ON LUCK. HE poetical description of Fortune, by membered as having distinguished himself at Agincourt, and the learned commentary upon that description by Captain Fluellen, whose services, though of a different nature, will not readily be forgotten, while affording notable proofs that the cultivation of the lighter branches of education by military officers is not merely a modern requirement of the Service, supply a sufficiently accurate account of the personification of Luck. The ancient Romans, whose expansive piety required a prefect army of gods and goddesses, who cheerfully invested Fever with divine attributes, and would undoubtedly have deified the Main Drainage and worshipped the Lambeth Waterworks, could scarcely have failed to place under mythological guardianship the chances that befall mankind. By depicting Fortune as blind, supplying her with "the furious, fickle wheel," and placing her upon "the rolling, restless stone," they have effected a happy compromise between Accident and Fate, which we Moderns may well envy. But above all things, did they account for the illogical and capricious operations of Luck by making its dispenser a lady. That was a stroke of genius indeed. The startling sur prises of Fortune, its inexplicable frowns, its bewildering smiles, are admirably expressive of feminine guidance, and one really fails to see the necessity of making the Goddess blind to account for the vagaries in which she delights to indulge. Indeed, as an ardent admirer of the Sex, their present Humble Servant feels indignant that its native and enchanting mutability should have been thought to require such artificial assistance. Everything that is sublime and beautiful in Nature, the sky, the sea, the wind the meandering rivers, the waving trees, and the manycoloured tastes and fancies of the daughters of Eve, are subject to rapid and picturesque mutation. It is only that wretched humdrum creature Man who moves ever in the same iron groove, and knows nothing of the proverbial charms of variety. If a man had been placed at the wheel of Fortune, the ship of life would doubtless drive on with monotonous and unswerving precision towards its destined port; but when the spokes are held by velvet palms and fairy fingers, a charmingly devious and erratic track will, of course, be the result, now stranding us on sandbanks, with much straining of timbers, anon wafting us through summer seas to romantic latitudes, inhabited by unsophisticated races anxious to barter diamonds as big as ducks' eggs for bottles of rum, and to exchange ambergris by weight against Birmingham muskets. Decidedly it is a Woman -bless her dear heart!—who steers the ship in defiance of the mariner's chart and the careful compilations of the Astronomer-Royal. The apparently inconsequent nature of the good or evil lot that befalls mankind of course engendered the idea of a supernatural control, which equally, of course, was to be bribed; and from flocks and herds sacrificed, which had much better have been eaten, to the pelting of newlymarried couples with rice and old slippers, continuous attempts have been made to bargain for "Luck," which, in the case of servant-maids, usually takes the form of a young man in one of the Household Regiments. Agreeably to the rigid law of supply and demand, intermediary professors have in all times arisen to ascertain and propitiate the course of Fortune, usually at prices absurdly cheap, considering the value of their services; and from the day of the Augurs, who could not look one another in the face without laughing, down to those of the modern Pythoness, who laughs in her sleeve, until an infidel magistrate usurps her calling, and foretells that she will spend three months at the treadmill, an unbroken line of inspired personages has existed. The entire Universe, moreover, has been ransacked for information of coming events. The stars that glitter hundreds of millions of miles afar have been considered as deeply interested in the career of the inhabitants of this tiny globe, and the sediment at the bottom of a teacup has been held to be fraught with profound meaning, to the same paragons of nature. Comets have been imported into our solar system obviously for the purpose of warning us of approaching disaster, and minute insects are naturally commissioned to prepare us for approaching dissolution by "tapping" in the woodwork of old houses. If all the records of this lore had been preserved, we should probably have found that there is nothing that we can hear, see, or feel, which is not a presage of good or evil luck. The unfortunate part of the business is that the two varieties of fortune are by no means equally distributed. For every one lucky thing likely to happen to you, there are, alas fifty much more apt to occur profoundly unlucky, and though the course of life gives a terrible air of realism to this, it is impossible not to feel that it is dreadfully unfair, and to wonder whether, if the learned in such matters were to reverse some of their instances, existence might not be made rather more endurable. Perhaps if it were laid down on good authority that walking under scaffolding, spilling salt, crossing knives, getting out of bed on the wrong side, etc., etc., were incidents of good omen, the terrible results that accrue from indulging in these things might be converted into happy issues. Moreover, considering that most of these fateful affairs happen by pure accident, it does seem rather hard that we should suffer for them, as if they had been done of malice prepense and aforethought. It is bad. enough to have ill-luck, but to bring it about oneself by things that one cannot help is an aggravation of the grievance. How am I to avert misfortune by refraining from getting out of bed on the wrong side, when I do not know which is the right side, and even though I did, when my condition prevents me from making a choice? How am I to avoid encountering a pin lying crossways upon my path? Is it any fault of mine that I am the thirteenth guest at a dinner-table? Where am I to find a crooked sixpence, or a lucky horse-shoe? How am I to prevent accidents, when I am profoundly ignorant of half the things that cause them? It was only last week that I learnt from a lady that it was unlucky to put a pair of boots upon a table, or to open an umbrella in the house. I do not say that I have been engaged in doing these things all my life of inadequate happiness, but they are, without doubt, specimens of man's liability to suffer from causes beyond his control. Is it not monstrous to think that while the plastic period of life is occupied with teachings of merely superficial value, knowledge involving felicity or misery is utterly neglected? Surely there should be a Professor of Luck at every school. The universal belief of some influences independent of our own in deciding the event is, after all, very natural. How, otherwise, can you account for it that your ball coquets with the pocket and remains outside, that you shave your adversary's leg-stump by a hair's-breadth, that the ship you insured goes to the bottom, that your volume of poems is not a success, that your picture was rejected? You had succeeded before over and over again, with less effort and reason; and you may say without vanity that Jones, who beat you, Brown, who made that famous speculation, and Robinson, whose picture was hung "on the line," are certainly not better men than you. It would be affectation for you to pretend that they are. They had the luck, that's all, which is very likely true, and would be equally true of you, perhaps, if you had been successful, for unquestionably our best efforts may suffer and our worst be improved by accident. Only, we fail to see the luck, when it is in our favour, but we never fail to recognise it in other people, particularly our rivals. Jones' play is very unscientific, but he has the devil's luck and his own as well. Brown has very little judgment, but something always turns up and pulls him through. The drawing, composition, and colour of that picture of Robinson's are absurdly weak, but then he happened to hit upon a subject that people like. I am afraid it would never do to entrust criticism to those |