all along rather from calculation than | house-not enough, had his income from from impulsiveness, from head not heart. the bank failed, to enable him to enjoy He may have been following Paley's coun- the comforts which age, infirmity, and sel, who recommends us to cultivate our confirmed habits had made necessary to better feelings by alms-giving if only with him in this. a view to our own self-complacency. Or The robbery which took place a few he may have been simply more fortunate years ago seemed likely at first to expose in his experimental benevolence than the him to a trial which he had never had to nobleman who, on being advised to try encounter. It served, on the contrary, doing a little good by way of a new plea- to show the generous confidence and atsure, replied that he had tried it already tachment of his friends. So soon as the and found no pleasure in it. To what news of the robbery got abroad, one nodoes this analysis of motive à la Roche- bleman placed £10,000, a second £30,000, foucauld amount after all? Surely, to and a third (a merchant prince) £100,000 seek and find happiness in doing good, is at his disposal. He bore this robbery, to be good. Admitting that the mere which might have led to very serious voluptuary, and the general benefactor, consequences with great equanimity, and have each the same end, self-still the said it had done him good, by the chastdifference in the means employed will con-ening effect of adversity, and by bringing stitute a sufficiently wide and marked dis- out the good qualities of his friends. It tinction between the two. When we was after repeating Pope's line: have calmly computed how much good might be done daily, how much happiness diffused, without the sacrifice of a wish or caprice, without the interruption of a habit, by thousands of the richer classes who never turn aside to aid the needy or elevate the lowly — when we have done this, we shall then be in a fitting frame of mind for estimating the superiority of a man who had arrived at just conclusions regarding the real uses of superfluous wealth, and acted on them. "Bare the mean heart that beats beneath a star," that he one day mentioned, by way of qualification, the munificence and promptitude with which noble as well as simple had hurried to aid and sympathize with' him. The best accessible specimens of his epistolary style will be found in the eighth. volume of "Moore's Memoirs," edited by Lord John Russell, who says that Rogers "Sir," said Adams, "my definition of himself selected those of his letters which charity is, a generous disposition to relieve were to be published. They are evidentthe distressed." "There is something in ly written with the scrupulous care which that definition," answered Mr. Peter marks everything he undertook; and we Pounce, "which I like well enough; it is will answer for it that his love-letters, as you say, a disposition, and does not so should they ever come to light, will bear much consist in the act as in the disposi- internal evidence of having been composed tion to do it." There are plenty of Peter on a diametrically opposite principle to Pounces in our society. What we want that recommended by Rousseau, who says are the Allworthys, or the worldly phil- that the writer should begin without osophers, on whose tomb-stones may be knowing what he is going to say and end read without provoking a smile of irony: without knowing what he has said. Three "What I spent, I had; what I gave, I or four of Rogers's letters relate to "Cohave; what I saved, I lost." We com- lumbus." He writes to consult Moore as mend this epitaph to the attention of the to which of sundry very ordinary verses millionnaire who has been accused of is the best, telling him, on one occasion, wishing to invest the accumulations of that half of a particular line has received more than half a century in one big bank- the sanction of Sharp and Mackintosh, note and carry it out of the world with and anxiously inquiring to be informed him. When (see "Table Talk," p. 51,) Lord Erskine heard that somebody had died worth $200,000, he observed, "Well, that's a very pretty sum to begin the next world with." Rogers had reserved for the next world just one-eighth of that sum, exclusive of the contents of his if he agreed with them. Never, probably, since the Roman Senate was summoned to consult about the boiling of a turbot, was the importance of the subject more ludicrously contrasted with the solemnity of the reference. One of the most pleasing of these com positions is that (p. 95) in which he gives | an account of the family of a brother who had retired from the bank with an ample fortune, and was really living the life of rural enjoyment which the poet af fected to think the acme of felicity. In another (p. 79) he avows a confirmed dislike to letter-writing. The notes which he wrote in the common commerce of the world are models of conciseness and caligraphy. If ever handwriting corresponded with and betrayed character, it was his-neat, clear, and yet not devoid of elegance. "Will you breakfast with me to-morrow? S. R.," was his pithy invitation to a celebrated wit and beauty. "Won't I? H, D.," was the congenial re sponse. There is no good likeness of him. The fact is, he would never allow one to be taken. He preferred that by Lawrence, because it was the most flattering. There is one designed and drawn on stone by an amateur artist (Lady Morgan's niece, Mrs. Geale) in 1838, which would have been excellent, had she ventured to give him his actual age at the time. Danton's caricature bust is hardly a caricature, and for that very reason he held it in horror. One day Moore was indiscreet or malicious enough to say that a fresh stock had been sent over, and that he had seen one in a shop window. "It is pleasant news," said Rogers; "and pleasant to be told of it by a friend." The accident wich deprived him of the power of locomotion was the severest of trials to a man of his active habits and still extraordinary strength; for he delighted in walking, and thought his health depended upon the exercise he took in this way. Not long before, he had boasted of having had a breakfast party at homethen gone to a wedding breakfast, where he returned thanks for the bridesmaidsthen to Chiswick, where he was presented to an imperial highness-dined out-gone to the Opera-looked in at a ball, and walked home-all within the compass of fourteen hours. "When I first saw him after his fall," writes the lady already quoted, "I found him lying on his bed, which was drawn near the bedroom window, that he might look upon the Park. Taking my hand, he kissed it, and I felt a tear drop on it, and that was all the complaint or regret that he ever expressed. Never did he allude to it to me, nor, I believe, to any one." One day, between six and seven, when he was just going to dinner, hearing a knock at the door, he desired his faithful and attached servant, Edmund, to say not at home. "Who was it?" he inquired. E. "Colonel sir." R." And who is Colonel ?" E. "The gentleman who upset you, sir, and caused your accident.” R. "It is an agreeable recollection, did he come to refresh it?" E. "O, sir, he calls very often to inquire for you." R. "Does he? then if he calls again, don't let him in, and don't tell me of it." The gallant officer was (at worst) the innocent cause of the mishap; for as his brougham was passing at an ordinary pace, Rogers, who was about to cross, suddenly checked himself, lost his balance, and fell with his hip against the curb-stone. When some one was speaking of a fine old man before Swift, he exclaimed, in a spirit of melancholy foreboding, "There's no such thing as a fine old man; if either his head or heart had been worth anything, they would have worn him out long ago." Till near ninety, Rogers was a striking exception to this rule. He then gradually dropped into that state, mental and bodily, which raises a reasonable doubt whether prolonged life be a blessing or a curse: "Omni Membrorum damno major dementia, quæ nec Nomnia sevorum, nec vultus agnoscit amicum, Cum queis præteritâ cœnavit nocte, nec illos Quos genuit, quos eduxit." Although his impressions of long past events were as fresh as ever, he forgot the names of his relations and oldest friends whilst they were sitting with him, and told the same stories to the same people two or three times over in the same interview. But there were frequent glimpses of intellect in all its original brightness, of tenderness, of refinement, and of grace. "Once driving out with him," says a female correspondent, "I asked him after a lady whom he could not recollect. He pulled the check string, and appealed to his servant. 'Do I know lady M-? The reply was, "Yes sir.' This was a painful moment to us both. Taking my hand, he said, 'Never mind, my dear, I am not yet reduced to stop the carriage and ask if I know you.”” To another female friend who was driving out with him shortly after, he said, "Whenever you are angry with one you love, think that the dear one might die | trative. that moment. Your anger will vanish at once." During the last four or five years he was constantly expatiating on the advantage of marriage. "It was a proud, a blessed privilege," he would repeat, "to be the means, under Providence of clothing an immortal soul in clay." He introduced and pursued this theme without respect to persons, and not unfrequently recommended matrimony to married people who would have lent a readier ear to a proposal of separation or divorce. In explanation of the rumors circulated from time to time in his younger days respecting his own attempts to confirm precept by example, he said, "that whenever his name had been coupled with that of a single lady, he had thought it his duty to give out that he had been refused." On his regretting that he had not married, because then he should have had a nice woman to care for him, it was suggested,-"How do you know she would not have cared for somebody else?"--an awkward doubt at all times. His own version of his nearest approximation to the nuptial tie was, that, when a young man, he admired and sedulously sought the society of the most beautiful girl he then, and still thought he had ever seen. At the end of the London season, at a ball, she said: "I go to-morrow to Worthing. Are you coming there?" He did not go. Some months afterwards, being at Ranelagh, he saw the attention of every one drawn towards a large party that had just entered, in the centre of which was a lady on the arm of her husband. Stepping forward to see this wonderful beauty, he found it was his love. She merely said: "You never came to Worthing." In the case of most men over whom the grave had closed so recently, we should have refrained from such minuteness of personal detail, however curious or illus But the veil had been removed from the private life of Rogers long be fore we approached the sanctuary; and we are not responsible for the profanation, if it be one. His habits, his mode of life, his predilections, his aversions, his caustic sayings, his benevolent actions, have been treated like common property as far back as the living generation can remember. They have been discussed in all circles, and have occasionally appeared (with varying degrees of accuracy) in print. Now that monarchs have left off changing their shirts at crowded levées, we should be puzzled to name any contemporary celebrity who, whether he liked it or not, had been so much or so constantly before the public as Rogers. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. He spoke without reserve to the first comer, and the chance visitor (haply some "penciller by the way") was admitted to his intimacy as unwarily as the tried friend. This argued a rare degree of conscious rectitude and honorable self-reliance; and in estimating his character, in balancing the final account of his merits and demerits, too much stress cannot be laid on the searching nature of the ordeal he has undergone. Choose out the wisest, brightest, noblest of mankind, and how many of them could bear to be thus pursued into the little corners of their lives?" all their faults observed, set in a note-book, learned and conned by rote ?" Most assuredly, if the general scope and tendency of their conduct be no worse, they may, one and all-to borrow the impressive language of Erskine "walk through the shadow of death, with all their faults about them, with as much cheerfulness as in the common path of life." But if great virtues may not atone for small frailties, or kind deeds for unkind words, "they must call upon the mountains to cover them, for which of them can present, for Omniscient examination, a pure, unspotted, and faultless course ?” From Dickens's Household Words. THE OPAL AN old street, which we shall name the Rue des Truands, in old Paris, in times not old to us. To call it a street is a little more than the form of speech; it is rather a narrow, black, squalid passage that divides the tortuous rows of high, dark, rickety, bulgy, sickly houses, irregularly pierced with windows that breathe an atmosphere, the nature of which may well account for the unwholesomeness of their complexions. The place has evidently a guilty consciousness of its vileness, but not the least intention to repent and reform; for it crouches there in its filthy obscurity, shrinking from the light of heaven, and spurning the sunshine, well knowing what his least ray would bring forth of shame and loathsomeness and ignoble squalor. There is no flag-way, and the pavement's rough irregularities are nearly concealed by the smooth, liquid, black mud that not winter or summer ever dries there-that has spattered the houses for so many, many years that their fronts, for six or seven feet high, are cased with it-that when thunder-showers come, streams, yet more diluted, in murky torrents into their low doorways. It was always cold there, and the atmosphere is always charged with a deadly damp and nausea. On the ground-floors of the houses are some shops that have no aspect of containing any thing saleable, or of being the scenes where commerce of any kind is carried on; for you always seem to see the same faded, untempting goods, of whatever nature or description they be, in the dark mud-splashed windows. Lean, green, undersized children, some looking precociously and viciously intelligent, others stolid in their grimy misery, hang about the doorways or listlessly dabble in the mire; and towards evening, which falls early there, the rats come out and forage, little disturbed by their vicinity. The street is very quiet in general, RING. except on fête days, about some of the low cabarets, from whence there then proceed fierce oaths and savage roars, which are supposed to be songs of mirth and jollity; for even joy there wears a mask of vice and debasement and ferocity. Narrow, creaking staircases, that never saw a gleam of daylight, lead upward to filthy, dingy rooms; some, lined with the wooden panelling put up at the period of their building, and now so smoke-dried and dirt-stained as to bear no trace of its former aspect or color; others hung, with shabby paper, no less undistinguishable. All have innumerable closets in the walls, suggestive of concealment and mystery, and not a few secret staircases and strange, unexplained recesses behind chimneys and in the thickness of the walls. Here and there, an attempt has been made, long ago-probably by some new-comer to this God-forgotten place to rear a pot of mignonette or wall-flower, or those parasites of the poor, scarlet-runner and nasturtium, on the sill of the dim windows; but the poor things yellowed and sickened and dropped their leaves, and nothing remained but a brown, dry stem, or a few stiff, dead tendrils, clinging round the stick or stretched twine placed to support them. On a summer evening, when the right side of Paris had not yet lost the last beams of the sun that never fell upon the wrong, a woman turned from the gay quarter into the Rue des Truands. She was dressed in dark garments and closely veiled, so that nothing but her height was clearly distinguishable; and she walked rapidly, and with the anxious air of one who is nervously conscious of being in a false position. She stopped at last before a closed door, examined the aspect of the house, consulted a little paper she held in her hand, and then knocked softly. The door opened instantly, and closed on her as she entered, leaving her in total darkness. "Fear nothing, madame," said the shrill voice of the invisible porter; "give me your hand, and I will guide you safely." The visitor held out her hand in the dark, and felt it taken by a hand so cold, so lean, so extraordinarily small, that she could hardly forbear shuddering at the strange, unnatural contact. Through a room or passage, dark and earthly-smelling as a tomb, up a steep, winding staircase, through a long, creaking corridor, still in darkness, now and then faintly and momentarily broken by some invisible borrowed light, the guide and the guest proceeded together in silence, till at the end of the passage they stopped, and the former knocked at the door. Being bidden to enter, they did so; and for the first time, the visitor looking down to about the level of her own waist, saw her conductor, a dwarf humpback of the female sex, but of an age perfectly undistinguishable, who after peering upward with a quick, strange, sidelong glance that seemed to pierce her veil, noiselessly withdrew and left her standing before the room's inhabitant. He was an old man, of a pale leaden complexion, with quick, keen gray eyes, that peered from beneath low, shaggy black brows, while his hair and long thick beard were white. He sat at a table, covered with venerable-looking books, yellow vellum manuscripts, and various instruments of singular aspect, on which a shaded lamp threw a partial gleam. Signing to the lady with a lean, long hand to advance to a seat near him, he watched her movements with a look of close and quiet scrutiny and in profound silence, till she had taken the chair. "Excuse me, madame," he said, "but you must raise your veil. I can not speak to you without seeing your face." She hesitated for a second, then suddenly flung it up, and boldly and steadily met his eye. The action and the face accorded both were proud, passionate, resolute-even defiant; the latter, though not in its first youth, handsome. Nothing of all this was lost on the old man; neither did he fail to perceive that the hand that threw back the veil was small and white, and that a jewel flashed from it in the lamplight. "I come," the visitor said, "for a turn of your art." He bowed, without removing his eyes from her face. His silent scrutiny seemed to irritate and annoy her. "Can you, and are you disposed to aid me? Fear nothing as to the extent and security of your reward;" and she laid a heavy purse on the table. He appeared not to notice the movement as he said quietly: 66 When you have stated the case to me, madame, I shall be better able to answer your question." It was evident that there was a powerful struggle in the mind of the visitor; for her color rose, her nostril dilated, and when, after a pause, she spoke again, her voice was thicker and her words abrupt and hurried. "I love, and would be loved again, which I am not. I would purchase lovethat one man's love at-any price." "At any price to him, or to you?" "Is he heart-free or does he love another ?" "He loves another-his affianced wife." "Hum! Complicated." "You have nothing more encouraging than that to say to me?" The old man smiled a quiet, slightly contemptuous smile. Patience, belle dame; this is not an affair of yes or no in the first five minutes. I must consider it." She was obviously annoyed. "How long a time do you require for consideration?" "I require until the day after to-morrow, at this same hour." "And you will tell me nothing till then? You do not know what it is to me to come to this place. If you doubt my possessing the means to reward your services, here is only a small portion of what I have both the power and the will to bestow, in the event of your aiding me effectually;" and she held the purse out to him. He waved it back quietly. "Keep your money for the present. You have on your hand a jewel, which, if you choose to confide it to me, shall, in the event of my deciding to accept this task, be made the instrument of accomplishing your wishes, and shall, in any case, be restored to you in safety." His eye was fixed on a ring she wore |