dined with friends, and at the very same time
after dinner that my father had said he was a
good man and my mother had kissed me, I
happening to be on the stairs, grandfather
came and kissed me without any misletoe and
spoke to me, and asked whether I would marry
him. Upon the stairs! I was obliged to
answer quickly, and said at once to him,
"Yes; because you are a good man, Stephen."

"Well," said Walter, " that's a tolerable
story. I should have liked your father and
mother better, granny, if they had been
ghosts. But there are the old Christmas
towers coming closer and closer. If my
dream isn't to come true I wonder what we
really shall find under their shadow."

"At least," I said, " an inn of rest, and the
society of fellow-travellers. " Besides plenty
of fun," said Walter; " and I see Tom at
the stile, waiting to go in with us. That's
the beginning of my dream. We shall soon
get under the Christmas trees and hear the
chiming."

MR. WISEMAN IN PRINT.

Mr. Wiseman is one of those inestimable
personages who have a "view." As the
world cannot go on, nor society be governed,
but by means of somebody's " views," surely
such men as Mr. Wiseman are the world's
benefactors—furnishing views without fee
or reward—asking nothing, in short, but
appreciation. Mr. Wiseman, however, has
found the world ungrateful. It gives him
no appreciation: neither is it possible that
it should; for it has thus far given him
no hearing. Mr. Wiseman thinks he
can prove to demonstration that, if only
society could be taught to attend to this
"view" of his for one single hour, all minds
must necessarily embrace it, and the total
regeneration of society would follow of
course. Mr. Wiseman modestly declines to
say how soon this would occur—how long
precisely it would take to annihilate the very
last and most tenacious of social evils; but,
a few months more or less are of no great
consequence in comparison with the centuries
of human woe that lie behind us; and he,
for one, will have patience with some slight
postponements of social perfection when once
his view is universally admitted.

He thought himself fairly on the way to
success when, twenty-five years ago, a letter
explanatory of his "view," and signed with his
name at full length, appeared in a local
newspaper in Cornwall; but the world was not so
struck with it as he expected, and it took no
effect. This he ascribed at the time to the
very small print in which the letter appeared,
and to the editor not having in any way
directed particular attention to it.

He was sure the Americans would be less
torpid, and he made sail for New York, to see
what could be done there. He found, indeed,
that the Americans were anything but torpid;
but there were two difficulties which
destroyed his hopes in that hemisphere—
most of the Americans were too busy to sit
down quietly for the one hour which was
necessary for making disciples of them; and
again, the few who were willing to undertake
the regeneration of society had, every
one of them (it is a curious circumstance, but
so it was), a " view" of his own, and of course
each man's view was wholly incompatible
with every other. Nearer home Mr. Wiseman's
disappointments were no less signal.
In Italy, he found there was no press or free
speech. In Spain, nobody had any social
ideas at all. In Germany, there seemed a
flattering prospect of success; but his
disciples rose into such ecstasies of delight at
their own prodigious amplifications of his
view, that he trembled lest his solid scheme
should go off in vapour, and disperse in thin
air; which it presently did. In Holland his
failure was clearly owing to his inability to
express himself fluently in Dutch; for he
could, on his side, make nothing of the objections
proposed by solid friends at Amsterdam.
He ventured into Russia, conceiving that,
whenever Russia should become mistress of
Europe his view would pervade Europe, if
only he could get it established in Russia
first; but after the very first opening of his
mouth to empty his heart, he was glad to
take a certain little hint from a certain official
personage, and to quit European Russia by
the western frontier instead of the north-
eastern. France was the great land of
promise after America, and he went to Paris.
He had nearly concluded a negotiation (I
may be excused from saying of what nature,
for the sake of certain citizens who might be
endangered by further disclosure), when the
coup d'état occurred; bringing forward very
prominently another social view, not entirely
reconcileable with Mr. Wiseman's. He
decided that on the whole, it would be best to
give another chance to dear Old England—a
chance of distinguishing herself by taking the
first great step in the regeneration of the
destiny of mankind; and he honoured her
shores by setting foot on them (at Folkstone)
on the tenth of February, eighteen hundred
and fifty-one.

I shall be silent on what has occurred
since, up to this very week. Posterity will
know, Mr. Wiseman says, by a fitting record,
the labours, sacrifices, and sufferings through
which its benefactor has passed in its
service; and to posterity I will leave his
eulogium, for which I am sure he will show
abundant cause. I proceed at once to the
eventful Monday evening which disclosed to
the great man's vigilant eye a bright and
glorious prospect. He told me in my car, as
we came away together from that evening
party, that Monday would henceforth be the
day of the week to him.

Mr. Wiseman was standing in his usual
dignified isolation—now lost in reverie, and