goods, in which there is nothing that can raise desire, but the difficulty of obtaining them. Thus men become the contrivers of their own misery, as a punishment on themselves for departing from the measures of nature. Having by an habitual reflection on these truths made them familiar, the effect is, that I, among a number of persons who have debauched their natural taste, see things in a peculiar light, which I have arrived at, not by any uncommon force of genius, or acquired knowledge, but only by unlearning the false notions instilled by custom and education. The various objects that compose the world were by nature formed to delight our senses, and as it is this alone that makes them desirable to an uncorrupted taste, a man may be said naturally to possess them, when he possesseth those enjoyments which they are fitted by nature to yield. Hence it is usual with me to consider myself as having a natural property in every object that administers pleasure to me. When I am in the country, all the fine seats near the place of my residence, and to which I have access, I regard as mine. The same I think of the groves and fields where I walk, and muse on the folly of the civil landlord in London, who has the fantastical pleasure of draining dry rent into his coffers, but is a stranger to fresh air and rural enjoyments. By these principles I am possessed of half a dozen of the finest seats in England, which in the eye of the law belong to certain of my acquaintance, who being men of business choose to live near the court. In some great families, where I choose to pass my time, a stranger would be apt to rank me with the other domestics; but in my own thoughts and natural judgment I am master of the house, and he who goes by that name is my steward, who eases me of the care of providing for myself the conveniences and pleasures of life. When I walk the streets, I use the foregoing natural maxim (viz., That he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without the enjoyment of it), to convince myself that I have a property in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight my eyes, and the imagination of those kind people who sit in them gaily attired only to please me. I have a real, and they only an imaginary pleasure, from their exterior embellishments. Upon the same principle, I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the diamond necklaces, the crosses, stars, brocades, and embroidered clothes, which I see at a play or birthnight, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those that wear them. And I look on the beaux and ladies as so many paroquets in an aviary, or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or library, that I have free access to, I think my own. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things, let who will have the keeping of them. By which maxim I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain; with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, or the envy of others. The same principles I find of great use in my private economy. As I cannot go to the price of history painting, I have purchased at easy rates several beautifully designed pieces of landscape and perspective, which are much more pleasing to a natural taste than unknown faces or Dutch gambols, though done by the best masters; my couches, beds, and window curtains are of Irish stuff, which those of that nation work very fine, and with a delightful mixture of colors. There is not a piece of china in my house; but I have glasses of all sorts, and some tinged with the finest colors, which are not the less pleasing, because they are domestic, and cheaper than foreign toys. Everything is neat, entire, and clean, and fitted to the taste of one who had rather be happy than be thought rich. Every day, numberless innocent and natural gratifications occur to me, while I behold my fellow-creatures laboring in a toilsome and absurd pursuit of trifles: one that he may be called by a particular appellation; another, that he may wear a particular ornament, which I regard as a bit of riband that has an agreeable effect on my sight, but is so far from supplying the place of merit where it is not, that it serves only to make the want of it more conspicuous. Fair weather is the joy of my soul; about noon I behold a blue sky with rapture, and receive great consolation from the rosy dashes of light which adorn the clouds of the morning and evening. When I am lost among green trees, I do not envy a great man with a great crowd at his levée. And I often lay aside thoughts of going to an opera, that I may enjoy the silent pleasure of walking by moonlight, or viewing the stars sparkle in their azure ground; which I look upon as part of my possessions, not without a secret indignation at the tastelessness of mortal men, who in their race through life overlook the real enjoyments of it. But the pleasure which naturally affects a human mind with the most lively and transporting touches I take to be the sense that we act in the eye of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness, that will crown our virtuous endeavors here with a happiness hereafter, large as our desires, and lasting as our immortal souls. This is a perpetual spring of gladness in the mind. This lessens our calamities and doubles our joys. Without this the highest state of life is insipid, and with it the lowest is a paradise. What unnatural wretches then are those who can be so stupid as to imagine a merit, in endeavoring to rob virtue of her support, and a man of his present as well as future bliss? But as I have frequently taken occasion to animadvert on that species of mortals, so I propose to repeat my animadversions on them till I see some symptoms of amendment. Complete. Number 49 of the Guardian. SIR WALTER BESANT (1838-) OMETIMES we tire of being subjugated by our intellectual superiors and coerced by those who set up their moral excel lencies in overwhelming array against us. As the schoolboy, when the woods are green with the first fresh tints of June, longs to escape from the majesty of his teacher to the company of vagrant boys whom, through the solid walls of the schoolroom and a mile of intervening fields, he can see splashing in the forbidden stream, so do we long for the delight of freedom in the company of minds of our likeness. And this longing, necessary for our growth, deserves indulgence at all times and gratification as often as possible. After we have been disciplined and instructed, taught with all necessary birching or the threat of it, "To do the thing we never like, the time ought to come in the natural order of a well-conducted universe when we can do what we like. That, when it does come, is of all others the time for reading Sir Walter Besant's essays, novels, tales, or anything else he has written. For whatever it is, whether essay, tale, or novel, we shall find it the same thing in the end-to wit: what we like! If fifteen years ago it happened that, without waiting for the suggestions of eminent critics, we read by chance either "The Golden Butterfly," or "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," there is hardly a chance but that it alone of all the novels we read that year will stand the severest test to which any book can be put― that of whether or not the reader really liked it. For what a man really likes he assimilates-and in the nature of language and of things he can assimilate nothing else. To know Besant and not to like him is impossible. Hence, when the whole generation of unlikable people is forgotten, Besant will be remembered. "From the beginning," says Charles Dudley Warner, "he was one of those who come with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner." If we ask how, we do not have far to seek for the answer. It is because he likes what we like His mind holds easily all we have tried to hold in vain. Our impressions which faded out before we could fix them, he fixed and held in trust for us, that he might give them back in due time as thought-ours and his in perfect likeness. He was born at Portsmouth, England, August 14th, 1838. After graduating from Christ College, Cambridge, he was for seven years senior professor in the Royal College at Mauritius. When he returned to London, it was with a determination to adopt literature as a profession, and although it is said that he burned his first novel because a publisher rejected it, he was successful from the beginning. His studies of French poetry and his essays on "The French Humorists" show his superiority to the style and to the literary tradition of the English Critical Review. They are unmistakably literature in their own right and not mere commentaries on it. The partnership as a novelist formed with James Rice in 1871 resulted in "Ready-Money Mortiboy," "The Golden Butterfly," and other novels which at once attained international popularity. Rice died in 1882, and in the same year appeared the first of Besant's independent novels, "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," one result of which was the building of the People's Palace in East London. In 1884 he was elected first president of the English Society of Authors, and in 1887 was again elected, serving until 1892. In 1895 he was knighted and in 1900 became a member of the Advisory Council of the World's Best Essays,-of which in his own right and as the special representative of England, he is honorary chairman. He has been active in promoting closer relations between England and America, and has taken special pains to promote the convenience and pleasure of Americans visiting London. W. V. B. WITH THE WITS OF THE "THIRTIES HE ten years of the 'Thirties are a period concerning whose literary history the ordinary reader knows next to nothing. Yet a good deal that has survived for fifty years, and promises to live longer, was accomplished in that period. Dickens, for example, began his career in the year 1837 with his "Sketches by 'Boz" and the "Pickwick Papers." Lord Lytton, then Mr. Lytton Bulwer, had already before that year published five novels, including "Paul Clifford" and "The Last Days of Pompeii." Tennyson had already issued the "Poems by Two Brothers" and "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical." Disraeli had written "The Young Duke," "Vivian Grey," and "Venetia." Browning had published "Paracelsus" and "Strafford." Marryat began in 1834. Carlyle published the "Sartor Resartus" in 1832. But one must not estimate |