away at the piano. What a change from such a fancy to this sunset and moonrise on the quiet, lonely Connemara Bay,-nothing living is seen but the great winged sea-bird flapping his way home, close to the "charmèd wave." The whole scene radiant, sacred, and still; "the gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme." The man who could feel this, and make us feel it, had the soul and the hand of a great painter. A MORAL LESSON FROM THE NURSERY. HOW WE PITCH INTO EACH OTHER SO, FOR FEAR WE MIGHT This speaks for itself. Nobody needs to be told which is Freddy; and you see the book from which Arthur got his views of genesis and the mystery of being; and the motherly, tidy air of the beds! Freddy's right thumb in his belt; the artistic use of that mass of white beyond his head; the drawing of his right sole; the tremendous bit of theology in that "only"-do any of us know much more about it now than does Arthur?only surely nobody would now say, according to Pet Marjory's brother, that our Arthur, as he now sits, clean and caller, all tucked up in his night-gown-made of soft cotton, thick and (doubtless) tweeled and ready for any amount of discussion, is only "dirt."1 We have said he was greater in humour than in caricature or even satire, and, like all true humourists, he had the tragic sense and power-for as is the height so is the depth, as is the mirth so is the melancholy; Loch Lomond is deepest when Ben dips into it.-Look at this. Mr. Merryman and his dead wife-there is nothing in Hogarth more tragic and more true. It is a travelling circus; its business at its height; the dying woman has just made a glorious leap through the papered hoop; the house is still ringing with the applause; she fell and was hurt cruelly, but saying nothing, crept into this caravan room; she has been prematurely delivered, and is now dead; she 1 This word, in conjunction with children, brings into our mind a joke which happened to Dr. Norman M'Leod, and which he tells as only he can tell his own stories. He was watching some barelegged Glasgow street children who were busied in a great mud-work in the kennel. "What's that?" said he, stooping down. "It's a kirk," said they, never looking up. "Where's the door?" "There's the door," points a forefinger, that answers young Fleming's account of the constitution of man. "Where's the steeple?" "There's the steeple,"―a defunct spunk, slightly off the perpendicular. "Where's the poopit?" "There's the poopit," said the biggest, his finger making a hole in a special bit of clay he had been fondly rounding in his palms; "and where's the minister?" Oh, ye see," looking as vacant as a congregation in such circumstances should, and as the hole did when he withdrew his finger: "Ou're run oot o' dirt;" but jumping up, and extinguishing for the time, with his bare foot, the entire back gallery, he exclaims, "There's Airchie comin', he's got a bit." Airchie soon converted his dirt into a minister, who was made round, and put into his hole, the gallery repaired, and the "call" vociferously unanimous and "sustained." Wouldn't that jovial piece of professional "dirt" chew his cud of droll fancies as he walked off, from the fall of man to the Aberdeen Act, and the entire subject of dirt. "Where did Adam fall?" said his kindly old minister to "Wee Peter" at the examination. "Last nicht, at the close-mooth, sir" (Adam, like his old namesake, was in the way of frequenting a certain forbidden tree, his was "The Lemon Tree "--it was in Aberdeen), “and he's a' glaur yet,” (glaur being Scottice et Scotorum, wet dirt.) "Ay, ay, my wee man,' said the benevolent Calvinist, patting his head, "he's a' glaur yet,—he's a' glaur yet." VOL. XLII.-NO. LXXXIII. Q had been begging her Bill to come near her, and to hear her last words; Bill has kissed her, taken her to his heart-and she is gone. Look into this bit of misery and nature; look at her thin face, white as the waning moon "Stranded on the pallid shore of morn;" the women's awe-stricken, pitiful looks (the great Gomersal, with his big blue-black unwhiskered cheek, his heavy moustache, his business-like, urgent thumb,-even he is being solemnized and hushed); the trunk pulled out for the poor baby's clothes, secretly prepared at bye-hours by the poor mother; the neatly-mended tear in Mary's frock; the coronet, the slippers, the wand with its glittering star; the nearness of the buzzing multitude; the dignity of death over the whole. We do not know who “S. H." is, who tells, with his strong simplicity, the story of "The Queen of the Arena"-it is in the first volume of Once a Week -but we can say nothing less of it than that it is worthy of this woodcut; it must have been true. Here, too, as in all Leech's works, there is a manly sweetness, an overcoming of evil by good, a gentleness that tames the anguish; you find yourself taking off your shoes, and bow as in the presence of the Supreme,--who gives, who takes away,-who restores the lost.1 We end as we began, by being thankful for our gift of laughter, and for our makers of the same, for the pleasant joke, for the mirth that heals and heartens, and never wounds, that assuages and diverts. This, like all else, is a gift from the 1 We remember many years ago, in St. Andrews, on the fair-day in September, standing before a show, where some wonderful tumbling and music and dancing was being done. It was called by way of The Tempest, a ballet, and Miranda was pirouetting away all glorious with her crown and rouge and tinsel. She was young, with dark, wild, rich eyes and hair, and shapely, tidy limbs. The Master of ceremonies, a big fellow of forty, with an honest, merry face, was urging the young lady to do her best, when suddenly I saw her start, and thought I heard a child's cry in the midst of the rough music. She looked eagerly at the big man, who smiled, made her jump higher than ever, at the same time winking to some one within. Up came the bewitching Ferdinand, glorious, too, but old and ebriose; and, under cover of a fresh round of cheers from the public, Miranda vanished. Presently the cry stopped, and the big man smiled again, and thumped his drum more fiercely. I stepped out of the crowd, and getting to the end of the caravan, peered through a broken panel. There was our gum-flower-crowned Miranda sitting beside a cradle, on an old regimental drum, with her baby at her breast. Oh! how lovely, how blessed, how at peace they looked, how all in all to each other! and the fat handy-pandy patting its plump, snowy, unfailing friend; it was like Hagar and young Ishmael by themselves. I learned that the big man was her husband, and used her well in his own gruff way. Supreme Giver to be used as not abused-to be kept in its proper place, neither despised nor estimated and cultivated overmuch; for it has its perils as well as its pleasures, and it is not always, as in this case, on the side of truth and virtue, modesty and sense. If you wish to know from a master of the art what are the dangers of giving one's-self too much up to the comic view of things, how it demoralizes the whole man, read what we have already earnestly commended to you, Sydney Smith's two lectures, in which there is something quite pathetic in the earnestness with which he speaks of the snares and the degradations that mere wit, comicality, and waggery bring upon the best of men. We end with his concluding words : "I have talked of the danger of wit and humour: I do not mean by that to enter into commonplace declamation against faculties because they are dangerous;-wit is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for observation is dangerous, every thing is dangerous that has efficacy and vigour for its characteristics; nothing is safe but mediocrity. The business is, in conducting the understanding well, to risk something; to aim at uniting things that are commonly incompatible. The meaning of an extraordinary man is, that he is eight men, not one man; that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as much sense as if he had no wit; that his conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence, and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much better than witty, who loves honour, justice, decency, goodnature, morality, and religion, ten thousand times better than wit;— wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men; than to observe it expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness,-teaching age, and care, and pain, to smile, extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit and humour like this, is surely the flavour of the mind! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marle.'” ་ |