gross, to what is elevated rather than to what is low, seem to me more creditable than otherwise. In our external life, observances become habits, and habits become principles. We all of us live not merely for and in ourselves, but partly for and in others. To be threatened with a fall from our sphere or special field of life, is to anticipate one of the greatest of evils, a sort of half death. It is not wonderful that men and women should make such a struggle to avoid it. But in fact efforts of this kind are connected with some of the best properties of our nature. The father eager to give his family the benefits of his own rank—the children willing to submit to any sacrifice, rather than see their parents lowered in the eyes of their equals: the whole resolvable into that sense of decency and sensibility to public esteem, without which this social scene would be a howling wilderness. No, there is surely no proper subject of merriment or of reprobation in these things.

There are in this empire two kinds of cities and towns—those which are passing through a career of mercantile prosperity, and those which rest at one point of prosperity, or are perhaps slowly falling off. It is not uncommon to hear the denizens of the parvenu town indulging in mirth at the expense of the meagre and ill-supported gentility which they observe in their ancient neighbour. Perhaps this neighbour has only a cathedral, or the county courts, to look to as a source of income: it keeps up a brave spirit, but cannot give anything better than tea-drinkings. Its better class are formal and refined in their manners, and even its poor have a clean delicate air about them, dressing much better than they eat or drink. All this is matter of mirth to the unthinking members of the more thriving community, who feel that, if they are less refined, they have at least more of the substantialities of life at their command. It seems to be a great prize to them that the genteel town is only a town of 'appearances.' But is there in this any true ground for so much self-congratulating merriment? I will admit there is, when it is established that the material is superior to the spiritual—that gross, full-feeding habits are more laudable than a taste for neat apparel—that a profuse, and often ostentatious expenditure, unregulated by taste, is better than a tasteful moderate expenditure, in which a sacrifice of immediate appetites is made for the sake of some ultimate gratification in the esteem of our fellow-creatures. It is a point of ambition with a Scottish artisan to have a suit of superfine black clothes in which to go to church and attend funerals. It may be said that this is keeping up an appearance beyond his station; but if he only saves for this appearance what a less intellectual operative of some other country would spend on excesses in meat and drink, enjoyed out of sight, is he not rather to be admired than condemned? I have known something of country towns, where there is considerable poverty within doors and in reality, while at the same time the bulk of the population make a principle of appearing as well dressed as possible; and my feeling on the subject is, that to laugh at such things is to laugh at virtue itself. The whole moral being of the individual anchors perhaps in some frail remains of well-saved clothes, or in the possession of some tolerable house handed down from some more comfortable ancestor. Take away this poor fiction from them, and their self-respect is diminished. They feel that they are regarded as falling into a lower category, and into that lower category they fall accordingly. No one, having a just sense of human frailty, would wantonly remove, or wish removed, even such slight edifications as these, but, on the contrary, rejoice to see them carefully maintained.

To sum up—It will always be proper to exercise the greatest care in discriminating between what is good and what is bad in appearances. Their being necessary to the support of morality, will not make them more amiable in those who lack the reality of goodness. Their being respectable in persons to whom loss of external grade or the failure to support it is social death, will not justify the ambitious citizen in forfeiting the real comfort of his family in an effort to live in the manner of those who possess better means. But, after the possibility of such abuses is admitted, and the fact itself deprecated, we must still keep in view that one of the essentials of a good life is a regard to Appearances.

R. C.