(There is a

Cousin Ethel, he takes care, in his pride of pedigree, to question her as to her belief in their common ancestor, the Barber-Surgeon. "Do you believe in him?" asks Clive. "Why should we disown our family?" Miss Ethel answers, simply. noble lord listening and looking on.) "In those early days I suppose people did-did all sorts of things, and it was not considered at all out of the way to be surgeon to William the Conqueror." "Edward the Confessor," interposes Clive, correcting her. “And it must be true, because I have seen a picture of the Barber-Surgeon: a friend of mine, Mr. Collop, did the picture, and I dare say it is for sale still."

In an earlier work of the same author's there is a case of arson-the calamity of the conflagration being attributed to the drunkenness of a scoundrelly Irish watchman, who was employed on the premises, and who upset a bottle of whisky in the warehouse of Messrs. Shadrach, and incautiously looked for the liquor with a lighted candle. The Insurance office requiring proof, proof was brought, and such proof as would have satisfied the exacting logic of Smith the Weaver. The man was taken to the office by his employers; "and certainly, as we all could testify," confesses a convinced and the most conspicuous clerk, "was even then in a state of frightful intoxication."

But a more direct illustration of the subject occurs in a less known production of Mr. Thackeray's, his Great Cossack Epic, in twenty books, which tells,

inter alia, how the statue of Saint Sophia, at Kioff, wrought miracles on a walking expedition upon the very waters of the Dnieper. The twentieth book of the Epic comprises two lines, and these the poet prints in capitals; nor, in honour to him, and to the subject, can we do less:

THINK NOT, O READER, THAT WE'RE LAUGHING AT YOU; YOU MAY GO TO KIOFF NOW, AND SEE THE STATUE.

ABOUT SECOND AND THIRD READINGS.

REFERRING to the instance of a man who made it a law for himself never to read any book again which had greatly pleased him on a first perusal, lest a second reading should in some degree disturb the pleasurable impression which he wished to retain of it, Southey remarks that the person in question must have read only for his amusement, otherwise he would have known that a book is worth little if it deserves to be perused but once; and, moreover, that, as the same landscape appears differently at different seasons of the year, at morning and at evening, in bright weather and in cloudy, by moonlight and at noonday, so does the same book produce a very different effect upon the same reader at different times, and under different circumstances.

Schleiermacher, in one of his love-letters to "dearest Jette," tells her he has just been reperusing some of hers; and that, strange to say, on this re-perusal several of the passages seemed to him quite new: how could this be, as he had certainly never been guilty of overlooking anything in her letters ? 66 It is true," he says, "that the same thing happens to me in regard to the books I like the best; each time I read them over again the chief im

pression which I receive is determined by some special passage or other, and the rest remains as it were in the background." Every re-perusal, in such a case, involves, therefore, not merely the refreshening of old impressions, but the production of new ones.

The studious man who, at forty, as Southey's Doctor has it, re-peruses books which he has read in his youth or early manhood, vivid as his recollections of them may be, finds them new because he brings another mind to the perusal. "Worthless ones with which he may formerly have been delighted, appear flat and unprofitable to his maturer judgment; and on the other hand sterling merit which he was before unable to appreciate, he can now understand and value, having in his acquired knowledge and habits of reflection the means of assaying it."

That is at once an amusing and a suggestive story told by Sir Walter Scott, of a grand-aunt of his, Mrs. Keith of Ravelstone, who lived with unabated vigour of intellect to a very advanced age, and enjoyed reading to the last of her long life. One day she asked her grand-nephew, when they chanced to be alone together, if he had ever seen Mrs. Behn's novels? He confessed he had. Well, could he get her a sight of them? He said, with some hesitation, he believed he could; but that he did not think she would like either the manners or the language, which approached too near that of Charles the Second's time to be quite proper reading. "Nevertheless," said the old lady, "I remember them being so much admired, and being so much interested in

them myself, that I wish to look at them again." To hear was to obey. So Walter sent Mrs. Aphra Behn, curiously sealed up, with "private and confidential" on the packet, to his gay old grand-aunt. The next time he saw her afterwards, she gave him back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with nearly these words: "Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn, and, if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel. But is it not," she added, "a very odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society in London ?" This of course, as Sir Walter observes, was owing to the gradual refinement of the national taste and delicacy.

A. K. H. B. is right enough in describing the "something like indignation" with which we occasionally re-peruse a volume which enchained us in our boyish days. For, having now burst the chain, we have somewhat, he says, of the feeling of the prisoner towards the gaoler who held him in unjust bondage: what right had that bombastic rubbish to touch and thrill us as it used to do? "You sit by the fireside and read leisurely your Times, and feel a tranquil enjoyment. You like it better than the 'Sorrows of Werter,' but you do not like it a twentieth part as much as you once liked the 'Sorrows of Werter.'" The Country Parson who now hails from St. Andrew's had harped on the same string in