a gay, The first girl at whose feet he prostrated himself laughing, roguish little witch of eighteen-begged him to pick himself up immediately; "it must be very inconvenient, if not even painful," she said, "for one who is so long-legged to lie in that position." She was proud of the affection of one who stood so high in the world; but being unambitious in her views, and preferring an humble, obscure station in life to courting the world's gaze, she "respectfully" declined his proposals. The second girl, who unluckily was as diminutive a Hebe as the first, expressed much ironical sorrow for her unhappy fate, but it was plain at a glance that they did not match; and besides, she was extremely sensitive to cold during the winter, and therefore very partial to small, lowposted rooms, which would, if she married him, deprive her of her dear husband's society till spring. His third amica excused herself by saying that she thought husbands and wives ought to walk arm-in-arm in the streets, which in their case would be manifestly impossible. Besides, she would be unable to accept his hand at the marriage ceremony, without mounting a stool, — and that would be so ludicrous! The fourth and last of his " dulcineas " a servant-girl, to whom in sheer despair he offered himself as his last chance, ere he verged into the "sere and yellow leaf" of confirmed celibacy — returned him an answer more cutting than all the previous ones. Making a very low courtesy, and putting on a look of extreme humility, she replied, with malicious affectation, that she was but a mean body, a poor servant-girl, and could not possibly think of looking so high! Coats, New and Old. such, for WHAT a luxury is an old coat, example, as the warm, brown one in which I am now writing! What a pity that coats have to be new, and consequently stiff and unfamiliar, before they can be old, easy, and delightful! I pity a man in a new coat. No matter what sartorial skill may have been lavished upon its cut and make-up; no matter how it may gratify its wearer's pride, he betrays his uneasiness in it every moment that he sits or walks. At home he is uncomfortable, and abroad he is perpetually haunted by a consciousness of his new apparel. If he is a literary man, in vain will he try to concentrate his ideas on any subject, to bury himself for a time in thoughtful abstraction. A sudden pinch in the elbow dispels a brown study; a hard squeeze in the waist recalls him from the fine frenzy of the poet to the knight of the shears; Snip's goose vanquishes Anacreon's dove. The great secret of happiness is the ability to merge one's self in the contemplation of grand or uplifting objects; but this a new coat utterly forbids. To be enslaved by one's superiors is bad enough; but to be shackled by the ninth part of man, to be the helot of a tight fit, to feel like a chicken trussed for the spit, to be at the mercy of the scavenger and the street-sweeper, to dread a sudden shower or a fall of snow, to forego the refreshment of an arm-chair slumber, are miseries of which only the wearer of a new coat has constant and vivid experience. How different from all this are one's experiences of an old coat! It is like an old acquaintance. However stiff it may have been at your first introduction to it, time sets you perfectly at ease with it; all ceremony is banished, and an accidental breach is quickly repaired. If you have travelled with it, scenes of beauty and of grandeur - the White - Mountain Notch, the Yosemite, the Rigi, Lake Como, St. Gothard's Pass, Homburg, Rothenburg, the Walhalla, and a hundred other places have left something of themselves in its folds. It has been your companion in sunshine and in storm, in joy and in sorrow, till its very blemishes, its tears and stains, are dear to you; it has become like that centaur's tunic which could not be torn off without carrying away the flesh and blood of its wearer. Its warp is woven out of foreign joys, and its woof out of home affections. An old coat is equally favorable to retirement and to learning, for when your coat is old, and has lost all pretensions to starch and buckram, you feel no inclination to gadding or dissipation; while, as we have already intimated, you cannot study, meditate, or compose in a new coat, any more than in a strait-waistcoat. Then, again, what an apt symbol of sociality is an old coat! What a unique. impersonation of comfort! What a flood of dear and delightful memories it conjures up! It speaks of quiet and seclusion, long flowing curtains, a drowsy arm-chair, a nicely-trimmed lamp, a ruddy fire sending its dancing flames over a snug sitting-room, a bubbling and loud-hissing tea-kettle "sending up its steamy column," a flute, and, above all, of a volume of Izaak Walton or Sir Thomas Browne or Montaigne or Xavier de Maistre, that holds you spell-bound by its enchantment within the magic circle which the hand of genius can so effectually trace. Calmness under Provocation. ONE of the greatest blessings which a man can possess especially if he is a public man is an imperturbable temper. It is a re markable fact that those who have most signally manifested this virtue have been men who were constitutionally irritable. Such was the case with Washington, whose habitual composure, the result of strenuous self-discipline, was so great that it was supposed to be due to a cold and almost frigid temperament. By nature a violently passionate man, he triumphed so completely over his frailty as to be cheated of all credit for his coolness amid exasperating trials. The Duke of Wellington, also naturally irritable in the extreme, early schooled himself to calmness and self-possession under trying circumstances; he was never known to be unduly excited, or to lose his temper on the field of battle. Brialmont, his Belgian biographer, tells us that at Waterloo, in the most critical moments, the duke gave his orders in a subdued tone, and that under insult and ignominious treatment he was as stoical as an Indian chief. One of the coolest and most self-possessed of politicians or statesmen was Prince Talleyrand, who was naturally quick-tempered and excitable, yet by assiduous effort schooled himself into an imperturbability of soul which proved of signal advantage to him as a politician and a diplomatist. History hardly furnishes a finer exhibition of this self-control than that which he manifested on a memorable occasion when insulted by Napoleon. Having acted in an important matter, when he was Napoleon's minister, contrary to the latter's wishes though according to his own best judgment, he was assailed by the Emperor in a crowded state assemblage with the most violent language, accompanied by furious gesticulations and flourishes of the fist, so that, to avoid being struck, Talleyrand was obliged to retreat step by step before the angry and advancing monarch, until the wall prevented farther recession; yet not by the slightest sign, by word or flush or gesture, did this master of himself betray the least emotion. On another occasion, — of which M. Molé, who was present, gave an account to Sir Henry Bulwer, at the end of a Council of State, in 1814, the Emperor burst into some violent exclamations of his being surrounded by treachery and traitors, and then, turning to M. de Talleyrand, abused him for ten minutes in the most outrageous language. The prince, who stood by the fire all the time, guarding himself from the heat by his hat, never moved a limb or a feature. "Any one who had seen him," says M. Molé, “would have supposed that he was the last man in the room to whom the Emperor could be speaking; and finally, when Napoleon, slamming the door violently, departed, Talleyrand quietly took the arm of M. Mollien, and, with apparent unconsciousness, limped downstairs. On reaching his home, he sent a dignified letter to the Emperor offering his resignation, which, however, was not accepted." How much of the unpopularity of John Adams and his consequent failures as a statesman were due to his lack of self-control, to his irascible temper and waspish tongue! How many of the miseries of literary men of genius have been due to the same cause! How savagely impatient was Swift of the slightest contradiction! What a headstrong, overbearing, quarrelsome man of genius was Walter Savage Landor! "A Tartarean broil of bitter quarrels " with his tenants and neighbors drove him, in 1815, from England to Italy, where, during a residence of twenty years, his hot temper involved him in frequent disputes with officials and others; and in 1835 an irreconcilable quarrel with his wife drove him back to England. Even to his few friends he was so exacting and " touchy" that they were liable at any |