were obliged to attend the more, and did attend to what was going on, on the stage-because a word lost would have been a chasm which it was impossible for them to fill up. (32) With such reflections we consoled our pride then, and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? (33) The getting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough-but there was still a law of civility to women recognized to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages― and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play afterward! (34) Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. (35) You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. (36) I am sure we saw, and heard, too, well enough then-but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty.

(37) "There was pleasure in eating strawberries before they became quite common-in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear to have them for a nice supper, a treat. (38) What treat can we have now? (39) If we were to treat ourselves now—that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. (40) It is the very little more that we allow our-. selves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share.(41) I see no harm in people making much of themselves in that sense of the word. (42) It may give them a hint how to make much of others. (43) But now-what I mean by the word-we never do make much of ourselves. (44) None but the poor can do it. (45) I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. what that which

1

(46) "I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of a year to make all meet and much ado we used to have every thirty-first night of

ELEMENT'S OF ENGLISH.

117

December to account for our exceedings-many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much-or that we had not spent so much-or that it was impossible that we should spend so much next year and still we found our slender capital decreasing but then, between ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talking of curtailing this charge and doing without that for the future, and the hope that 'youth brings, and laughing spirits, (in which you were never poor till now,) we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with lusty brimmers,' (as you used to quote it out of hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, as you called him,) we used to welcome in the coming guest." (47) Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year-no flattering promises about the new year doing better for

us.

(48) Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occa sions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. (49) I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor-hundred pounds a year. (50) "It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. (51) I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. ((52) That we had much to struggle with as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful.) (53) It strengthened and kuit our compact closer. (54) We could never have been what we have been to each other if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. (55) The resisting power-those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten-with us are long since passed away. (56) Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. (57) We must ride, where we formerly walked; live better and lie softer-and shall be wise to do so-than we had means to do in those good

old days you speak of. (58) Yet could those days return -could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a day -could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and

you

and I be young to see them-could the good old oneshilling gallery days return-they are dreams, my cousin, now-but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa, be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers -could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours -and the delicious (Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theater down beneath us, I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R— is supposed to have, to purchase it. (59) And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty, insipid, half-Madonaish chit of a lady in that very blue summer house."

End

THE SKY.

(1) It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. (2) It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. (3) There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man, is not answered by every part of her organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, if once in three days or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud were brought up over

were

adf.

the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue ad
again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and
evening mist for dew.(4) And (instead of this, there is
not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not
producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory
after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and
constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is
quite certain it is (all) done for us, and intended, for our
perpetual (5) And every

however interest or of
has this doing for him constantly. (6) The noblest scenes
of earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not
intended that man should liye always in the midst of
them, he injures them by his presence, le ceases to feel
them if he be always with them: but the sky is for all;/
bright as it is, it is not too bright nor good for human
nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for the
perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the
soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust.;

far from other sources merever placed,

"

(7) Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes
awful, never the same for two moments together; almost
human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness,
almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal
in us, is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of
blessing to what is mortal, is essential, (8) (And yet we
never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought,
but it has to do with our animal sensations: we look
but
upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to
brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of
the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the cover-
ing vault than the light and the dew which we share with
the weed and worm, (only as a succession
as a succession of meaningless
and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be
worthy of a moment) of watchfulness, or a glance
of admiration.

(9) If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity
we turn to the sky (as a last resource,) which of its phe-
nomena do we speak of? (10) One says it has been wet,

and another it has been windy, and another it has been
warm. (11) Who among the whole chattering crowd
can tell me of the forms and precipices of the chain of
tall, white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yes
terday? (12) Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came
out of the south and smote upon their sunmits until they
melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? (13)
Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight
left them last night, and the west wind blew them before
it like withered leaves? (14) All has passed unregretted
as unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for
an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extra-
ordinary; and yet it is not the broad and fierce mani-
festations of the elemental energies, not the clash of
the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest
characters of the sublime are developed (15) God is
not in the earthquake, nor, in the fire, but in the still
small voice. (16) They are but the blunt and low facul-
ties of our nature, which can only be addressed through
lampblack and lightning. (17) It is quiet and subdued
passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm,
and the perpetual that which must be sought ere it is
seen, and loved ere it is understood things which the
angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, which
are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to be
found always, yet each found but once; it is through
\these
se that th
the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught and the
blessing of beauty given. 18) These are what the artist
of highest aim must study; it is these, by the combination
of which his ideal is to be created these of which so
little notice is ordinarily taken by common observers, that
I fully believe, little as people in general are concerned
with art,
more of their ideas of sky are derived from
pictures than from reality, and that if we could examine
the conception formed in the minds of most educated
persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently be
found composed of fragments of blue and white reminis-
cences of the old masters.

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