“The tail, you observe, Sir Matthew, is of the true character."

"No doubt, ma'am," replied the pestered pea-hunter, dropping fifty from his fork for about the sixth time; "and to an admirer of cat's tails, it must be a treat indeed!"

All the lady wanted was advice; she was not so unreasonable as to demand a knowledge of the subject besides; but some people are so fastidious.

As there must often be presumption in the unconsidered proffer of advice upon numerous subjects, so the solicitation of it must frequently contain one of the most valuable of compliments. We cannot properly seek counsel on matters of consequence, without attributing to the adviser the possession of some ennobling giftssome qualities of judgment and of sincerity to which we respectfully defer. For the sake of both parties, advice should be as cautiously asked as given. The help, in the form of true counsel, which we can best accord one another, will never be secured but by the nicest discrimination in the choice of advisers. To ask advice at random, is too often to call upon the hatter to clothe the body, and the tailor the head; and to receive it in the same way, is to permit the lawyer to treat our ague, and the physician our chancery-suit.

In most cases, it is thought enough to know, when advice is sought, that it is asked of a friend; and to two persons, the most opposite in all qualities of judgment and experience, the same question is put, with equal confidence in the integrity which is perhaps the sole qualification of both. The different counsel thus obtained, sends out the puzzled querist in quest of an umpire; till the umpire is sought in every acquaintance that can answer a question without considering its bearings.

In choosing councillors and adopting advice, much care is requisite to avoid being taken in by the showy qualities. We may always remember with usefulness the question put by the great Mrs. Siddons to the shopman, who, handing her some muslin for a dress, was in love with its pattern, and in raptures with its colour.

"Young man," said she, in a full and measured tone, which, startling his nerves, seemed to carry a great moral lesson, a solemn admonition and warning into his soul, "young man, WILL IT WASH?"

ET-CETERA.

(THE REMINISCENCES OF MR. FITZBEETLE).

"And are et-ceteras nothing!"-PISTOL.

EVERY man has his foul fiend-(thus said Mr. Fitzbeetle, beginning the narrative of his experiences)— every man has his foul fiend, of whom it behoves him to beware. The fiend attendant upon us all takes infinite shapes, and bears myriads of names, in languages unspeakable. My own fiend has a familiar Latin cognomen; he is called Et-cetera. I have known him by name ever since I learned the alphabet, but I have only lately discovered him.

Edgar's madness was a fiction, but his foul fiend was a reality like Lear's fool. The sham maniac never knew it, but there was actually a follower at his heels wherever he went, vexing him unaware. It were as easy to separate ourselves from the shadow we cast in the sunshine, or to outrun the echoes of our footsteps, as to part company with our fiend; to distance him, to

presence;

trip him up, even when we are conscious of his but we seldom detect this private and invisible attendant pursuing us, until life's day begins to darken.

We all remember, when we have once read, that fearful and picturesque lesson of Bulwer's-the story of the man who panted for solitude, utter solitude, who hated the faces of his brethren, and slew the grinning, chattering fellow, cast with him on the desert island, because he would not keep on his own side of the stream, and consent to be alone. Well, this lover of loneliness, when he had thus got rid of this grinning, chattering impersonation of Society, and sought repose in the bosom of sweet Solitude, found he could never be alone more. Never for an instant could he be alone now, for the grinning, chattering thing walked with him and ran with him, slept beside him at night, and sat opposite to him at dinner. And when on his return to Europe the physician, thinking to cure the suffering sinner, led him into an apartment, the floor of which was covered with a layer of wet sand, and in the middle of the room said,

"You and I are alone here, he is not with us,"-the lover of solitude answered by pointing to the sand, on which the footprints of three persons, from the door to the centre where they stood, were distinctly visible, and as the two living men walked farther, wherever they went the feet of a third moving creature left their prints upon the floor also.

Why we can no more run away from the fiend we have once allowed to tread upon our heels, than the misanthrope could from his victim. We permit, nay which, without

encourage, the growth of a habit to knowing it, we become a slave, and from which, while liberty is worth having, there is no escape. Each, then, has his foul fiend in this way, give him what name we

will. My own, as I have said, is named Et-cetera. To Et-cetera I have been a victim all my days; in Etcetera is included all my causes of complaint; with Et-cetera every misfortune of my life has been hurried on; and yet to the influence, the potency of Et-cetera, I have always been blind.

The truth is, that from the earliest dawn of my day, I was known as a philosopher of a very literal turn of mind. I could just crawl forward and spy whatever lay conspicuously before me in the straight path. I had a tolerable eye for causes, but not for effects—I never could see these until they had happened-not one out of twenty. Any immediate consequence I might be sensible of, but not the remote ones and the contingencies. There was room in my mind for only one idea at a time.

Thus I was perfectly well aware that a shower of rain would give me a soaking, if it lasted long enough; but there my consciousness stopped short; it rarely extended its regard to the next generation of consequences, taking in the influenza and rheumatism.

So, too, I was sensible enough that eating very heartily was likely to be destructive to appetite; experience taught me this fact, and I felt it forcibly from boyhood; but I had a very indefinite notion of the next stage of results, indigestion, nightmare, apoplexy, Et-cetera.

Getting wet through, and laying down my knife and fork, in the cases in question, constituted the sum-total of what would be in my mind as inevitable and necessary consequences. All other results, however natural and certain, were not of this primary class, but fell into a category of which I rarely took the slightest notice— and then only by a great effort of the mind, after much pondering upon those things.

If not in my cradle, certainly in my early school-days,

my experience of the influences of this fiend Et-cetera, together with my insensibility, began.

But I am not going to dive so deeply into the past, as that retrograde movement would carry me. Enough, that long before I quitted the University, Et-cetera was at my heels hourly tripping me up. He attacked me terrifically, the very first breakfast I ever gave. I thought of a breakfast then, as of eggs, coffee, cream, rashers, and a pigeon-pie or so; and thus I agreed to give some breakfasts-in a friendly way, and in the spirit of a wise young student. Bless my five simple wits, how innocent I was of words as well as forms and customs! How little did I know what breakfast was, until they told me, in the most good-natured style of warning imaginable, that I must order champagne, Et-cetera.

And ordered they were; and in due order their successors came; and then departed only to be replaced by indescribables equal to them; and, in short, in the course of two years I had won quite a reputation, and grew famous among all men of taste for my breakfasts -these breakfasts being thus relished and reputed, not at all on account of those excellent commonplaces the coffee and eggs; not by any means on account of such unmitigated vulgarities as rashers or pigeon-pies; nay, not for the sparkling refinement and vivacity of the champagne; but chiefly, and above all things, for the Et-cetera, the nameless luxuries, the inexpressible ingenuity and abundance of the Et-cetera.

And very right it was that some effect should be produced by it, as it turned out to be far the heaviest item in my college account of debts, some thousands of pounds long; for I remember my father, when called upon to pay, declaring that the charges for the more regular and necessary articles were not on a particularly