rage, that they would go up-stairs from their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness, and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence of it had gotten vent; and the passions abate and cool. I heard once of a shop-keeper that behaved himself thus to such an extreme that, when he was provoked by the impertinence of the customers beyond what his temper could bear, he would go upstairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes as a man chained down in Bedlam; and again, when that heat was over, would sit down and cry faster than the children he had abused; and, after the fit, he would go down into the shop again, and be as humble, as courteous, and as calm, as any man whatever; so absolute a government of his passions had he in the shop, and so little out of it: in the shop, a soulless animal that would resent nothing; and in the family, a madman: in the shop, meek like a lamb; but in the family, outrageous, like a Libyan lion. The sum of the matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business; his customers are to be his idols: so far as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and worship them; at least, he is not in any way to displease them, or show any disgust or distaste, whatever they may say or do. The bottom of all is that he is intending to get money by them; and it is not for him that gets money to offer the least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it: he is to consider that, as Solomon says, 'the borrower is

servant of the lender;' so the seller is servant to the buyer."

He tells

Poor George Dyer "commenced life, after a course of hard study, in the House of Pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish, fanatic school-master, at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, the school-master would take no immediate notice; but after supper, when the school was called together to even-song, he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them, ending with, Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me Agur's wish,' — and the like, — which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor Dyer was a receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least."

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"The late grand duke," said Goethe to Eckermann, "was very partial to Merck, so much so that he once became his security for a debt of four thousand dollars. Very soon Merck, to our surprise, gave him back his bond. As Merck's circumstances were not improved, we could not divine how he had been able to do this. When I saw him again, he explained the enigma thus: The duke,' said he, "is

an excellent, generous man, who trusts and helps men whenever he can. So I thought to myself, Now if you cozen him out of his money, that will prejudice a thousand others; for he will lose his precious trustfulness, and many unfortunate but worthy men will suffer, because one was worthless. So I made a speculation, and borrowed the money from a scoundrel, whom it will be no matter if I do cheat; but if I had not paid our good lord, the duke, it would have been a pity."

"The greatest pleasure I know," said Lamb, "is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."

IV.

STANDARDS.

AT a glance, it would appear that as a rule all men think all men imperfect but themselves. It follows, therefore, that all would reform all but themselves. But if every man's standard of excellence could be accounted for, what a melancholy history of human frailties and follies might be had. What sad curiosities, perhaps, would be our pet virtues-offspring, alas, too often, of sated appetites, spent passions, hairbreadth escapes, and disappointed hopes. Knowing all, with what wondrous pity must God hear our poor prayers. To seek perfect virtue or contentment "is as hopeless as to try to recover a lost limb. Those only have it who never have thought about it. The moment we feel that we wish for it, we may be certain that it is gone forever." "To know how cherries and strawberries taste, you must ask the children and the birds."

"All things," says Emerson, "work exactly according to their quality, and according to their quantity ; attempt nothing they cannot do, except man." He ventures "to say that what is bad is bad," and finds himself "at war with all the world." "Do not be so vain of your one objection. Do you think there is only one? Alas, my good friend, there is no part of society or of

UNIV. OF

life better than any other part. All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all alike." 66 Probably there never was," says De Quincey, "one thought, from the foundation of the earth, that has passed through the mind of man, which did not offer some blemish, some sorrowful shadow of pollution, when it came up for review before a heavenly tribunal; that is, supposing it a thought entangled at all with human interests or human passions." "All the progress which we have really made," says a writer in Blackwood, "and all the additional and fictitious progress which exists in our imagination, prompts us to the false idea that there is a remedy for everything, and that no pain is inevitable. But there are pains which are inevitable in spite of philosophy, and conflicting claims to which Solomon himself could do no justice. We are not complete syllogisms, to be kept in balance by intellectual regulations, we human creatures. We are of all things and creatures in the world the most incomplete; and there are conditions of our warfare, for the redress of which, in spite of all the expedients of social economy, every man and woman, thrown by whatever accident out of the course of nature, must be content to wait perhaps for years, perhaps for a life long, perhaps till the consummation of all things.' "For a reasonable, voluntary being," says Sterling, "learning as he only can learn by experience, there will always be errors behind to mourn over, and a vista of unattainable good before, which inevitably lengthens as we advance." If we only could "grieve without affectation or imbecility, and journey on without turning aside or stopping."

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