quired Johnson. "Sir," said Perkins, "I was resolved that my room should have one great man in it.” "A very pretty compliment," returned the gratified moralist; "and I believe you mean it sincerely."

Mr. Perkins did not thrive the worse for having the portrait of Johnson in his counting-house. People are, in general, quite enough inclined to look after the interests of "number one: " but they make a poor business of it, rich as they may become, unless they include a power of forgetting it in behalf of number two; that is to say, of some one person or thing, besides themselves, able to divert them from mere selfseeking. It is not uncommon to see one solitary portrait in a lawyer's office, and that portrait a lawyer's ; generally some judge. It is better than none. Any thing is better than the poor, small unit of a man's selfish self, even if it be but the next thing to it. And there is the cost of the engraving and frame. Sometimes there is more: for these professional prints, especially when alone, are meant to imply that the possessor is a shrewd, industrious, proper lawyer, who sticks to his calling, and wastes his time in " no nonsense;" and this ostentation of business is, in some instances, a cover for idleness or disgust, or a blind for a father or rich uncle. Now, it would be better, we think, to have two pictures instead of one, the judge's, by all means, for the professional part of the gentleman's soul; and some one other picture to show his client that he is a man as well as a lawyer, and has an eye to the world outside of him as well as to his own: for as men come from that world to consult him, and generally think their cases just in the eyes

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of common sense as well as law, they like to see that he has some sympathies as well as cunning.

Upon these grounds, it would be well for men of other callings if they acted in a similar way. The young merchant should reasonably have a portrait of some eminent merchant before his eyes, with some other, not far off, to hinder him from acknowledging no merit but in riches. Or he might select a merchant of such a character as could serve both uses, Sir Thomas Gresham, for instance, who encouraged knowledge as well as money-getting; or Lorenzo de Medici, the princely merchant of Italy. So with regard to clergymen, to professions of all sorts, and to trade. The hosier, in honor of his calling, might set up Defoe, who was one of that trade, as well as author of "Robinson Crusoe;" the bookseller may the footman Dodsley, who was at one time a footman as well as a bookseller and author, and behaved excellently under all characters; and the tailor might balk petty animadversions on his trade, by having a portrait, or one of the many admirable works, of the great Annibal Caracci, who was a tailor's son. It would be advisable, in general, to add a landscape, if possible, for reasons already intimated; but a picture of some sort we hold to be almost indispensably necessary towards doing justice to the habitation of every one who is capable of reflection and improvement. The printshops, the bookstalls, the portfolios containing etchings and engravings at a penny or twopence apiece (often superior to plates charged twenty times as much), and, lastly, the engravings that make their way into the shop-windows, out of the annuals of the past season,

and that are to be had for almost as little, will furnish the ingenuous reader of this article with an infinite store, to choose from; and, if he is as good-natured as he is sensible, we will venture to whisper into his ear, that we should take it as a personal kindness of him, and hope he would consider us as a friend assisting him in putting it up.

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A GENTLEMAN-SAINT.

Beauties of St. Francis de Sales.

OOKING over the catalogue, the other day, of Mr. Cawthorn's excellent circulating library (which has the books it professes to have, a rare virtue in such establishments), our curiosity was raised by a volume entitled "Beauties of St. Francis de Sales." We sent for it, and found we had started so delicious a saint, that we vowed we must make him known to our readers. He is a true godsend, a man of men, a real quintessence of Christian charity, and shrewd sense withal (things not only far from incompatible, but thoroughly amalgamable); in short, a man as sensible as Dr. Johnson, with all the piety and patience which the doctor desired to have, all the lowliness and kind fellowship which it would have puzzled him to behold in a prelate, and all the delicacy and true breeding which would have transported him. Like Fénélon, he was a sort of angel of a gentleman, a species of phoenix, which, we really must say, the French Church seems to have produced beyond any other. Not that we undervalue the Hookers and Jewels, and other primitive excellences of our own: deeply do we love and venerate them. But we like to see a human being develop all the humanities of which he is capable, those of outward

as well as inward elegance not excepted; not indeed in the inconsistent and foppish shape of a Sir Charles Grandison (who comes hushing upon us with insinuations of equal perfection in dancing and the decalogue, with soft deprecations of our astonishment, and all sorts of equivocal worldly accomplishments, which the author has furnished him with, on purpose to keep his piety safe, swordsmanship, for one), but in whatsoever, being the true spirit of a gentleman, manifests itself outwardly in consequence, shaping the movements of the commonest and most superficial parts of life to the unaffected elegance of the spirit within; and, at the same time, refusing no fellowship with honesty of any sort, nor ostentatiously claiming it; but feeling and having it, because of its true, natural, honest heart's blood, and a tendency to relish all things in common with us, " passioned as we.”

When a man exhibits this nature, as St. Francis de Sales did, and exhibits it, too, in the shape of a mortified saint of the Romish Church, a lone lodger, a celibatory, entering into everybody else's wishes and feelings, but denying himself some of the most precious to a being so constituted, we feel proud for the sake of the capabilities of humanity; proud because we belong to a species which we are utterly unable to illustrate so in our own persons; proud and happy and hopeful, that, if one human being can do so much, thousands, nay all, by like opportunities, and a like loving breeding, may ultimately do; not indeed the same, but enough,-enough for themselves, and enough for the like exalted natures, too, who have the luck to live in such times.