(Titian's) colour always struck him as being earthy. Eldest daughter asks why the 'person' is 'doing it' all in black (I have just commenced in charcoal). Is informed by pa that this is the great fault of the French school. They were too gritty. Youngest daughter gushingly declares that seeing pictures always made her die to be an artist. Is reproved by ma, who says that having had lessons at school, that was all 'any young lady could desire.'-Punch.

151. DOING ONE'S DUTY.

Doing one's duty (a charming phrase in the abstract, doubtless) proves usually much less agreeable in practice than in theory, seeing that it generally involves annoying oneself, and displeasing other people.

No credit attaches to it, because after all we have only done what we ought to have done; duty goes to bed weary and rises early; duty darns stockings and turns its dresses; duty does needlework, and pricks its fingers in the process; duty tends the sick and humours the fretful; duty gives to the poor, and goes about clad in the garments of humility; and for many and many a long day perhaps, until there be no more duties to perform in this world, it betakes itself to the next; duty has the felicity of receiving all the kicks of which society is so liberal, while halfpence and silver and gold are showered upon those who do not go in for duty at all, but simply for pleasure.

There is nothing so hard to discharge satisfactorily as our duty; there is nothing for which we get so little thanks. It is like work, looked down upon as a vulgar virtue : and yet when the small sums that go to make up life's great account come to be cast up, duty and work may be found to have borne good interest, though the one has oftentimes seemed to our eyes but as the toil of the ant, and the other but useless labour and misspent energy.—Mrs. Riddell (Maxwell Drewitt).

152. SOCIAL INDOLENCE.

Though we do not inflict so much evil on those who speak differently from us, as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment

of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian Church grew up a stately and spreading tree overtopping the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade. Our merely social indolence kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain, or even lose ground in each decade or generation. They never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons, among whom they originate, without even lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light. . . . A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters and logical consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world.

The sort of men who can be looked for under it are either mere conformers to commonplace or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles-that is, to small practical matters which would come right of themselves if but the minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually right until then; while that which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds-free and daring speculation on the highest subjects-is abandoned.-John Stuart Mill.

153. A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP.

(Scene—the corner of two principal Streets. The Town
Pump talking through its nose.)

Noon, by the north clock! Noon, by the east! High noon, too, by these hot sun-beams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my nose. Truly we public characters have a tough time of it! And among all the town officers chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains, for a single year, the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed, in perpetuity, upon the Town Pump? The title of town treasurer' is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire department, and one of the physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace, all water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town clerk, by promulgating public notices, when they are pasted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pattern to my brother officers, by the cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartial discharge of my business, and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain; for, all day long, I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike; and at night I hold a lantern over my head, both to show where I am, and keep people out of the gutters.

At this sultry noontide I am cupbearer to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dram-seller on the mall, at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and sundry in my plainest accents, and at the very tiptop of my voice-Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen, walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the unadulterated ale of father Adam-better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer, or wine of any price, here it is by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help yourselves!

You, my

It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they come. A hot day, gentlemen! Quaff, and away again, so as to keep yourselves in a nice cool sweat. friend, will need another cupful, to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as it is on your cow-hide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day; and, like a wise man, have passed by the taverns, and stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat without and a fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder, or melted down to nothing at all in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink, and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the fiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir! You and I have been great strangers hitherto; nor, to express the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite to steam, in the miniature tophet which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavour of cold water. Good-by; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next? Oh, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the stones, that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine-cellars. Well, well, sir-no harm done, I hope! Go draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue

lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind-legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout?

Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends; and while my spout has a moment's leisure, I will delight the town with a few historical reminiscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn earth, in the very spot where you now behold me on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and clear, and deemed as precious as liquid diamonds. The Indian Sagamores drank of it from time immemorial, till the fearful deluge of fire-water burst upon the red-men, and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch bark. Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here, out of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm, and laid it on the brow of the first town-born child. For many years it was the watering-place, and, as it were, the wash-bowl of the vicinity,-whither all decent folks resorted, to purify their visages and gaze at them afterwards—at least the pretty maidens did— in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath days, whenever a babe was to be baptized, the sexton filled his basin here, and placed it on the communion-table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the site of yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after another was consecrated to heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides, and cart-loads of gravel flung upon its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But, in the course of time, a town pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring; and when the first decayed, another took its place-and then another, and still another— till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my