Integrity and Ability Illumine the Path of Life.

It is a very high eminence to attain when a man's integrity and ability throw such a light about him that they illumine not alone the path he treads in life, but shine brightly on those who follow his track, making an atmosphere in which all around participate. To this height had Dunn arrived, and he stood the confessed representative of those virtues Englishmen like to honor, and that character they boast to believe national, the man of successful industry. The fewer the adventitious advantages he derived from fortune, the greater and more worthy did he appear. He was no aristocrat, propped and bolstered by grand relatives. He had no Most Noble or Right Honorable connections to push him. He was not even gifted with those qualities that win popular favor, he had none of those graces of easy cordiality that others possess, he was not insinuating in address, nor ready in speech. They who described him called him an awkward, bashful man, always struggling against his own ignorance of society, and only sustained by a proud consciousness that whispered the "sterling stuff that was inside"- qualities which appeal to large audiences, and are intelligible to the many. Ay, there was indeed his grand secret. Genius wounds deeply, talent and ability offend widely, but the man of mere commonplace faculties, using common gifts with common opportunities, trading rather upon negative than upon positive properties, succeeding because he is not this, that, and t'other, plodding along the causeway of life steadily and unobtrusively, seen by all, watched and noticed in every successive stage of his upward progress, so that each may say, "I remember him a barefooted boy, running errands in the street, a poor clerk at forty pounds a year, I knew him when he lived in such an alley, up so many pairs of stairs!" Strange enough, the world likes all

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this; there is a smack of self-gratulation in it that seems to say, "If I liked it, I could have done as well as he."

Success in life won, these men rise into another atmosphere, and acquire another appreciation. They are then used to point the moral of that pleasant fallacy we are all so fond of repeating to each other, when we assert, amongst the blessings of our glorious Constitution, that there is no dignity too great, no station too high, for the Englishman who combines industry and integrity with zeal and perseverance. Shame on us, that we dare to call fallacy that which great Lord Chancellors and Chief Justices have verified from their own confessions; nay, we have even heard a Lord Mayor declare that he was, once upon a time, like that "poor" publican! The moral of it all is, that with regard to the Davenport Dunns of this world, we pity them in their first struggles, we are proud of them in their last successes, and we are about as much right in the one sentiment as in the

other.

The world, the great world of man,-is marvellously identical with the small ingredient of humanity of whose aggregate it consists. It has moods of generosity, distrust, liberality, narrowness, candor, and suspicion,-its fevers of noble impulse, and its cold fits of petty meanness, its high moments of selfdevotion, and its dark hours of persecution and hate. Men are judged differently in different ages, just as in every-day life we hear a different opinion from the same individual, when crossed by the cares of the morning and seated in all the voluptuous repose of an after-dinner abandonnement.

DAVENPORT DUNN.

Estrangement from the world often imparts to the stories of the past, or even to the characters of fiction, a degree of interest which, by those engaged in the actual work of life, is only accorded to their friends or relatives; and thus, to this young girl in her isolation, such names as Raleigh and Cavendishsuch characters as Cromwell, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Napo

The PiЯuring Power of Fancy.

leon-stood forth before her in all the attributes of well-known individuals. To have so far soared above the ordinary accidents of life as to live in an atmosphere above all other men,-to have seen the world and its ways from an eminence that gave wider scope to vision and more play to speculation,-to have meditated over the destinies of mankind from the height of a station that gave control over their actions, seemed so glorious a privilege that the blemishes and even the crimes of men so gifted were merged in the greatness of the mighty task they had imposed upon themselves; and thus was it that she claimed for these an exemption from the judgments that had visited less distinguished wrong-doers most heavily. "How can I, or such as I am, pronounce upon one like this man? What knowledge have I of the conflict waged within his deep intelligence? How can I fathom the ocean of his thoughts, or even guess at the difficulties that have opposed, the doubts that have beset him? I can but vaguely fashion to myself the end and object of his journey; how, then, shall I criticise the road by which he travels, the halts he makes, the devious turnings and windings he seems to fall into?" In such plausibilities she merged every scruple as to those she had deified in her own mind. "Their ways are not our ways," said she; "their natures are as little our natures.' DAVENPORT DUNN.

Most men who have attained to high stations from small beginnings, have so conformed to the exigencies of each new change in life as to carry but little of what they

started with to their position of eminence; grad- The Dead Past. ually assimilating to the circumstances around

them as they went, they flung the past behind

them, only occupied with those qualities which should fit them for the future. DAVENPORT Dunn.

There is often a remarkable fitness-may we call it a "preestablished harmony"?-between men and the circumstances of their age, and this has led to the opinion that it is by the events

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themselves the agents are developed; we incline to think differently, as the appearance of both together is rather in obedience to some overruling edict of Providence, which has alike provided the work and the workmen. It would be a shallow reading of history to imagine Cromwell the child of the Revolution, or Napoleon as the accident of the battle of the DAVENPORT DUNN.

The Hour and the Man.

sections.

Honor.

Our Children.

There's great promise in a fellow when he can be a scamp and a man of honor. When dissipations do not degrade and excesses do not corrupt a man, there is a grand nature ever beneath.

Good heavens! how little do we know about our children's hearts! How far astray are we as to the natures that have grown up beside us, imbibing, as we thought, our hopes, our wishes, and our prejudices! We awake some day to discover that some other influence has crept in to undo our teachings, and that the fidelity on which we would have staked our lives has changed allegiance. SIR BROOK FOSSBROOKE.

Up Like a Rocket-Down Like a Stick.

Vain fellows get quizzed for their vanity, and selfish men laughed at for their selfishness, and close men for their avarice; but there is a combination of vanity, egotism, small craftiness, and self-preservation in certain fellows that is totally repugnant to all companionship. Their lives are a series of petty successes, not owing to any superior ability or greater boldness of daring, but to a studious outlook for small opportunities. They are ever alive to know the "right man," to be invited to the "right house," to say the "right thing." Never linked with whatever is in disgrace or misfortune, they are always found backing the winning horse, if not riding him. Such men as these, so long as the world goes well with them, and events turn out fortu

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nately, are regarded simply as sharp, shrewd fellows, with a keen eye to their own interests. When, however, the weight of any misfortune comes, when the time arrives that they have to bear up against the hard pressure of life, these fellows come forth in their true colors, swindlers and cheats. SIR BROOK FOSSBROOKE.

The Doctor's
Personality.

Have you ever noticed the effect that a doctor's presence produces in the society of those who usually consult him,—the reserve, the awkwardness, the constraint,the apologetic tone for this or that little indiscretion, the sitting in the draught or the extra glass of sherry? So is it, but in a far stronger degree, when an old man of the world like myself comes back amongst those he formerly lived with,-one who knew all their past history, how they succeeded here, how they failed there,— what led the great man of fashion to finish his days in a colony, and why the Court beauty married a bishop. Ah sir, we are the physicians who have all these secrets in our keeping. It is ours to know, what sorrow is covered by that smile, how that merry laugh has but smothered the sigh of a heavy heart. It is only when a man has lived to my age, with an unfailing memory, too, that he knows the real hollowness of life,-all the combinations falsified, all the hopes blighted,—the clever fellows that have turned out failures, or worse than failures,—the lovely women that have made shipwreck through their beauty. It is not only, however, that he knows this, but he knows how craft and cunning have won where ability and frankness have lost,how intrigue and trick have done better than genius and integrity. With all this knowledge, sir, in their heads, and stout hearts within them, such men as myself have their utility in life. They are a sort of walking conscience that cannot be ignored. The railroad millionaire talks less boastfully before him who knew him as an errandboy; the grande dame is less superciliously insolent in the presence of one who remembered her in a very different character. SIR BROOK FOSSBROOKE.

The Mirror

of the Past.