indignation that would seize on each if the
truth came out instead! There is that old
lady mumbling through her false teeth on
the sofa, in the delightful pursuit of hunting
down her neighbour's reputation; she is nearer
eighty than seventy, is as brown as chocolate,
and as lean as the starved apothecary, yet she
dresses with the youngest. Her head is adorned
with a flowery wreath perched on the top
of her luxuriant bright brown wig; her arms
and neck are bare; aud, for all pretence of
matronly covering, she wears a gauzy Indian
scarf thrown gracefully round her bust of whale-
bone and wadding, through which the chocolate-
coloured wrinkles are distinctly visible. But
the ladies cluster round the old creature— the
gentlemen too— admire her dress, praise her
good taste, and tell her that she surpasses
herself to-night, and looks younger than the
pretty little bride there in the corner. Her foolish
old head wags with contentment, and her silly
old heart swells with satisfaction. But they?
— they laugh quietly in their sinful sleeves while
thus painting her wretched effigy an inch thick.
If she could hack away that great mass of
glaring red, she would see some rather
different linings underneath. " You wretched
mockery of womankind— you poor benighted
old coquette— why, in Heaven's name, don't you
go home and cover your miserable bones
decently? Have you no daughter of the third
generation to tell you what an object you make
of yourself, and how utterly absurd you are?"

Then there is that household of small means—
notoriously small; but where the lady dresses
so stately in her well-preserved velvet, and the
husband has always a decent shirt-front, miraculously
washed; where such a noble and sufficing
outside is kept up, no matter what the poverty
or scantiness of the material beneath. How they
are flattered and complimented to their faces!
How her tact and management, and their joint
tastefulness and power of adaptation, are
acknowledged and commented on!— winged words
of honeyed sweetness flying like cooing Cupids
in their ears. Strip them of their paint and
varnish, their horsehair, their wadding, and
their peacock's feathers, and the cooing
Cupids would reveal themselves then as ugly,
water-logged, wooden dolls: the household of
small means would hear one-half of their
world laugh at them for pretentiousness, and
the other half condemn them for extravagance.
So, too, that pretty-looking girl with her long
repentirs meandering down her neck, her
embroidered jackets, her high-heeled boots, her
bead necklaces, and all the thousand-and-one
pardonable coquetries of her age and condition,
how would she find herself travestied from the
pleasant limning of her daily contemplation?
"Pretty" and " attractive," and " always so nice,
Julia, dear," now— with her patterns in every
one's hands and her fashions on every one's back
— she would be " bold," " forward," " dressy,"
"vulgar," "done only to attract men, odious
creature!" then. Suppose, too, instead of
"Jones, my boy, you are a connoisseur in wine.
Just taste this capital port, and give me your
candid opinion," it were, "Jones, you barely
know South African from 'forty-eight; and all
the heavens might blaze with comets before
your dull palate could discover any special
flavour in the vintage. I grudge throwing away
that yellow seal on you!" why Jones's dinner
would choke him.

Why do we live in a genteel neighbourhood,
with the rents steadily rising everywhere, when
we are so poor we can scarcely find sustenance
to feed that Behemoth of a rent of ours, which
eats us up, body and bones? Simply because we
are poor; because we must paint over the bare
boards of our impecuniosity, and varnish our
deal, and stain our pine too cleverly for detection;
because we cannot afford to do the daringly
simple things permitted to our friend Snooks,
with any number of thousands at his back.
Snooks may, if he chooses, give an Apician feast
in a woodman's hut,, and people would only say
"How odd!" winking to each other as they
sipped his claret witli the velvet on. Claret
with the velvet on may be sipped in woodmen's
huts if Apicius wills: but La Mere Gregoire's
piquette drunk in small tumblers outside the
barriers?— My friend, if you patronise the
piquette, and cannot rise to the height of the
claret, take care to paint your deal table of the
latest fashion, and spend an extra penny on a
superior kind of varnish. A man must be wealthy
who can afford to appear poor, according to the
way of the present world, and the morality of the
generation extant.

The telling of diplomatic lies is another matter
of paint and varnish, which one scarcely likes
but cannot see one's way out of, for many
governmental cycles at all events. A vast deal of
this paint and varnish flows from the Treasury
Bench; and the Foreign-office is so smothered in
successive layers of them that no one now
attempts to understand the nature of the original
wood beneath, or to dream of guessing at
the name of the forest-tree which supplied it.
But if this is bad, the undraped truth would be
sometimes worse; and, when delicate questions
were incubating, and either a dove or a cockatrice
depended on the careful handling of both egg and
hatcher, perhaps, if a thousand free but clumsy
hands were thrust into the nest perpetually and all
at once, the cockatrice would be hatched oftener
than the dove: so often, indeed, that the whole
revenues of the land would be swallowed up in
keeping his comb red and his scales shining.
Paint aud varnish in the Foreign-office do a great
many questionable things: they make seemingly
clean and wholesome, dirty places which ought
to have been washed out, or cut out, or burnt
out, instead of being merely varnished over into
a fine mellow tone; they hide weak places and
unsound places; make a grand marble column
out of a sorry deal board; line the walls with
antique oak when the real core is lath and
plaster; and cover an acre of soiled hempen
canvas with the picture of heaven, tenanted by
angels and the loves and graces. They renew
last year's decay, and huddle up the dilapidations