of an inherent love of truth. He generally begins, before his opinion is asked or thought of, with "If you want me to speak my mind, I must say you never looked so ill in all your life." And then he pounces perhaps upon a little one who looks delicate;-"No, not him-the second one, what's his name?—he with the queer nose and sandy hair; well, if I'm to say what I think, he won't live-but they're all sickly." He is the man who thinks that a carraway-seed must have dropped into every bottle of your choice wine, and wonders why you persist in keeping your wife's portrait over the chimney-piece: though he adds, “I don't know, it might have been like her when she was young."

Now, nobody ever imagined the toad to be a whit more agreeable from the fiction of its having a precious jewel in its head; and a creature of the sort alluded to, though his plain-dealing, like poetry, were a true thing, would still be anything but fascinating. At the best he is a brute. He is the Apemanthus of real life, and Timon's flatterers would be preferable. If your hair but happen to curl, and keep its blackness, he thinks nature might have known better than to make a fop of anybody. He sneers at your very coat as monstrous, only because it has the grace to be anything but his cut. He waits to hear what metre the new poem is written in, and then, whatever it may be, condemns it for the metre's sake. Courtesies and compliments he never offers, lest it should be supposed that he had not spoken his mind. He makes it a rule to be disagreeable, to maintain the consistency of his character. The plain-dealer often requires to be dealt with just as plainly. There is something downright in a kick.

As it is very difficult to detect his motives at once,

and to discriminate between the false and the true jewel, the world must not be too severely condemned if, in its indignation at the insolence, it sometimes refuses to hear the honesty, and prefers the certain gratification of its dear self-love to the probable gratification of a snarling malignity. Even if honest always, this plaindealing would, were it universally in action, be an abominable quality. It would be unwise to show it any very extensive countenance, or to insist too seriously upon its moral value, while the tastes of men remain as various as they are at present. Suppose you encounter but a score of thorough plain-dealers in a day, what is the consequence? You go to bed discomfited, disheartened, rebuked, self-condemned-to dream of perfection unattainable, and critics that find no fault. Every thing you had done, every thing you took pride in, had been pulled to pieces in turn. Each would have his "but," and the "but " at last would apply to all you had done, and all you hoped to do. Ask opinions on your pictures; each plain-dealer would strike out his half-dozen as villanous copies, until all were flatly condemned, and you would begin to fear you had bought a collection of genuine Van Daubs. If all the acquaintances of any popular poet were plain-dealers, every line, in turn, of his greatest work, would be pronounced to his very face egregiously defective. Grant to each plain-dealing friend the license to speak out, and the best novel of the age, chapter by chapter, must be cut to ribands before the eyes of its author. Plain-dealing is a jewel, but it sadly lacks polishing: and, moreover, it is well to keep it a scarcity lest it lose its value.

A BIRD IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH.

Not so save in the estimation of those who would rather sit ingloriously at home, listening to the solitary chirper as he bewails the loss of his mate, than dash onward into the fields of glorious enterprise, content with the risk of returning empty-handed, so that they secure the chance of a double capture. He is no true sportsman who would not forego the one sure bird for the brace that he has a fair prospect of bringing down. The poor in spirit pocket their small winnings and decamp, while the bold player throws for the double stake. This bird-in-the-hand principle militates against all speculation-all adventure. It tends to induce people to stop short at the halfway house and be satisfied, lest they should encounter an obstacle further on in the road. To him who has studied the art of catching the two in the bush, the one in the hand is at best worth only half as much. aim, and they are his; he has but to lodge upon their tails some grains of salt, and they are bagged. Moreover there is this great addition to the advantage of acquiring a double treasure: the value of the one in hand" is known-it is a tomtit perhaps-perhaps it is a barn-door relic of the last century, or a snipe in a consumption. Now the "two in the bush" may be birds of paradise. Who can say what they will not be? They are yet to be caught; and they may be Venus's doves, or a pair of geese with golden eggs-or descend

ants from

He has but to take

"The bird of Jove With thunder in his train."

66

Great deeds had never been done, great fame never achieved, if the giant hand had been satisfied with the

one flutterer it held fast, and failed to stretch itself forth to seize the two, that, although they

"Dallied with the wind and scorn'd the sun,"

soared not so high but that the wings of hope could follow; and when a lofty and daring hope leads, success is seldom far behind. If wisdom, and enterprise, and patriotism, had always preferred the one bird caught to the brace that invited the catcher, our teachers, the philosophers, had left off at the first lesson, and sitting down with the fame of a single volume, had shunned the risk of answering themselves and of writing their works into obscurity; our merchants had kept their hard-earned wealth at home, instead of casting it out upon the waters to be returned to them again a twofold blessing, or just cent. per cent.; and our statesmen and warriors had left the little isle much as they had found it, unconscious of its limitless capacity for triumph over land and sea. Careless about the two birds in the bush, content to be something and indifferent to captures, Napoleon had remained the little corporal all his days, and the Duke had cautiously sold out after his first battle, lest in the second he should lose his glory as the hero of one fight-his bird in the hand. Point out the blockhead who will not win when he may for fear of losing, and recognise in him the image of the noodle who cherishes his sprat through dread of not insnaring the couple of salmon that are already half-out of the river, and actually boiling to be caught. And this, of course, is the counterpart of the idiot, who, instead of sending out the one bird he can boast of, as a feathery seducer to bring back a troop of webfooted brethren following close at its tail-feathers, goes home and dines upon his decoy-duck roasted. No doubt he would have kept Sir Francis Drake at home after his

first voyage, as a rara avis too sacred to be allowed to go beating about foreign bushes any more; and he would have the coolness to assure you that his own lottery-ticket, which had come up a blank, was worth as much as two tickets, each a lucky number, and not yet out of the wheel!

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON.

We never found the young Grimaldi much like the old one; nor was Cardinal Wolsey, as he grew up, remarkable for any striking likeness to his sire. Nor did Claude Lorraine resemble his, nor Nero his; nor was Cleopatra in all things the image of her mother. The first son, Cain, was not a bit like the first father, Adam.

Nobody can know the old block by the chips. The cut of the family face comprises wonderful opposites, unlikenesses that seem the work of design. The nose paternal is seldom the nose filial. The handsome aquiline has frequently a snub for its eldest-born; and the meek dove's eye becomes a goggle in the next generation. The tall, hardy, fine-limbed veteran looks upon his shrimp of a son, wondering whether he will be mistaken for a man when he is bald; and the father, five feet high, looks up to his long boy, marvelling when he will come to an end. With mental gifts, the rule of contradiction still obtains. Philosophy begets foolery, and from fools issues wisdom. It is often the fate of genius to leave an illustrious name to a dolt; as it is the fortune of a dolt, still more apparently hopeless, to see in his offspring the enlightener of nations, the enchanter of all ages. He who could never read a book in his life, stares to find his son writing one with