by loving bands in the spot which she had
chosen, close to a nameless grave that rested
in the shadow of an ancient church.

CHIPS.

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY.

ALTHOUGH, as a rule, a man has a right to
whatever he buys and pays for, yet this rule
like all others has exceptions. A by no means
literate person can, for example, purchase the
privilege of placing after his name the letters
"Ph.D." or before it the title of "Doctor," and
thus patent himself in society as one of the
learned; but, as no one can buy brains with
bank-notes, or learning with small change, so
an ignoramus has no right whatever to the
distinction, although he may be able to show
a receipt for the value in cash of his diploma.
A gentleman advertised his services in the
literary papers regularly, some time ago, to
retail, to any one who could pay, certain
learned degrees, at per diploma. The wholesale
houses with which he dealt were understood
to be the universities of Jena and Giessen.

Ben Jonson wrote in his day,

"Hood an ass in reverend purple,
And he will pass for a cathedral doctor;"

and now, in our day, society is often hood-
winked by the agency of the much-revered
yellow of twenty sovereigns, (more or less),
into believing in the erudition of any person
who chooses to disburse that sum to some
German University for the privilege of being
addressed as " Doctor." Of all titles none
ought to be more respected; consequently,
when improperly borne, the false pretence
demands exposure.

As now bartered for lucre, the prefix
"Doctor" is a distinction extrinsically without
a difference; for, titularly, Dr. Jenner, Dr.
Abernethy, Dr. Hooker, or any other really
great man, stands in the same rank with Dr.
Taws, who keeps a school and cannot spell; or
Dr. Family Black, who has found it profitable
to add a drug department to his grocer's shop;
and who, like Dr. Taws, has paid his money to
buy the privilege of adding " Dr." to the brass
of his door-plate.

It must be understood, however, that
although the title " Ph.D." is a suspicious
one, all Ph. D.'s are not pretenders. Even at
the German universities, the first and second
classes of Doctors can only obtain their
degrees after trying and legitimately successful
examinations. It is only the third class
diploma which is sold, " and no questions
asked." On the document of this third
class it is inscribed that the candidate has
passed cum laude, with praise (doubtless fur
prompt payment); the second class awards it
cum multa laude, or, with great praise; and
the first, cum summa laude, with the highest
praise. Some of our most distinguished
chemists are Ph. D.'s of the first class, such as
Lyon Playfair, Hofmann, Graham, and
Musprat. The public cannot, however, know
whether the innumerable Doctors of Philosophy
daily to be encountered, are of the honourable
first or second class, or of the dishonourable
—because paid for—third class. They
may, however, detect any pocket-dubbed
doctor by asking to look at his diploma, and
learning with what sort of praise lie was
"capped." The present market price of a
third class German degree is one hundred
and sixty guilders.

THE GAUGER'S POCKET.

POOR old Tristram Pentire! How he
comes up before me as I pronounce his name.
That light active half-stooping form; bent as
though he had a brace of kegs upon his
shoulders still; those thin gray rusty locks
that fell upon a forehead seamed with the
wrinkles of threescore years and five; the
cunning glance that questioned in his eye, and
that nose carried always at half-cock, with a
red blaze along its ridge, scorched by the
departing footstep of the fierce fiend Alcohol,
when he fled before the reinforcements of the
Coast Guard.

He was the last of the smugglers; and
when I took possession of my glebe, I hired
him as my servant of all work, or rather no
work, about the house, and there he rollicked
away the last few years of his careless
existence, in all the pomp and idleness of
"The parson's man." He had taken a bold
part in every landing on the coast, man and
boy, full forty years; throughout which time,
all kinds of men had largely trusted him with
their brandy and their lives.and true and faithful
had he been to them as sheath to steel.

Gradually he grew attached to me, and I
could not but take an interest in him. I
endeavoured to work some softening change
in him, and to awaken a certain sense of the
errors of his former life. Sometimes, as a
sort of condescension on his part, he brought
imself to concede and to acknowledge in his
own quaint rambling way:—

"Well, sir, I do think when I come to look
back, and to consider what lives we used to
live—drunk all night, and idle abed all day,
cursing, swearing,fighting, gambling, lying, and
always prepared for to shet (shoot) the gauger—
I do really believe, sir, we surely was in sin!"

But, whatever contrite admissions to this
extent were extorted from old Tristram by
misty glimpses of a moral sense and by his
desire to gratify his master, there were two
points on which he was inexorably firm. The
one was, that it was a very guilty practice in
the authorities to demand taxes for what he
called run goods; and the other settled
dogma of his creed was, that it never could
be a sin to make away with an exciseman.
Battles between Tristram and myself on these
themes were frequent and fierce; but I am