The places of their former toils like unquiet acquainted with him: if you and he are both ghosts! How sick they get of the country! true men, you will not find it a difficult task I do not think of grand disappointments of to like him. It is perhaps asking too much the sort; of the satiety of Vathek, turning sickly away from his earthly paradise at Cintra; nor of the graceful towers I have seen rising from a woody cliff above a summer sea, and of the story told me of their builder, who, after rearing them, lost interest in them, and in sad disappointment left them to others, and went back to the busy town wherein he had made his wealth. I think of men, more than one or two, who rented their acre of land by the sea-side, and built their pretty cottage, made their grassplots and trained their roses, and then in unaccustomed idleness grew weary of the whole, and sold their place to some keen bargain-maker for a tithe of what it cost them.

Why is it that failure in attaining ambitious ends is so painfu!? When one has honestly done one's best, and is beaten after all, conscience must be satisfied: the wound is solely to self-love; and is it not to the discredit of our nature that that should imply such a weary, blank, bitter feeling as it often does? Is it that every man has within his heart a lurking belief that, notwithstanding the world's ignorance of the fact, there never was in the world anybody so remarkable as himself? I think that many mortals need daily to be putting down a vague feeling which really comes to that. You who have had experience of many men, know that you can hardly over-estimate the extent and depth of human vanity. Never be afraid but that nine men out of ten will swallow with avidity flattery, however gross; especially if it ascribe to them those qualities of which they are most manifestly deficient.

of human nature to ask you to do all this in the case of the man who has carried off the woman you loved; but as regards any thing else, do it all. Go to your successful rival, heartily congratulate him. Don't be Jesuitical; don't merely felicitate the man; put down the rising feeling of envy: that is always out-and-out wrong. Don't give it a moment's quarter. You clerks in an office, ready to be angry with a fellow-clerk who gets the chance of a trip to Scotland on business, don't give in to the feeling. Shake hands with him all round, and go in a body with him to Euston-square, and give him three cheers as he departs by the night mail. And you, greater mortals-you, rector of a beautiful parish, who think you would have done for a bishop as well as the clergyman next you who has got the mitre; you, clever barrister, sure some day to be solicitor-general, though sore to-day because a man next door has got that coveted post before you; go and see the successful man-go forthwith, congratulate him heartily, say frankly you wish it had been you: it will do great good both to him and to yourself. Let it not be that envy-that bitter and fast-growing fiend

shall be suffered in your heart for one minute. When I was at college I sat on the same bench with a certain man. We were about the same age. Now, I am a country parson, and he is a cabinet minister. Oh, how he has distanced poor me in the race of life! Well, he had a tremendous start, no doubt. Now, shall I hate him? Shall I pitch into him, rake up all his errors of youth, tell how stupid he was (though indeed he was A disappointed man looks with great inter- not stupid), and bitterly gloat over the occaest at the man who has obtained what hesion on which he fell on the ice and tore his himself wanted. Your mother, reader, says inexpressibles in the presence of a grinning that her ambition for you would be entirely throng? No, my old fellow-student, who gratified if you could but reach a certain have now doubtless forgotten my name, place which some one you know has held for twenty years. You look at him with much curiosity; he appears very much like yourself; and, curiously, he does not appear particularly happy. Oh, reader, whatever you do-though last week he gained without an effort what you have been wishing for all your life-do not hate him. Resolve that you will love and wish well to the man who fairly succeeded where you fairly failed. Go to him and get

though I so well remember yours, though you got your honors possibly in some measure from the accident of your birth, you have nobly justified their being given you so early; and so I look on with interest to your loftier advancement yet, and I say-God bless you!

I think, if I were an examiner at one of the universities, that I should be an extremely popular one. No man should ever be plucked. Of course, it would be very

wrong, and, happily, the work is in the hands | glen. He preached his sermon, and got on of those who are much fitter for it; but, in- pretty fairly; but after service he went down stead of thinking solely and severely of a to the shore of the far-sounding sea, and wept man's fitness to pass, I could not help think- to think how sadly he had fallen short of his ing a great deal of the heartbreak it would ideal, how poor was his appearance compared be to the poor fellow and his family if he were to what he had intended and hoped. Perhaps turned. And the readers of Fraser may be a foolish vanity and self-conceit was at the thankful that I am not its editor. I should foundation of his disappointment; but though always be printing all sorts of rubbishing ar- I did not know him at all, I could not but ticles, which are at present consigned to the have a very kindly sympathy for him. I Balaam-box by the firm discrimination of my heard, years afterwards, with great pleasure, resolute friend who pilots this craft. I could that he had attained to no small eminence not bear to grieve and disappoint the young and success as a pulpit orator; and I should lady who sends her gushing verses. I should not have alluded to him here but for the fact be picturing to myself the long hours of toil that in early youth, and amid greater expecthat resulted in the clever lad's absurd attempt tations of him, he passed away from this life at a review, and all his fluttering hopes and of high aims and poor fulfilments. I think fears as to whether it was to be accepted or how poor Keats, no doubt morbidly ambitious not. No doubt it is by this mistaken kind- as well as morbidly sensitive, declared in his ness that institutions are damaged and ruined. preface to Endymion that "there is no fiercer The weakness of a sympathetic bishop bur- hell than failure in a great attempt." dens the church with a clergyman who for many years will be an injury to her; and it would have been far better even for the poor fellow himself to have been decidedly and early kept out of a vocation for which he is wholly unfit. I am far from saying that the resolute examiner who plucks freely, and the resolute editor who rejects firmly, are deficient in kindness of heart, or even in vividness of imagination to picture what they are doing though much of the suffering and disappointment of this world are caused by men who are almost unaware of what they do. Like the brothers of Isabella in Keats' beautiful poem :

:

"Half ignorant, they turn an easy wheel,

That sets sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel."

Yet though principle and moral decision may be in you sufficient to prevent your weakly yielding to the feeling, be sure you always sympathize with failure;-honest, laborious failure. And I think all but very malicious persons generally do sympathize with it. It is easier to sympathize with failure than with success. No trace of envy comes in to mar your sympathy, and you have a pleasant sense that you are looking down from a loftier elevation. The average man likes to have some one to look down upon-even to look down upon kindly. I remember being greatly touched by hearing of a young man of much promise, who went to preach his first sermon in a little church by the sea-shore, in a lonely highland

Most thoughtful men must feel it a curious and interesting study, to trace the history of the closing days of those persons who have calmly and deliberately, in no sudden heat of passion, taken away their own life. In such cases, of course, we see the sense of failure absolute and complete. They have quietly resolved to give up life as a losing game. You remember the poor man who, having spent his last shilling, retired to a wood far from human dwellings, and there died voluntarily by starvation. He kept a diary of those days of gradual death, setting out his feelings both of body and mind. No nourishment passed his lips after he had chosen his last resting-place, save a little water, which he dragged himself to a pond to drink. He was not discovered till he was dead; but his melancholy chronicle appeared to have been carried down to very near the time when he became unconscious. I remember its great characteristic appeared to be a sense of utter failure. There seemed to be no passion, none of the bitter desperate resolution which prompts the energetic "Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world; " but merely a weary, lonely wish to creep quietly away. I have no look but one of sorrow and pity to cast at the poor suicide's grave. I think the common English verdict is right as well as charitable, which supposes that in every such case reason has become unhinged, and responsibility is gone. And what desperate misery, what a black horrible anguish of heart, whether expressing

itself calmly or feverishly, must have laid its
gripe upon a human being before it can over
come in him the natural clinging to life, and
make him deliberately turn his back upon
"the warm precincts of the cheerful clay."
No doubt it is the saddest of all sad ends;
but I do not forget that a certain authority,
the highest of all authorities, said to all human
beings, "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
The writer has, in the course of his duty,
looked upon more than one suicide's dead
face; and the lines of Hood appeared to
sketch the fit feeling with which to do so :-

Owning her weakness,
Her evil behavior;
And leaving, with meekness,

Her soul to her Saviour."

hedge, misses his aim at the landlord who fed him and his family through the season of famine. You do not feel very deeply for the disappointment of the friend, possibly the slight acquaintance, who with elongated face retires from your study, having failed to per suade you to attach your signature to a bill for some hundreds of pounds "just as a matter of form." Very likely he wants the money; so did the burglar: but is that any reason why you should give it to him? Refer him to the wealthy and influential relatives of whom he has frequently talked to you; tell him they are the very people to assist him in such a case with their valuable autograph. As for yourself, tell him you know what you owe to your children and yourself; and say that the slightest recurrence to such a subject must be the conclusion of all intercourse be tween you. Ah, poor, disappointed fellow ! How heartless it is in you to refuse to pay, out of your hard earnings, the money which he so jauntily and freely spent!

What I have just written recalls to me by some link of association, the words I once heard a simple old Scotchwoman utter by her son's death-bed. He was a young man of twenty-two, a pious and good young man, and I had seen him very often throughout his gradual decline. Calling one morning, I found How should disappointment be met? he was gone, and his mother begged me to Well, that is far too large a question to be come and see his face once more; and stand- taken up at this stage of my essay, though ing for the last time by him, I said (and I there are various valuable suggestions which could say them honestly) some words of I should like to make. Some disappointed Christian comfort to the poor old woman. men take to gardening and farming; and I told her, in words far better than any of my capital things they are. But when disappointown, how the Best Friend of mankind had ment is extreme, it will paralyze you so that said, "I am the Resurrection and the Life: you will suffer the weeds to grow up all about he that believeth in Me, though he were you, without your having the heart to set your dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth mind to the work of having the place made and believeth in Me, shall never die." I re- neat. The state of a man's garden is a very member well her answer. "Ay," said she, delicate and sensitive test as to whether he is "he gaed away trusting in that; and he'll keeping hopeful and well-to-do. It is to me be sorely disappointed if he doesna' find it a very sad sight to see a parsonage getting a 80." Let me venture to express my hope, dilapidated look, and the gravel walks in its that when my readers and I pass within the garden growing weedy. The parson must be veil, we may run the risk of no other disap-growing old and poor. The parishioners tell pointment than that these words should prove you how trim and orderly every thing was false; and then it will be well with us. There when he came first to the parish. But his will be no disappointment there in the sense affairs have become embarrassed, or his wife of things failing to come up to our expecta- and children are dead; and though still doing his duty well and faithfully, he has lost Let it be added, that there are disappoint-heart and interest in these little matters; ments with which even the kindest hearts will and so things are as you see. have no sympathy, and failures over which we may without malignity rejoice. You do not feel very deeply for the disappointed burglar, who retires from your dwelling at 3 A.M., leaving a piece of the calf of his leg in the jaws of your trusty watch-dog; nor for the Irish bogtrotter who (poor fellow!), from behind the

tions.

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 429

I have been amused by the way in which some people meet disappointment. They think it a great piece of worldly wisdom to deny that they have ever been disappointed at all. Perhaps it might be so, if the pretext were less transparent than it is. An old lady's son is plucked at an examination for a

civil appointment. She takes up the ground the remaining nineteen; that it shall be found that it is rather a credit to be plucked; that in every library; that Mr. Mudie may annearly everybody is plucked; that all the nounce that he has three thousand two huncleverest fellows are plucked; and that only dred and fifty copies of it; that it shall be the stupid fellows are allowed to pass. When the talk of every circle; its incidents set to music, examiners find a clever man, they take a pleas- its plot dramatized; that it shall count read ure in plucking him. A number of the clevers by thousands while others count readers erest men in England can easily put out a lad of one-and-twenty. Then, shifting her ground, she declares the examination was ridiculously easy; her son was rejected because he could not tell what two and two amount to; because he did not know the name of the river on which London is built; because he did not (in his confusion) know his own name. She shows you the indignant letter which the young man wrote to her, announcing the scandalous injustice with which he was treated. You remark three words misspelt in the first five lines; and you fancy you have fathomed the secret of the plucking.

I have sometimes tried, but in vain, to discover the law which regulates the attainment of extreme popularity. Extreme popularity, in this country and age, appears a very arbitrary thing. I defy any person to predict a priori what book, or song or play, or picture, is to become the rage,-to utterly transcend all competition. I believe, indeed, that there cannot be popularity for even a short time, without some kind or degree of merit to deserve it; and in any case there is no other standard to which one can appeal than the deliberate judgment of the mass of educated persons. If you are quite convinced that a thing is bad which all such think good, why, of course, you are wrong. If you honestly think Shakspeare a fool, you are aware you must be mistaken. And so, if a book, or a picture, or a play, or a song, be really good, and if it be properly brought before the public notice, you may, as a general rule, predict that it will attain a certain measure of success. But the inexplicable thing-the thing of which I am quite unable to trace the law-is extreme success. How is it that one thing shoots ahead of every thing else of the same class; and without being materially better, or even materially different, leaves every thing else out of sight behind? Why is it that Eclipse is first and the rest nowhere, while the legs and wind of Eclipse are no whit better than the legs and wind of all the rest? If twenty novels of nearly equal merit are published, it is not impossible that one shall dart ahead of

by scores; while yet one cannot really see why any of the others might not have taken its place. Or of a score of coarse comic-songs, nineteen shall never get beyond the walls of the Cyder Cellars (I understand there is a place of the name), while the twentieth, nowise superior in any respect, comes to be sung about the streets, known by everybody, turned into polkas and quadrilles, and in fact to become for the time one of the institutions of this great and intelligent country. I remember how, a year or two since, that contemptible Ratcatcher's Daughter, without a thing to recommend it, with no music, no wit, no sentiment, nothing but vulgar brutality, might be heard in every separate town of England and Scotland, sung about the streets by every ragged urchin; while the other songs of the vivacious Cowell fell dead from his lips. The will of the sovereign people has decided that so it shall be. And as likings an dislikings in most cases are things strongly felt, but impossible to account for even by the person who feels them, so is it with the enormous admiration, regard, and success which fall to the lot of many to whom popularity is success Actors, statesmen, authors, preachers, have often in England their day of quite undeserved popular ovation; and by and by their day of entire neglect. It is the rocket and the stick. We are told that Bishop Butler, about the period of the great excesses of the French Revolution, was walking in his garden with his chaplain. After a long fit of musing, the bishop turned to the chaplain, and asked the question whether nations might not go mad, as well as individuals? Classes of society, I think, may certainly have attacks of tempoLind fever was such an attack. Such was the rary insanity on some one point. The Jenny popularity of the boy-actor Betty. Such the popularity of the Small Coal Man some time in the last century; such that of the hippopotamus at the Regent's Park; such that of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

But this essay must have an end. It is far fortiori my reader must be so. Let me try too long already. I am tired of it, and á the effect of an abrupt conclusion. Stop!

A. K. H. B.

PART II.-CHAPTER II.

"She gives thee a garland woven fair,
Take care!

It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear,
Beware! Beware!

Trust her not,

She is fooling thee!"

-LONGFELLOW FROM MULLER.

BEHOLD Phoebe Fulmort seated in a train

had set out the Holt flowers and arranged the books, so that it seemed full of welcome.

Phoebe ran from window to mantle-piece, enchanted with the quaint mixture of old and new, admiring carving and stained glass, and declaring that Owen had not prepared her for any thing equal to this, until Miss Charlecote, going to arrange matters with her house

"Well, Robin?" said Phoebe, coming up to

on the way to London. She was a very pleas-keeper, left the brother and sister together. ant spectacle to Miss Charlecote opposite to her, so peacefully joyous was her face, as she him anxiously. sat with the wind breathing in on her, in the calm luxury of contemplating the landscape gliding past the windows in all its summer charms, and the repose of having no one to hunt her into unvaried rationality.

Her eye was the first to detect Robert in waiting at the terminus, but he looked more depressed than ever, and scarcely smiled as he handed them to the carriage.

"Get in, Robert; you, are coming home with us," said Honor.

"You have so much to take, I should encumber you."

He only crossed his arms on the mantelpiece, rested his head on them, and sighed.. "Have you seen her?" "Not to speak to her." "Have you called ? ” "No."

"Then where did you see her?" "She was riding in the Park. I was on foot."

"She could not have seen you!" exclaimed Phoebe.

"She did,” replied Robert; "I was going to tell you. She gave me one of her sweet

No, the sundries go in cabs, with the est, brightest smiles, such as only she can give. maids. Jump in."

44

Do your friends arrive to-night?" "Yes; but that is no reason you should look so rueful! Make the most of Phoebe beforehand. Besides, Mr. Parsons is a Wyke

hamist."

Robert took his place on the back seat, but still as if he would have preferred walking home. Neither his sister nor his friend dared to ask whether he had seen Lucilla. Could she have refused him? or was her frivolity preying on his spirits?

Phoebe tried to interest him by the account of the family migration, and of Miss Fennimore's promise that Maria and Bertha should have two half-hours of real play in the garden on each day when the lessons had been properly done; and how she had been so kind as to let Maria leave off trying to read a French book that had proved too hard for her, not perceiving why this instance of goodnature was not cheering to her brother.

Miss Charlecote's house was a delightful marvel to Phoebe from the moment when she rattled into the paved court, entered upon the fragrant odor of the cedar hall, and saw the Queen of Sheba's golden locks beaming with he evening light. She entered the drawingroom, pleasant-looking already, under the judicious arrangement of the housekeeper, who

You know them, Phoebe. No assumed welcome, but a sudden flash and sparkle of real gladness."

"But why-what do you mean?" asked Phoebe, "why have you not been to her? I thought she had been neglecting you from your manner, but it seems to be all the other way."

"I cannot, Phoebe. I cannot put my poor pretensions forward in the set she is with. I know they would influence her, and that her

decision would not be calm and mature."