PARABLE OF THE WILL-O'-THE-WISP.

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your light for a friendly lamp, but have been deceived to my destruction."

"Yet not by me," cried the Will-o'-the-Wisp anxiously-" I work out my appointed business carefully and ceaselessly. My light is ever a friendly lamp to the wise. It misleads none but the headstrong and ignorant."

"Headstrong! ignorant!" exclaimed the statesman, for such the traveller was. "How little do you know to whom you are speaking! Trusted by my King-honoured by my country-the leader of her councils-ah, my country, my poor country, who will take my place and guide you when I am gone?"

"A guide who cannot guide himself! Misjudging, misled, andthough wise, perhaps, in the imperfect laws of society-ignorant in the glorious laws of Nature and of Truth-who will miss you, presumptuous being? You have mistaken the light that warned you of danger for the star that was to guide you to safety. Alas for your country, if no better leader than you can be found!"

The statesman never spoke again, and the Will-o'-the-Wisp danced back to the edge of the black morass; and as he flickered up and down, he mourned his luckless fate-always trying to do good-so often vilified and misjudged. "Yet," said he to himself, as he sent out his beams through the cheerless night, "I will not cease to try; who knows but that I may save somebody yet! But what an ignorant world I live in !”

Thus, in the spirit of Mrs. Gatey's parable, these doubtful securities, promising magnificent rates of interest, and so seducing unwary travellers on the road of life, ought, like the Will-o'-the-Wisp, to act as warnings, and waive away the traveller from venturing on the dangerous ground which may prove to him in the end a Slough of Despond.

FF

A SERMON ON SAVOIR FAIRE, CONSIDERED AS

MA

ONE OF THE FINE ARTS.

"Be all things to all men."-PAUL.

ANY years have now passed since our mind became first impressed by, and our heart moved to admiration for, the masters of Savoir Faire. We are greatly surprised that we, who have a handbook and vade mecum for every kind of art and science, and catechisms for etiquette and behaviour, have no popular introduction to what is confessedly the very art of society; at any rate there is none that we are acquainted with, and yet our very social existence depends upon it. A A savage, for instance, you may describe by many negatives, Johnson's among the rest, that he has "neither past nor future;" but, we take it, the chief idea of a savage is, that he is a man without savoir faire. A young lady the other day asked us what it was: we were obliged to tell her that the thing was perfectly undefinable. "My dear," we said, "you may just as well ask us to define the scent of your mouchoir, or the bloom of your cheeks; and yet you know they are the very spirituality and aroma of your personality." So of savoir faire. Literally translated, we can make nothing of the phrase, merely "knowing how to do it;" but in itself its very indefiniteness speaks wonders. You scarcely hear of any great success in life, but it is achieved by savoir faire. You admire Grigsby in the drawing-room; he is a delightful fellow, chats with you, jokes with you, keeps an unflagging interest alive and awake all around him; how do you reckon him up? In fact, he is a master of savoir faire. Do you know Pugglewash, your tradesman in the next street, that master of bland courtesies, who has accumulated, as we know, a nice little fortune, and keeps his brougham and his country villa, and for whom most people have some commendatory word to say, as on the whole a thorough good fellow?-what is the secret of it all? Savoir faire. And you surely know that eminent pulpit orator, the Rev. Dr. Ravelby;-did you ever hear the oleaginous Doctor? Savoir faire is the oleaginous faculty. We spent an evening with him not long since; he was delicious, we can't describe how beautiful he was. Nothing wrong, you understand; he never forgot that he was a divine, but somehow it was a body of divinity served up with piquant sauce; and a dear old lady said, as he left the

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SAVOIR FAIRE-KNOWING HOW TO DO IT. drawing-room, "Ah, he is always the same, pulpit and parlour, dear Dr. Ravelby!" Whereupon a gentleman rejoined, evidently with great admiration, "Yes, Dr. Ravelby is a great master of savoir faire." What makes a successful doctor-the man of large practice, who tires out his half-dozen pairs of horses in the course of the day? Science? skill? Nonsense! savoir faire. What gets the Member into the House, and makes him an agreeable and pleasant person there? Principles? We think we know better than that-savoir faire. We dare say Mr. Gladstone is rather a great man; but it's just the very thing, the little item wanting in his Titanic intelligence; he has not mixed the salad of his character somehow quite judiciously—a flash too much of the vinegar, and too strong a suspicion of the pepper-condiments which never enter into savoir faire. As we have said, we revere the faculty! When we go into the House of Lords on a great field day, or when the Queen forgets the proper dignity of her station so far as to open the House, as we gaze on the bench of bishops, our reverence becomes something fearful to us; we are always afraid of doing some improper thing to mark it, for practically, you see, we are not a master of the science. We say to ourself, "Ah, there they sit, the great professors of the art, every one of them knew how to do it; whatever their Greek or mathematics, whatever their skill at metaphysical and theological conundrums or riddles, each of those venerable men might have been a poor curate, or a poor professor or schoolmaster, at best the rector of a village; but he was a master of savoir faire.

As we see these things, and think these things, and hear so much said about success in life, and the development of the resources of the British Empire, and the probable failure of coal mines; and, even as some grim prophets,-like the late Dr. Daubeny, for instance,-prognosticate, the failure of our very soil, we say, but what madness! Ought we not to look to it? Success in life, development of resources, why, all this is rather a question of savoir faire. Ought we not to institute lectureships in our Universities upon the science, and give prizes to the hopeful young pupils the future athletes in this noble sport? Ought we not to have some prize essays, at any rate some scientific treatises, on so essential an element in the manhood of a great people? Ought it not to be made the subject of more profound study in the perception of these things? We have thought we might, at any rate, attempt to fill out some few pages; and oh! may the spirit of the age deign to receive and bless these remarks to the well-being of some whose too gauche manners, or too blunt simplicity and ignorant reliance on the universal transparency of our kind, especially of our country men and women,-may perhaps prove a fatal barrier to their social eminence and future fortune.

We foresee an objection at starting. Some of our readers will, we fear, be impertinent enough,-alas the word! that is not of the approved manners of savoir faire,-forgive it, and go on. Some of our readers will say, that by savoir faire we seem only to be realizing a kind of

436 SAVOIR FAIRE—A FINE AND PRIMAL INSTINCT.

character we usually call "a humbug." a humbug." Not at all, far from it, perish the thought! There is as much likeness between that disgusting character we call "a humbug" and the master of savoir faire, as there is between a pumpkin and a cucumber. No; your humbug is a coarse, vulgar, ungentlemanly ruffian; your master of savoir faire "does his spiriting gently." He is like our "tricksy Ariel," he is all refinement; oh, that is his characteristic, he is "a perfect gentleman," like a certain character our friend, poor "Tom," mentioned when he was "a-cold." Your humbug does his work with a rough, hard, grimy hand, he disgusts you; the hand of the professor of our science is velvety soft, usually tightly gloved. In a word, Barnum,-disgusting character,—is a humbug, and the creature acknowledges it; but the dear Lord Chesterfield, the author of those three volumes of classical letters to his son, was a master of savoir faire. And by the bye, we wish some one would publish an annotated edition of them, bringing down the state of the science, and those fine essays and prescriptions of that great master to the attainments and wants of modern society. Undoubtedly the object of both is success in life; but their character and the difference of the means they employ is absolutely as opposite as the professions of a burglar and a bill-broker, and we trust none of our readers will see any resemblance between these; the one does outrageous and disagreeable and ungodly things, and in the end comes to be transported, or perhaps hung; the other pleasantly negotiates our little monetary transactions for us, draws our agreeable acceptances, bridges over apparently impossible chasms"Makes the rough paths of peevish nature even,

And opens in each breast a little heaven."

We beg pardon of the master of savoir faire for having,-even in order that we might repel a foul possible assertion,-brought his name into such a possible relation.

For, really, there is nothing objectionable in this attribute which we desire to see so generally inculcated. What is the substance of savoir faire? We think it only means, win your own ends by making yourself decidedly and universally agreeable; be on good terms with yourself, and be or at any rate, seem to be-on good terms with everybody else. And, oh! beloved reader, suppose we were to turn the tables, and attempt to win our own ends by making ourselves decidedly disagreeable to everybody else? We do not think the programme would be successful, but, we must confess, it is very often tried at. And these disagreeable people are precisely they who find fault with savoir faire; for there are persons who pique themselves upon their principles,

Conscience, honesty,

And things of that description,"

All very admirable things, no doubt, in their way, and having market value, but not always to be taken out for an airing. Now, the man of savoir faire is a man of fine instincts; he knows exactly how far

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to go; he is not a man of nice details. Of course, when you talk upon matters of conscience, you have to take a good deal for granted; you have to leave a wide margin. There is nothing narrow about savoir faire; it is decidedly Broad Church; it has no politics; in a word, as we said just now, it aims to make itself agreeable.

One of the first attributes of this character is a wise reserve-we say a wise reserve. We do not mean by that, the shutting of the mouth and saying nothing; that is very easy. But to keep on talking for an hour, or hours, and to be reserved all the time, and to impose upon the company the idea of your being delightfully confidential, and eminently unreserved, even to win the praise of being so open, so candid, almost too much so, this we take to be rather a triumph of art. Very fine, this, to permit people to think that they are reckoning you up, and taking stock of you, and you to be reckoning them up, and taking stock of them all the while, and winning your own beautiful ends with them; for reserve, O beloved, is one of the last pieces of the finish of high breeding and good behaviour. What is a man worth who can be read off like a sign-post? And how long will it be, think you, before such a man is victimized? On the contrary, the man who knows the length and breadth of his own ground, and who is able to keep up a conscious sense of easy pleasantry, a man, apparently, rather shallow than otherwise, maintaining his ground of truisms and platitudes, and yet, in the midst of all, never losing sight of his own purpose, like an experienced angler throwing out his line in the dark, and smiling as he sees the pleasant bait taking,-is most beautiful. For the master of savoir faire never loses sight of his own ends or interWhat else do we live for? Our object in life is to make ourselves interesting, entertaining, agreeable. We are not anchorites and hermits, we hope, to shut up all our sympathies within our own narrow and isolating selfishness: no; but then, in order to make this most reciprocative, it is necessary that we always are aware of the secret springs and motives of our own character. The happiness of society is founded on a pleasant admixture of hypocrisy. Let us not misunderstand each other. Hypocrisy is a nasty word, we do not know why; it only signifies admirable acting, beautiful seeming. We know it would seem a very singular thing, were we to say, Mr. Fechter and Mr. Sothern were eminent, admirable hypocrites; but in fact it is so, as the poet says:

ests.

"Act well your part, there all the honour lies."

The best acting is good seeming; and so in savoir faire it is clever acting, what we call in our harsh way of speech, hypocrisy-the choice of a nice veil of words, admirably giving apparent fervour, an intensity to sentiments. People will love you for it; why not do it? This is amiability; it is really the transference of your own imaginary emotions. into the feelings of those with whom you are conversing. They think you delightful; you win golden opinions. This all results from keeping a fine vein of reserve, watching and acting out your character. We say, it is very beautiful.