He sent for Mr. Withair then, and I described "the swag,"

My Macintosh, my sugar-tongs, my spoons, and carpetbag;

He promised that the New Police should all their powers employ !

But never to this hour have I beheld that vulgar boy!

MORAL.

Remember, then, that when a boy I've heard my grandma tell,

BE WARN'D IN TIME BY OTHER'S HARM, AND YOU SHALL DO FULL WELL!"

Don't link yourself with vulgar folks who've got no fixed abode,

Tell lies, use naughty words, and say they "wish they may be blow'd!”

Don't take too much of double X!—and don't at night go out

To fetch your beer yourself, but make the potboy bring your stout!

And when you go to Margate next, just stop, and ring the bell,

Give my respects to Mrs. Jones, and say I'm pretty

well!

(By permission of Richard Bentley, Esq.)

RIGHT DEVELOPMENT OF MAN'S FACULTIES.

JOHN RUSKIN.

[As an Art-critic Mr. Ruskin

occupies, perhaps, the highest To point out and insist upon

place among his contemporaries.

the merits of a great master is, but too often, to awaken the

animosity of the mediocrities, and Mr. Ruskin has not been without his opponents. He is, however, an original thinker and a most graceful writer, and, apart from what he has written upon art, there are scattered throughout his numerous works very many sage remarks upon men and manners, life and character, &c., which are well deserving the thoughtful consideration of the masses outside the ranks of the professional artist. We are glad to find these brief essays have been published, by Messrs. Smith and Elder, in a very available form; viz., a neat 8vo volume entitled "Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin," and which contains the very pith and marrow of his works.

Mr. Ruskin was born in London in 1819; he was educated at Oxford, and studied the pictorial art under Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding. A pamphlet in defence of Turner and the modern English school of landscape painting was his first literary effort; it attracted great attention, and eventually swelled into his now standard work, the "Modern Painters." After a lengthened tour in Italy, Mr. Ruskin published (1849) his "Seven Lamps of Architecture," which was followed in 1851 by the "Stones of Venice." He has also contributed many papers to the "Quarterly," and other high-class periodicals.]

THE modern English mind has this much in common with that of the Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man, those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable

to the bitterer blight. And, therefore, while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies, because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labour, there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honour them in their imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is what we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the thoughtful part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best that is in them cannot manifest itself but in company with much error. Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the

first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them.

(By permission of Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co.)