by something supposed to be less rococo. These remarks apply mainly to the songs which are sung in the places whither the greedy and blasé million resort for recreation. Fortunately, the doFortunately, the domestic hearth is not abolished, and nature and genuine feeling, whether in song, in literature, or in conversation, have still a circle in which they are always welcome, and from which it will take an infinitely greater amount of ungodly cynicism than exists among us to banish them entirely.

Whether or not it be in conscious or unconscious subserviency to the cynical spirit of our time, the fact is certain, that nearly all the first-rate, and all the second and third rate, novelists and romancers their name is "Legion," and of the publishing of their books there is no end-take infinitely greater pains with their wicked than with their good characters. The good men and women are mostly depicted as if they were fools, or little better; whereas the villains, male or female, are all clever, agreeable, and beautiful- the men handsome as Antinous, the ladies "fair ones, with golden locks," angelic to the eye of the observer, but diabolical in thought and action. Even Mr Dickens fails to make his good people interesting, and must take lower rank as a true artist than would be his due, if, like Shakespeare or Scott, he could portray the noble and the lofty in human character with as much grace and facility as he portrays the ridiculous. The same causes lie at the root of the disfavour into which poetry has fallen. Poetry of the highest order deals with the noblest themes, and appeals to the highest intellects. But the highest intellects of our day go in for practical work, and have no time to study poetry. The poet who writes for men writes for a scanty audience, but the poet who

writes for women has a larger number of purchasers and admirers. Shakespeare, in our day, would have to write novels or leading articles. The stage would have no room for him. The two most popular poets in England and America, Tennyson and Longfellow, are almost feminine in their genius, and principally find among women the public that appreciates them. Men who think that "love" is "spooniness," and the acquisition of wealth the "be all and end all" of life and effort, are not likely to admire poetry, or even to know what the word signifies.

Of course it is not to be expected, when the doctrine of nil admirari is so generally applied to everything but money, and the people who are successful in making it, that the reviewers-daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly — will do other than take their tone from society. Pope said of the critics of his day, that none of them "admired superior sense, or doubted his own," adding elsewhere

"All fools have still an itching to deride,

And fain would be upon the laughing side."

And in our day, as in Pope's, the art of praising is very difficult; whereas the art of finding fault is not only exceedingly easy, but hits the public taste. Candide, in Voltaire's inimitable story, is much struck with the wisdom that must have been possessed by the great Pococurante, inasmuch as he approved of nothing. "Quel homme superieur!" he exclaims; Frien ne peut lui plaire!" The critics write as if the public were exactly of the school of Pococurante and the opinion of Candide, and endeavour to build up a reputation for the daily or weekly Snarlers and Revilers for which they write, by dint of depreciation of everybody,

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whose book, poem, picture, statue, musical composition, or public speech, they may have occasion to discuss. Formerly there were cliques of writers, members of what are now called "Mutual Admiration Societies," whose maxim was

"Nul n'aura de l'esprit

Hors nous, et nos amis,"

and who generally managed to chant each other's praises, when they published a history, a novel, a poem, or an essay. But each of the weekly Snarlers deprives the maxim of its last three words, and reads it, "Nul n'aura de l'esprit, hors nous," thus leaving friendship as well as admiration entirely out of its reviewing department. Whether modern criticism, as practised in the daily and weekly press, is injurious or not to the cause of literature, is a question that we shall not now discuss, though much might be said upon it. It is sufficient to note that criticism has lost much of its old power to make or mar literary reputations; and that such power as remains is in the hands of reviewers who have the command of time to form their opinions, and of space to justify them by argument and illustration. It is chiefly in the weekly press that the smaller critics have a chance to disport themselves. It is amusing, though sometimes irritating to those who are behind the scenes, to notice the patronising air with which a weekly critic of the cynical school sometimes treats a book of travels, of history, or of science. Desiring, above all things, to show how much cleverer and better informed he is than the author, and how much better he could have "done" the book had he been so minded, he proceeds to make an epitome of the facts in such a manner as to lead the reader to suppose that only a portion of these facts is to be found in the volume, and that the rest is

all derived from the vast repertory of the critic's experience, though his knowledge of the subject may be wholly derived from the book which he depreciates. It has been said by Emerson "that we all read a book as if we were superior to its writer; and that a slip of a boy, aged fourteen, perusing Shakespeare in a corner, sits in judgment upon Shakespeare." Our modern critics are such very superior beings in their own estimation, as to throw Emerson's boy completely into the shade. If that "boy" proceeded to print his opinions of Shakespeare, he would not be much more presumptuous, though possibly he might be much more amusing.

Cynicism, in its social and literary development, is, as we have seen, of three kinds: first, that which springs from disappointment and sorrow, like that of Lear and Timon, and in a minor degree like that of Larochefoucauld; second, that which springs from innate illnature and coarseness of mind, like that of Diogenes, Rabelais, Swift, and to some extent Voltaire; and third, that which flows from the political and social corruption of a too materialistic and money-worshipping age. The last is the worst of the three, for it makes general that which in the other cases was particular and accidental. There is no remedy for individual cynicism, and it is scarcely to be wished that there were, for in its degree it is not altogether useless to society. It is necessary that some one should be found to tell the world disagreeable truths about itself; and if the disagreeable truths be properly flavoured with wit and humour, they yield a pleasure not alone to the utterer but to the hearer. Besides, if the truth be too disagreeable, we are all ready enough to absolve ourselves from its application. But when cynicism pervades all society, as it did in Rome under some of the Cæsars,

and as it did in France in the reigns of Louis XIII., XIV., and XV., and spreads like a moral gangrene until all wholesomeness of thought is destroyed or perverted, a catastrophe is near at hand; and the necessary social regeneration-if accomplished at all, which it never was in Rome will have to be wrought by fire and sword, by wars and revolutions. France went through the ordeal and came out bravely. The manhood and womanhood of the nation were aroused and did their duty. But the old disease has reappeared in the day of commercial prosperity, of luxury, and of selfishness. The symptoms of it among ourselves are only too many. It will fare ill with us among the nations if the time shall come-may Heaven avert it!— when we shall brook national insult rather than incur the cost of resenting it, and if the national honour shall be held of less account than the derangement of commerce, the partial stoppage of industry, or an increase of the property-tax, or any

other inconvenience, sacrifice, and suffering which may be necessary for its vindication. Even warsrighteously undertaken - are not wholly evil. As the storms of thunder and lightning clear the physical, so political convulsions may help to clear the moral atmosphere of the selfishness, the cynicism, and the vice that are the invariable results of a civilisation that is based too exclusively upon the worship of wealth. When gentlemen speak "slang," and ladies are not much ashamed of anything but poverty, when nothing so surely excites laughter as a fling at the old-fashioned virtues, it is time to say with Cowley

"Come the eleventh plague rather than this should be,

Come rather sink us in the sea!
Come pestilence and mow us down,
Come God's sword rather than our own!
Let rather Roman come again,
Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane!
In all the bonds we ever bore,
We groaned, we sighed, we wept, we
never blushed before."

I HAD made a most unfortunate book on the "Oaks." Hammersley told me, Bicknall told me, Sackville Jervas told me they all told me-Glaucus was sure to win. They had had it from Locksley, who got it from Spooner, who knew a fellow who was constantly about with one of the stablemen. Then Argus said it in the 'Post,' and "Happy go Lucky" repeated it in Bell's Life,' and another in the 'Sport' said, "I borrowed a 'fiver' yesterday to lay it on Glaucus, and if any reader of this will kindly trust me with another, I pledge myself to send it in the same direction."

How was I then to doubt that I was on a safe thing? In fact, if I showed the slightest distrust about it, all the fellows in the "Rag" began to chaff me about being a "downy cove" and an "artful dodger," accusing me of trying to raise the odds against my horse, and palpably insinuating that if not an out-and-out "leg," I was something not very remote from it.

I am not going over the miserable three weeks before the race, a time I now look back upon as a man might regard the delirium of a fever. I awoke every morning to go through a day of agonising alternations of hope and fear. Every man I met had something to tell me that was sure to set my heart a throbbing. "I say, Considine," would whisper one,"get all you can on it; Glaucus has it sure. Rig the Market was bled yesterday, and Highlander's leg is thicker than ever." "Back out of your horse, Bob," said another. "They don't mean him to win; he's only running for Pole Cat. It's the mare they stand on." "Ain't you on Glaucus?" cried a third. "Take a railway ticket then for Taganrog,

I'd advise you, for he'll not be placed. Cut your lucky, old fellow, at once, and have your death inserted in the 'Times.'" "Glaucus will do well," muttered a stranger in my hearing, if the "course is heavy; dirty weather and deep ground will be seven pounds in his favour." Oh! didn't I watch the barometer after that? Was there in all England a farmer who prayed for rain as earnestly and eagerly as I did?

I cannot dwell on this terrible period. The eventful day came, and though the rain came down in torrents, and no man living had ever seen the "Oaks" run in such weather, a small wiry mare called Mrs Perkins won-Glaucus nowhere! nor I either! I sold out my troop in the "Roans," and with the price, and all I could scrape together, even to the sale of some Indian shawls and trumpery with which I had speculated on winning the affections of my aunt Dinah, a rich old damsel in North Wales, I paid all my debts on the turf, and found myself the next morning, as I awoke, with thirty-four pounds and some odd silver for all my fortune in the world.

I remember how I strolled down to the "Rag" to breakfast, affecting to think nothing of it-how I chaffed the fellows about their losses, and when some one asked me if I hadn't had it "hot and hot," I only laughed and said some commonplace about "better luck another time," and tossed off a liqueur-glass of brandy to keep me from fainting.

If, however, I escaped commiseration, it was only to incur something far worse; for seeing how easily I took my losses, the report immediately got about that I had made a splendid thing of it, that half the money won on Mrs Perkins

was in my pocket, that I had been betting through agents — they actually named the men; in a word, that I was one of the sliest, deepest, craftiest fellows in existence; and I even once overheard an encomium on my acuteness finishing off with "The Indian fellows are more wideawake than any of us." This was too much for me. I started for the Continent the day after. I went over to Ostend, where I found scores of men who had been on the wrong side of the post, but who, unlike me, had not met their engagements. They were jolly rascals enough, who took their bad luck philosophically. They breakfasted on devilled mackerel and champagne, and bantered each other in the most jovial fashion over their respective books, and laughingly told over all the "robberies" they had meditated, but broke down in.

I found a few more of the same stamp at Brussels, and as I ascended the Rhine, I met here and there a stray levanter taking the waters at Ems, or waiting for some one. Your levanter has always a friend coming to join him; but wherever I chanced upon them, they were always well dressed and well-to-do, living at the best hotels of the place, and evidently denying themselves nothing that the locality afforded.

I own that I marvelled much and deeply over this strange mysterious fact, that men whom in their palmy days I had often seen anxious and fretful and careworn, should become, by the simple incident of being irretrievably ruined, not only the pleasantest, cheeriest, jauntiest of mankind, but, what was still stranger, to all seeming the easiest on the score of expense, abounding in money, and living with a disregard to cost that was positively miraculous.

I wish I could tell my reader that I have sounded the depth of this mystery, and that I have read this enigma; but I own with shame that the puzzle remains to me what

it was on the first day I encountered it. I could see plainly enough there was a sort of freemasonry amongst these men ; and though so far as being ruined entitled me to the being made free of the Guild, they made no advances towards admitting me, but left me out with the rest of the profane world to wonder at and admire them. Over and over again I was on the point of asking one of them to confide his secret to me, but I could not pluck up courage for the effort. Indeed, the question involved such a direct indelicacy, that I could not compass it; for by what right or on what pretext could I ask a man how he could afford saddle-horses, a box at the opera, Steinberger and Chateau La Rose at breakfast, and a score of other indulgences not less costly nor less engaging?

Perhaps I shall arrive at the knowledge some day, was my sole consolation. Perhaps a man only attains to it after being frequently ruined-being, so to say, acclimatised to misfortune. If so, I must only wait and have patience.

At all events I could not very long continue to frequent such costly companionship. Champagne suppers and whist at "pound points" did not exactly chime in with the contents of my purse, and so I stole away from Wiesbaden on the morning of a picnic, my contribution to which had already nearly left me aground.

I wandered on to Schaffhausen, I scarcely can say why, except some hidden instinct had suggested to me that the falls of the Rhine might be an appropriate drop-scene to the luckless drama of my life. I was utterly purposeless, without aim or object. I only knew that when my last few francs were spent, my rambles must cease like a clock that has run down; but what was to happen to me after I could not imagine, nor, shall I own, did the thought press heavily on me. The world evidently had no want of me. I occupied no place in its business,