do wish to be able to speak several languages. I read the other day what a great man said—that every new language is an added Dower. Now, I know no language but my native English, and that I suspect is not first-rate."

Why, Polly, you know French! Mademoiselle herself says you do."

"I know it after a fashion; but it strikes me that there is something wrong about it. In the first place Mademoiselle, though she's a good soul, is not a lady; I found that out years ago. What I want is the French of ' society,' not mere citizen's French, answering to the English which the shopkeepers and the people generally speak here. I want to speak French with the same clear, pure, delicate accent that I observe in the English of the Miss Balaams and Lady Constance. In short I want to go to Paris, and to Paris I must go."

"It will be shockingly dull without you, Polly. I wish I could go with you."

"I wish you could; but that is out of the question, for the present certainly. I could not have gone when I was eleven years old; indeed, I am not sure that I shall get to go now, for of course mother has a perfect right to hinder me if she thinks fit. And she will find a hundred reasons for keeping me at home. She don't like the French, I know. She fancies they are just everything they ought not to be, and she believes that everybody who goes to France for their education turns Roman Catholic. And I could not say which mother dreads most-Dissent or Romanism! Now 1 know nothing of either, but I mean to know both. They may be as bad as bad, or as good as good-I can't tell, for I can only go upon what I have been told. I suppose there are all sorts in all religions. Any way, I don't intend to take my religion on trust. I told mother so the other day, when she scolded me for going into the Methodist chapel at Broomfield. Poor mother! I am afraid I am a sad trouble to her! But then I shall never be anything else if I stop here without a change. If I go away I know I shall be fonder of her, and we shall respect each other a great deal more if we are not shut up together day by day, and bound to disagree, because-it's very odd, but we certainly have not two ideas in common."

"If you go when will it be, Polly? And how will you get to know about the schools in Paris?"

"I will soon find out all that is necessary when once my going is decided on. Let me see : it's August now-I should like to go next month, or early in October. I could soon be ready; indeed I've been getting ready in a small way all the summer. I have mended up all my clothes that are worth taking, and I shall only want a couple of new frocks and a proper travelling dress. Now we must go home;

and remember, Oliver, all this, as well as Mark's affair, is strictly private and confidential! And while I am away mind you learn all you can. I'll leave you a lot of my best books. And keep friends with Dr. Smallwood, for he means well by you. And let nothing daunt you, whatever happens. Make up your mind to be a man of mark, and you will be one; only it will be very up-hill work. And I shall come back again in a year or two, even though I don't stay, for I will never live here again if I can help it."

(To be continued.)

PRETTY LOOKS IN PLAIN FACES.

"He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart."-KING JOHN.

THOSE who dwell in small provincial cities, or country towns, are, to a large extent, deprived of certain advantages enjoyed by Londoners; and among these advantages is one which seldom failed to give me both amusement and instruction when I was able to enjoy it. I mean omnibus riding. Perhaps some of my readers have hitherto looked upon such an occupation as a very prosaic and rather tiresome affair, and are a good deal puzzled to know how any sensible person (as the writer presumably is) can speak of it as an advantage at all, still less as an advantage combining amusement and instruction. But, to the lover and student of human nature, there is no college like an omnibus, and no library like the two long rows of faces that fill the ponderous vehicle. Among many suggestive sights I have seen in the omnibus was one which was always especially interesting. I have seen very plain, even ugly, people get into omnibuses, and yet, before they have got out, I have learned to look upon them as positively beautiful. A plain, rather repulsivelooking woman enters with a little child-perhaps an infant-in her arms. You wonder for a moment how any man could fall in love with such a heavy, uninteresting face, when, as the mother looks down upon the little, fragile form nestling in her arms, there comes over the face such a gleam and glow of beauty, that all harshness and repulsiveness vanish away, and you see instantly that there is such tenderness in that motherly heart that if it shone forth in the old courting days it would quite account for a good man's love. In a similar way, I have seen the puckered, anxious face of a busy man of the world suddenly light up with a kindly gladness, all the hardness dissolving into a smile of real beauty, as a friend stepped into the vehicle and seated himself on the opposite

bench. I once saw a man asleep in an omnibus, and really felt ashamed of my kind, as I marked the "human face divine" fade into a mere mass of flabby flesh. But then the soul had sunk below the horizon, and it was not astonishing to find nothing left but the bare, blank night. When the sun of intelligence rose once more, and you could see the man again, there was beauty at once in the glow of the features and the glance of the eye.

I think there is something suggestive, and pleasantly suggestive, in these facial phenomena. As we go through the world we gradually find out that there is a great deal in human nature which is not always to be seen on the surface. Things which are by no means prepossessing are discovered to have a beauty and worth which is all their own. There is "a soul of goodness in things evil." "There is honour among thieves." "To every cloud a silver lining." After all our cynics have said-and cynics are generally unconsciously fond of hearing their own bark-people are a great deal better than they (the cynics) allow. Perhaps we are too apt to think that men are, as we say, "all of a piece." As a rule, I don't think they are. Most of us are conscious of some good qualities, even though we are also aware of many faults. Aud we are sometimes surprised at the sudden gleam of virtue in a man whom we had utterly condemned. There are very few unmitigated villains in the world. Even Macbeth, murderer and usurper though he was, has, in Shakespeare's portraiture, some elements of greatness and dignity. Utterly as we condemn his foul deed, no one can refuse a momentary pity for the wretched, weary man, who was fitted by nature for a better destiny, as we hear him bitterly cry:

66

My way of life

Is fallen into the sear and yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but in their stead

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not."

How wonderfully has Shakespeare, who seems to have held a master-key to human hearts, portrayed the mingled good and evil in such a man as Wolsey; and how wisely does he, after having disgusted us with the Cardinal's pride, and pomp, and luxury, win from us a meed of pity, as we see the long-hidden nobility of soul shine out amid misfortune.

"Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition,

By that sin fell the angels.

Love thyself last, cherish those hearts that hate thee.
Corruption wins not more than honesty ;

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace

To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not."

It is especially worthy of notice that most men have some virtues which in respect of quality, or strength, or combination, are unlike the virtues of their neighbours, so that the world cannot afford to lose the virtues even of bad men. And it is also worthy of notice that men's virtues lie to a large extent in the same direction as their vices, which is indeed equivalent to saying that vice is very often the exaggerated and ungoverned activity of some quality which, properly controlled, would become a virtue. One man has a hasty temper, but then he has an enthusiastic and eager soul, and his passion is often the natural heat of feeling which ought to be an excellence and not a defect. Another has a phlegmatic nature, but then he is wonderfully patient and persevering; another is reserved and proud, but then he has a very faithful heart; and even in the selfish man there is generally some secret warmth of affection, some undeveloped capacity of sacrifice which, once awakened, may kill the selfishness of his nature. Though there is a truth, and an important one in the common judgment, that men are "all of a piece,” we must not drive the truth over the borders into error. Human nature is a very complex thing, and is being developed under very complex influences. Men are made up of many faculties and habits, and it is a very pleasant and wholesome truth that as there are pretty looks in plain faces, so there are good things even in bad

men.

But the suggestion seems to go further still. Have not some of my readers sometimes noticed a cottage by the wayside in some country place, or some small, mean-looking house in a narrow court, and mentally contrasted it, much to its detriment, with the more comfortable and imposing dwelling which they honour as their home; and yet, on entering our miserable cottage, an air of comfort and cleanliness, of warmth and homely snugness, has well nigh induced them to declare that they will dwell in just such a cottage to the end of their days?

"The wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily,

The clean hearth-stane, the thriftie wifie's smile,"

give a wonderful charm to the "lonely cot." Or it may be,

"The white-washed wall, the nicely-sanded floor,

The varnished clock that ticks behind the door,"

which give the house its air of comfort; but, whatever it may be, there can be no doubt that even in the cottage face, plain as it is, there is often something very pretty and attractive. Does not this apply to almost all external conditions? There was a time when it was fashionable to write poetic praises of a simple life, and people who languished over ditties about the charms of rustic simplicity took very good care to enjoy them only in imagination.

The pages of our poets are full of such praises of poverty. I wonder what our modern agricultural labourers would say to Phineas Fletcher's "Happiness of the Shepherd's Life "

"Thrice, oh thrice happy, shepherd's life and state,
When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!
His cottage low, and safely humble gate

Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns.

"His certain life that never can deceive him,

Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him,
With coolest shades till noon-tide rage is spent.

"His life is neither toss'd in bois'trous seas

Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;

Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please."

Who believes in Gray's Elegy in these days, or has any respect for those of whom he sings ?

"Far from the maddening crowds' ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life

They kept the even tenor of their way."

Who agrees with Oliver Goldsmith ?—

"To me more dear, congenial to my heart,

One native charm, than all the gloss of art."

Who sees any charm in the poverty which he exalts, and certainly knew how to emulate ?—

"Though poor the peasant's hut, his feast though small,

He sees his lot the little lot of all;

And calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.

*

"At night returning, all his labour sped,

He sits him down, the monarch of a shed;

Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys

His children's looks that brighten at the blaze."

There is a great deal of mere sentiment in all this; but there is some truth also. The honester tone of the times has changed a good deal of this kind of thing; but at the same time has made a little too much of the value of wealth and luxury. No one now is ashamed of acknowledging his ambition to get rich; indeed, people seem often to think it the highest form of virtue, and the consequence is that the advantages of poverty are not sufficiently appreciated. Now it is quite clear that, however prosperous the world becomes, there will never be a time when everybody is rich, and it may be well, therefore, to be reminded of the old-fashioned and almost forgotten doctrine of contentment, which is not only a Christian duty, but a virtue recommended by the soundest social