princes on 'Change, defeated Gladstone or Disraeli by the superiority of our oratorical powers, and beaten the Attorney-general by the strength of our forensic displays. At the bidding of equally fantastic philanthropists, fever has ceased to burn, disease to slay, famine to starve, and ignorance to kill both body and soul. And why should we crush these gay or benevolent phantoms, which, like the mirage in the desert, representing ærial lakes of limpid water or plains of luxuriant verdure, impart strength to the worn traveller, encourage him in his toilsome and painful journey, and hold out to him visions of bright expectations of brilliant success-of heavenly peace? Why should we willingly renounce the happiest moments of existence? What matters it that misery and disappointment, and ruin, and sickness, and early death expect us? They cannot deprive us of the pleasures of anticipation-of the bright gleams of gladness that light up the gloom of our lives, and which at least permit us to revel in our earthly paradise, be it for ever so short an instant. It is all gained, and, to use a vulgar simile, it is so much saved out of the fire. If we can dream and be happy, though it be ever so transitorily, let us do so rather than be awake to the cruel reality. Away, then, with the pedantic philosophy of these maxims.

"It is necessary that we should sufficiently weigh the objects of our hopes, whether they be such as we may reasonably expect from them, what we propose in their fruition, and whether they are such as we are pretty sure of attaining in case our life extend so far."

The Right Honourable Joseph Addison wrote with cold prudence, and it is fortunate for mankind that his dictates are so little followed. How barren and matter-of-fact existence would be if we only contemplated the probable, and, if before we longed for an object, we

believed its possession would render us contented. It is the chase, not the seizure of the spoils-it is the illusions of life, not its material enjoyments-that render the earth endurable, at least to too many of us. "If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in

vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.” No, Mr. Spectator, we do not think and act in vain, since the thought and action procure us happiness, even if it be of a fleeting kind, and the attainment of happiness in some shape or way is the aim and end of all our efforts, all our enterprises. Neither do we render life a greater dream and shadow than it is; but we make the dream more pleasant, and the shadow less black and heavy. my

Perhaps the vision of Alnaschar was the most lightsome moment that sanguine youth had ever experienced, or would have experienced under even the most favourable circumstances. Had he realised his hundred drachmas he would have carried on a petty huckstering trade, and have shared the ordinary lot of his like. He would to a certainty have wedded a wife, who would most probably have turned out a scold, or a slattern, or an extravagant hussy, who would have borne him numerous children, and who would have ruined him, or henpecked him, or led him through a course of misery, of privations, and of struggles, to keep the wolf from the door. Supposing, on the other hand, that his most confident calculations had been verified-that his small capital had been doubled at every fresh venture, until his cash had swollen into 1000 drachmas, and the 1000 multiplied into 10,000

that he had left the earthenware and crockery line for the manufac ture of earrings and bracelets-that instead of dealing in plates and basins he sold diamonds and rubies -that his fortune had increased in

geometrical progression, until he had become the Rothschild of the day-that he had purchased horses and eunuchs and houses, and asked in marriage the Grand Vizier's daughter-that the greedy and tyrannical minister had consented to that young lady's union with her wealthy, if plebeian, lover that the fond husband of the Vizier's child had shown his affection for his high-born spouse by bestowing upon her the famous kick-that, instead, reduced his basket of pottery and his hopes into a thousand pieces. Well, it is easy to perceive that a vain, ignorant, and conceited upstart, as Alnaschar would prove to be, would have awakened susceptibilities without number-that he would have inspired jealousies, heartburnings, and envy-that his old friends would have hated him, and his new friends despised him that his gentle-bred wife would have ridiculed him, and perhaps bestowed upon him the fate of George Dandin-that his career would have been a series of disappointments, vexations, and heartburnings, notwithstanding his apparent worldly success, so that he would never have felt such unalloyed delight for half-an-hour as his reverie had afforded him; and that, perhaps, he would have been ready to resign wealth and honours for another such brief period of complete happiness.

And, then, have we not the immortal Sancho Panza, the brave squire of a chivalrous master? Did not the proverb-spinning follower, and humble friend of the valorous Knight of the Rueful Countenance, dwell with ecstasy on the promised reward of his faithful services, that was to be the government of an island ? When trotting on his gray ass, along side of Rozinante, he would naïvely repeat all the benefits to be derived from the attainment of the high post of governor. He would, first of all, line well his purse with heavy doubloons, after the wont of go

But

vernors; he would wed his daughter, Mari-Sancha, to a count, with innumerable quarterings; he would drink cool draughts and eat warm meats; he would rest his fat body in fine linen over feather couches; he would be continually replenishing that huge paunch of his; and his mind dwelt with longing delight on the pleasures in store for him. alas, poor Sancho! the reality was very different from the anticipation in his case! When he had the government of the important Island of Barataria bestowed upon him, after delivering three judgments, worthy of Solomon, and he sat down to recruit exhausted nature before an elegantly laid-out table, an evil spirit, in the shape of a physician, stood beside him, and Sancho had hardly touched a mouthful when dish after dish was whisked before him untasted. Partridge was unwholesome; fricasseed rabbit, indigestible; veal, hard; olla podrida, injurious; fruit, acid; and the unhappy governor was starved lest he should make himself ill. Neither did he receive. a maravedi of salary, perquisites, fees, presents, tithes, or any income of any description whatsoever; and after the assault given to the island, in which the unhappy governor was knocked down and trampled upon by his own men, that ill-treated functionary skulked to the stables, and saddling his beloved ass, he strode forth, announcing to the Major-domo, that he would rather fill his stomach with onion soup than starve; rather sleep in the open air in freedom with a rough-skin covering, than lay between cambric sheets and clothe in sable furs in restraint.

And how many among us there are who, when they have reached the goal of all their aims, when they have attained the dearest wish of their soul, find themselves starvedaye, their hearts starved and their minds starved, for lack of sympathetic feeling and sympathetic intellect! Nothing is worse than the

hunger of the soul; to thirst for love, and to find dull indifference and selfish coldness; to long for spiritual companionship, and to find fatuous emptiness and barren stupidity. To witness the case of Wilfred of Ivanhoe, whose history was commenced by Sir Walter Scott, and completed by the great Michael Angelo Titmarsh. That brave young gentleman raved about the charms of the Saxon Rowena, who was the idol of his dreams, the object of his distant worship. Well, Rowena was but a woman after all, and yielding to the romantic adoration of her lover, which flattered her vanity, she accepted him, as we all know, as her husband, for the better or for the worse, and as it proved for him, decidedly for the worse. For he found in his yellow-haired bride, a helpmate for whom he had no mental affinity; one, who resting on her ancient descent and relying on his weakness, ruled him with a rod of iron, treated him with neglect, if not with absolute disdain; one who had really never cared for him, and who had evidently given what little love she was capable of feeling, to the apathetic Athelstane. When the scales fell from the unhappy knight's eyes, he awoke from his dream, to find how different was the reality. How he must have deplored that it had ever ceased to be the distant, impossible dream that had nerved his arm in battle, that had caused him to slay so many Paynim knights, to unseat from his horse the proud Templar Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert, and to conquer the burly Front de Boeuf. And poor Wilfred had to abandon in despair the fair Rowena, who had rendered his life wretched, and who, as soon as the rumour of his death arrived, consoled herself quickly with Athelstane the Unready.

Daydreams offer, even to the most matter-of-fact, to those who never soar above the level of the earth, a boundless field of happy

speculations, of pleasant anticipations, of gratifying contingencies, which seldom cease to be shadows, but which, at all events, serve to cheer though not to inebriate, some of our dreary hours. Not a few of us have been saved from utter wreck, by one solitary light which, like an ignus fatuus, eventually disappears, but which has guided us for years in the true direction, and has prevented us from sinking into the Slough of Despond. In dreams we have not only roses without thorns, but we have roses when we should otherwise have had thistles and prickly briars.

It is not to be denied that our natural vanity, our self-conceit, our brilliant idea of our own powers, afford food for most of the creations of our imagination; and many of us believe that if opportunity only fa voured us we should speedily and surely rise to eminence, to wealth, and to honours. Tom Mezzotint is firmly convinced that were only the Hanging Committee to relent, and to admit to the exhibition his grand historical picture of Alfred burning the Cakes, numerous connoisseurs would gather round it, would inspect it carefully, would admire it in rapt silence, and would then express their warm gratification at having at last discovered an original genius. They would then produce their cheque-books, and bid eagerly for the valuable canvas, eventually gladly secured by a lucky purchaser at four figures.

Harry Foolscap is fully persuaded that one day the conspiracy of editors against him will break down, and that his novel of "Ambition " will enliven the pages of the popular magazine, The Bucklersbury; that his essays in The Growler will attract the attention of literary men ; that his comedy of the Three Wallflowers will draw enormous audiences at the Theatre Royal, Pall Mall.

Young Flintscratch only requires the advance of fifty pounds to set him up in business, to enter the

Stock Exchange, to become a great speculator, to make loans to foreign governments, to become a millionaire, to rule the markets, to become a mighty power in the City.

The gravedigger could play Hamlet far better, if he could only have the chance, than Kemble and Kean, Macready, Phelps, and Fechter; and the apothecary is fully satisfied that he would make an excellent Romeo, and looks forward to the day when showers of bouquets and storms of plaudits will welcome his first appearance in his new character. Pretty Emily Polkington eagerly looks forward to Captain Fitzblazer's next letter; and she knows he means to propose the first time he comes home from "Gib." She recollects the delicious walks in the Spa at Scarborough, the warm whispered words of love, the intoxicating waltzes in his arms in the Assembly Rooms; the disapproval to the flirtation of her father, who sceptically declares Fitzblazer to be a rake and a fortune hunter; she is sure he is a much-calumniated, honourable, noble-minded gentleman, and is conjuring gleeful images of connubial felicity in which his figure stands always smiling, graceful, and tender beside her.

It would be a pity to deprive these hopeful individuals of their rose coloured glasses. The time will come soon enough, when Tom Mezzotint, who has no more idea of drawing than a Spanish cow, or colouring than a chimney sweep, will be glad to paint public-house signs for a bare crust. When Harry Foolscap, after having lost the best years of his existence in trying literary composition, for which he is as fitted as an elephant, and having passed through numerous bitter disenchantments, will limit his ambition

to providing paragraphs and scraps to the papers, thankful to earn thereby a paltry pittance scarcely enough to prolong the sufferings of his wife and children. When young Flintscratch,then become old Flintscratch, a miserly bachelor leading a sordid, solitary, and unloved life, notwithstanding the considerable sum of money he has certainly screwed, and scraped, and squeezed together, will sink to a premature and unhonoured grave, through a fever caught owing to his penurious habits. When gravedigger-Hamlet will be hissed off the stage, and apothecary-Romeo will be received with laughter accompanied by pieces of orange-peel and strips of apple-rind by the country audiences, before whom these worthies managed to make an appearance. When Emily Fitzblazer nee Polkington, pretty no longer, will deplore her fate, and bitterly lament the moments she foolishly consented to wed a showy heartless profligate, who squandered her fortune, ill-used her in his drunken moods, and deserted her with her children as soon as he became tired of her, and she was ro longer able to feed his extravagance. So our El-Dorado, reached with difficulty, is frequently but a barren plain, a sandy desert full of wild beasts, and venomous reptiles and bitter, poisonous fruits. When we have succeeded in struggling up to Olympus, we too often discover, to our intense mortification, that it differs but little from Hades.

Let us, then, cherish our illusions, my masters, until our eyes become dim, our hairs blanched, our figures bent with years; until we are summoned to the Promised Land, where an eternal vision of happiness and ineffable light may be with us for