this traditional practice of the bores and the wits of society, to write at length the records of their daily life, bottle them carefully up in a series of MS. volumes, and leave them to their grandchildren to publish, and to posterity to criticise. Now, it has always appeared to me that the whole fun of writing was to watch the immediate effect produced by one's own literary genius. If, in addition to this, it is possible to interest the public in the current events of one's life, what nobler object of ambition could a man propose to himself? Thus, though the circle of my personal acquaintances may not be increased, I shall feel my sympathies are becoming enlarged with each succeeding mark of confidence I bestow upon the numerous readers to whom I will recount the most intimate relations of my life. I will tell them of my aspirations and my failures-of my hopes and fears, of my friends and my enemies. I will narrate conversations of general interest as touching current, social, and political events, and of a private character when they concern nobody but myself. I shall not shrink from alluding to the state of my affections; and if the still unfulfilled story of my life becomes involved with the destiny of others, and entangles itself in an inextricable manner, that is no concern of mine. I shall do nothing to be ashamed of, or that I can't tell; and if truth turn out stranger than fiction, so much the better for my readers. It may be that I shall become the hero of a sensation episode in real life, for the future looks vague and complicated enough; but it is much better to make the world my friend before anything serious occurs, than allow posterity to misjudge my conduct when I am no longer alive to explain it. Now at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever happens I shall give my version of the story first. Should the daily tenor of my life be undisturbed, I can always fall back upon

the exciting character of my opinions. Upon most subjects these are quite original-or where by chance I am commonplace, there is my friend Grandon upstairs who is not. What I want my readers to understand is why I write and what I am going to write about. I am going to write about myself and everything else that happens from day to day, and to publish it periodically, so that I may by degrees become the most popular topic in railways and omnibuses. Thus a member of Parliament and a City man, quite unknown to each other, leaving town by afternoon train, will open a conversation somewhat in this strain :—

M. P.-"Seen the evening papers?" C. M.-"Only the Pall Mall Gazette,' but I could not find any news in it."

M. P." Perhaps nothing has happened since it was started. What do you think of these peace negotiations in America?"

C. M.-" They can't come to anything, though there is a report in the City that gold went up just before the steamer left New York, but that is in a private telegram. However, the Confederate loan rose two in consequence. Do you think there is to be a dissolution of Parliament in April?"

M. P.-"Not if Palmerston can help it. By the way, I see he came to town yesterday-from Broadlands. Do you know at all what Lord Frank Vanecove [that's me] is doing just now?"

C. M.-" Ah, we shan't know till the first of next month: there was one report that that extraordinary adventure of his ended in the most singular and unexpected manner; another that he was married after all; and a third, that he was ill of brain-fever. The fact is, the suspense is very trying to everybody."

M. P.-"Yes; the odd thing is that a friend of mine who knows him tells me that you would never imagine it at all to look at him. Well, he would be a serious loss to the country," and so on. But though,

of course, I am myself my own most popular topic, I fully intend to introduce the public to my friends. I have not asked their permission any more than the public's, as I know it will be a mutual benefit.

I don't mean that I shall go through the ceremony of a formal introduction, accompanied by a prefatory notice of each after the manner of Americans-they shall speak for themselves; several of them who are members of the present Government have, indeed, already done this to a considerable extent; still it too often happens that a certain coldness subsists between the Cabinet and the country, -they don't thoroughly understand each other; their extra-parliamentary utterances, for example, very often require a key: this article it will fall to me to supply. Thus, for instance, if our Foreign Minister makes a speech in a Highland valley, or even on the brow of a suburban hill, committing the country to a policy of which I do not approve, how consolatory it will be to the public when I am enabled to inform them on the first of the following month, that I at once remonstrated with his Lordship on the subject, and that he has in consequence entirely altered his views, and adopted the despatches with the drafts of which I had supplied him, and which I may possibly find it necessary to publish myself. It shall be my duty, not only to put my friends on better terms with the people at large, but to draw those together whom I think congenial spirits, and separate those who are contracting an improper or injurious intimacy. As I write, the magnitude of the task I propose to myself assumes still larger proportions. I yearn to develop in the world at large those organs of conscientiousness and benevolence which we all possess but so few exercise. I invoke the co-operation of my readers in this great work: I implore them to accompany me step by step in the crusade which I am about to preach in favour of the

sacrifice of self for the public good. I demand their sympathy in this monthly record of my trials as an uncompromising exponent of the motives of the day, and I claim their tender solicitude should I writhe, crushed and mangled by the iron hand of a social tyranny dexterously concealed in its velvet glove. I will begin my efforts at reform with the Bench of Bishops; I will then descend to the parsonic body of the Church of England, with an upward digression to Catholicism, and a downward cut into Dissent; I will branch off to the present Cabinet and analyse it minutely; I will cross over to the Opposition, and dissect the motives. which actuate their policy; I will extend the sphere of my operations into the ultra-Radical ranks, and mix in the highest circles of society in the spirit of a missionary. I will endeavour to show everybody up to everybody else in the spirit of love; and if they end by quarrelling with each other and with me, I shall at least have the satisfaction of feeling myself divested of all further responsibility in the matter. In my present frame of mind apathy would be culpable and weakness a crime.

Candour compels me to state that when, as I told Lady Veriphast, my imagination becomes heated, my pen travels with a velocity which fails to convey any adequate impression of the seething thoughts which course through my brain. I lose myself in my subject, and become almost insensible to external sensations; thus it happened that I did not hear the door open as I was writing the above, and I was totally unconscious as I was reading fervidly aloud the last paragraph, containing those aspirations which I promised to confide to the public, that I had already a listener. Judge of my surprise-I may say dismay-when, just as I had finished, and was biting the end of my pen for a new inspiration, I heard the deep-toned voice of Grandon close behind my chair.

66

Well, considering, my dear Frank, that you have borrowed all those sentiments from your friends, from the conversion of the Ecclesiastical Bench down to Missionary Enterprise in the ball-room, I think you have put it as forcibly as I could have wished. I am glad to hear that I shall not only have the benefit of your valuable assistance in propagating my views, but that you propose enlisting public sympathy in the matter as well. As you have so boldly begun by taking the public into your confidence, perhaps you will go on to tell them the mode in which you intend commencing operations. How, for instance, do you propose to open the campaign against the Bishops?"

If there is one quality upon which I pride myself more than another, it is readiness. I certainly had not formed the slightest conception of how any of these burning thoughts of mine-I mean my friends' should be put into execution; but I did not hesitate a second in my answer. "I shall go down to one and stay with him in his palace," I replied promptly.

"Which one?" said Grandon.

I was going to say "Oxford," as he is the only one I happen to know; but, in the first place, I am a little afraid of him; and, in the second, I am hardly on sufficiently intimate terms with him to venture to propose myself so I said, with some effrontery, "Oh, to a Colonial bishop, whom you don't know."

"Nor you either, I suspect," laughed Grandon. "Just at present colonial bishops are rather scarce articles, and I have never heard of one in England with a palace, though there are a good many of them dotted about in snug livings, retaining only their lawn sleeves, either to laugh in or remind them of the dignity and the hardships of which they did not die abroad. Their temptations are of a totally different nature from those who are members of the House of Peers, and they must be treated apart; in fact, we will take them

with the Missionaries and Colonial Clergy. If there is one thing that is more urgently needed than a Missionary to the ball-room, it is a Missionary to the Missionaries; and as you have had so much experience of their operations abroad, you might become a very useful labourer in the ecclesiastical vineyard."

I need scarcely say that my heart leaped at the thought; it was a work for which I felt myself specially qualified. "Why," I have thought, "should there be a set of men who preach to others, and are never preached at themselves? Every class and condition of life has its peculiar snares and temptations, and one class is set apart to point them out surely there should be somebody to perform that kind office for them which they do for others. He who is paid to find out the mote that is in his brother's eye, and devotes his energies to its discovery, is of all men the one who requires most the kind and faithful friend to show him the beam which is in his own. I will be that friend, and charge nothing for it," thought I.

Grandon saw the flush of enthusiasm which mounted to my brow, and looked grave.

"My impulsive friend," he said, "this is a very serious subject; we must beware lest we fall into the error which we blame in others; it is one thing to see the need of the missionary, it is another to rush headlong upon the work. However, I am able to offer you an opportunity of beginning at once, for Dickiefield has given us a joint invitation to go down to-morrow to Dickiefield, to stay till Parliament opens; we shall be certain to find a nondescript heathen society in that most agreeable of country-houses, and you may possibly meet the identical Colonial Bishop at whose palace you proposed staying. The threeo'clock train lands us exactly in time for dinner. Will you come?"

"Well, I'm not sure," said I, with some hesitation, not having of course a shadow of doubt on the matter. "I'll try and get off my visit to Joseph

Evangelical Alliance, so I thought I would fasten him on to Broadbrim -they'll help to float each other." And my warm-hearted and eccentric friend, Lord Dickiefield, left me to my meditations and my toilet.

"I shall probably have to take one of these Broadbrim girls in to dinner," thought I, as I followed the rustle of their crinolines downstairs back to the drawing-room. So I ranged myself near the one with dark hair and blue eyes-I like the combination-to the great annoyance of Juggonath, who had got so near her for the same purpose that his great foot was on her dress. "I beg your pardon, Mr Juggernaut," said I, giving him a slight shove, "I think you are standing

66

Chundango, sir, if you please," said he, unconsciously making way for me, "Juggonath is the name which my poor benighted countrymen" "Juggernaut still speaking, as they say in the telegraphic reports from the House of Commons," I remarked to Lady Ursula, as I carried her off triumphantly; and the Indian's voice was lost in the hum of the general movement towards the dining-room.

I have promised not to shrink from alluding to those tender sensibilities which an ordinary mortal jealously preserves from the rough contact of his fellow-men; but I am not an ordinary mortal, and I have no hesitation in saying, that never in my life have I gone through such a distinct change of feeling in the same period as during the two hours we sat at that dinner. Deeply versed as I am in every variety of the sex, married or single, how was I to know that Lady Ursula was as little like the rest of the species as our Bombay friend was to wealthy Hindoos generally? What reason had I to suppose that Lady Broadbrim's daughter could possibly be a new type?

Having been tolerably intimate at Broadbrim House before she was out, I knew well the atmosphere which had surrounded her youth, and took it for granted that she had imbibed the family views.

"Interesting creature, John Chundango, Esq.," said I, for I thought she had looked grave at the flippancy of my last remark; "he has quite the appearance of a ' Brand.'' "A what?" said Lady Ursula, as she looked up and caught him glaring fixedly at her with his great yellow eyeballs from the other side of the table.

"Of course I don't mean of the 'whipper-in' of the Liberal party, but of one rescued from fire. I understand that his great wealth, so far from having proved a snare to him, has enabled him to join in many companies for the improvement of Bombay, and that his theological views are quite unexceptionable.

"If his conversion leads him to avoid discussing either his neighbours or their theology, Lord Frank, I think he is a person whom we may all envy."

Is that a hit at her mother or at me? thought I. At Broadbrim House, society and doctrine used to be the only topics of discussion. My fair friend here has probably had so much of it that she has gone off on another tack; perhaps she is a "still deep fast" one. I thought thus, I ran over in my mind my young lady categories, as The wholly worldly

follows: first,

and

As

The worldly holy.

In this case the distinction is very fine; but though they are bracketed together, there is an appreciable difference, which, perhaps, some day when I have time, I shall discuss.

Second, "The still deep fast."

This may seem to be a contradiction in terms; but the fact is, while the upper surface seems tranquil enough, there is a strong rapid undercurrent. The danger is, in this case, that you are very apt to go in what is called a "header.' The moment you dive you get caught by the undercurrent, and the chances are you never rise to the surface again. Third, "The rippling glancing fast."

This is less fatal, but to my mind