first part of a sentence from the page, and then literary custom and a good education in platitudes (but she did not call them so) gave the latter part to her resting eyes. Thus she made shift, knowing what her authors were likely to say; and she was glad of the habit of her life. We must hope that she did her novelists no injustice, but that her commonplaces closed duly with theirs, and that little or nothing was lost or dropped between the writer and the reader. Their alliance must have been a peaceful one. But let us think how different will be the lot of the old lady whose eyesight is failing at a time -it must be only a few years hence if the fashion continues-when old ladies will have the "paradox" instead of the platitude at their fingers' ends. It will be almost horrible; the uneasy grown easier than anything else in the world, and the ignorant knowing all about it. There must always be twaddle, or there always will be; but twaddle has lost its innocence, and is grown twice dismal.

The Outlook.

Where the unexpected-the real unexpected-keeps its quality is in the page of Charles Lamb. His delicate ambushes really hide; his gentle sorties surprise. Nay, he is so justified that here, in the writings of an author who can write no more, whose every turn is actually known to us, the quality of surprise is still present, albeit gone from the phrases of the play of to-day which we never saw, or the essay we never read, before. That quality is the quality of freshness, and-here is a "paradox" worth having-this old thing has the freshness and this new thing has it not.

Another paradox worth thinking of is the divine parodox that salt can lose its savor. It and its savor are one; and it was long a puzzle what salt could be, how it would exist, when its saltness was gone. We know now. For we know the unexpected which is the expected. We know that which is fit to be trodden underfoot of

men.

Alice Meynell.

The future Cicero, who composes a modern "De Amicitia," when he has exhausted the common stock of platitudes on the subject of friendship will propound, no doubt, an interesting conundrum. What, he will ask, in his slightly pedantic manner, is the quantitative limit of friendship? How many friends is it possible for a man to have, so that the relation between him and them still maintains its true character and does not decline into mere acquaintance? And then he will point out in his luminous way that the puzzle cannot be solved by arithmetic. The answer will vary with the nature of the individual man. One will have a genius for friendship and be able to

bring a multitude within the circle of his life; another will be a man of rare and intimate attachments. Friendship in the one case may be as real a thing as in the other, provided that each gives and receives what is due to it. For our philosopher will share the modern suspicion of those people who swim through life on a current of thin popularity. We all know the man against whom no one has a word to say. The whole world speaks well of him, for he speaks well of all the world; but there is no great fervor of conviction in the compliments of either. He will never "crab" an acquaintance; he will find excuses for everybody; his manare kindly and agreeable, with

ners

just a suspicion of detachment in them. He inspires no enmities, but, on the other hand, he awakens no very real attachments. His easy good nature does harm to no one, but he is too negative, too colorless, to be of great service to anybody. The majority of mankind do lip-service to his merits, but in their heart of hearts they condemn him. For the world at the back of its head has a tenderness for the "rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntary." It prefers a man to have bold preferences and to declare them boldly, to dislike as well as to like, and to show that next to the love of his friends he courts the hatred of those whom he despises. It is an unregenerate spirit, but it is in accordance with human nature, which has an old liking for positives. This is the reason why a number of epithets which appear commendatory on the surface are generally looked on as debased currency. "Worthy," "honest," "good-natured,” a "good sort,"-there is something dim and shallow about the beings they de scribe. They seem to imply an absence of other virtues, so that the sum total of character is insignificant. "Worthy" has come to denote a kind of bourgeois dulness of mind. "Honest" in common parlance suggests that a man comes, like Bunyan's Old Honest, from the "Town of Stupidity which lieth four leagues beyond the City of Destruction." A "good sort" means too often, as Lady Louisa Stuart said, "a good person of a bad sort." And the same significance has come to attach to the man who is reported to have a thousand friends and not an enemy. This prejudice against indiscriminate friendship is amply justified when we consider the meaning of that muchabused term. Bacon, it will be remembered, makes a distinction between "friends" and "followers." A man may have as many as he pleases of the latter, for he gives them nothing but a

little easy patronage. They are his inferiors, not his equals, and friendship is only for the latter. For it means that two people are desperately interested in each other's well-being. According

to the old saying of the Greeks, "a friend is a second self." This second self must be prepared to deal faithfully with the other-"there is no such Remedy against Flattery of a Man's Selfe as the Liberty of a Friend" -to sacrifice its own interests on occasion, to identify its fortunes with those of its countertype. Bacon has summed up in famous words the character of such an alliance. "After these two Noble Fruits of Friendship (Peace in the Affections and Support of the Judgment) followeth the last Fruit, which is like the Pomegranat, full of many kernels; I meane Aid, and Bearing a Part in all Actions and Occasions." Every man who is capable of friendship knows in his heart that the gibe of the French maximist, "There is something not entirely displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends," is ludicrously untrue. It derives its point solely from the loose usage which in ordinary life treats acquaintance and friendship as identical, and uses the latter word for both. But if friendship be this rare and perfect understanding, which the world admits it to be, it can never be indiscriminate. The capacity of man is limited, and since friendship involves giving and taking, it clearly admits of no indefinite extension. Some men, to be sure, have a genius for it. Quite sincerely and truthfully they can say that they have many friends, each of whom is a vital part of their life. Men of superabundant vitality and warm affections may reasonably make the claim, and their fellows will admit it. But the ordinary person has no vitality to spare. If his friendship has a large area, we may be sure that it is spread very thin. For most men only a few friendships are

possible, and the world instinctively recognizes the fact, and looks with suspicion upon the friend of everybody. For what value can there be in the friendship of such a one? A weak toleration means either intellectual stupidity or a cold heart. "If you call me your friend," it may be argued, “and extend the same friendship to some one I despise, you pay me a poor compliment. And if I find that half the world shares in the inestimable privilege, I am entitled to rate it pretty low. For you are neither saint nor genius, and your good humor is due neither to Christian charity nor to surpassing wisdom. Either you are singularly stupid or singularly lacking in taste, and in either case you do not know what friendship means."

This prejudice against a weak amiability is so solidly founded in reason that it may be taken as part of the rough philosophy of life. But, like all sound instincts, it can be exaggerated; and, carried too far, it becomes a very unpleasing compound of cynicism and irritable jealousy. In his "Flight of the Duchess" Browning has drawn a picture of another Sir Willoughby Patterne, pompous, jealous, with a crazy feudal sense of possession. The unhappy Duchess, who looks out on the world with frank and kindly eyes, is crushed by his narrow proprietorship, and most properly goes off to gipsyland. But Browning never forgot that there The Spectator.

were two sides to all human quarrels, and in "My Last Duchess" he allowed the Duke a different and less ignoble Duke, to be sure to state his case. He complains of a friendliness so universal and unthinking that it left no place for the affection he desired:

She had

A heart-how shall I say?-too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace-all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men,— good! but thanked

Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked My gift of

name

a

nine-hundred-year-old

With anybody's gift.

No doubt the Duke was a fool and a prig, but-it is hard to avoid the admission that he had something to say for himself. And the old complaint, which comes most commonly from the lover, is not less in reason in the mouth of the friend.

and he told Mother that the rod at home and the cane at school had done all the training he had ever wanted.

But Mother said she felt that she would be neglecting her duty to the whole of the rising generation in the

country if she drew her hand back from the plough.

When Dad asked her what she meant by the plough, Mother said she did not of course mean a real plough, but only that she had told Lady Montfort that she thought the idea of the lectures was charming, and that she would open her drawing-room with pleasure. "Lady Montfort says he is quite a Dear Man, and that we shall all be sure to like him," Mother said.

So the Dear Man came-and so did heaps and heaps of ladies, and they ate piles of afternoon tea. Cecil said that was to show sympathy with childhood, and to come down to the child's level. He said that after we had heard the lectures.

The worst of Cecil is that he is frightfully honorable. It is awful trying to prove to him that the things we both want to do are all right. And of course we wanted to hear what the Dear Man had to say, especially as he isn't a bit rotten, and has the biggest nose and the twinkliest eyes; besides, we heard Mother telling Dad that the lectures were entirely unsuited for children.

That was what made us think of the conservatory, and the place behind the fernery, where there used to be a fountain, but the tap has gone wrong.

If you crouch down, the palms hide you, and you can hear any one talking in the drawing-room.

Cecil argued for an hour about it, but I never give in, and at last I thought of telling him that Dad often said that two were better than one, and that if we knew how we were to be trained, we could bend ourselves and help Mother so much better. In our house Mother does the training, and Dad makes remarks.

Then I enticed Cecil by telling him to take his note-book, and that Mother would be delighted afterwards to find that he had written it down, for

she had only been groaning just before about how she forgot every lecture she ever went to.

So we went, and it was all rather startling. I am going to underline what Cecil put down. He writes rather large, so he missed heaps, and I had to listen to the in-between bits.

"Sit at the feet of the child. Place the child in the midst!"

Fancy, and they wouldn't even have us in the room! I nudged Cecil and was just going to say something when he licked his pencil and told me not to interrupt him.

"Curiosity-a precious gift! Do not smother it. Do not let it worry you. The child is reaching out to know. The child cannot help itself."

There, again, of course we were right to listen. Cecil looked up at me with joy in his big eyes, and knew at last that I was really right.

"There are two kinds of children— Motors and Sensors. Motor children are those who act first and think afterwards, and Sensors are those who think first and act afterwards-sometimes."

We thought that was rather clever of him. He had got Cecil and me as good as a snapshot.

I adore playing motor-cars bouncing down the rock path, but Cecil doesn't. He says a real motor would never go that way to the pond, but round by the drive.

"The Motor child is covered with cuts and lumps and bruises. The Sensor child seldom falls."

That was as right as Cecil's sums always are. I counted six things on me this morning in the bath-one a lovely green and purple mark as big as a pincushion. (Cecil says that's no comparison, because a pincushion might be any size of course I meant the one in my room.)

Certainly Cecil never gets a scratch. Dad says Cecil will be a judge, and that I shall be a circus girl.

"It is upon the Motor child that the everlasting 'Don't falls."

"Cecil," I said, "that man must be a wizard!" I poked my head through the palms, but I could only see some boots. "Do not crush the Motor child by 'don'ting' him. The world is full of ‘don'ters'— that is what is the matter with it. Rather feel that in your Motor child you have a mighty force."

I told this afterwards to Nurse while she was doing my hair-of course without telling her what had put the idea into my head-and all she said

was:

"Don't twist about so, Miss Helen!" Then I told Guest, the gardener, and he said, "Well, Miss, so long as you don't run over my flower beds, and don't jump over the new shrubs, and don't leave the hot-house doors open, and don't-"

I told him he was a "don'ter," and ran off.

"That precious gift, the imagination! Make-believe! Your children live in a beautiful world of their own! Do not seek to drag them downwards to our poor adult level!"

We wondered what an adult level was. Cecil thought it might be the level crossing down below the park that we were not to be dragged down to-as if we weren't always dying to run across the line.

Then we heard Mother's voice. "But suppose you had a boy and girl who lived in such a 'beautiful world' of their own that they employed themselves one early morning in digging up earthworks on the lawn and insisting, against all argument, that the Boers were in the park, and that they were defending the house?"

Cecil and me looked at each other. They had put us to bed at five that day, and took away our pocket-money

Punch.

for a fortnight to pay for the gardener's time for putting the earthworks back.

"Surely the precious gift of imagination which your children possess, Mrs. Lister, is worth your beautiful lawn ten times over! And consider the evidence of loyalty to yourselves, the instinct of home defence"

Wasn't he a Dear Man? I would like to have rushed to kiss him.

"But one can't have one's lawns digged up," went on Mother, in a mournful little voice she has sometimes. "We should lose the gardener in a week."

"Perhaps it might have been better to enter into the spirit of the occasion, and tell them that you had authentic word during the night that the Boers would approach by the back of the house.

"Then they would have digged up the vegetable garden," Mother said, "and the under-gardeners would have left in a body."

We did not hear the end of that, because the door opened and we knew that the tea was coming, and Mother had particularly mentioned that as it was holiday time we were to come in and make ourselves useful.

So we scrambled up, and round by the side door, and so properly into the drawing-room.

The minute we appeared they all stopped talking, and we knew why. "Please don't mind us," said Cecil, very politely.

"My dear boy, where have you been?" laughed Mother.

And when we looked down, Cecil's knees and my skirts were awful, with crouching in the fernery.

"There is a plot on foot to destroy every mother in the country!" said Cecil, in his slow, clear voice. "Helen and I have been searching in the cellars."