advantages (not without their moral consequences) which come in a large community of the clubbing together of the limited means of a great number of comparatively poor people. In a large city there is everywhere a solidity, an appearance of wealth. As in a club, a congeries of men of very moderate resources are able to afford a palace, with the arrangements, the books and periodicals, which only a millionaire could provide for himself, so is it in a great town. The very pavement of the streets is different. The water-supply is better and more abundant. The shops are incomparably handsomer and better provided. You have the great luxury of a first-rate bookseller, on whose tables you can see all the new books: buying a few, and seeing as much as you desire of many more. In the little place you may be thankful to have a railway at all: so thankful that you do not grumble at the wretched rickety. wooden shed which serves for a station, the rattling carriages, the ill-laid rails which would make express speed destruction. You cannot expect to step into the luxurious and fluent carriage, which in nine hours and a half bears you four hundred miles: conveying you from Athens to Babylon. Neither can you, when you feel dreary and stupid, wander away and lose yourself in mazes of smoky streets in some noisy and squalid quarter, whence you return with a penitent sense that you have little right to be discontented. Most middle-aged men remember to have got good

in that way. I remember talking with a very intelligent working man who abode in a little city, but had at one period in his life lived for some years in London. What I liked about London,' said he, 'was this: that if a body was ill off, you had only to go out for a walk and you would see some other body worse off.' The idea was sound, though awkwardly expressed. It was as when the Highlander said, 'The potatoes here are very bad; but, God be thanked, they are a great deal worse about Drumnadrochit.'

On the whole, the little community is a school wherein, with certain disadvantages and certain advantages too, one may cultivate good temper, sympathy, patience; forbearance with the faults of others and the habit of occasionally remembering

:

one's own.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF ALIENATION.

WHAT is the main characteristic of the life of these advancing years?

There are several, which would be better

away.

The natural thing, as one goes on through life, is to be going down-hill. We are leaving behind us our better days. We grow less warm-hearted and more crusty less confiding and more suspicious: less cheerful and hopeful. It is with us as we know it to be with certain of our humbler fellow-creatures. How much less amiable a being is your stiff old dog of twelve years, rheumatic, fretful, listless, snappish, not to be touched without risk of a bite, than the gay, playful, frisking, sweet-tempered creature he used to be! That humbler life runs its course faster than we run ours, but the course is the same. I look at my unamiable fellow-creature and think, There is what I shall be.

But a distinction must be sharply made, which is oftentimes not made. This is the distinction between

passing moods which come of little physical causes and which go quite away, and the downhill progress which is vital, essential, and irretraceable. Dyspepsia and nerve-weariness may for a day or a week simulate the confirmed despondency and testiness which will come when the machinery is breaking down finally. We must distinguish between the passing summercloud and the drear December. There are people who begin too soon to regard themselves as old: to watch for the signs of age, and to claim its unamiable prerogatives. It is not so with others. I find it stated in Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, that the judge and Edinburgh reviewer at a certain period came to the conclusion that he must, in some sense, make up his mind that he had become an old man. Looking to the top of the page, I read, Æt. 70. I rapidly recall a wellknown assertion of Moses and think Lord Jeffrey was not a day too early in coming to that conclusion. But one has known those who, very soon after forty, think of themselves as old. Now at that period, it will not do to yield to the invasion of impatience, irritability, despondency. It is merely that you have got for the time into what golf-players call a Bunker : and you must get out again. Some day you may get into the bunker, and abide.

Before going on to the main topic to be thought of, let a word be said of a tendency much to be guarded against, which comes with advancing years. It is the tendency to be less kind and helpful to other

people than you have been heretofore.

I do not mean

merely through lessening softness of heart: but for

a more tangible reason.

you

You are a fortunate mortal

indeed, if, as your life lengthens, you do not find that here and there receive an evil return for much kindness you have shown to others. Some man, whom you have helped in many ways, who has many times eaten your salt, to advance whose ends you have taken much trouble in ways most unpleasant to yourself, turns upon you and disappoints you sadly at some testing time. Some such man, under no special pressure of temptation, proves himself both malignant and untruthful. Personal offence you readily forgive and forget: but doings which indicate character cannot be forgotten. If a man have told a manifest falsehood once, it must be long before you trust him any more. And, thus disappointed in people you have known, you will be aware of the temptation to look suspiciously on new-comers to resolve that you shall not waste kindness on those who will by-and-by turn upon you. For we are too apt to take the worst we have known, for our samples of the race.

Of course, unless you are to allow yourself to settle down into misanthropy, you must strive against all this. If you look diligently, you will commonly discern some excuse for the wrong-doing which disappointed you. I do not mean that you ought to persuade yourself that the wrong was right: but that you should admit pleas in mitigation of judgment. And