection many a good wife makes almost before the honeymoon is over.

"He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, Little better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse."

And for years this will go on. Years of quiet agony, of unrequited affection, of looks of love unnoticed and unreturned; acts of kindness unseen, of eloquent, loving words passed over as unheard, of the very flowers of the heart of love trampled upon and despised. This is too often the

history of marriage. Then gradually, as the caloric of the atmosphere is absorbed by an iceberg which floats down the German Ocean, and the flowers and fields of England wither and grow barren at its approach, so true love cools down, and life grows dull and worthless and barren, till young people wonder how such and such a couple have grown so quiet and so dull.

As it is in this life of married happiness (?) when fit

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mates do not meet, so it is when the author or the artist misses the fame that he so dearly loves. A man may live on a good many years soured and embittered, but it is but a kind of half-existence that he lives. It may be for him the times are out of joint. It may be that a Supreme Artist creates time and opportunity, and from the dull breasts of the mob evokes sympathy for his genius. But it is certain that anti-poetic days exist, in which the very best writer in the world would get but scant measure of justice; and if Pope lived at the present day, we very much doubt if any one would listen to his silver numbers and his happy moral truths. A satirist of the day has gone so far as to assert that if Shakspeare lived at present, in these days of burlesque and sensation, he would not get a living, but would in a rage burn his plays, condemned

"To beg, with written Hamlet in his hand,

From the dull 'Row,' along the duller Strand ;'
On his cold hearth he'd sacrifice his scenes,

Or write for Moses or the Magazines."

How many men of genius are there amongst us now, the history of whose life is in effect marvellously like that which the satirist has pictured! How many a life passes like a day without sunshine, a year with a frosty spring, an unkindly summer, and a stinted harvest !

The remedy in this matter is simply good nature and tact, with less absorbing and dull selfishness. The age has

lately grown ruder and ruder, narrower and more narrow. Laugh, as superfine critics will, at Mr. Arnold, what we want is more sweetness and light; and we shall get this, not by a captious, criticizing method, but by a wise generosity and a wholesome praise of that which is good in the young, the impulsive, and in those who feel most. Mr. Daniel Quilp, in Dickens's story, was accustomed to make his presence felt by cruel nips, blows, and pinches, given to women and children. He was a spiteful dwarf, and an idiot to boot. Let our presence be felt by the gladness it creates, and our wisdom be shown, not by the sharpness of our blame, but by the generosity of our open approbation.

XXIII.

LIKES AND DISLIKES.

ONE of the most cruel things, and (as all cruel things are, to the natural and kindly human heart, difficult) one of the most difficult things for a young man or woman to make real to themselves is the fact that there will come a time when good friends will part, and really honest people will stand upon different sides of the way, opposed to each other, hating each other, having little or nothing in common with each other, and sacrificing friendship to principle.

All the walks of life have divergent alleys, down which, one by one, our friends go. You love A for a rough, manly, sensible, plain-spoken man, not refined, perhaps, not instinctively a gentleman, but honest. By-and-by comes a time when you defer your own opinion to this honest man's views; and there comes another time, too, when you find that he holds entirely distinct views upon important matters, which are totally irreconcilable with yours; and you can go no further together.

It is a very painful discovery this, to every man. In