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beauty, nor talents, nor wit, nor wisdom to bestow. Nevertheless, to make amends for these deficiencies, she drags up from the very bottom of the lucky-bag an accommodating little quality, elastic as gutta-percha and versatile as the chameleon, which is called Tact. With this the male infant occasionally, the female almost invariably, is endowed. What is there in our Marriage Service that induces the bride to lay it down so often at the altar-rails? Why does the wife so steadily forget to resume it, till she has lost all the other good qualities of wifehood? The more people love each other, the less reason is there for interchanging disagreeable remarks in a disagreeable manner; and although the domestic fireside is a spot sacred to ease, repose, and confidential intercourse, there is no Comfort even there without goodhumour, no happiness anywhere without self-restraint.

Moralizing thus, no wonder you fall asleep, and waking, somewhat astonished to be in bed at this period of the day, find that it is teatime, and the candles are already lit. We need not follow you through every hour of the twenty-four, only maintaining that each of these, if properly regulated, has its pleasures as well as its advantages. The longest are those of the night, when the whole household is buried in profound repose, and mysterious beings, never heard by day, begin to tread the floors of the rooms and passages, causing the wainscots to tremble and the boards to crackwhen the country-mouse holds a jubilee, scurrying about with the action and almost the noise of a Shetland pony, while its cousin, in town, seeins only awed into quiet by the policeman's echoing tread reverberating through the empty street, as if his boots were hollow, and clamped besides with iron up to the ankles.

And now you pay the penalty of your afternoon nap and your evening cup of tea. You never felt so wide awake in your life as you do at this moment, lying on your back and staring blankly at the windowcurtains, and the bed-furniture, and the grim mahogany wardrobe, a

edifice

ghastly and forbidding enough, as seen in this sombre and dubious twilight,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall;

but the aspect of which, suggestive though it be of depression, has no tendency towards repose. There are many receipts for the wooing of slumber, which people tell you are specifics, as poppies, mandragora, and the drowsy syrups of the East,' but of which the favourite and most infallible would appear to require some an intense effort of the imagination, others the closest application of the mind. To picture to oneself a volume of steam continuously issuing from the spout of a tea-kettle, or a flock of South Downs following each other persistently through a gap, would seem to be anything but a train of thought conducive to rest; while counting steadily on up to several thousands, without any definite object, although a wearisome and monotonous task enough, is obviously no bad method of remaining awake till sunrise. The best plan is, perhaps, to give yourself up without an effort to your destiny, and allow your ideas to flow on, wave after wave, in their accustomed channel, eccentric and unaccountable though it be.

And here we may broach a theory -call it a crotchet if you willwhich must stand for what it is worth. We hold that a man's character, though it originates them, may in its turn be reacted on to an important extent, for good or for evil, by his last thoughts before going to sleep. If people would tell the truth, few, we believe, would deny that the engrossing topic of their lives, whatever it may be, is then in full possession of their fancy

-that the brain is at that period, more than at any other, busy with the desire of the heart. If you have witnessed any unusual and exciting spectacle during the day, such as a race-course, a regatta, a nomination on the hustings, or a review of troops, you will find when you shut your eyes at night a phantasmagoria of the scene impressed, as it were, on your mental vision, with a strange

relationship to the actual faculty of sight. It is a physiological mystery, for which we can no more account than for a hundred other conditions of our every-day life; but it has its parallel in the effect surely produced on the mental system, by steeping it, so to speak, in a train of thought recurring day after day with the regularity of clock-work, until it reproduces the essence of that element which it has so assiduously absorbed. It would be curious to know how many people nightly close their eyelids only to behold some haunting face of which an idol has been made, alas! to be worshipped perhaps in grief, and solitude, and unhealthy longing, fatal to the worshipper. Nay, even when the idol has been taken down from its pedestal, to lie prostrate and mossgrown in the rank luxuriance of decay, or has been shivered into atoms by a stroke, which men call the pitiless blow of destiny, and angels the wise dispensation of God, the marble brow, still towering in its pride of place, holds dominion, as of yore in the world of darkness, and alone by night with our sorrow or our shame, we do homage yet, for all that is come and gone, to the face we loved so well.

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to acquire the habit of reflecting every night before we go to sleep on something noble, and loving, and good-on some rare instance of heroism-some glorious effort of selfsacrifice-some great example, superior to, yet in perfect sympathy with, the ordinary type of mankind. Such thoughts, repeated night after night, and persisted in, would gradually raise the mind into a purer atmosphere, would gather at length into an ideal which we might strive to imitate, though to its perfection we could never hope to attain. Such an Example and such an Ideal is before us all. Sin is no hindrance, weakness no discouragement, ignorance no drawback to our attempts, however feeble and unworthy. Success is open to every competitor. Trust and humility are the only conditions exacted, and he who stoops the lowest shall spring highest towards the prize.

Perhaps, however, the thoughts that haunt us in this shadowy border-land between sleeping and waking may be of a more practical and material kind. It may be that we have offended the dark majesty of Proserpine, and she has recalled her doves from flitting round our heads, and replaced them by owl and raven, and carrion crow, illomened birds of night. We may be tempted to think of all that is worst and most ignoble in our nature-we may dwell upon our evil wishes, and brood over our baser feelings, till we have thoroughly pioneered and paved the way for malice and hatred, and revenge and sin. There is no fear but that these will rush in fast enough when they find their road ready made; and the man who begins by deploring that he cannot govern his thoughts may soon learn to his cost that he can no longer control his actions.

It would be a step gained, surely,

A week in bed, you see, makes you ponder over many things which escape you in the hurry and turmoil of every-day work. It gives you time to consider the future, as well as to reflect upon the past. It probably originates many good resolutions, some of which are to be ignored, some broken, and some altogether forgotten. Nevertheless, this is a crop that cleans the land, though it seldom produces a harvest by any means proportionate to the seed sown. Good intentions are said to form the pavement of a certain locality; but at least they afford a foothold from which to struggle upwards out of the abode of evil. The man who tries for a fathom will probably gain an inch; and he who is always resolving to improve cannot but have the importance of amendment continually before his eyes. Besides, nothing on earth stands still. There is no such thing in reality as the statu quo, and everybody knows the impossibility of getting back to the status ante. Upon the principle of a penny saved' being a penny gained,' every step in the right direction counts for two. Nay, the rapidity with which our moral character tends to evil is only to be calculated by that geometrical progression with which we

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estimate the fall of some heavy substance through the air. Mean well, therefore, as strenuously as you please while on your back. You are neither a devil nor a monk *-far from it; and never doubt but that, when on your legs again, you will strive to the utmost to fulfil the engagements entered into by the bedridden penitent with yourself.

It is almost worth while to be ill for the pleasure of getting well again. One of the most remarkable attributes of the human mind is the facility with which, in the shortest space of time, it accommodates itself to radical change of any description, provided it be permanent and inevitable. The beggar on horseback, ere he has gallopped a mile of his infernal ride, feels as if he had been an equestrian all his life. The ruined gamester, who walks away from the table at Homburg or BadenBaden without a five-franc piece in the world, contemplates his position with a calmness that is astonishing even to himself. Criminals under sentence of death, though stupified and paralyzed by the fatal verdict, recover themselves in a few hours with an elasticity that is inconceivable to other men, and can even occupy their minds with their dress, or express anxiety about their dinner. Nothing when it comes is either so delightful or so terrible as we expected it to be; and just as man's bodily constitution is created capable of bearing every climate in every extreme, so does his mental organization assimilate itself without difficulty to every change of fortune, every variety of condition and circumstance. By the time you have been a week in bed your habits have become those of a man who is crippled for life. You are a little fidgetty, a little querulous—you like to dwell on your grievances, and to be pitied by your visitors; but you are, nevertheless, tolerably resigned and easy, and altogether wonderfully comfortable.

Can it be only seven days since you were up and doing?-only a

week ago that you were one of the busiest atoms in the swarm of the busy street? It seems incredible, and more incredible still that tomorrow you are to go down stairs, and, by the permission of wife and doctor, occupy yourself once more with the work and play of every-day life. Reflecting on this new change in your position, you suddenly begin to feel as if you really belonged to the world once more, and had never left it. The bed-furniture, the window-curtains, even the grim mahogany wardrobe, lose their imposing significance, and relapse into mere necessary articles of housekeeping, which you feel conscious are fading and wearing out more rapidly than you could wish. Already your pleasure in release from confinement is somewhat damped by anticipations of extra work, accumulated letters, much to be put right that has unavoidably gone wrong from such a stoppage in the main stream of business as the absence of its head. You will enjoy it when you get fairly at it; but in the mean time you have learned to appreciate the blessings of an interval of idleness and repose.

With your convalescence we have nothing to do. The delight of getting down stairs, the charm of the cheerful breakfast-room, the sensation of renewed health and energy experienced by every hard-working man after a period of rest not too long protracted, the uproarious exultation of the children, shared by all but one, that youngest little damsel, who is demurely sorry because she will sit on papa's pillow no more- these various pleasures have nothing to do with our subject. Your probation is over-you are off the sick-list-you are a helpless cripple no longer.

We shake you heartily by the hand, we congratulate you on your recovery, and we beseech you now and then, in the full tide of manly strength, and health, and energy, to bestow a thought on the more serious subjects which occupied your attention during 'A Week in Bed.'

The devil was ill, the devil a monk would be;
The devil got well, the devil a monk was he,

G. W. M.

JEM NASH, THE DULL BOY.

JOW I wish my uncle and aunt

stupid. There they are persuading
themselves that he is idle and care-
less, and unmindful of the sacrifices
they have made for his sake; and
making themselves and poor dear
Annie (to say nothing of Jem him-
self) miserable, and all because they
won't see that, as Nurse says, "you
can't make a silk purse out of a
sow's ear." Harry says he works
fearfully hard, and is more pudding-
headed than ever. I suppose it is
very presumptuous to doubt the
wisdom of one's uncle and aunt,
and that I ought to believe that all
these years of torture have been ne-
cessary; but to my mind Jem is
more of a martyr than a sinner.
People are born to be dull or clever
I suppose, as well as tall or short.
What a blessing it would be if their
families could take the measure of
their intellect, and not expect it to
stretch at will.' So thought Louisa,
as she impatiently stretched an
elastic band between her fingers
until it snapped in two'; and then
she embarked in a simile between
intellect and india-rubber, in which
she found more amusement than we,
I think, should do.

Louisa was staying at Ashford Rectory when she indulged in the foregoing soliloquy, with her aunt, and her aunt's husband, the Rev. James Nash. Her brother Harry was at school with Jem Nash, and they were spending part of their holidays together at Ashford.

sity, had there distinguished him-
self, and taken a fellowship; and
when he relinquished that for a
living which was given to him ex-
pressly on the ground that the
patron had the 'full assurance that
he could not make a better use of
the power entrusted to him than
in securing for Ashford the services
of a man so distinguished by his
learning, industry, &c., &c.; and
when he married the daughter of a
well-to-do country gentleman, whose
family would assuredly have ob-
jected to the match had he not been
so distinguished; he saw in these
pieces of good fortune, not the le-
gitimate result of his labours and
self-denial, but the beginning of a
series of rewards, the first steps
gained in that ascent that was to
lead him at last to the most pro-
minent places in his profession.
This expectation had also encour-
aged him in beginning his married
life comfortably, i. e., in living fully
up to his income. The income was
so sure speedily to become larger,
and he wished that his wife should
feel as little difference as possible
between life with him and life in
her old home. Time had sped,
however, and the income had re-
mained stationary. Many old friends
and acquaintances had passed him
in the race; many whom he felt to
be in every respect his inferiors. He
had set himself a hard task. Could
he have confessed that he had made
a mistake all would have been well,
but this was not his way; irritated
and depressed by disappointments,
he wished to believe that he never
had had any disappointments at all.

Ashford was not an ugly place, and the Rectory was a tidy and moderately comfortable house. Life might have been easy and pleasant enough there but for a constant sense of effort and striving. Mr. Nash had in a great measure made his own fortune in life; but his fortune, such as it was, did not altogether satisfy him. He had a good capacity, great industry, had begun early to show a decided predilection for study, had steadily persevered in the pursuit of knowfedge under difficulties, had gained a scholarship, had in consequence been allowed to go to the Univer

Of course, with 'society constituted as it was, no man without interest could get on, and no man of common sense could expect it to be otherwise.' Poor Mr. Nash! If they might have been all disappointed together, and all admitted that they were poor together, how happy they might have been; but that anything but success and prosperity should ever visit Mr. Nash was a heresy not to be named in the family. And though Mrs. Nash grew worn and faded in her unceas

ing efforts to make both ends meet, and the whole household was made irritable by the constant watching and worrying over the expenditure of a shilling, the subject was never discussed, and shabbiness crept upon them, unnoticed if not unfelt.

Their three children were, Annie, a year or two older than Jem; Jem, our hero; and Mary, a year or two his junior.

Jem was a stupid fellow. He had been a dull sleepy baby, a big awkward child; always spilling, breaking, and tumbling over everything in a heavy matter-of-fact manner; never profiting by his many experiences in the form of bruises, cuts, or scoldings; never clearly understanding that any one event was the natural consequence of any other; never able to take in more than one idea at a time.

Poor Jem! He might have done very well had he been born heir to some thousands a year. In a happy and genial atmosphere his self-confidence might have received sufficient nurture to enable him to pass muster among his peers, and be pronounced in the county (even apart from his fine horses and fine wines) a very good fellow.

As it was, he was expected to make his own way in the world, and his proud but timid parents watched him with the most aggravating anxiety from his cradle. His sisters were quick little things. Curious-he never was; confidinghe never could express himself; observant-he only understood his fellow-creatures well enough to feel no interest in their concerns; but he was the hope of the family.

Mr. Nash used to sit and plan all that James' might accomplish in these days of open competition, when James was an innocent infant sucking his large red thumb, trying the veracity, or rather, perhaps, the ingenuity, of every lady visitor to the house, so difficult was it to discover where the mother's weak point might be in that shapeless doughylooking mass.

Mr. Nash had not got on in the world as well as he would have wished; but then he had never had the chance that James would have.

James would easily be able to provide a home for the two girls if any thing should happen to him and Mrs. Nash. He was determined to spare no pains or expense in his education, and he should be one of that band who would prove to the world what lights England had hitherto hidden under the bushel of aristocratic influence and corruption.

Jem certainly took some time to master his alphabet, and laboured under a chronic confusion as to B and R up to a very mature age of childhood; but then to be 'slow but sure' was what Mr. Nash always wished for his boy. He would have been quite disappointed had he been as quick and volatile as Mary was.' Jem's lessons in arithmetic were long remembered in the family. And his little sister's ideal of the acme of human woe was Jem one lovely summer's day forbidden to go out until a certain sum was finished. Lying first on his back, then as time went on and his brain grew more hopelessly clouded, on his face, his thumbs in his ears, that he might not hear the birds, and worse than that, Dash's impatient bark of joy at Mary throwing sticks and dawdling near the house with him, waiting, as Jem well knew, for him; his fingers through his thick heavy hair, repeating by rote but without one ray of comprehension the rule that ought to have made it all clear to him. Tears at last dropped slowly one by one on the slate under his nose. I think he was occupied in wondering how long it would be before the round drops would join together and make a stream, and in judiciously guiding their course by tilting the slate, when Mary came in. Angry to be discovered thus, his tears were dashed away by slaty fingers. In spite of her intense sympathy she could hardly help laughing at the effect of the dirty furrows all across his woebegone countenance. Poor Jem! the rule had been explained so often and was so self-evident to his father, that his failing to accomplish his task was put down to obstinacy, and it was considered a moral duty to conquer him. He never got out all day, had bread and water for

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