cook bearing the most tremendous testimonials, and armed with the deadliest diplomas, was completely routed by the grandly simple question"Can you cook a potato?" And in a similar way, many a Goliath-like fiction will succumb to a small pebble of truth. So, when anybody loftily asserts, "You should not concern yourself with the affairs of others," I ask, Why not? It is the most natural, most graceful, most generous, most Christian-like thing to do." It is nothing to the purpose to object that scandal may cause pain to the person against whom it is directed. It need not do so. A man of well-regulated mind and amiable disposition will rejoice to think that any sayings and doings of his have been so perverted as to contribute to the general enjoyment of society. What need he care, so long as his conscience is unclouded? The best and greatest men that have ever lived have been slandered and calumniated, and they accepted the slanders and calumnies as tributes to their own worth. Know we not that envy doth merit like its shade pursue, and that like the shade, it proves the substance true? Wrote Pope to Addison :—“To be uncensured and to be obscure are the same thing. I congratulate you upon having your share in that which all the great and good men that ever existed have had their part of -envy and calumny." From Pope and Addison to the reader's obedient servant, the transition is easy and natural. All manner of wild scandals have been circulated respecting the afflicted author of this essay. It has been even alleged against him that he is a married man, and has children. What cares the Afflicted for such rumours! He will not say that he knows better. Alacka-day !—he knows worse. He is well aware that his is a case of "no such luck." But he recks not. He willingly delivers himself over to the scandalmongers, to be dealt with according to their pleasure. Full well he knows that to the generality of his fellow-creatures scandal is even as salt to their egg. lemon to their whitebait, the "violet " to their beef-steak. Yet strange, if not sad, to say, there are person's who detest scandal, and hold the whole brood of gossips, tatlers, and tale-bearers in abhorrence. One of the ablest and most cultivated men I have ever known, systematically turns a deaf ear to detraction, pooh-poohs all censorious stories, and does not hesitate to pull up the guests at his table in their headlong career when he finds them picking absent people to pieces. He hopes and thinks the best of everybody, and takes for his favourite maxim these words of a forgotten poet "Believe not each aspersing word, As most weak persons do; In thus thinking and acting, my friend may perhaps be a philanthropist according to his own peculiar ideas of philanthropy, but most assuredly he is not a philosopher in any legitimate sense of the word. THE FALL OF THE LEAF. HEN the blinding summer sun is turned off at the main-the western main-and the milder radiance of the succeeding orb enables you to dispense with your trusty umbrella; when the langourous air no longer hangs heavy in the sapphire sky, but a bracing breeze from the steel-grey dome freshens the ruddy current in your veins; when the leaves are aglow with scarlet and orange, and fluttering softly down, spread a crisp and comely carpet for your wandering feet in woodland ways,-why, why, you had better at that romantic moment put on your chest-protector, order a ton of Wallsend, and tell your housekeeper to place another blanket on your bed. I had no intention of saying anything of that ignoble sort when I began this delightful essay; but how should any one be expected to pile up antitheses to a telling climax in a year from which the seasons have been omitted, and where there has been no change in its immutability? How can a man, or better still, a woman, be sweetly poetical about "the corn that bending greets the reaper," when there is not such a thing as a harvest anywhere about? How is it possible to be fervently eloquent about the merry maids that pluck the golden hop, when there is not much B more than a hop a-piece for maid, wife, and widow? It would be ridiculous to strike the sounding harp to the luscious clusters of the regal vine for the benefit of the phylloxera, who have eaten them all up? Do be reasonable,-Ask me not, Oh ask me not! to sing the song of rapture anent the rosy apple, when I saw advertised in a shop window last evening, "Ribston pippins, twopence each." I have not been well since. It were of no use to turn in the direction of field-sports for either comfort or inspiration. A partridge, a pheasant, or a grouse is, indeed, rara avis in terris. As for the foxes, it would be no great wonder if they were to grow sulky, and commit suicide, rather than fulfil their natural functions of affording entertainment to man and beast. There is no consolation in the thought that all these necessaries may be supplied from other sources, or by artificial means. You cannot get enthusiastic over the corn or the hops of the alien. The apple of the stranger awakens no tenderness in your breast. A Bacchanalian ode to a beverage concocted of chemicals would lack spontaneity and fervour. Nor would mechanical vulpine or ornothological objects of the chase stir the pulses of true sportsmen. There is nothing for our woes but resignation. Mother Earth has been a cruel step-dame to us,-nay, a baby-farmer who starves us; but we must submit, in the fond hope that our distress and our abuse of her combined may arouse better feelings in her sterile bosom. However, though three-quarters of the year should fail us, we know we are quite sure about the fourth. There is no cause for fear that we should be deprived of the winter. Spring may neglect to come up smiling to time; Summer may be conspicuous by its absence; Autumn may conceal itself; but Winter never forgets to come,not always, perhaps, in the same garb, but recognisable through every disguise, and faithful when all else is false. It is nice to know that there is something that you can depend on in the matter of climate. How wearily we waited for the Summer! How loth we were to give it up! Indeed, we always do, we always are. Will the Spring never go? How long it seems till I shall be a man! Has the summer gone? It cannot be, dear heavens, it cannot be that I am getting old! Friend of my soul, the table-land of maturity is not a dead-level, though it may appear so. There is a gentle gradient all through it, long before you come to the steep incline at the end. I do not know whether it is autumn with you yet. Some of your leaves have fallen. I notice that many of those left have changed colour. "Oh! that is nothing. My hair has been thin ever since a severe illness I had; and I began to turn grey at twenty-five. That girl almost broke my heart." "You have increased in size about the lower part of the waistcoat." "Yes, I don't take enough exercise, I know." "Oh! you've given up cricket, then?" "Well, really I have not the time; but Í could drive a ball or save a run, I believe, as well as ever I could." "I dare say, but how dull your boots look! Haven't they been polished?" that's the nature of them, my dear fellow; they're buckskin, as soft and easy to your feet as stockings." Ah! you used to be rather natty' about the extremities once." "Yes, that's right enough, but I go in for comfort now, my boy." 66 Oh, Then the autumn has indeed commenced. When a man refuses invitations, cannot be dragged away from his fireside, and shows a partiality for a |