Commons, that rather than witness the direful calamity (in deprecation of which he had delivered an impassioned and masterly address), he would plunge a dagger in his heart; at the same time drawing one from under his waistcoat, and exhibiting it to the fear-surprised eyes of honourable gentlemen; he hit upon a magnificent specimen of the practical and the demonstrative.

His friend, the all-admired Fox, figures more pleasantly and wittily in an equally well-known story, the tendency of which is similar. When interrupted, in an allusion to a gentleman whose name will immediately transpire, by loud cries of "Name, name!"

“No,” he said, "I must decline mentioning him, though to do it is as easy as to say Jack Robinson."

But both these examples we must consider to be eclipsed by the admirable faculty for practical illustration once strikingly displayed, very strikingly as will be seen, by an eminent pamphleteer now dead, who in his younger days was usher in an humble school. Expounding to a publisher (who had called during school-hours to settle terms for a new treatise on finance) the merits of a grand plan for paying off the national debt without sponge or money: "Sir," said he, "I here prove by simple arithmetic, that there is no more difficulty in paying it off at once, than there is in caning this boy!" at the same instant, dragging one from the nearest form and caning him vigorously; but observe, without the least difficulty.

The illustration was triumphant. The mode of argument was more than forcible, it was convincing. By merely comparing the two tasks of liquidating the debt and flagellating the boy, he just raised an idea of their identity in point of ease; the consequence was, that he seemed to establish the practicability of the one by immediately performing the other. When the

admiring publisher saw the boy flogged, he fancied the debt was paid. It was the cane that did it all; the comparison would have been nothing without the successful practical experiment.

Desirous of dealing fairly by the demonstrators, as by us they have not done, this anecdote is cited because it seems to supply some vindication of their practice. We are not, and possibly nobody is in these times, so absurd as to object to the flogging of a boy merely because he is not our own, and has committed no offence. The question is, not whether the little ceremony with the cane is just, but whether it is expedient; whether the injury done to the weaker party is a convenience to the stronger. In the case referred to, it was; and the demonstrative principle succeeded. We complain of it only where it fails; where an unwarrantable attack is made without beneficial results; where the outrage is wholly superfluous. It is thrown away, when an acquaintance jams one's hat down over one's eyes, for the mere sake of showing how his own had just before been served in the mob; but it would be by no means thrown away, perhaps, if, while seated beside an author seeing his new play, you were to hiss loudly, with the view of exemplifying to the dramatist the energy with which some brute in the pit had been hissing in his absence.

Nay, you may even go all lengths with the demonstrators, provided you keep a desired object distinctly in view; you may not only injure another, but yourself also, when a great moral end is to be answered.

A story occurs, as a case in point, of a needy gambler, who wished to palm himself off as a pigeon upon a famous rook whom he had never before met, or at least to beget a conviction that he could pay what he lost; which otherwise might seem doubtful.

"Why, sir," said he, "I value it (whatever they were

conversing about) I value it no more than I do this bank-note;" taking out one of the last two tens he had left in the world, and quietly lighting his cigar with it.

How empty would have been this vaunt without the flame! The sacrifice was essential to success. Success! by which, in every age and in every class of life, so much that is doubtful in policy and worse than doubtful in morals, is triumphantly vindicated.

The chapter of complaints directed against those who do suit the action to the word is after all a short one; but what a volume would it have been, had it included commentaries upon those who do not suit the action to the word.

Hazlitt wrote a brilliant essay some years ago, upon "Persons one would wish to have seen."

"Very well," said Charles Lamb, upon reading it, "then I'll write a paper twice as long, on 'Persons one would wish not to have seen'."

FEMALE ARITHMETICIANS.

FIGURES on China jars and ivory fans, figures in intricate quadrilles, and figures of polite rhetoric, are among the things which education and custom have rendered perfectly comprehensible to every woman of taste; but figures of arithmetic are unquestionably matters on which even the most enlightened and accomplished of the sex are apt to entertain rather confused ideas.

We intend not hereby the remotest of remote allusions to the subject of age. On that point, it is well known their notions are for the most part perfectly clear-per

fectly clear; as they always are with regard to the particular hour of the night at which "truant husband " returned home from the club or the play. They never confound the sober hour of eleven with dissipated half-past one, when discussing the question over the breakfast-table next morning. Never.

You never hear them upon such occasions cry—

"My dear, it's of no use talking; I'm sure it was half-past one before you came to bed, and I believe it was two, comparatively speaking."

(This phrase, by the way, this "comparatively speaking," is invaluable as a qualifier of exaggeration, while it justifies and makes clear the most preposterous comparisons. The scold informs her wedded victim that he is enough to provoke a saint, "comparatively speaking;" and the traveller fresh from New York declares that he had seen cheeses there in which the mites were as large as muffins, "comparatively speaking.")

But with reference to those figures which are sometimes essential in the calculations of "domestic economy," with reference to the phraseology current in what is called the monetary world, most women are, for half their lives at least, in a delicious mystification, an exquisite obliviousness. "Five per cent.," constitutes a case of perplexity, and "per ann.," converts it into an enigma not to be solved.

We never quote without book; here is an argument drawn from real life, that is exactly in point.

"Make haste, Edward, make haste down, you'll be too late," cried the anxious mistress of a pretty lodge at Kensington, to its hurried, flurried, worried master, as the omnibus that took him to town drove up to his gate the other morning.

"How I do hate this omnibus life!" she continued,

as after two or three "Now, sirs," from the road, he darted past her, just in time.

"Only to think of my being obliged to see that dear fellow rush out of doors every morning, as if the house were on fire! That horrid omnibus! It doesn't care how husband and wife part!"

And the affectionate creature, left to herself, sat down to meditate on grave matters. Various abstruse and difficult calculations kept her brain in full employment until his return, when the result began to unfold itself in this interesting observation :

"In my opinion, Edward, we could very well afford a carriage!"

A slight shrug, a movement of the eyebrows, a rather melancholy smile, and a decided shake of the head, conveyed the discouraging answer.

"Well, but think now," pursued the lady, "just estimate the expenses. What would a carriage and horses, once purchased, cost in the year?"

"Pair of horses? Oh, why, a hundred a year; set it down at a hundred, certain," was the reply.

"And what, now, does the omnibus cost you, may I ask ?"

"Omnibus? Oh, why, eight pounds, about eight.” "But this you would save," argued the lady; "for if we had the carriage, you would not want the omnibus, you know."

"That's true; yes, of course, I should save the eight pounds."

"Well, well!” cried the lady, with a look of exquisite simplicity, yet in a tone that implied something of exultation as a discoverer.

"Well! and wouldn't that be getting eight per cent.?" Wise and excellent is the law that gives, in due succession, the sway of this empire to the hand of a woman.