thronging eagerly around it. His professional utterances, to be sure, are not particularly melodious, but the profession itself is humane and gentlemanlike. What a lucky fellow, too, is the muffin-man, and how much is he to be envied! How delightful to roam through the swarming streets of London, what time the sun is setting and the gentle moon begins to rise, with a trayful of delicious tea-cakes upon your head and in your hand that dear little bell from whose tongue as you trudge along you shed silvery music upon the cold clammy fog! Ah! it is indeed a sweet pursuit, charmingly suggestive of calm fireside pleasures such as fall to the share of married folks and of them alone; for bachelors are neither wife-beaters nor muffin eaters, nor are single men qualified for so sublime an enjoyment as the consumption of crumpets. I have never ceased, nor shall I ever cease, to regret that I was not brought up to the muffin and crumpet business. It would have suited my tastes and talents to a nicety. But dustmen, cat's-meat-men, and muffin-men the pets of civilisation. Return we to our martyrs. are It is not alone the princes of the blood, groundselsellers, engine-drivers, and the like who fill the ranks of that devoted army. Every man, of whatever station, who has had the misfortune to succeed in life is in some sense a martyr of civilisation for "What is glory? what is gain? The successful are dragged at the chariot wheels of their own success. Consider what the lives are of the lawyers, doctors, artists, authors, journalists, actors, merchants, and men of all pro fessions who have won for themselves a grand position in their respective spheres! Toil unremitted and endless solicitude. Never shall I forget the reply made to me by a barrister in immense practice whom I one day incautiously congratulated upon his eminence. "Alas!" he said, "you little know at what a cost that eminence has been purchased. I am the slave of my profession. It holds me in an iron bondage from which there is no escape. It absorbs all my time: it engrosses all my faculties. The circle of people whose dearest interests are interwoven with the skilful discharge by me of my duties in their regard widens every day. What to me are field sports, which I love dearly, or the calm delights of literature, to which I am equally attached? I have hardly time to kiss my children. Home I have none. My health is rapidly giving way, and propter vitam vivendi perdidi causas.' Poor fellow! Six months had not elapsed before the willows were waving over his grave. penalties of success are equally severe in the case of the fashionable physician, whose every hour is mapped out and whose sleep is liable to momentary invasion; of the favourite actor who, though his own heart be breaking, must still administer to the enjoyment of the public; of the prosperous painter who is overladen with commissions he will never live to execute; of the popular journalist who, come what may-sorrow or sickness, poverty or anguish-must still write, and write up to the mark of happier times, or else lose name and emolument for ever. Such and so great are the sacrifices exacted by Fortune, goddess unworthy of the name. All too truly spake the Roman satirist―" nullum numen habes, Fortuna, si sit predentia." Depend upon it that the happiest are The often they who have received the fewest of Fortune's favours. It is the men who have failed, and they alone, who have the leisure and opportunity to enjoy life. The successful are preeminently the martyrs of civilisation. ON THE RIVER. HE little brooks make the great rivers," but, ah! would they if they only knew what they were doing? Should we-assuming that we had an option in the matter-ever have grown up to be men and women if we had known the sorrows, the toils, and, alas! the stains that would come with our maturity? Certainly not; we should have remained children all our lives, for doubtless it is only owing to the incessant desire to increase in wisdom and in stature-but particularly in stature-that we do either, the former being the more rare. And so with the little brooks; they would never combine if they knew that their fellowship of play was likely to become a trade-union; one would not say a betrayed union for the world. How could they? To well pure and fresh from the breast of earth, to shine like a diamond set in a fairy filigree of flowers, ferns, and grass, to laugh, to leap, to dance, to play at hide-and-seek in leafy nooks, to wrestle in mimic rage with moss-grown rocks-to act in that manner is delightful; but then to become a bondslave, forced to walk with grave and silent face -no singing nor any dancing now-in a rigorously appointed path between high walls that shut out the pleasant fields and hills, to have to perform repulsive offices, to bear oppressive bur dens, and sometimes sometimes to have to carry in your arms, with shuddering dread, a horrid thing that was once a man! Ah, poor Undines, my heart bleeds for you. Hark! surely it is the sound of voices that rise from the river There is no water on the giant earth, From the small brook the green hill-side gives birth Niagara's thunder that the stunned air fills, Yes, it is even so; the wheels run on for ever and for ever. Shifting, changing, dividing, joining, but staying never. There is no pause, no rest, we must "a' dree our weird." We may chafe and fret, we may toss our manes, champ the bit, and paw with rebellious feet, but the grim driver Fate is behind us and the inevitable path before. Yet after all there is some compensation for the little brooks. Have they not made a noble river? And has not man paid homage to it with palaces, cathedrals, and magazines? Has not the proud city wedded it with banks and bridges, and does it not bear the wealth of all the nations to be poured down at the feet of its kingly consort? What changes the river has seen! The painted savage has launched his coracle upon its early uncurbed lagoons. The Roman master of the world has driven his brazen prow through its winding reaches, borne his all-conquering eagles to its heart, and taught its tides to flow unwandering through the path he willed. The Scandinavian pirate king has flown his raven flag above it, and furrowed its face with the iron keel of his grim galleys. Unwieldy |