mantle has descended partially, if not entirely,
on very many even of our own day. People
blessed with health, wealth, and youth,
are yet frequently seized with an
insatiable craving for some particular roc's
egg, which, if even they possessed it, would
be an unsuitable disfigurement to their dwellings.
And, while, thus fixing their eyes on
some unattainable and doubtful good, they
miss many tangible benefits; besides many
innocent joys and pleasures, simple luxuries
which even the poorest can enjoy, and the
richest ought to value. They linger
listlessly through the present sunshiny moment,
dreaming of some future day that may
come loaded with rain and storm, instead
of making the very utmost use of the bright
gleam they possess now, and thereby laying
up stores of sunny memories for days less
bright to come.

We may be endowed with wealth untold;
with unbroken health; with all the vigours
and energy of youth, and yet lack that
crowning presence of all,—the power of enjoyment.
It is the nearest approach to happiness
that is humanly possible, and it opens
the heart with even such tiny keys as the
scent of the many-blossomed may, or the
song of the bees in the golden broom.

O ye deluded followers of my Lady Crump
—inheritors of her mantle, more fatal than
the garment of Nessus, while you eagerly
peep with one eye, through your telescope,
at far-off love or fame, wealth or distinction
—you miss all the nearer but more vulgar
treasures of green fields and blue skies,
humble love, and quiet competence. Renounce
your allegiance to her, and be free; strive to
train up the tendrils of your hearts more
willingly in their appointed station, and put
on the spectacles of contentment, through
which a wise man sees the world. Copy
Nature's beautiful adaptability; whereby,
although her fundamental laws are as
unchangeable as those of the Medes and
Persians, her minor rules are determined by
circumstance. I do not mean when she
gives to peculiar climates their most useful
and life-giving forms of vegetation, as in the
giant cactus of Mexico, whose juicy leaves
quench the thirst of men and mule, or the best
tracts of melons, which, as Doctor Livingstone
tells us, was food for all, from the tiny
insect to the lordly elephant. Not in this
alone do we see her accommodating herself
to her place, clothing sterile regions with a
verdure and beauty peculiar to themselves;
but her most useful lesson is nearer home.
You have only to watch a tree planted in
some confined nook or corner. It is true it
does not flourish in all the beauty and
unconstrained freedom that was intended for it;
but yet, cramped and knotted, angular and
misshapen though it be, it sends out its green
branches of cheerfulness and contentment
even in the close prison-yard or dense city
garden, to cheer and encourage some lonely
heart, pining for fresh air and sunshine. It
knows not the ambrosia of gentle dews, and
delicious cool rains, but drinks, unrepiningly,
the dank fog or the inky stream that has
imbibed all the sooty particles from roofs
and gutters. Yet it stretches out its green
fingers as far as it can to catch the least
gleam of comfort, reaching far up for a tiny
glimpse of blue sky and fresher air.

In all phases of life in which we are placed
there is something to be gathered and gained
—"some softening gleam of love and prayer"
—some humanising influence that is to work
for our good. Above all, let us steer clear of
the rock on which my Lady Crump went
down:

     In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
     Yet sickening of a vague disease,—

The growing and inveterate sickness of the
heart—discontent. Good Isaac Walton says:
"Let us not repine, nor think the gifts of
God unequally bestowed. If we see another
abound with riches, when, as God knows, the
cares that are the keys that keep these riches
hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle
that they clog him with weary days and restless
nights, even when others sleep quietly.
Let us therefore be thankful for health
and competence, and above all for a quiet
conscience!"

THE REVEREND ALFRED HOBLUSH
FINDS A NEW BROOM.

THE following passage from the life of the
Reverend Alfred Hoblush, is submitted in
this place as illustrative of the stripes which
this ill-fated person had to bear in the course
of his journey through this vale of tears:

She came with the most extraordinary
testimonials as to character, having left for
perusal a package of the documents
popularly known as discharges, or characters,
done up in a strap and buckle; and I am
about calling to the single person who
waits on me, but who is only holding
office provisionally until the appointment of
a successor—to show up the bearer of the
documents—when I think of the state of my
room now in horrible disorder, which is such
as almost to preclude possibility of easy
access. For being what is irreverently called
a bookworm, and all shelf accommodation
being long since used up, I had found it
convenient, for purposes of reference, to keep
the greater folios and more unmanageable
tomes at free quarters on the floor, with a
little circuitous lane leading round by the
window, the windings of which were only
known to myself. The fact was, I was busy
with the Golden Ass (which, as all the world
knows, was written long ago by the heathen
Apuleius, and is most delightful reading), of
which I had been labouring at a choice
edition for many years. It should be the
completest, most erudite thing of the age. I