the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless, slug-like creatures, young larvæ, perhaps more hor rible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon thi compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs and some of them have a good many-rush round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for under ground retreats from the region poisoned by sun shine. Next year you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissfu consciousness pulsate through their glorified being.

-The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very familiar way,-at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it necessary to repress,-that I was coming it rather strong on the butterflies.

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, the butterfly as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature borne down and bleached of all its colour by it. The shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms

kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a newborn humanity. Then shall beauty-Divinity taking outlines and color-light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted.

You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population that dwells under it.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of one of his pamphlets. "I think I have not been attacked enough for it," he said;-" attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds."

--If a fellow attacked my opinions in print

would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?

Don't know what that means ?-Well, I will tel you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, and the fools know it.

No, but I often read what they say about other people. There are about a dozen phrases which all come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody knows. If you get one, you get the whole lot.

What are they?—Oh, that depends a good deal on atitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isothermal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, celebrated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black. hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization.

What do I think determines the set of phrases a man gets?-Well, I should say a set of influences something like these:-1st. Relationships, political

religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oysters, in the form of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criti cism. I believe in the school, the college, and the clergy; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public opinion—which means commonly the opinion of half a dozen of the critical gentry-is the following Major proposition. Oysters au naturel. Minor propo· sition. The same "scalloped." Conclusion. That

(here insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, brilliant,-and the rest.

No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has ɔysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of hospitalities; one gives a "spread" on linen, and the other on paper, that is all. Don't you think you and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical line? I am sure I couldn't resist the softening influences of hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you know,—I dine so well at our own table, [our landlady looked radiant,] and the company is s pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the boarders]; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such additions as that article of food requires to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jingling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us,-not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest among the

virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would never be a critic, because I know I could not always tell it. I might write a criticism of a book that happened to please me; that is another matter.

—Listen, Benjamin Franklin! This is for you, and such others of tender age as you may tell it to.

When we are as yet small children, long before the time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless ivory, and on each is written in letters of goldTRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds that things, which roll so easily are very apt to roll into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way when he most wants them, while he always knows where to find the others, which stay where they are left. Thus he learns thus we learn to drop the streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to