the social entertainment. We confess our enjoyment of it, when we designate it, as the popular phrase emphatically does, "a jolly row." The less you know about its origin the better. The more clearly you understand the circumstances of its rise and progress, the more surely is it brought to an end.

Cassio's quarrel is the thing, he remembers that, "but nothing wherefore." When you begin to comprehend what it is all about, you cease to relish it. The glorious riot then assumes the sober character of reason. A convulsion deliberately got up is well enough in its way; but the unprompted, unpremeditated tumult is better; like parties of pleasure, that are never planned three weeks before date, but start into instantaneous life.

Of the two adversaries, then, the stranger and the friend, which the quarreller will naturally seek, the last is to be preferred; of the two modes of eliciting a contest, that which is least premeditated, and most left to the happy chances of convivial and confidential intercourse, is by much the best. Let him but adhere to these two rules, and the quarreller has the field to himself. He is free from all imputation of malignity in his attack, for he has the sincerest regard for his enemy; he is cleared from every suspicion of slyness and deceit, for his quarrel sprang out of the occasion, and was open as day. He may in this manner pass through life in secure and continual enjoyment of the luxury of embroilment, preserving, with the respect of all men, the very particular esteem of the persons he is at war with. It is only the

"Whispering tongues that poison truth ;"

and give hearts once united the likeness of

"Cliffs that have been rent asunder."

Whispered complaints are detestable. It is the open rupture, the bold outspoken abuse of you and yours, the manly honesty that runs you down at Charingcross in the broad noon-day, that constitutes the excellence of the quarrelsome friend. So far from desiring concealment, he begs that you may be informed of it. He goes from Brown to Brown, and from Jones to Jones with the same story.

"I never make a secret of my opinion about him” (no, he gives it unasked). "I always tell him his faults to his face; we are fast friends, and I want all the world to know the fooleries he commits. If it were not for his pride, avarice, and conceit, his habits of toadyism and ridiculous jealousy, together with that unfortunate disregard to truth which I always reminded him of, and that provoking proneness to treachery which everybody must have noticed, he would be the best creature in the world.

"If one could but believe a word he says, no man's conversation would be pleasanter; and if he would but get rid of that selfishness which taints all he does, no man would be capable of better actions. Tell him what I say; he is my old friend, and as you observe, an excellent fellow on the whole; here's his health!"

You trace every ill report against you to this old and excellent friend; but can you help loving, and quarrelling with him?

SOCIETY FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF HEARTS.

IT is a remarkable fact that up to the auspicious moment in which the establishment of this new society, of whose existence and proceedings we have a special report, was conceived for the happiness of man, no

institution having a similar object and tendency had ever been projected. Societies were anything but scarce. Human nature has shown an inclination, in all times and countries, to combine and associate for its own pleasure and profit; but for the purpose indicated by the title of this admirable association, the idea of gathering together never awoke in the brain.

Societies for every purpose beside, good and evil, in the earth, or in the waters under the earth. Societies to make us swimmers and skaters, to create painters and sculptors, to foster art and science in every shape, to dig up antiquarians and screw out engineers, to make laws and compel their repeal, to set us singing and dancing, shooting, riding, and driving; societies to drill us into everything attainable; to teach us something of all that is useless, and a little of much that is useful; to make us accomplished, knowing, learned; to give us grace and bodily strength, to use perfections and to conceal defects; to do ten thousand opposite things, many of them possible, and a few desirable.

Yes: people have never been slow to evince their cleverness, such as it is. Not a child of their begetting but would rather, when patted on the head, be called clever than good; and the same weakness is not always worked out of the flesh in old age. And so we have societies of every class and degree, devised from time to time by wonderfully clever fellows, to make mankind intellectual and happy: associations for improving the head, for enchanting the ears, for fascinating the eyes, for feasting every sense, for directing the voice, for educating the hands, for exercising all the limbs, for advancing the feet in the general march but one society, efficacious and full of blessings above all others, was still wanting until now; it was the Society for the Encouragement of Hearts.

How it originated is of little consequence. Be sure of this, that its origin was small enough; what good work ever had any other! There is no crevice so narrow, that good will not ooze through it, and gather and augment slowly, until it can force its way by degrees, and flow in a full broad stream. Once set good going, and who can say where it will stop!

Perhaps the grand originating idea of this Society first awoke in a brain of not superior dimensions or quality, ordinarily, to that of a moth when it is flying into the flame. Perhaps the benevolence, the humanising spirit of the project, first heaved and throbbed in a heart no bigger than a mite's, and having commonly no sympathies, no aspirations towards anything higher than cheese. Some men's hearts are of this pattern; very possibly; but do not therefore give them and their affections up. No; cherish a hope of those hearts still; nay, generously prophecy their enlargement, and they will expand, and glow, and become animate under the very influence of that prediction. The affectionate confidence of it acts upon them like destiny.

The Society for the Encouragement of Hearts, however it sprung up, was born to flourish and prosper for ever. It has many distinguishing features; but the chief one is that it has no bound or limit, and the only rule provided for its government seems to be, that there shall be no rules at all. Anybody may become a member in whatever state or stage of the heart. The door is open to all in all conditions. There are no blackballs, except the pieces of ebony which numbers of people bring with them in their bosoms. Hearts of even that hue and substance are not unwelcomed, and nothing is too bad for admission into the Encouragement Society.

What is the result! In ten hundred instances out

of a thousand, a rapid, beautiful, and all but marvellous change. No sooner is the candidate for admission an acknowledged fellow of the Society, registered and enrolled, than an alteration ensues. A certain lightness pervades all the region of the heart; the inward ebony blushes for its own blackness, and softens instantaneously. Sometimes, this takes place of its own accord, sometimes it happens unconsciously. But the transformation is not the less certain. The dry withered root puts forth a sweet and innocent blossom; the hard cold cinder emits a brilliant flame, clear and of heavenward course as when life began.

It may be asked, how can a change so sudden and complete be effected, by the simple act of enrolment as a fellow of the Society of Hearts, without any gradual operation of its principles, or affording needful time for the development of its proper influences. The answer is easily supplied by another question; how is it that a man becomes an antiquarian the instant he is admitted a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries? How does it happen that we become learned on being called to the bar, and honourable the moment we get, by disgraceful means, into Parliament ?

Enough for the fame and honour of the Society if we state facts, without attempting to account for them. It is a case in which clouds of witnesses can be called. Old Lord Cheeseparing would serve to prove something; he who starved for forty years, till having joined the society under the impression that he should have his board for nothing, he went out immediately to bespeak many quarts of turtle-soup, gave a sumptuous banquet to a score or two of astonished friends, and has kept open house at Mouldy-hall ever since. society, or a system, call it what we will, that could move Lord Cheeseparing to give a dinner, not to speak

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