at the poles, but bulging in the centre. His face was rendered mightily truculent and bellicose by a furious moustache, plentifully greased, and turned up towards his eyes; while his hair strutted out horizontally from either side of his head, as if he had received some terrible fright in his infancy, and had never recovered from its effects. But his beard it was which gave the distinguishing characteristic to his face. It was the very ne plus ultra of eccentric beards—

Una barba la piu singulare

Che mai fosse discritta in versa o'n prosa.*

Every individual hair of this extraordinary beard seemed resolutely determined to assert its perfect selbständigkeit (substantiality), to use a term much in vogue at the present day, and stood out from its root as sturdily and stiffly as a porcupine's quill, thereby furnishing his chin with a natural chevaux-de-frise-not by any means a convenient appendage, one would imagine, for an inamorato. But revenons à nos moutons. He was, as I have said, kept in distressful durance by his verbose entertainer, whilst burning to display his gallantry to the Fräulein; and his spleen was still further aggravated by seeing the position he was longing for occupied by such an upstart youngster as myself.

By some strange fatality, Emilie managed to drop her parasol or handkerchief about half a dozen times during our promenade, which of course afforded me brilliant opportunities of showing my chivalric devotedness, by flying to her assistance, and restoring the fallen articles into her hands. The unfortunate lieutenant made a desperate plunge on each of these occasions to perform the like polite office; but in vain. The inexorable host would not on any account allow him to leave his side for an instant, but, grasping him tightly by the arm, detained him a close prisoner till such time as he should have finished his explanatory comments, so that the chagrined officer had the mortification of seeing himself forestalled by his impudent subordinate. After walking about for nearly an hour, we took tea in a large summer-house cut out of the compact foliage of a gigantic cedar, planted by some ancestor of the count's, I know not how many generations back. By means of some delicately-devised stratagems, I managed to get myself seated by the side of the Fraulein, who occupied the post of tea-maker; and, consequently, I had the inexpressible delight of paying her all the various little attentions which are customary on such occasions. At one time I handed her a cup, and then, "O paradiesisch Fühlen!" our hands would come into contact, and the momentary touch shot a delightful sensation through my frame. At another time she would lean forward to get something, and as, of course, I could not allow her to do anything which it was possible for me to take upon myself, I leaned forward to anticipate her, so our heads came into such dangerous proximity, that I felt her breath, more sweet to me than all the gales of Araby the Blest, fanning my delighted cheek. With such enchanting trivialities the evening sped away; my vis-à-vis, Lieutenant Hönigthauicht, regarding me all the while with a sinister frown, curling his very beard with choler, and looking as though it would have given him most hearty pleasure to see me safely landed on the other side of the

A beard the most singular

That ere has been described in prose or rhyme.

66

Styx-a feeling which, I am sorry to say, I could not swear to be unreciprocated. I would willingly have lengthened out the evening into a small eternity; for, after overleaping all such conventional formalities as recommendation, introduction, &c., and plunging at once like an epic poet in medias res, doubts began to arise in my mind lest my finale might be similar to that of the brain-spinning poetasters of to-day, who flit across the stage for an hour, and then are lost in the gulf of oblivion for ever and aye! But, alas! all my wishes for a protraction of the evening were of no avail. Phoebus Apollo seemed to drive his thirsty steeds down the steep descent with dangerous velocity, and my short term of happiness slipped away with accelerated rapidity.

Doch gehen wir. Ergraut ist schon die Welt,

Die Luft gekühlt, der Nebel fällt.

The Gräfinn rose to retire into the house with her niece, and I felt myself constrained to take my leave; which I did with a melancholy calculation of how many were the chances against my ever being so fortunate again, though somewhat revived by the benevolent urbanity of host and hostess, and exulting in the possession of a rose, which, I having chanced to express my admiration of it, had been plucked from a bush by Emilie's fingers, and bestowed upon myself.

ARTHUR HELPS.

FLORIAN had a passion, it is said, for playing Harlequin on the public stage; but his agility was paralysed the moment his mask was removed. Not a few authors, who have donned the mask of a pseudonym, appear to have entertained similar apprehensions as to the possible results of doffing it. Whether Florian would have perpetually broken down, had he persevered in trying the harlequinade without the vizor, we know not. But that the misgivings of sensitive authorship are, after a certain status is reached, causeless and imaginary, is evident from the records of literature in general. Junius, indeed, would have lost his power together with his nominis umbra; but Addison lost nothing by the identification of the short-faced Spectator; nor are we aware that Professor Wilson drooped when the propria persona of Christopher North was bruited abroad, or that Mr. Isaac Taylor was nonplussed by the detection of the "Author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm," or that the right hand of Mrs. Marsh lost its cunning when she was multiplied into "Two Old Men." The author of "Friends in Council" is now pretty generally known to be Mr. Arthur Helps; but the anonymous was, in his case, retained long after he had achieved a success, which rendered it, as a literary experiment, superfluous. We are not, however, of those who think it inexplicable, that when a man's venture has been recognised and applauded by "crowded houses," he should not be in a hurry to stand up in his private box, and bow and simper unutterable things in response to their most sweet voices. Restless inquirers and quidnuncs there are, who, measuring the brains of others by the metre of their own, exclaim, "Why, herein is

a marvellous thing!" whensoever a third edition still wants the author's name in the title-page, and his pedigree in the preface.

Mr. Helps has done much to burnish up that rusted thing, the Essay, and to ensure for it a sale in days when it was supposed to be a deadweight on the book-shelves. His originality and grace have proved that even the Essay, if a thing of beauty, is a joy for ever.

In assailing moral prejudices and social anomalies he is outspoken, but with no offensive or irritating candour. Like Brutus in the rostrum, he may challenge complaint on this score-may "pause for a reply," and find that "none hath he offended." Years since, one of his friends pronounced him a man who could say the most audacious things with the least offence. Objections have been raised to the defect of tangible remedies in his discussion of current evils-a kind of reproach that will ever, he says, be made, with much or little justice, against all men who endeavour to reform or improve anything-the reproach that they are not ready with definite propositions, but are, like the chorus in a Greek play, making general remarks about nature and human affairs, without suggesting any clear and decided course to be taken. What he " essays" to do, is not to prescribe a course of action, but a habit of thought which will modify all actions within its scope. Not that he is an abstract thinker, with a scornful disregard of the practical; on the contrary, he is an essayist "in the intervals of business." Avowedly, he writes not as a hermit or a clergyman, but as a man conversant with the world. His writings evidence a considerable and close experience of life. Without that love of originality and paradox which predominates in some minds of a like order, prompting them to an affectation of antagonism to the vulgar, in omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, he freely uses his privilege of private judgment, and peers with his own eyes into the shady side of a question. As Sydney Smith, when a hubbub was raised about a dog biting a bishop, remarked that, for his part, he should like to hear the dog's version of the story, so this essayist (to illustrate his temperament by one instance) whispers his private suspicion that "some of those Roman emperors" have been maligned a little. He is no superficial observer-no "one idea'd" man. He manufactures no Procustes' bed, on which to gauge universal human nature. He keeps no hack dogma, licensed to be let out to all characters, on all services, and in all weathers; no ethical hobby, which he rides to death without remorse. His antidotes to moral ills are not compounded in the quack medicine style, or puffed as the infallible panacea, exclusive in saving virtue, unconditional in specific effect. If his mind is subtle enough to see closely into a subject, it is also broad enough, and plastic enough, to escape the penalties of one-sidedness. Fond as he is of reverie on his favourite topics, he carefully sets reason on the watch, and compels reverie to a summary exit at the challenge of that trusty sentinel in his dreamiest mood we never find him

Losing his fire and active might

In a silent meditation,

Falling into a still delight

And luxury of contemplation.*

His philosophy is of the Coleridgean type; in spirit and manner some

* Tennyson: "Elean or."

what akin to, but more expansive and practical than that of Archdeacon Hare and Professor Maurice. Moderate and conservative in his general views, he is no straitlaced partisan; and we know those who account him "unsafe," because he is not afraid to quote the quarantine pages of Shelley, Carlyle, and Emerson; nor does his churchmanship recoil from writing down doctrinal primnesses, clerical over-niceties, protracted litanies, and long sermons. His lines of thought are constructed on the broad, not the narrow gauge; and it is pleasant to watch the steady swiftness of the trains the ease with which they touch at intermediate stations—the quiet triumph with which they issue from some long dark tunnel of speculation—and the methodical fidelity with which they keep time, and discharge their consignment at the terminus. Although it might seem that the accommodations are only for first-class passengers-scholars and men of culture yet there is that lucid arrangement, forcible illustration, and attractive style about our author, which, with due attention on their parts, will be found available even by humble penny-a-milers. His style is polished, but not pedantic,-occasionally a little careless, but frequently rising into poetical beauty, and usually characterised by tranquil elegance. Nor may we omit to notice the religious spirit, the tone of mild, intelligent, benignant piety, which animates him with its prevailing presence, and colours his pages with a light as of setting suns.

career-was

His first work-so far, at least, as we are able to trace his anonymous Essays written in the Intervals of Business," published some ten years since. It treats on such subjects as Practical Wisdom, SelfDiscipline, Aids to Contentment, Benevolence, Domestic Rule, Advice, Secrecy, the Education of a Man of Business, the Choice and Management of Agents, the Treatment of Suitors, Party-spirit, &c. The first eight of the fifteen pertain to mankind in general; the concluding seven to men of business. It is a man of business who writes, and who writes essays essays of lofty moral tone, of large intellectual character, and of considerable imaginative power. And this man of business shows, what technical men of business so systematically ignore, that imagination and philosophy can be woven into practical wisdom, and that the highest moral qualities may be translated into action. He shows how feasible it is, or may become, for a sound heart and a clear head to compass the material ends of a Benthamite by the unselfish means of a spiritualistto unite the "not slothful in business" with the nobly "fervent in spirit." His view of practical wisdom is as far from so-called expediency as it is from impracticability itself. His doctrine is, that high moral resolves and great principles are for daily use, and that there is room for them in the affairs of this life; and, in fine, that the men who first introduce these principles are practical men, although the practices which such principles create may not come into being in the lifetime of their founders, being regarded at first as theories only, but eventually acknowledged and acted upon as common truths. The object of the Essay on Contentment is, to suggest some antidotes against the manifold ingenuity of selftormenting; and most admirably does it expose the evils of oversensitiveness about what people may say of us,—many unhappy persons imagining

Imagination, as he happily phrases it, if it be subject to reason, is its "slave of the lamp."

themselves always in an amphitheatre, with the assembled world as spectators, whereas all the while they are playing to empty benches; the evils, too, of habitual mistrust, of morbid craving for sympathy, and of unemployed intellect and affections. Another essay greatly to our mind, is that on Party-spirit-an evil against which the wisest require to be constantly on their guard, lest, as is well expressed, its insidious prejudices, like dirt and insects on the glasses of a telescope, blur the view, and make them see strange monsters where there are none; most salutary is the censure of the unfounded, but common notion, that party-dealings are different from anything else in the world, and are to be governed by looser laws, for it is a very dangerous thing, we are here reminded, to acknowledge two sorts of truth, two kinds of charity. Of the whole of this small volume, we may safely and advisedly say, that it were difficult to name anything in contemporary prose of a more healthy and intelligent nature. The sale it enjoys tends, in some measure, to ratify this

opinion.

In a later work, our author characterises "Friends in Council" as a book which the average reader will find a somewhat sober, not to say dull affair, embracing such questions as Slavery, Government, Management of the Poor, and such like; but in which the reader, who is not the average reader, may, perhaps, find something worth agreeing with or differing from. The "friends" are happily discriminated: Ellesmere, who views everything in a droll sarcastic way, a shrewd man of the world, who speaks out fearlessly; Dunsford, an amiable country rector, who pretends to be a simple, unworldly, retired man, content to receive his impression of men and things from his pupils, and to learn politics by watching his bees, but a man of practical acumen when he chooses to be so, and one who, as his pupils tell him, ought to conduct great law-cases and write essays, instead of leaving such things to Ellesmere and Milverton ;-the latter, Milverton, an eloquent, thoughtful, gentle essayist, whose themes form the subject of the conciliar debates. Alike in these sententious though fluently written essays, and in the discussions to which they give rise between the members of the triumvirate, we find healthy sentiment, deliberate reflection, and refined taste. The topics reviewed are often trite enough. Ellesmere charges Milverton with his musty selections:

"There is no end to your audacity in the choice of hackneyed subjects. I think you take a pride in it."

"No, indeed," is the reply; "but they do not appear hackneyed to me." Nor do they to the reader, thanks to the fresh, genial treatment of the writer. Among them we meet with History, Truth, Fiction, Education, Greatness, Slavery, Reading, Criticism, the Art of Living, the Condition of the Rural Poor. The Essay on History teems with evidences of conscientious and repeated study. It pronounces the main object of the historian to be, the securing an insight into the things which he tells us of, and then to tell them with the modesty of a man who is in the presence of great events, and must speak about them carefully, simply, and with but little of himself or his affections thrown into the narration. A canon, this, sadly calculated to damage many a popular historian-particularly those of the Lamartine school! The disquisition on Greatness is another very able section, explaining greatness, if it can be shut up in qualities,