between Dennis and Sir Richard Steele. After taunting him with the atrocious offence of being an Irishman, Dennis says of Steele that he is marked "like Cain," and that his Hibernian origin is "stamped upon his face, his writings, his actions, his passions, and, above all, his vanity." Steele replied that his assailant had an "ugly vinegar face" and "duck-legs made for carrying burdens," and that "he never let the sun into his garret for fear he should bring a bailiff along with him." Macklin called Garrick a "sheer impostor," and Quin, who could not endure that such a wrong should be done even to a rival, retorted that "villain was written on every feature of Macklin's face. George III. had the meanest possible opinion of Chatham and Temple, and did not hesitate to express his aversion. "I cannot get rid of the scoundrels," he exclaimed ; "and I do not consider myself a King while I am in their hands." Very touching and affectionate was what Queen Caroline said of her own child, the Prince of Wales. "I regard him," observed this exemplary mother, "as the greatest ass, the greatest liar, the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the world, and I heartily wish he was out of it." Poor wretch, he did not long encumber the earth, for he took an eternal adieu of it in 1751. Chesterfield would not allow that Fox had "the least notion of or regard for the public good." Posterity is not altogether of the same opinion, but one "great" man must have his fling at another. Sir William Temple sneered at Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood as "a thing which sense can hardly allow." Lord Bacon rejected Galileo's discoveries with scorn. Dr. Kenrick said of Goldsmith's 'Traveller' that it was a "flimsy poem," and of 'The

modern times.

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Deserted Village' that it had "neither fancy, dignity, genius, nor fire." The same spirit has survived to Mr. Carlyle politely assures us that Ignatius Loyola was "a ferocious human pig." Mr. Thackeray, who had an amiable weakness for digging people out of their graves and hanging them in chains, and who should have had few frailties of his own, so merciless was he to those of his fellow-creatures whether they were alive or dead, described Pope as "a pert, prurient little bard," and Swift as a wretched wornout scamp-a poor stricken wretch." Nor was he more gracious to John Wilkes. Dr. Alexander Chalmers assures us that Mr. Wilkes was "a gentleman of elegant manners, of fine tastes, and of pleasing conversation." Mr. Thackeray described him as a "blasphemous cockeyed demagogue." Dr. Gilbert Stuart hallooed Dr. Henry through the world as "an ass and an idiot" (what would your great men do when talking of one another but for that word "ass"?), and Southey could not afford to designate Napoleon otherwise than as the bloody Corsican." Nor was the French Cæsar more just, for he sneered at Wellington as "a Sepoy Captain." Byron called Landor "a gander," Southey an incarnate lie," Wordsworth "a footman," and Shakespeare himself "a humbug." But in this last instance, he did but steal the thunder of Voltaire, who characterized the King of dramatists as a buffoon and a barbarian."

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Such is the tone in which great men have spoken of one another, and well, indeed, may we exclaim "Tanta ne animis cœlestibus iræ !”- -“Can heavenly minds such high resentment show?

THINGS THAT HAVE GONE OUT.

FASHION is the veriest chamelon, exercising over

our "habits," both sartorial and social, a sway so arbitrary and capricious as to defy all calculation. In customs, as in costumes, her empire is absolute, and the wisest among us have no alternative but to submit. So true is the old saying that one may as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. It is wonderful to think how rapidly the kaleidoscope of public taste changes. Things come in only to go out. We have ourselves our exits and our entrances, so also have our "institutions " and observances theirs. That which is "ton" to-day may be "bad form " to-morrow, and every new-fangled device, whether of dress or ceremony, which now beguiles our fancy, to the exclusion of momentous matters, is but, "the perfume and suppliance of a minute." The wind passeth over it, and it is gone. We need not go back to remote days for illustrations of the mutability of manners and the evanescence of practices which were once held in the highest esteem. Everything has its day of bright glory, succeeded by a night of dark oblivion. This being so, it may not be uninteresting to take a retrospective glance, whether actual or ideal, at a few of those fashions which, though they enjoy great popularity at a date within easy range of memory, have either already disappeared, or are passing rapidly into disuse.

What has become of the Snuff-takers? Like the

Quakers, they grow fewer and fewer each succeeding year, and the day may not be distant when both the Friends and the Snuffers shall have altogether vanished. Horace Smith is very severe on the subject of pulverized tobacco. "Snuff," he says, "is dirt thrust up the nostrils with a pig-like snort, as at a sternutatory which is not to be sneezed at. The moment he has thus defeated his own object, the snuff-taker becomes the slave of a habit which literally brings his nose to the grindstone; his Ormskirk has seized him as St. Dunstan did the Devil, and if the red-hot pincers could occasionally start up from the midst of the rappee, few persons would regret their embracing the proboscis of the offender." Lord Stanhope has calculated very exactly that in forty years, two entire years of the snufftaker's life will have been devoted to tickling his nose and two more to the delightful process of blowing it, with other incidental circumstances. "Well would it be," he adds philosophically, "if we bestow half the time in making ourselves agreeable that we waste in rendering ourselves offensive to our friends. Society takes its revenge by deciding that no man would thrust dirt into his head, if he had got anything else in it." This is very savagely said, and the sarcasm is, as the French would phrase it, sanglant, but the satire wants the poignancy of truth, seeing that many men of high intellect and profound scholarship have been addicted to the ungraceful habit which the satirist denounces with such severity. The reign of snuff was long and brilliant. It was probably at its zenith in the picturesque days of powder and patches, when every fop in Covent Garden was, like Sir Plume, "of amber snuff-box justly vain, and the nice conduct of a clouded cane."

Amber snuff-boxes and clouded canes in our age would be regarded as archæological curiosities, for which virtuosos would vie emulously at Christie and Manson's. The style of costume had, no doubt, a sensible influence upon the personal habits of the wearers; and a snuffbox, whether of amber or studded with brilliants, “went well," as the ladies say, with the general tenue of a man of fashion, a-blaze with jewelry, and clad in satin small-clothes, a coat of embroidered velvet, and ruffles of Mechlin lace. All his chattels and accessories were objects of watchful observation to his attendants, and Dean Swift, in his Advice to Servants,' did not fail to give sage counsel, which was doubtless occasionally turned to good account:-"If a gentleman leaveth a snuff-box on the table and goeth away, lock it up at once as part of your vails." Gorgeous Gorgeous "tabatiéres " went out with effulgent apparel; and when men took to broad-cloth, their snuff-boxes partook the sombre hues of their garments. Now and then, indeed, a man of costly tastes would sport a gold or silver box, and proffer it courteously for a "pinch," to a stranger, a practice which broke the ice between them, and was an easy prelude to familiar discourse. Napoleon was an inveterate snuffer, and the habit had another royal votary in the person of Queen Charlotte, who was won't to use a tiny golden bellows wherewith to blow the snuff up the nostrils, a contrivance less graceful than ingenious. It is to be regretted that her snuffy majesty had not sufficient interest in fairyland to have secured the services of those dainty sprites whose achievements have been celebrated so melodiously by Pope, in The Rape of the Lock: