Le ciel veut qu'ici bas chacun ait ses fâcheux,
Et les hommes seroient sans cela trop heureux.

There is another mischance incident to human life which, though it be necessary to allude to it sometimes, is much more commonly dwelt upon by sufferers than there is any need for. It is usually called poverty, but really consists in no more than the necessity of denying oneself certain pleasant but superfluous luxuries. It would, of course, be a very fine world if every one were able to keep two pairs of carriage-horses and a good cook; but it is a great mistake for any one to suppose that, so long as he can keep a roof over his head and a coat on his back, it is a matter of the slightest interest to anybody else-anybody, that is, whose regard is worth retaining-whether his income be 500l. a year, or 5,000l., or 50,000l. It is just as ill-advised to make the smallness of your means a topic of conversation as the affluence of them. This is specially the case in this country, where we are sadly deficient in the graces of expression. It is necessary of course, sometimes, though not half so often as is supposed, to mention one's inability to incur such and such expense. You happen to speak anxiously in the presence of a friend about your wife's health.

My dear fellow,' he says earnestly, 'you ought to take that in time. Chests are not to be trifled with, especially in these days of influenza. Take her away at once, and, if you will follow my advice, let it be to take a villa there for the winter, and you'll never repent it.'

'Oh, it's all very well for you to give advice,' you reply with a mien of virtuous austerity, but I can't afford it, you know. Why, look here, my rents are down five-and-twenty or thirty per cent. (that comes off free income, mind), I have three boys at school, and then there's the governess at home,' &c. &c. If your friend is wellbred and sympathetic you will very likely be tempted to enter at some length upon your misfortunes, but none the less will he be bored with you. This is essentially a moment to

Give thy thoughts no tongue

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

It sounds heartless to say so, but men are impatient with poor acquaintances, not because of their narrow fortune, not because they apprehend appeals to their liberality, but simply because the story is ungracefully told. Plenty of people are poor and yet not bores, because they can bear and even talk of their poverty without wearying others, just as there are sweet old men with whom to be is a delight as great as the burden of being with others. It is the way the mantle is carried, not its texture or trimming, that makes the wearer look knightly or beggarly. beggarly. The truth is, we English-speaking people have not the gift to trick out harsh truth in lightsome phrase. They possess that art in Naples. Children of the sun and

sea-breeze, needy and mendacious more than the populace of most towns, they can tell the truth about their narrow means more poetically than any others. There are no milk-carts in Naples, the cows and goats are driven in each day from the country and milked at the house-doors of customers. It often happens that a poor housewife has not the needful coppers to pay for the day's supply; passa la vacca―let the cow pass on-is then the word; and passa la vacca has become a well-understood metaphor among all classes for 'I can't afford it.' Such a phrase has a reflex effect upon him who utters it; he is snapping his fingers at untoward circumstance; there is a lordly nonchalance in his tone as different as can be from the beggar's whine. Yet when begging is his occasion none understands it better than the Neapolitan.

Verbal expression-spoken intercourse between a man and his fellows-is sure to degenerate without watchful culture. The English tongue, though inferior in harmony to some continental languages, is pliant and melodious enough to bring minds into very intimate communion, but it must not be carelessly used, and it will not stand pranks being played with it. There are some people who think it engaging, or once thought it so, and have contracted a horrible habit to mispronounce words. You know by experience the vocables which they are accustomed to torture, and you wince at what is coming. Such people may be expected to talk of 'mutting for mutton,'' homblibus' for 'omnibus,' and so on. You are certain that when they leave you they will say 'addoo' for adieu, or eau reservoir for au revoir. It is a very contagious trick, this kind of linguistic grimace, and it is just as offensive to warp words, which are indeed holy things, as if one should be perpetually screwing up the nose or putting out the tongue. Condillac knew how easily the edge of speech is blunted, and declared, in seeming paradox, that by studying to speak accurately one acquired the habit of thinking rightly.

Well, we have passed in review a few who have taken service in the great army of bores; we have sorted them roughly into combatant and non-combatant ranks, noting the various uniforms by which they may be identified, and, taking account in an unprofessional way of their armament, have come to the somewhat Hibernian conclusion that the best way to encounter them is to keep out of their way altogether. It is certain you cannot meet them on equal terms: you may be as intrepid and agile as Lobengula's crack impis: the assegais of your wit may be of perfect edge and temper; but you have no armour that will protect you from the merciless fire of their Maxim guns. Study to keep out of range. How can I do that, Mr. Philosopher?' complains one; my wife is the greatest bore I know.'

Is she indeed, sir? Then you have no one but yourself to blame. It is your own fault.'

When I married her, twenty

Oh, but I assure you that is not so. years ago, she was the sweetest and brightest girl in the country, and so sympathetic.'

'Precisely; she sympathised with all your projects, listened to all your long stories, gave up all her own little schemes; and how did you requite her? You were rude to some of her old friends because they did not happen to suit you; you sulked because she said long walks round the home farm tired her; and music being her ruling passion, you told her you would not have those greasy, long-haired fiddler fellows in your house any more. Morning callers are not, as a class, a very lively lot, yet day after day you left her to receive them, while you went off to your club, or your House of Commons, or your match at Lord's. Poor thing, she played her hand to yours as long as the cards held out, but you would not respond: it is not her fault if the rubber ends in failure. What united strength you might have shown if you had bestowed a thought upon the suits in which she was strong, and been at half the pains to draw them out which she was at to support you! It is you that have made her a bore, by neglecting or repressing every independent idea she possessed. Bores are made, not born; and if a man finds his wife a bore, rely upon it she is one of his own creation.'

There remains one other variety of bore to be alluded to, and it is one that peculiarly abounds in, if indeed it be not the product of, the present day. This is the earnest-eyed, intense being whose normal mood is to ordinary human nature what Mr. Burne-Jones's dingy-lipped, jointless maidens are to the glorious women whom the Venetian painters loved to limn. It exists of both sexes, and may be known by its talk, though capable of sustained spells of studied silence. This talk is at once confident and plaintive, reproachful and consciously meek, enigmatic and surpassingly simple. On the whole, it wears a mournful, inquiring, rather languid air; it is intended to give the impression that the talker is always in quest of the hidden meaning of everyday aspects—-a kind of mental pin-hunting; but when least expected it wakes up and pours forth its soul with astonishing earnestness on such subjects as affinity, thought-reading, art (of the post-præ-Raphaelite school), and poetry (of the fleshly school). It is not easily moved to laughter, except by what it sees ludicrous in the Christian religion, and then it is not laughter of a nice sort, not such as it does one good to hear among young people. For, strange to say, this class of bores consists as yet mainly of people comparatively young. You shall find them in the best houses--at least in houses where the cookery is of the best; for, loftily as these superior beings stand towards material pleasures, there is a notable vein of sensuousness through them all.

This is, of all others, the most irredeemable kind of bore. How

*

can one put up with a creature that is continually posing as one of a select school, who never for a single instant forgets that he has a part to play, or lets you forget how immeasurably you are his inferior? What! the world is old, but is it to learn not to laugh? Is any human being helped through his troubles by others refusing to be frankly grateful for what beauty is around them and what mirth may be had? Are these yearning, discontented souls to sit like spectres at our board, shaming us out of the belief that it is good to be young, strong, healthy, happy, and hungry; that wisdom and dainty pleasure died with the invention of return-tickets; and that all that can be saved is reserved to a handful of sad-eyed, sallow-cheeked disciples of Schopenhauer? No: our course is clear: rather than suffer this posing handful of modern bores to interrupt one ray the blessed sun may shed across our path, we will accept and glory in the damaging title of Philistine; we will even run the risk of some prophet arising to revile us as 'Dead-Sea apes.'

HERBERT MAXWELL

MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Ir is at first a strange, but a decidedly pleasant, sensation when we live in the midst of a Turkish population to find how, on all ordinary subjects, their feelings are our feelings, and their thoughts our thoughts, and their motives our motives. They are doing what is right and what is wrong very much as we do. They are satisfied with themselves and ashamed of themselves just as we are.

When they speak about religion, which they do rarely, they will speak of God just as we do, as the Lord and Governor of the universe as just and righteous, yet always merciful; and they will act as if they were strongly convinced that virtue will be rewarded and vice punished either in this life or in the life to come. They have a very strict regard for truth, and will respond to our confidence by equal confidence. Are these, then, the Turks, infidels and heretics, we ask ourselves, for whom we used to pray? Is their religion false while ours is true, is their morality corrupt while ours is pure?

Their customs and social habits are no doubt different from ours, but they hardly ever become obtrusive or offensive to others. If their life under its good and its evil aspects may be taken as the result of their religion, we shall have to confess that these Turks and infidels and heretics really excel us on several very important points. The most important is that of sobriety. There is no force used to prevent drinking; and I am sorry to say that the upper classes, which everywhere abound in black sheep, are certainly no longer total abstainers. But the middle and lower classes are 'free, and yet sober.' If it is true, as a well-known English Judge declared, that nearly all our crimes can be traced back to drunkenness, how can we help regretting that our religion and our clergy should not have been able to exercise the same salutary influence on the people as the Korán and the Ulemahs! How can we help wishing that they would teach us how to produce the same results in Christendom which they have produced during the 1,273 years that their religion has existed and has quickened the most torpid and lifeless parts of the world!

There is another point on which it is more difficult for strangers to form a decided opinion, but, if I may trust my Turkish friends, no Turkish Mohammedan woman leads an openly immoral life. Certainly such sights as may be seen in many European capitals are not to be