he (or she) must have sadly misread that little paper before coming to a conclusion so startling. The volume by post, a good deal knocked about: the newspapers, many in number, for people of modest means can afford these now: the trenchant weekly, preserved and bound, which has mounted up into that long shelf of dark-calf folios with red edges, which nobody would buy: the other day twenty-two volumes of it (only in cloth indeed) sold by auction for seventeen shillings: all these enter into the life of the household through that bronze-covered slit in the outer-door, large enough to receive a magazine. And sometimes letters bearing unfamiliar postage-stamps from foreign lands: almost all very cheering. Make much of post-time: more than heretofore. Encourage all correspondence: unless indeed the two or three daily invitations to take shares in some new company (limited), whose projectors are plainly quite unlimited, in various undesirable ways. If you have not spoiled your nerves by stimulants which coarsen and degrade, here will be a daily series of sensations.

Have these counsels seemed selfish? Is all this a cheap Epicureanism, within the reach of poor folk ? The range I have allowed myself in these pages may indeed be in some measure obnoxious to such condemnation. But if life be the grave and awful thing we have found it to be, in its surroundings, tendencies, and issue, may we not be permitted, in little harmless

Beyond these, let us try

ways, to cheer ourselves in quiet times: knowing that often the utmost effort will be needed, and the heavy pang be felt? No one will dream that these things here said are all. But they are real (to some people) so far as they go. ever to get out of ourselves: let us keep a kind interest in others. Though we are growing older, and getting travel-stained, it is pleasant to think that all the world is yet fresh with the glory of its youth to little children. Fussy philanthropy is (to some) most irritative: in some cases even disgusting, when it loudly proclaims all it does and a good deal it never did. But stay: we are not to be angry: though the sham doer of good, sounding his cracked trumpet in the street, is a sight to stir the wrath of angels. But to quietly by word or deed help or cheer another, is singularly cheering and helpful to one's self: Not, indeed, if it be done with an eye to that reward.

CHAPTER X.

OF GROWING OLD.

IN the hopeful May-time, when the primroses were springing, and the green leaves coming again, just this time thirteen years, I wrote an essay Concerning Growing Old That essay found favour, possibly because it deserved it; possibly because it did not; but that is neither here nor there. It gave the views of its subject which had then been reached: and, writing it, it seemed to its writer that he was able to look away backwards towards an illimitable horizon, and in fact that he was very old. 'I am very old, I am forty,' said Mr. Buckle on his birthday. Doubtless that remarkable man meant what he said, and spoke without any degree of affectation. When that essay was written, the writer wanted a good deal of being Half-Way yet Mr. Buckle's notion was quite honestly entertained. Looking back now, it seems different as many things seem. He was young then young comparatively. Mr. Dickens made

1 Recreations of a Country Parson: Second series, chap. vi.

mention of Tom Pinch, as 'a respectable young

man, aged thirty-five.' A fortiori must he be young who was considerably less. Yet did he presume to treat, not without sincere feeling, of a matter imperfectly understood.

to.

Let the subject of that departed May be recurred There is something to be said about it, learned. through the experience of these thirteen years. Much has come and gone, much has been learned, in that long time. It seems now as though no one could really feel old, if both his father and mother were still living: hale, active, enjoying society and life. Still abides the old Home whence the household were scattered. You are still one of the boys:' and in any perplexity you know where to go to for counsel, always kind and sincere. But when they go, you stand in the front rank, with no preceding generation between you and the great change. It makes a great difference, many know.

May I recall that time, May in the year of grace 1860? It comes back, without recalling, to-night, very vividly. For to-day there came an afternoon of leisure, coming amid busy days: and after two miles' walk over a dusty and shadeless road, whence, looking back, you saw dark towers and ruins and the environing sea, you might turn into a little wooded dell, down which murmurs a brook under green trees and under the trees there blazed everywhere such thick tufts of great primroses as may seldom be seen:

beautiful to look upon, and with the faint but powerful fragrance which recalls earliest days. Doubtless it has been with many, that primroses were the first remembered flowers. Among many Mays, these leaves and flowers brought back vividly that which has been named, wherein that old essay was written in scraps of time amid hard work now traceless. It was packed up, and sent away by post from Athens to Babylon, like others innumerable. For the dog had his day, and a very cheering day. And, lest vanity should obscure the fact, several kind friends were prompt to inform him when it began to go over. Then, a few days later, through the summer night with its brief darkness, he journeyed in the flying train to the great city met once more (it was the last time) the dear old face of the friend who was then in charge of Fraser; and corrected his proof, not in the green light of leaves in the distant country, but in the hearing of the unceasing roar of the Strand; looking down with awe on that awful tide of life: thinking How can an ignorant dweller amid trees and hedges, sheep and oxen, where only small events ever occur, have anything to say worth being heard by wise and polished men and women strung and refined by the ceaseless brightening and sharpening of London? Then, in days just like these now present, under John Parker's roof, the writer beheld for the first time many eminent and famous men, long known, and long beloved (some of them) through books which had

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