think of the fifty pounds—an income, a
year's income to a prudent man. Pray,
pray be careful, and compose your mind:
promise me, my dear, dear fellow—promise
me, on your word of honour to compose your
mind!"

I left him still harping on that string, and
suffering, I believe, the only serious attack of
mental distress that had ever affected him in
the whole course of his life.

Behold me, then, now starting afresh in
the world, in the character of a portrait-
painter; with the payment of my remuneration
from my first sitter, depending
whimsically on the life of my grandmother. If
you care to know how Lady Malkinshaw's
health got on, and how I succeeded in my
new profession, I will proceed with my
narrative next week.

LOOKING OUT OF WINDOW.

WHAT do the matrons of my acquaintance
mean when they say of their servants that
they have given, or will give, or must give
them a month's warning, because they are
giddy girls, whose chief pleasure is looking out
of window? I am not subject to giddiness. If I
could stand tiptoe on one leg anywhere, I could
do so, no doubt, on a tight-rope stretched over
the deepest mountain chasm. I am sedate,
stout, and far gone in years. What hairs I
have, are grey. Nevertheless, few as they
are, they would be enough for me to be
dragged by with sorrow to the grave, if I
depended in my old days, upon British
mistresses for maintenance and consolation.
Lady Goneril and Mrs. Walter Regan—
capital housewives and dear friends—would
bewail over me to all their acquaintance
and then turn me out of their establishments,
if I were Betty Lear, a cook on trial, in place
of Dagobert Lear, Esquire, of her Majesty's
Customs. I do like looking out of window ;
and, if I were a part of the establishment
either of Mrs. Goneril or Mrs. Regan, that
would be my vice. And yet in the (suspected
to be) false teeth of Mrs. Regan and of
prejudice in general I undertake here to
maintain by public thesis against all antagonists,
that, limited as the view out of window
usually is, there are people with more
limited views still, who scorn to contemplate
the world beyond it. I maintain, also, that such
people deserve to be immured alive in houses
glazed with greasy paper, or to vegetate
opposite dead walls in unfrequented
neighbourhoods.

Mrs. Regan, I may be permitted to observe,
sits at the window nearly all day long with
her embroidery, and virtuously testifies that
she selects such a position only for the sake
of a more accurate observance of her stitches.
Her miserable stitches—millionth parts of a
worsted parrot, worth in its complete state, I
guess, twopence (matrons, forgive me ! I'm a
bachelor and oldish, and know no better)—
—she takes credit to say fix her attention,
more than the whole spectacle of panting,
labouring humanity with which a tenth part
of an inch of glass connects her. From
which it divides her ? No, madam. Glass is
a non-conductor, I believe, of something;
but of human sympathy glass—window
glass—is, to my mind, of all dead
conductors the most perfect. The assertion can
be proved. I am not sure whether in
proving it I may not unavoidably be led to
make it clear that, looking out of window, is
the noblest occupation of domestic life. But
if so, why may we not be glad when it
becomes in any house the constant occupation
of domestics?

Were I well versed in metaphysics, I
should use, no doubt, such terms as objective
and subjective, the Ich and the Nicht Ich,
in expounding the truths to be laid down.
Not being well versed in metaphysics, I must
use my vulgar tongue. I must begin the
demonstrations as Euclid does, with an axiom
or two:—

One.—The eye is the window of the body.

Two.—The window is the eye of the
house.

From the eye a man looks out of his raw
self; from the window he looks out of his
dressed and garnished self, upon the world
without.

To begin with the natural eye, the
window of the soul—did ever any one abuse
a fellow-man or woman for permitting all
that lived and worked within to look
frequently and earnestly through that ? Need
I take any trouble to demonstrate that the
man who, as to soul or spirit, lives in-doors
with his eye-blinds down; who minds only his
own affairs, and is never to be seen peeping out
with intent gaze and confessed interest at
what goes on outside; that such a man is, if
nothing worse, a puppy, an ass—humanly
speaking, with a due reserve in favour of
the better wisdom of real dogs and donkeys.
This may be taken for a postulate. In what
way do we judge constantly of the respect
and love due to the family of thoughts
that lives in any one of those perambulating
mansions which their owners thatch with
straw, or tile with beaver, hang with
drapery, and take all pains they can to keep
in good repair until the lease expires? Do
we not judge by the lights in the windows,
and by observing who or what comes—and
comes how often—to look out? If such a
mansion be inhabited by feelings and opinions
constantly abed and keeping down their
blinds; or by persons who are so much
occupied with their own private enjoyment of
themselves and the few sticks of furniture
they have acquired, as seldom or never to
give a fair and honest peep of interest at what
is going on among the neighbours,—that we