rule. If he has any real merit of any kind, men's esteem will be increased, if he is supposed not to be poor. If he borrows, or practises fraud of any kind, such as making debts which he cannot pay, he will lose all esteem, even if he were the wisest man in the world. In this matter opinion is severe and just.

To conclude, if you are rich, you will be respected, perhaps esteemed, provided you live a decent life. You will not be expected to show great virtues; but you must not have great and notorious vices. If you are not rich, but merely supposed to be, or to be at your ease, you will do very well, and you will receive a certain amount of external respect in the addresses on your letters, the touching of hats, and even dinners occasionally and invitations to festive meetings. I forgot to say that you must subscribe to something sometimes; but pray be careful that you lay your gifts out well. A little well given, in the proper time and place, will do more for you than much careless giving. If you have merit, if you have a few friends who acknowledge it, if the public who know you not except by something that you have done, shall have a good opinion of you, that may be some comfort; for though a man must not

seek good opinion as the direct object, he cannot, he ought not to undervalue it, if it follows upon honest and useful labour. Perhaps you may ask, How I am to know that I have merit? and may I not have merit, and yet not all the esteem that I deserve or desire? I answer that your question proves that you do not understand the matter. If you have real merit, you will know it, and if you have not real merit, you may think that you have it and you will desire the esteem, which you do not deserve. It is a case past my cure, and I believe it is nearly incurable; and that is all that I can say. Real merit of necessity, by virtue of the notion itself, implies modesty and a consciousness of itself; and a man's consciousness of his own integrity, his honest purpose, his labor to attain it, and some success in the attempt is a better reward than the opinion of others. If it were not, tell me what would be the use of that which we call Conscience.

man.

OF STATUES.

HE reason why I have a chapter of Statues is this. I am writing of human life and what must and what may happen to

As certain as it is that out of a large number of people some one or more will be hanged, so certain is it that out of some number greater or less some one or more after death will have a statue. It is in the nature of things that statues should be made. They were made more than two thousand years ago, and I believe the business has never stopped, for when people could not get good statues, they were content with bad, as we are now.

At present a bronze statue costs a good round sum, and yet I am told that the money allowed to the artist is generally insufficient to enable him to produce an excellent work; and this may be true, for I do not think so meanly of our men as to sup

pose that they have yet done their best. The time may come when we shall find out some way of making statues of cheaper materials than metal. Perhaps we shall make them of paper. That will be a glorious time. We shall all have our statues, living or dead; and we shall not be plagued with these periodical demands for subscriptions to statues of men whom we never saw, do not care for and are glad to forget. If I might give a word of advice to the men now living, who look forward to the honor, if it is an honor, of being set up in bronze in the highways or in marble in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's ; if I might advise, I would say, leave a legacy in your will for your own statue. It will save much trouble and people will think better of you, when gone, if you cost them nothing. As to their laughing at you for looking after your own statue, be not afraid of that. There is good classical example for providing by will for your own monument; and if a man does really expect or fear that he must after death stand in public to be gazed at, rained on, or perchance spit on, it will be the best thing to empower his executor to look after this matter, to pay the artist well and to escape from the taste of a committee. The Romans when they set up a public

you are

statue did it in this fashion in Cicero's time. Servius Sulpicius, a great jurist and an honest man, died on a mission in the camp near Mutina. His friend Cicero pronounced his panegyric in the senate and moved that a bronze statue of Servius should be placed on the Rostra. The consuls were empowered to instruct the city quaestors, the lords of the treasury, to make a contract for the statue and to pay the artist. There was no sum fixed in the terms of Cicero's motion. Both the money and the choice of the artist appear to have been left to the quaestors, and it is very likely that when they had found their man, they let him have his own way, and did not higgle about statue or pedestal, as our statue jobbers sometimes do.

As in all things so in this there are degrees. Some men have been imbronzed during their life time, have actually seen themselves bestriding horses, brazen men on brazen horses. But this is rare. Others must wait till they are dead, but they may enjoy the statue by anticipation, and be comforted by the prospect of their immortality in bronze or marble; if in no other way. Some men must be content with a marble bust, and they may get that in their life time either by hiring a man to make it or by the kind attention of friends. In fact they