of the pence, and the pounds would take care of
themselves,' and so I would; but that I find
another proverb of equal weight and influence
with the first, which distinctly affirms that if I am
'penny wise,' I shall be 'pound foolish.' Now, sir,
how am I to act in a dilemma such as that?"

The Reverend Mr. Smear stared wildly at his
pupil, ran his fingers through his hair,
commenced two or three abortive sentences, and then,
looking suddenly at his watch, exclaimed:

"Bless my heart, our exercise hour commenced
ten minutes ago; get your hat at once, and—let
us walk."

Now here we have Brogg all over. Brogg the
child, Brogg the boy, Brogg the man. As an
instance of profound and profitable reflection,
this that I have given seems to me to be
unparalleled, and there is no display or flourish
about it. This wondrous difficulty is not started
when the subject is first brought forward by
Smear. There might be something ostentatious
about that. No, a week elapses, and the objection
is made with modesty and propriety.

I must give another instance of the same thing.
It was part of the Reverend Mr. Smear's system
of education to devote one of the hours which
were given to study, to general information, and
a mighty successful plan it was. It was in the
course of the hour devoted to general information
that the proverbs had come under discussion,
and where should we have been if that had not
happened. On the occasion to which I would
now refer it happened that the conversation had
drifted into the desert, and the Reverend Smear,
who had travelled in the East, was laying down
the law as to the best mode of acting in encounters
with wild beasts.

"Look at him," says Smear. "The human
eye is too much for any animal, depend upon it;
there is a majesty, a concentration, a power of
dominion before which all must give way. The
whole feline tribe are especially amenable to this
influence, and will turn and flee before a steady
and protracted gaze.

A week elapsed, the general information hour
arrived again, and our young friend once more
had a question to put.

"I say, Mr. Smear, with regard to what you
said the other day about the influence of the
human eye, I have been thinking a great deal,
and making some experiments. You know the
cat, as you have often told me, is a feline animal,
and I have been trying with all my might to
make him look at me, but he won't. Now this
seems to make it all doubtful about the wild
beasts, for when an animal is rushing towards
you as hard as he can bound, what is the use of
your having a human eye, if you can't get him to
look at it?"

There is something almost terrible about the
closeness and acuteness of this reasoning. I
believe that it was on the strength of these two
searching replies that C. J.'s mother decided that
that boy should be brought up to the bar. "A
retort such as one of these," the good lady
remarked, "would establish his career for ever; any
court of law in England would quail before such
a reply."

"Yes, my dear," replied Mr. Brogg sen.,
"but you must remember that, however good his
replies may be, they wouldn't, in a court of law,
give him a week to think them over."

One word, by-the-by, about Mr. Brogg senior.
He was rather a rough old fellow, and scarcely
fit to be the father of such a son. He used to
say that he hated sentiment, and that sort of
thing, and he thought that the boy (C. J.) was
being made a fool of by his mother. He had,
however, not much voice in the management of
domestic matters, being absent all day in the
City, at the bank in which he was a partner, and
his wife being a person of extraordinary energy
and activity. Old Brogg might, however, do as
he liked with the other boy, James, so he was
sent to school and brought up as other boys are,
and was the apple of his father's eye.
Nevertheless, James grew up, as has already appeared,
with a profound belief in his brother, and with a
conviction that everything should and would give
way before him all through his life.

Mr. Brogg was a good man of business, and
provided all the money which was wanted in his
wife's establishment. For his own part, all that
he expected was to find a good dinner on the
table every day at seven o'clock, to be allowed to
partake of it in peace, and, furthermore, to be
permitted to retire to his own private room
whenever he liked. There were people who frequented
his house before whom he fled, refined souls who
talked of things which he did not understand,
and who never thought of taking him into the
conversation. Before such he fled to his dearly
beloved study, where he would plump down in
his easy-chair, exclaiming: "Bless my heart and
life, what a deal of nonsense is talked in this
world." That done, his wrath was over, and he
would give himself up to the Express and an
occasional nap, and so pass a pleasant evening.
And this, mind, if you can believe it, was said to
be a clever man—a man whose opinion was
waited for and looked up to in the City, and,
forsooth, with brains worth ten of those contained
in any one of the skulls of the geniuses in the
next room. So his friends said, poor creatures!
From what I have been able to glean from
different sources, it has always seemed to me
that there was nothing in old Brogg—positively
nothing. Money, indeed, he may have known
something about; but what's that? Shall we rank
Finance with Feeling, or Shares with Sentiment?

No, dear reader, we will not do that. We
may do many wrong things, but not that. Ah,
Sentiment! who that knows thy delicious melting
mood, will ever put aught into competition
with thee? Sentiment! Is it pleasure or pain?
Brogg (C. J.), as a child, once whacked a dog in
order that he might have the rapture of
sympathising with it afterwards, and uniting his tears
with those of the whelp. Here is a nature!
Here is a soul yearning over all creation, and