labourers trudging to their work in the gardens between Kensington and the City, the wandering merchants and hawkers filling the air with their cries. The world was going to its business again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for them; and kings, very likely, lost their chances. So night and day pass away, and to-morrow comes, and our place knows us no more."

Or take what may in some sort be called a companion picture, by the most popular of Mr. Thackeray's brethren of the pen.-There is a duel at daybreak of Mr. Dickens's describing, which ends in a death. And of the dead man's couching-place on the turf we read, that the sun came proudly up in all his majesty, the noble river ran its winding course, the leaves quivered and rustled in the air, the birds poured their cheerful songs from every tree, the short-lived butterfly fluttered its little wings; "all the light and life of day came on; and amidst it all, and pressing down the grass whose every blade bore twenty tiny lives, lay the dead man, with his stark and rigid face turned upwards to the sky."

Very natural, in quite another vein, is the same author's description of the feelings of a household on the day of a funeral. The chief thing that they know, below-stairs, in the kitchen, we read, is that "it seems like Sunday." They can hardly persuade themselves but that there is something unbecoming, if not wicked, in the conduct of the people out of doors, who pursue their ordinary occupations and

And how with the

wear their every-day attire. morrow morning after little Paul Dombey's burial ? The morning sun awakens the household as of old: the rosy children, opposite, run past with hoops: there is a splendid wedding in the church: the juggler's wife is active with the money-box in another quarter of the town; and the mason sings and whistles as he chips out P-A-U-L in the marble slab before him. Telle est la vie-et la mort.

It is like a man being buried at sea, where

-the constant sun lies sleeping,

Over the verdant plain that makes his bed;
And all the noisy waves go freshly leaping,
Like
gamesome boys over the churchyard dead;
The light in vain keeps looking for his face,
Now screaming sea-fowl settle in his place.

Mr. Charles Reade, in a hard-cash matter-of-fact romance, tries to makes us realise the situation of a ship's crew apparently in the jaws of death amid glorious sunshine, and the strange incongruity, therefore, between the senses and the mind in these poor fellows. "The day had ripened its beauty; beneath a purple heaven shone, sparkled, and laughed a blue sea, in whose waves the tropical sun seemed to have fused his beams; and beneath that fair, sinless, peaceful sky, wafted by a balmy breeze over those smiling, transparent, golden waves, a bloodthirsty Pirate bore down on them with a crew of human tigers."

As an utterly diverse illustration to the same effect, take, from a subsequent stage in the story, the horror of daylight felt by the deserted heroine.

"But as they drew near the gate of Albion Villa, twilight began to usher in the dawn. Julia shuddered at even that faint light, and fled like a guilty thing, and hid herself sobbing in her own bedroom.'

So, again, with Lionel Haughton, in Lord Lytton's Note of Interrogation novel, when made acquainted with certain humiliating passages in his family history. He slinks away into a thick copse, longing to be alone. "The rain descended, not heavily, but in penetrating drizzle; he did not feel it, or rather he felt glad that there was no gaudy mocking sunlight." So he sits down forlorn in the hollows of a copse-covered glen, and there buries his face in his clasped hands.

So with George Eliot's Tina, whose poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy for it, while Nature held on "her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and terrible beauty."

When Consuelo, newly wedded newly widowed, awoke, after a few hours' repose, and returned to the saloon, she was struck with dismay to find it empty: Albert had been laid upon a bier and carried to the chapel. But "the summer sun lighted up the sombre wainscoting of the room, while the merry call of the blackbirds sounded from the garden with insolent gaiety."

O Nature, how fair is thy face,

And how light is thy heart, and how friendless thy grace! Thou false mistress of man! thou dost sport with him lightly In his hours of ease and enjoyment; and brightly

Dost thou smile to his smile; to his joys thou inclinest,
But his sorrows, thou knowest them not, nor divinest.
While he woos, thou art wanton; thou lettest him love thee;
But thou art not his friend, for his grief cannot move thee.
And at last, when he sickens and dies, what dost thou ?
All as gay are thy garments, as careless thy brow,
And thou laughest and toyest with any new comer,
Not a tear more for winter, a smile less for summer.

ABOUT SAGE FRIENDS WHO "ALWAYS

TOLD YOU SO.”

LUCULLUS is one of the Athenian "lords and flatterers of Timon," upon whom Timon's faithful steward attends, in his master's hour of need, to solicit a loan. Timon has sent Flaminius to this his fast friend, nothing doubting his present assistance. But Lucullus is a summer friend only : a mid-summer friend only. He is not for winter wear. Nothing doubting, quotha? Is Timon so confident as all that? The more fool he. Flaminius must go back re infectâ. Lucullus cannot think of bolstering up the sinking credit of so wasteful a master. Hasn't he told Timon fifty times that he was living too fast? Didn't he always say it would come to this at last? "La, la, la, la,—nothing doubting, says he? alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and often I have dined with him, and told him on't; and come again to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less: and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. Every man has his fault, and honesty [liberality] is his; I have told him