de Sévigné accredits De Bussy with the knack of bestowing, attributing, or suggesting-praise so neatly conferred and so smoothly finished off that the object of it was all but convinced of deserving at least a part of it, quelque exagération qu'il y ait. Whatever dirty-shirted philosophers may say to the contrary, quoth the Chronicler of Clovernook, flattery is a fine social thing the beautiful handmaid of life, he styles it, casting flowers and odoriferous herbs in the paths of men, who, crushing out the sweets, curl up their noses as they snuff the odour, and walk half an inch higher to heaven by what they tread upon.

Trompart is, on Spenser's showing, fit man for Braggadocchio, making it his one study to uphold "his ydle humour with fine flattery, and blow the bellows to his swelling vanity." Base is the slave that fawns, has been the motto of many a proud spirit, that so far did well to be proud. Dante was notably on his guard against ever making any approach to flattery; "a vice," says Cary, "which he justly held in the utmost abhorrence." In the eighth circle of l'Inferno he comes across Alessio of Lucca, who, "beating on his brain," thus bewails his gross indulgence in that vice:

"Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk,

Wherewith I ne'er enough could glut my tongue."

Hotspur thanks his stars he cannot flatter, and disdains the tongues of soothers. Gloster finds himself out of favour because he cannot flatter and speak fair, smile in men's faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, duck with French nods and apish courtesy. "My tongue could never learn sweet soothing word." Coriolanus would not flatter Neptune for his trident, or Jove for his power to thunder: he is one that would, as Menenius rates him, rather follow his enemy in a fiery gulf, than flatter him in a bower. Cassius is avowedly one that cannot fawn on men, and hug them hard; to his proud nature the humiliation is severe when Brutus tells him of his faults, and, to his deprecating Irotest that a friendly eye could never see such faults, replies, "A flatterer's would not, though they do appear as huge as high

Olympus." Hamlet doubles the value of his hearty praise of Horatio by the assurance, "Nay, do not think I flatter: for what advancement may I hope from thee?" Cordelia cannot flatter; and thereby loses her father's love and her share of his divided realm: unhappy that she is, she cannot heave her heart into her mouth; her love is richer than her tongue; she wants "that glib and oily heart to speak and purpose not.' Kent is as true to Lear, in his way, as Cordelia in hers; as true a friend, as she a daughter. But he is plain and outspoken, and his duty dreads not to speak when power to flattery bows. What is afterwards said of Kent in disguise, though untrue of him, is a faithful enough portrait of some folks:

"This is some fellow

Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness. He cannot flatter, he !—

An honest mind and plain-he must speak truth,
An' they will take it, so; if not, he's plain."

Molière's Clitandre takes credit to himself for that " son cœur n'a jamais pu, tant il est né sincère," descend to flatter even the most charming of her sex. Swift's cringing knave, who seeks a place without success, thus tells his case : Why should he longer mince the matter? He failed because he could not flatter." So again,

"The chaplain vows he cannot fawn,

Though it would raise him to the lawn :

But owns he had a stubborn spirit,

That made him trust alone to merit."

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For himself as well as for Horace is Pope speaking when he strenuously disclaims all ascription of praise undeserved

"And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves

Clothe spice, line trunks, or fluttering in a row,

Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho."

As Mégabate in Le Grand Cyrus is very upright, he is the avowed enemy of all flattery; he cannot praise what he deems undeserving of praise,-cannot debase himself to say what he does not believe; he likes much better to pass for severe among those who are ignorant of what true virtue is, than to

expose himself to the charge of adulation. So closely does the rest of the description tally with the lines in Le Misanthrope, "Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte," etc., that M. Victor Cousin starts the note of interrogation, Had Molière read this passage of the Cyrus ?-More than one or two great artists have piqued themselves, with better or worse reason for it, on their incapacity for flattering speeches. "Unknowing how to flatter the great," one of Caravagio's biographers says of that ill-starred genius, "he was driven from city to city in the utmost indigence, and might truly be said to paint for his bread." When the ambassador from Lucca chid Benvenuto Cellini for not acting the courtier better to his patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, "I made answer," quoth Ben, "that I wished well to my lord, was his affectionate and faithful servant, and could not stoop to the arts of flattery and adulation." Not Madame d'Arblay's Mr. Crutchley could more energetically repudiate such arts, all and sundry. "Me!" cried he; "no, indeed! I never complimented anybody: that is, I never said to anybody a thing I did not think, unless I was openly laughing at them, and making sport for other people." "Oh," cried Fanny Burney, (everybody cried in her days at any rate, crying was "pretty Fanny's way," all her Diary through,) "if everybody went by this rule, what a world of conversation would be curtailed!"

When Henry Home, afterwards Lord Kames, was a young man, wily old Lovat, as Dr. Chambers tells the story, observed his talents, and conceiving, from his success at the bar, that he might, in the course of time, become serviceable to himself, resolved to make him his friend. He set about it by rushing out to embrace Home one day, in his fulsome style, and by pretending extreme admiration of his personal graces, and consequent ambition to become his intimate friend. "My lord," cried Home, struggling to extricate himself from the hug, "this is quite intolerable. I ken very weel I am the coarsest-looking fellow in the Court o' Session; so ye needna think to impose upon me wi' your fair-fashioned speeches. Hae dune-hae dune." Henry," exclaimed Lovat, in an altered tone, "I was

only trying you. I'm truly glad to find that you can withstand flattery." "My dear lord," said Home, “I am glad to hear you say so." Lovat's purpose was accomplished. He had flattered his man upon his superiority to flattery; and that, as the sequel proved, was the way to win him.

"Most crafty when no craft appear'd,

The elder and worldly-wiser of Mr. Trollope's Bertrams cautions his son, who is chary of civil words to the churlish uncle that professes to disrelish them, not to “believe everything that everybody tells you in his own praise." When a man says that he does not like flattery, and that he puts no value on soft words, do not on that account be deterred, Sir Lionel advises, from making any civil speeches you may have ready he will not be a bit stronger than another because he boasts of his strength.

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Does one of Sam Slick's protesting listeners think that if the adroit Yankee wanted to "soft sawder” him, he'd take the white-brush to him, and slobber it on, as a nigger wench does to a board fence, or a kitchen wall to home," and put his eyes out with the lime? "No, not I; but I could tickle you enough, and have done it afore now, just for practice, and you warn't a bit the wiser. I'd take a camel's-hair brush to you, knowin' how skittish and ticklesome you are, and doing it so it would feel good. I'd make you feel kinder pleasant, I know. . . . I wouldn't go to shock you by a doin' of it coarse; you're too quick and too knowin' for that. You should smell the otter o'

roses, and sniff, sniff it up your nostrils, and say to yourself, 'How nice that is, ain't it? Come, I like that; how sweet it stinks!'" The other assures Mr. Slick that he overrates his own powers, and exaggerates his listener's vanity: "You are flattering yourself now; you can't flatter me, for I detest it." Creation, man," said Mr. Slick, "I have done it now afore your face, these last five minutes, and you didn't know it,” and the other, on consideration, has the candour to plead guilty,

and to say, "You took me in.

You touched a weak point.

You insensibly flattered my vanity, by assenting to my selfsufficiency in supposing I was exempt from that universal frailty of human nature." And Mr. Slick duly chuckles over the confession that he did "put the leake" into the Squire, that's a fact.

Decius can undertake to "o'ersway" Cæsar, by flattery the the most subtle and suasive; and this is how the expert goes about it,

"But when I tell him, he hates flatterers,

He says he does; being then most flattered."

HE

XXIII.

THE EARTH ABIDING.

ECCLESIASTES i. 4.

E that preached vanity of vanities, all is vanity, opened that discourse with a contrast between fleeting man and the abiding earth. The sons of men come and go; they appear for a little while, and then vanish away; but the scene of their brief show is a fixture, and the stage they strut upon till the curtain falls is no mere vanishing quantity, no mere dissolving view, like themselves. "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever." The contrast seems almost a cruel one between the material dwelling-place and the spiritual dwellers therein; it abideth, but they abide not; the round world hath its foundations so sure that they cannot be moved, but the races that people it are hurried off the scene, and for them there is no stay. Even within their sorry space of existence they have time, some of them, to grow feeble and old, to outlive their own health and strength, to exchange comeliness for wrinkles, and bloom for decay. But the earth abideth as it was—its canopy of skies as blue as of yore, its rush of rivers as fresh