principle. Yes, yes that's all true, but all men are not alike, and that's his way he doesn't mean to do. wrong." One of my neighbours was telling me about his minister: said he, “I like his preaching, but his manner of doing it is awful. He has no ease, no grace, no dignity: he makes wry faces, and awkward gestures, and acts all the time as if something was hurting him. But then it's his way.' Certainly it is, and a very bad way, too. It hinders and harms his usefulness: takes away from the force of the truth: pains the hearer when he ought to be attracted; and so the word, even the word of God, is made of none effect. He has been taught better, and is yet so young that he might cure himself of these disagreeable habits that have become so characteristic as to be called his. But he himself thinks they are his ways, and therefore innocent and rather great. Dr. Johnson was a bear among men and women, his manners intolerable and his speech outrageous. It was allowed and even enjoyed, on the ground that it was "his way." But that made it no more decent. And no amount of genius or learning will justify a man among men in failing to be a gentleman. All peculiarities are not to be found fault with. Far from it. Every man has a way of his own, as his face and walk and voice are unlike every other face and walk and voice. To be distinguished for virtues is itself a virtue. Dr. Cox was told that Calvin Colton said of him, "If it were not for his Coxisms, Dr. Cox would be a great man." "Yes," said Dr. Cox, "he might have been Calvin Colton." Learning, wit, goodness, every good may adorn and illustrate a man's life, and the more of such ways a man has the better for the world he lives in, his age, his country, the church, and the kingdom of God. But it sadly happens for the most part that we speak of "his way" or "my way as an excuse for something that might be better. Mr. D. comes home from his day's work, weary and hungry, and therefore (he thinks it is therefore) cross. He makes himself specially unpleasant to the little family whom he ought to brighten and bless by words of cheer and love. But "his ways" are not ways of pleasantness. And so it comes to pass that his paths are not the paths of peace. For as iron sharpeneth iron, so one cross man in a house crosses all the rest, and he gets as good as he gives. Like begets like. The savour of his presence while the mood is on him spreads a pall on the spirits of the household; coldness, petulance, and general discomfort reign. Over the evening meal he thaws and melts and the better nature flows: the children catch the returning tide and begin to play in it: the man is himself again and the house is glad. It is "his way" to be out of sorts when he comes home. And it is a bad way, a mean way, a wicked way, and he ought to repent of it and be reformed. I never heard Mr. E., a man whose company I am often in, speak well of anybody but himself. His rule is, "If you can't say something ill of a man say nothing." That's his way. He goes on the principle that if a cause is good, or a man is good, or a woman is all right, there's no need of talking about him, it, or her; but if there is a screw loose, or room for improvement, or danger of going wrong, it is best to say so, and so make it better. And on this ground he finds fault with everything. He is a pessimist. The worst side of everybody is before his eye. The spots on the sun fix his attention. No sermon ever satisfied his mind or escaped his criticism. The newspaper he enjoys in exact proportion to the number of mistakes he finds in it. Society is out of joint, in his judgment. Nobody knows how to do anything as it ought to be done. If they would only let him run things for a while, he would show them how to do it. He is disgusted generally, and takes pains to say so. This is his way. And it is just about the most disagreeable way a man can have. He forgets that other people are annoyed by his incessant grumbling: that most people love to take cheerful views of things, to look on the bright side, to hope for the best, to find good even in the midst of evil, and to try to improve what can be mended, and not to fret about what can't be helped. Mr. E. often comes into my office and wants me to "come down on" this man and that society and cause; and he thinks I am timid and time-serving because I will not let him swing his whip over the backs of all the saints and reform them as he thinks into necessary righteousHe is the most unsanctified friend I have, and yet he thinks all the rest wrong and himself about right. I have no fear of offending him by saying this, for his self-righteousness renders him all unconscious of his sinful infirmity, and the first time I see him he will thank me "for giving it to those everlasting fault-finders." ness. "Mark the perfect man." Would that we might have a chance. There was one. No guile was ever found in His mouth. He was meek and lowly in heart, and the lion also of His tribe. He loved those who hated Him. He gave His life for others. His way was like the going forth of the sun, and all the nations are blest in Him. His friends never had to make an apology for Him. His judge could find no fault in Him. His ways were not offensive to any good people, and He was lifted up to draw all men unto Him. So, my friend, bear in mind when you say, in defence of a habit, "It's my way,” or, “It's his way," the strong presumption is,-it's a bad way. IRENEUS PRIME. The Metropolis of New England. THERE is no city in America which Englishmen are so anxious to see as Boston. Arriving late in the evening, I thought it had here and there an English look-certain rather narrow and winding streets, with buildings of no architectural pretension, reminding me of commercial towns in our own country. But next morning a French aspect seemed predominant in the stores, private residences, large hotels and magnificent offices built within the space which had been devastated by recent conflagrations. Looking at the enormous heights of these structures-the staircases within which are as "streets set on end"-I could have fancied myself in Paris. Looking out of a drawing-room window, near the Charles River, as my eyes rested on the opposite bank where Cambridge is built; on the broad, calm waters lying between; on the sharp outlines of the architecture on both sides; on the boats floating between the city and its rival suburb; on the blueness of the flood and the azure of the sky; flushed to the West by the splendours of a gorgeous sunset; I called to mind the Grand Canal of Venice, in one of those bright, clear views which Canaletti delighted to paint. Yet the American character of Boston, after all, is distinctly visible in its wide commercial streets hung across with manifold advertisements, like festive flags; in the new handsome churches of different denominations, Congregational, Baptist, Methodist and Episcopalian; and in tramways where broad cars glide along crowded with passengers, the entrance at the rear with its steps and platforms being covered with people, like bees clustering at the inlet of a hive. Then there is the charming hamlet of Brooklyn studded with cozy brightcoloured villas, ensconced in pretty flower-gardens and shrubberies, and the magnificent drive by the Charles River amidst park-like scenery for miles and miles, wrapping the hedges of the city in folds of wood and verdure; and the neighbourhood of Cambridge, with the quaint red buildings of Harvard University overshadowed by lines of trees, with handsome villas belonging to professors and distinguished persons. Surpassing all, is the cemetery of Auburn, where bush and flower-bordered alleys lead the visitor from point to point; here a lake, there a fountain, here a dell, there a knoll, here a group of marble tombs and there a mortuary chapel adorned by the statues of great men. Beyond all these attractions, there is a charm about Boston Common which has a fast hold on the memory from its green expanse, its shady avenues, its grand old elms, its lake and gardens, the Granary-buryingground, the great hall and the buildings clustering round the vast area, including churches and other public edifices, together with the abodes of Boston celebrities. No place in America can compete with Boston in "old land-marks." In spite of merciless spoliation there linger about the city, a good many relics and traces of by-gone names and incidents, for Boston is the mother City of New England and the Northern States. Plymouth, though older, has never attained to more than the rank of a village or town. It is interesting to push our thoughts backward to the commencement of the century and to think of the New England Metropolis as it was then. "A pyre of shapeless structures crowds the spot One little spark the funeral pile may fire, Fires at "The numerous chaises we met drawn by one horse," says a lady, in 1795, "the driver being placed on a low seat in front, appeared to me very singular." There were no sidewalks except near the old South. The streets were paved with pebbles, and, except when driven on one side by carts and carriages, everybody walked in the middle, where the path was smoothest. Lamps were not common till towards the end of the last century. Yet a French Abbé, visiting Boston in 1781, spoke of its regular buildings intermingled with steeples as giving it more the appearance of an old Continental town than of a recent colony. The wood houses he described as regular, “with frames well joined, and the outside covered with slight, thinly planed boards, overlapping each other somewhat like the tiles on European roofs." paint was used it was of a greyish tint. Where Let us go back to the close of the seventeenth century. The house in which Franklin was born, in 1703, as seen in old woodcuts, for the house is gone, was of the kind described by the Abbé. There had, at that time, begun for some years, a division of the town into eight wards. The first paving was laid down in fragments before 1700; but in 1704, £100 was voted for the purpose, as the select men should "judge most needful, having particular regard to the highway nigh old Mrs. Goddard's house." The first newspaper was established in 1690. Watchmen crying the hour and the state of the weather went their nightly rounds, and a bell at nine o'clock invited the inhabitants to bed. Their number, in 1717, was reckoned at twelve thousand. To go further back. In 1663, most of the streets had been paved with pebbles. The buildings were described as handsome, joining one to the other as in London; in the high street, towards the Common, there were even at that time some stone edifices, and though the town was not divided into parishes, it had three places of worship. The walls of the dwelling-houses were wood, the roofs thatched, but in the composition of chimneys clay was introduced. If anybody paid attention to the wainscoting or ornamenting of his habitation it was thought a piece of extravagance. The whole appearance of things in the first quarter of the seventeenth century was utterly different from what it is now. Land has been recovered from the water, and other changes in the ground on which the city stands have been effected, so as to obliterate many of the old natural features. At first, Boston could boast of only a few cabins on the eastern declivity at the foot of a hill which fronted the sea. At high water its primitive area of about |