Come! feel the deepening dearness
About the grand old place.
Come! let us see the cordial smile
Of your frank, magnificent face.
Winter was dreary: of waiting we weary:
Best of all joy-bringers, come!
Spread bonny white sails! blow balmy spring-gales!
Hasten my Lady Home!

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLES.

I SUPPOSE very few people will be inclined to
deny that the changes which a score of years
have worked in our manners have been remarkable.
They are chiefly alterations for the better.
The changes for the worse might be told in a
dozen lines; those for the better might demand
as many chapters. In one or two things only has
society remained stationary, or very nearly so.
The Peerage, for instance, is very nearly as much
studied as ever. It has not quite the hold upon
the community which it had, nor is that hold
quite so wildly extended. Peerage-worship is
shaken. The votaries are fewer, though as
yet the number of them, is only reduced
infinitesimally. The ardour of their devotion is
cooled, though only by the hundreth part of a
degree. We are edging further and further
away from the old Feudal Time— and that is
enough.

How many affectations that used to obtain
among us have fallen into desuetude; nay, to
what a great extent is affectation itself out of
fashion now! What a creditable thing it used
to be considered once for a lady to live without
food! To win a reputation for being a small
eater, a young woman would formerly lay in
large supplies of food in secret, consuming her
natural nourishment in occult places and at
unhallowed hours. Why? What additional
attraction did it confer on any young person that
she had lost her appetite? Here was a young
woman, either damaging her health by
abstinence, or fraudulently feeding at unsocial
moments, to convince you— of what? that her
stomach wanted tone. What a state of things
was this! Hostesses would feel quite proud of
one of these languid young ladies, and would say:
"Oh, it's no use persuading her, Mr. Cropful; we
all know that Miss Barebones lives upon air."
We have got rid of this nonsense at any rate. The
young ladies of the present time are not in the
least ashamed of having good appetites. They
take to their mutton kindly, as reasonable
creatures should, and have no objection to beef
when it comes in its turn.

The affectation of delicate health is also
losing ground in these days. The sofa, the
scent-bottle, the darkened room, what
prodigious institutions those were! They are
greatly out of fashion now. Fainting, too, and
hysterics, we have less of: if people are
subject to those terrible afflictions now, they say
as little about them as possible. The fashion of
ill health was a mighty convenient one, the fair
invalid being generally strong enough to do
anything she felt inclined for, but always pleading,
with a faint smile, her " wretched health"
as an excuse for getting out of unpleasant
engagements. "I must ask you not to discuss
Hie question with me just now; my health will
really not bear the slightest contradiction"—
this was a very common state for these interesting
creatures to get into. They must not be
troubled about household affairs; they must be
soothed by everybody who came near them; no
unpleasant information must reach them; nor
might any painful topic be discussed in their
presence. Their digestive powers, too, were
very remarkable. " I can't eat roast mutton,"
one of these delicate persons would say, faintly;
"it is too much for me: it's that curious
lobster-salad, or a little pickled salmon and
cucumber, always agrees with me perfectly."
Nor was it a small advantage enjoyed by these
mysterious invalids that they had means at
their disposal of avoiding all sorts of unpalatable
social intercourse. " Tell dear Mrs. Boreham,
with my kind love, that I feel unfortunately
much too poorly to see her this afternoon."

The affectation of timidity and nervousness,
again: those were the days when, if a young
lady had to walk along a plank to get into a
sailing-boat, the performance was attended with
a little volley of screams, and was preceded
by many announcements that nothing would
induce "her to attempt it. That same young,
lady would spoil all the arrangements of a
pleasure-party in the country, if it were necessary
that a harmless cow should be encountered.
Whenever the timid one was asked to sing in
company, she would spend half an hour in
resisting all the combined entreaties of the
society, pleading extreme nervousness, but
always giving in at last, and managing, curiously
enough, when once seated at the piano, to do her
abilities, such as they were, the amplest justice.
These wretched affectations are daily perishing
away before modern good sense.

The affectation of melancholy, again, is going,
out of fashion. The poet Gray, in describing
an individual for whom he seeks to claim our
feelings of interest, says that "Melancholy,
marked him for her own." I am afraid this
would not do now. Action, not melancholy,,
is what we admire. The man who should try
the Edgardo business now, the man of cloaks,
of pallor, the recliner against chimney-pieces in
soft reverie, would in these days stand no chance.
The blighted dodge was an excellent one in its
time, but now, when young ladies are in the
habit of taking the nonsense out of a leg of
mutton, I am afraid Edgardo would be left
with his elbow upon the chimney-piece, and his
fine eyes suffused with melancholy, to waste
his sweetness on dowagers and wall-flowers.

Men who are not near-sighted, no longer screw
glasses into their eyes, to the imminent risk of
their optical health. Men who are liable, as we
all are even— Edgardo himself— to catch colds
in their heads, no longer think it needful to wear
thin boots, but don the Balmoral of stoutness
and defy the puddles, as, indeed, the ladies do.
also. I remember when frock-coats were