respectable simply means to be rich. He has no end of cash, but he is badly off for h's, poor fellow, and the flocks that graze the plain know quite as much as he about the works of William Shakespeare. In fact, a book is about as interesting to this Proud Young Porter as is a chronometer to a cow. I know a splendid specimen of this City Porter-a broker, who rose from nothing, and cannot be said to have reached much higher, though he is wallowing in money. But, oh! what airs he takes upon himself, and what a Proud Young Porter he is, to be sure, as he loafs along the street, with his glossy hat and a huge posy in his button-hole! He is "dying of dignity," as Dr. Arnold said of the Church of England; but you might put his wit, learning, and refinement in your eye, and you would see none the worse for them. Then, again, there is the Proud Young Porter of the Bar, who talks about "the other branch of the profession," meaning the solicitors, pretty much in the tone in which the Turks of old, after classing all living creatures except swine in one category, alluded to the pig as "that other animal." But this Proud Young Porter changes his tune in the presence of a solicitor, and invariably behaves towards him with elaborate politeness. What can the reason be? But of all the Proud Young Porters going, save, O save me from a saint! When your Proud Young Porter, stiff with the starch of sanctity, emerges from his conventicle, look out for snubs, ye unregenerate! He is strong in faith, that Plymouth Brother, or that most particular of Particular Baptists, but he is weak in charity, so look out!

These and all other varieties of the Proud Young Porter are pests to society. Zounds! Do they never think of their own shortcomings, and the mortal condi

tion of their earthly estate? Who are they, that they should presume to treat with disdain any human being on earth? They would do well to bear in mind the words of an American satirist :-" Great men never swell. It is only your three-cent individuals who are salaried at the rate of $200 a-year, and dine on potatoes and fried herrings, who put on airs and flashy waistcoats, swell, puff, blow, and endeavor to give themselves a consequential appearance." No discriminating person need mistake the spurious for the genuine article. The difference between the two is as that between a barrel of vinegar and a bottle of the pure juice of the grape. And what a magnificent passage is this from the writings of Sydney Smith, in whose presence your Proud Young Porter of whatever class would have been unworthy to stand !" Take some quiet, sober moment of life, and add together the two ideas of pride and man; behold him, creature of a span high, stalking through infinite space in all the grandeur of littleness. Perched on a speck of the universe, every wind of heaven strikes into his blood the coldness of death; his soul floats from his body like melody from the string; day and night, as dust on the wheel, he is rolled along the heavens through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the creations of God are flaming above and beneath. Is this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, to deny his own flesh, to mock at his fellow, sprung from that dust to which both will soon return? Does the proud man not err? Does he not suffer? Does he not die? When he reasons, is he never stopped by difficulties? When he acts, is he never tempted by pleasure? When he lives, is he free from pain? When he dies, can he escape the common grave? Pride is not the

heritage of man; humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for ignorance, error, and imperfection." Well said! well said! thou glorious philosopher! Whose cheek does not flush the crimsoner, whose eye does not flash the brighter, whose heart does not beat the quicker for thine inspired words? There is one man, and one only, who would not be touched by such an appeal. And who is he? The Proud Young Porter. For him alone was the world created, for him alone, poor booby of an hour, do sun, moon, and stars shed their light upon this gorgeous world:

"Ask for whose end the heavenly bodies shine?

Earth, for whose use? Pride answers, "'Tis for mine.

For me, kind Nature wakes her genial power,

Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower.

Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew,
The juice nectarious and the balmy dew;
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings,
For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise,
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.""

Alas! and

All, all for the Proud Young Porter! a-well-a-day, he is, for all his pride, the veriest gnat in all creation! How little knows he of true glory! how little of manhood worthy of the name! We may safely say that "always and everywhere true genius is ever modest, real superiority is always generous, and genuine science is at all times just." Of this, at all events, you may rest confidently assured, that no Proud Young Porter was ever yet a gentleman.

THE ABSURDITY OF GOING OUT OF TOWN.

THERE is but one thing more absurd than staying in town, and that is going into the country. Man, to be sure, is everywhere, and always a ridiculous object, and under whatsoever conditions of destiny, whether civic or rural, cannot fail to afford matter of derision to the animals whom he has the insolence to call the "lower." But then there are degrees in absurdity, as in all other things; and ludicrous though a man may be in Marylebone, he is a hundred-fold more so at Margate. In London, life is doubtless very nonsensical, but in certain of its phases it is nevertheless very enjoyable; whereas in the country it is outrageously preposterous, without being in any sense pleasant. Indeed, the longer one lives the more one must admire the philosophic reflection of Sir Charles Morgan, who, having spent half an hour in a village, confessed his inability to understand why people should live in the country when they might die so much more cheaply in London. It is lamentable to think what opportunities of happiness are discarded and what occasions of discomfort are invited by the people who, in compliance with an idiotic fashion, fly out of London, as though it were on fire, during the months of August and September. Inverting the order of the seasons as laid down by Dr. Johnson, we may rest assured (but we won't) that London is the best place in winter and the only place in summer. Indeed, delightful as is the Village

on the Thames in the former period, it is incalculably more so in the latter. London in summer-time abounds in sights and sounds the most gratifying and ennobling that can be imagined.

"One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of human evil and of good,

Than all the sages can."

So spake William Wordsworth, but don't believe a word of it.

66

Say rather :

"One impulse from a chimney-pot

Will teach you more of man,

Of what you've learned and what forgot,

Than all that Wordsworth can."

The affinity between a chimney and humanity is remarkable. A good fellow is called in the slang of the day, a "brick." A chimney is made of bricks. A man's hat is commonly known as a "tile" and a chimney-pot ;" and as for the fumes that issue from the flue, they teach the most truthful of all lessons,— Gloria mundi fumus, the glory of the world is smoke. So passeth it away. How any person having the faintest pretensions to sanity, not to say taste, can prefer a flower to a paving-stone, a river to a sewer, or a tree to a chimney-pot, is one of those mysteries which deride human comprehension, and demonstrate the contemptible insignificance of mind. A tree is the most servile of living things, meanly obsequious to every wind that blows, the veriest creature of the climate, which withers or smashes it according to the caprice of the moment; whereas a chimney-pot defies the elements, sways neither to the right nor to the left, but maintains a posi