to with forbearance, respect, if not applause; but if he be a sensible, modest man, which he mostly is, he will curb the temptation to enlarge on No. 1, and so add to his laurels instead of diminishing their lustre. It has been observed that the greatest men are the meekest and the most unobtrusive. If distinguished for their literary performances, they do not insist upon reading the tit-bits of their essays or the brilliant portions of their novels and plays for you, in order that in return the soap of flattery may be laid on with no niggard hand. If noted for their scientific achievements they will not harp upon their last gigantic scheme to number man amongst the feathered tribes, by giving him wings with which he can fly, thus superseding railways and steamboats, nor will they, at the same time, expatiate on their laboratories and contents, setting forth the delicacy of the blowpipes and the uniqueness of the crucibles. Or if bitten with the photographic mania, their works will not be exhibited and dwelt upon with a lingering fondness, while the patient listener hangs upon their loving words. If of aristocratic blood or connection, they will not convey to you adroitly by insinuation, if they are clever, that they are allied to half the nobility, and, to enhance the effect, hand-and-glove with the other half. Nor will they, provided they belong to the class who have seen better days, and through some unkindness of fortune are out of their sphere (but only as a temporary arrangement), endeavour to relieve the shabby genteel cut of their impoverished pretensions, by some adventitious little local or official adjunct to their assumed state. Now, this hobby of boasting, trotting out our advantages and claims to superiority over other people, is decidedly the most prevalent and most offensive. With some it takes a supercilious form, and is manifested more by a curl of the lip and half-subdued sneer than anything else at the mention of other people's greatness; while with others it ventilates itself in grandiloquent talk. This latter species is the most easy to describe, and, being the most common, if our delineation is in any degree faithful, they will not fail to be recognised without our being suspected of any attempt to be personal. From a long indulgence in their hobby they get into an easy and interminable prattle upon the topics which they have most at heart. This incessant stream of small talk, like a babbling brook, really astonishes one by its fluency and capacity for reproduction. Their loquacity is like those wonderful little insects which, cut them up in as many pieces as you will, have the power of starting out afresh again, with a new heading, and without any impairment of their powers. There is certainly with them less coherence and consistency. Moreover, we have found no people less tolerant of, or more censorious on affectation and all their own foibles as seen in others; indeed, it rather exasperates them, and, we believe, from one or other of two reasons either that, from self-consciousness, they know so well their

basis of egotism, and therefore can estimate their weight; or because so much time taken up in talking of one's self is so much dead loss to them in plying their oar. Some of them are so wrapped up in an all-pervading sense of their own sufficiency that they cannot listen to the virtues of others extolled. Lost in the contemplation of their own perfection, they have neither eyes nor ears for the rest of mankind. Women are generally more successful boasters than men. Their ready tact and inventive turn enable them to tell their stories more opportunely and impart to them a strong colouring of reality. We shall see the effrontery alluded to every day; indeed we not seldom come into collision with it, and we think the best possible test of command of temper and amiability of disposition is to bear up manfully and with external complacency under the infliction. Let us look at the staring facts. We see one man claiming exemption from the sacrifices and penalties of humanity on the ground of his unexampled goodness. His moral nature is a fragrant bouquet of all the virtues; they are, as it were, constellated in his character, and shine upon the wickedness of others with a most saintly lustre-in his own opinion, by the way. Another man is engaged in a perpetual warfare against the incredulity of his circle of acquaintances, who put on a look peculiar but unequivocal when he expatiates upon the good society he mixes with, the swells he knows, the big-wigs with whom he is on familiar terms, and the ill-starred parvenus in the shade languishing for the distinction of his patronage. This gentleman will be found closely allied to that interesting person who is of old stock, whose genealogical tree is perennial and has been blossoming and casting off shoots from time immemorial, as the annals of the country, or rather the archives of his family, can clearly establish. He has now, alas! probably nothing to hang the rags of his faded gentility on but memories of his own social triumphs, or of those of his connections, which he delights to retail and upon which he can be endlessly eloquent.

Another man has been lucky enough, in spite of meagre opportunities and clinging drawbacks, to pick up a little of that kind of learning which makes a great show and noise, and confines, or rather extends, its application to some dryasdust pursuit-a species of grubbing into the caverns of literature dignified by the name of research, and moulded or spun out into ponderous lucubrations, which have light in the inverse ratio of their weight, and a popularity proportioned to their obscurity. This little learning he certainly makes go a great way. Notwithstanding its inertness in other respects, the hobby travels at a pretty brisk pace under his guidance; but its length is at the expense of its breadth, it narrows the intellect, and generates a dogmatic, captious, and opinionative propensity in its proud proprietor. The thought of his greatness (which has its root in littleness) is

never absent from this man's mind. It is highly sensitive, a sort of thermometer, an inseparable appendage of himself, indicating to those who can read it his moral temperature. Absorbed by his hobby (only a drudging hack), he conceives public attention is concentrated on him and his surroundings, and his egregious vanity has reserved a niche in no remote edition of that repository, "Men of the Time," in which contemporary greatness (diluted by some very small fry, but not all) is crystallised. The speciality may take any form-music is the most rife. The young aspirant to musical celebrity, and he abounds everywhere, having been flattered for his digital twittering on the pianoforte (an instrument which is now a piece of gorgeous furniture in every house of the genteel order), at once jumps to the conclusion that inborn genius smoulders in his breast. He twangles away with a diligence and pertinacity which, with a commensurate amount of natural talent, would place him on a pedestal of fame higher than ever Rossini reached. But alas! nature in conferring that plodding and susceptible faculty, denied the more spiritual and intuitive essence, evidently designing in her even-handed justice that should the votary of music fail of public appreciation he should at least win the applause of himself.

Speechifying as a hobby ranks high. We do not wish to depreciate the value of this most useful and ornamental accomplishment. It is an important agent for social amelioration, political and scientific exposition, and is unquestionably a great gift, but rarely bestowed. We have spouters, stumps and the like, but they are but wordy nuisances, inexhaustible windbags, who, with an inflated style, pompous or emphatic utterance, endeavour to pass off their stale commonplaces and trite apothegms for something, if not inspired, at least next door to it. They are at once sapient and vacuous. A successful conversationist is not so often met with as one would imagine. The speechmaker depends upon the power of continuity in his own resources, which must be accessible and systematic. If they fail him he breaks down. The conversationist on the other hand can only exercise his capacity upon stimuli proceeding from others, and if he neglect these, he is either silent or longwinded, usually the latter, because sooner than say nothing and run the risk of looking foolish, he will talk nonsense. The speechmaker with the power of sustainment, but without the other essentials, who has spoken two or three times in public, gets to relish the sound of his own voice so hugely that he is scarcely ever silent when he gets the chance to hold forth. He feels a burning sensation strongly impelling him to deliver himself, and the more often this is gratified the less it can be cured or restrained. If an explanation is desired upon some commonplace matter, the man, though not specially addressed, feeling that it is his mission to speak, or believing that no one else

can give the desired information so concisely or satisfactorily, begs. to venture a few words in the most modest but insidious manner, and soon gets launched on the ocean of speech, where he drifts up and down, with great enjoyment to himself but to the downright boredom of others for half an hour or so. He has let off the superfluous steam and feels easy. People rather avoid this specimen of the talking genius; but he has a fashion of waylaying and seizing you by the buttonhole and pumping on you a rivulet of words. Pretty much the same with the conversationist who will die sooner than not speak. He has a faint idea that stupidity and silence are synonymous. If he can talk volubly he prizes a good listener next to his dinner, as the greatest earthly luxury. It is not exactly necessary that a good listener should be an attentive one. So dearly does, the talker love to hear the sound of his own voice, that if he can secure anyone to pay him all the outward marks of attention, he is satisfied, and, as usually of the more consideration of the two, he is silently endured but internally execrated. The next hobby which operates socially we may designate plaindealing. The proprietor of this specimen will blurt out the truth if he die for it. Nobody asks him to tell the truth, or wants him to tell it; nevertheless he feels an inward craving he cannot resist, which he mistakes for candour. These delightful people are generally the matured growths of the boys at schools whom we have all known there, who to curry favour with the master would display their own singular goodness by revealing the peccadilloes of their companions; or to present a vivid contrast of their own perfections with their schoolmates" faults, would take every opportunity of reminding the latter of their crimes and misdemeanours. They will afterwards in the world indicate the early promise of their boyhood; those commendable habits in their fruition act as puffs to get them on at the expense of the frailties of others whose gift of eye-service and caution is probably limited.

It would be idle to dwell on flunkeyism as a hobby because we believe there are very few people entirely free from it. The court paid to some is in obedience to a principle in human nature which prompts us to render the tribute of our praise, submission, and deference to those of superior station, or possessing qualities of a higher order than our own. Perhaps we should not call this flunkeyism, but it is difficult practically to draw the line. Your true flunkey is he who allows respect to sink into servility, and judicious approbation into fulsome flattery. The true flunkey is also known by his adulation of mere rank. Let its owner be ever so deficient in personal merit, your genuine flunkey will ignore, or with agreeable suavity excuse, the fact for the sake of the more vulgar attribute. He will bear any

amount of snubbing and contumely, if he be only allowed to bask in the sunshine of the greater man's favour. There are some people so thoroughly saturated with this species of flunkeyism that they magnify

out of all proportion the estimable qualities of their idols, and are incapable of seeing or appreciating a better type of the same endowments in the humble and unpretentious. This hobby is the free and spontaneous emanation of a character made up of weakness and vanity. There are occasions when something is to be gained by skilful address in the exercise of the toady's functions, but as a rule they have not much effect. They are pardonable because professional in the flunkeys who wear the badge of their servitude, but inexcusable in those flunkeys who are ambitious of mental cultivation and affect refined society, and whose position should secure them from the exactions levied by people who affect superiority, and should also help to develop in them a self-reliant and manly air. But there is no use in expostulating with them. There are persons so thoroughly Conservative, whose bump of veneration is so large, that they cannot be made to see merit as merit and tinsel as tinsel. Toadyism and feebleness of intellect almost invariably go hand-in-hand. The worst feature in toadies is that they cannot appreciate independence in others. They call it presumption and impudence, and are in reality such tyrants to their inferiors that they have no conception other than that they should be toadies to themselves. We think these pets of fortune and society (as they unaccountably often are) should be discouraged who exact a slavish deference to their will and utterances as their due. They actually seem to think that they were specially sent into this world to be ran after, fawned upon, and be-slavered with flattery, liberally administered, but with more depth than sincerity; receiving it from a few dependants they demand it as the price of their favour from all who approach them. Reverse all this and toadyism will die out of the land. But where inordinate conceit is joined to a shallow intellect, and where the proud owner of this nice combination has got pitch-forked, Heaven knows how, into a conspicuous place, which gives him opportunities for lording it over his fellows, instead of hoping for experience to hold the mirror up to nature, we should rather anticipate its growing out of all proportion for any mirror to reflect it; and there is only one or other alternative for it— bear it with philosophical contempt, or put our heel at once upon it. There are persons whose domestic instincts are at once very strong and very troublesome. They elevate their household gods into the dignity of a hobby, and their friends and acquaintances are taxed to contribute to their worship. The gushing paterfamilias will meander for hours upon the subject of the prizes Nature has given him. "All his geese are swans." He alludes with paternal delight to that infant phenomenon who exhibits a proclivity in the line of soap-bubbling, on the strength of which he predicts with confidence a very elevated position for Alfred in the world-say as a distinguished aeronaut. Or he has a slim creature in petticoats, all soul, all mind, whose