have long since returned from their "honeymoon," and possibly have had time enough by this for two or three little " family jangles"), for not having acknowledged their wedding-cards. The fact is, I get more weary of all such formalities, more and more negligent about them, and increasingly grudge the time, postage, and patience expended on them. Well, thank heaven,— in heaven they" neither marry nor are given in marriage ;" and so, I suppose, we shall get rid of the nuisance of "wedding-cards' at any rate. As they also "die no more," we shall be free from the yet more odious ceremonial and formalities of funerals. In that world, there will be no lawyers - for there will be no wrongs to be redressed, and no rights that need to be contested; no physicians, for there will be no diseases to be cured, or aggravated; no clergy, for all shall be well-taught and well-behaved; and not least, there will be no undertakers ! Happy world, even if known only by negatives!

Your friend's wild hysteric laugh of anguish at the imminent peril with which one so dear to him was threatened, and his burst of joyful tears when it passed away, were both very natural; and yet how paradoxical !

Your description put me on an old speculation in which I have sometimes indulged; whether if the appropriate symbols of joy and grief, pleasure and pain, and so of our other emotions, were all at once to change places; if, for example, the loss of a dear friend were announced by a simper or a giggle, and a sudden

accession of fortune by a groan or a sigh, we should ever learn by habit to regard these as the natural signs of emotion; as natural as our present.

You know that there are those who hold that the "beautiful" is wholly factitious; that, consequently, the signs which express it are quite arbitrary in themselves, and derive their fancied power from pleasing associations alone; that is, from associations with what the constitution of our nature makes the sources of happiness to us; that, consequently, these signs have no specific propriety apart from such associations; that if health and youth were always united with the complexion of a corpse, and disease and pain with ruddy cheeks and sparkling eyes, our associations would soon change places; we should grow enamoured of grey hairs and wrinkles, and horrified at vivacious features and blooming complexions.

One cannot deny that it may be so; I certainly must admit that association, in many cases, has great power to transform the once indifferent into the beautiful or the ugly: nay, the beautiful into the ugly, and the ugly into the beautiful. Still, I cannot help fancying that there are limits to this power, and that there is a propriety in the very symbols (even if they might be reversed without permanent confusion in our interpretation of them) by which the various emotions are, originally, either excited or expressed ; a propriety arising out of the entire constitution and organism of our nature. I cannot help fancying that not only are there limits to the magic power of association to alter or reverse them, but that even when it can do it, the effect is never so perfect as when association, acts in accordance with certain signs, and does not counterwork them; that is, that the symbols are

natural.

If it be the case with the symbols by which the "beautiful" in objects is presented to us, it ought to be also in the symbols by which the emotion is expressed; and, by parity of reason, with the symbols of all our other emotions. It is next to impossible to imagine, indeed, what would be the effect if the emotions were to play a masquerade, and express themselves by the opposite

;

symbols; whether we could ever learn (not to interpret them,that we certainly could do), but whether we could ever think them to be as appropriate as those we use now. That we could learn to interpret them is plain; we do, even the most arbitrary signs of emotion as when an oriental smites his breast, or rends his garments, or throws ashes on his head in deep grief; and, doubtless, if it became the fashion among us, in a similar case, to express our dejection by unbuttoning one of our braces, taking off our stockings, or swallowing a dose of rhubarb, these actions would soon become full of grave significance, and be thought admirably adapted to alleviate calamity!

What a pity that we cannot make a few experiments in this matter! Yet it is plainly out of the question; the above arbitrary signs, who could attempt to bring into fashion, however admirably conceived? Who could stand the laughter such ludicrous sorrow would create? And as to the inversion of the natural signs, it would be still worse. The experimental philosopher who should laugh at a funeral or groan at a wedding, would be liable to be kicked out of the company.

I confess I am sometimes staggered when I see how astonishingly easy it often is to accommodate the signs of emotion to the most opposite sources, and how nearly similar in many cases is the language of joy and sorrow, of pleasure and pain, of hope and fear, and how frequent and rapid the interchange of smiles and tears. There are tears of joy and smiles of sorrow, as well as tears of sorrow and smiles of joy ;-nay, they often both dwell at the same moment on the same face, and so blend in their appropriate, as well as their interchanged, expressions, that it is impossible to tell which is which, under the infinitely subtle combinations of emotion to which the mysterious heart of man is subject. How often, in such moods, do we see gleaming radiance, and passing shadows, and glittering tears, all chasing each other, and melting into one another, -meeting and breaking, like the shifting sunshine and showers, the shadowy clouds and falling spangles, of an April day! Similarly, to a stranger, it is hard always to distinguish a blush of modesty from a blush of

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shame; to say whether paleness be the effect of extreme fear or extreme rage; whether a sigh, which is equally the utterance of pleasure and pain, and often partakes of both, come from the "fountain of sweet water," or "bitter whether a smile be a smile of melancholy or a smile of complacency, or a smile of that pleasing sadness which is allied to both. Upon my word, as I think of these things, I am half inclined to fancy that though the book of emotional expression be doubtless a very significant volume, it would be almost as intelligible if read upside down!

I was sitting at my solitary breakfast yesterday when the servant came in with her arm bound up; and, on asking her what was the matter, she told me, with a giggle, that she had cut her wrist nearly to the bone, by the slipping of a sharp knife. She ended her account with something like a laugh,which at first appeared rather unseemly; but on reflection, "Poor girl," said I, "the accident has made her hysterical this morning." I told her that she should have every care taken of her, and that her sister should stay with her till she was well. Her face immediately clouded over, and she began to whimper her thanks. This seemed strange too; but, thought I, “the girl has a grateful heart, I see, and she cannot bear much this morning." Yet one could hardly help thinking that her giggle and her whimper might just as well have changed places.

A good woman, of whom I sometimes buy eggs, and with whom I sometimes have a gossip, came in shortly after, and told me, with a frequent application of her apron to her eyes, that she had just had a loving letter from her son, whom she had given over as one of the crew of the bark "Fair Susan," recently wrecked on the coast of Northumberland. He had, however, been unexpectedly taken up; and she told me (fairly blubbering now) that she was daily expecting to be blessed with a sight of him. "What a strange thing is a mother's heart!" said I to myself. "A looker-on might imagine that she was greatly disappointed at finding her 'Enfant Perdu' turning up again."

On going, further on in the day, to visit a cottage of a peasant

in distress, I found things in so much worse case than I had anticipated, the husband, a great hulking fellow, out of work, the wife sick, two out of three children very ill with the measles, and the third lying dead, that I was surprised into a much larger gratuity than I had thought of giving, and promised to send doctor and nurse into the bargain. The poor fellow, who had gazed at all this misery with the stolid eye of desperation, no sooner received the money I put into his hand, than he burst into a passion of tears! How very odd yet in the whole 'signal-book" of Nature was there any more natural way of expressing his joy?

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Still I had my doubts about the feasibility of the metaphysical theory I above referred to, and they were confirmed by a dream of last night. Hear it, and confess how much better philosophers we are in our sleeping than in our waking moments; though, by the way, dreams-sleeping or waking-have always been an unfailing resource with philosophers; I do not know what they would do without them.

In my dream, I did actually, somehow, get into a world where all the signs of emotion we see here were reversed; as for the effects-voilà! Methought a dear friend came in to inform me that his daughter was going to be married the next day; and "very happily," as he said, with a long face and the voice of an undertaker. It seemed to me so ridiculous that I could not help laughing, on which he remarked that he could not think why his intelligence should have caused me any chagrin; and giggling himself, told me he was very sorry for it, deeply cut to the heart by my behaviour indeed. I immediately put on a lugubrious face of sympathetic joy, and accepted, with as deep a sigh as I could fetch up, the invitation to be present at the wedding. I went accordingly, having put on a black suit and crape round my hat to grace the joyful occasion.

Being too late, I met the merry procession in the streets,dressed, of course, in deep mourning, looking very grave and solemn, and escorted by a band of music playing a tune about half as airy and quick as the "Old Hundredth," or the "Dead