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of any other lady are so many stones thrown at her; she can by no means bear them, they make her so uneasy, that she cannot keep her seat, but up she riseth and goeth home half-burst with anger and strait-lacing." Now there are

a few rare women who can bear to hear men praising the more homely virtues of another woman, but are there any who can suffer in silence while a friend's fine eyes or pearl-like teeth are mentioned in tones of genuine unstinted admiration? They do not necessarily rise and go home half-burst with anger, but even the very best of them will sniff ever so little, and remark that belladonna dilates the pupil in a wonderful way, or that Brown the dentist is such a clever man. Lord Halifax expects too

much.

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Preciosity, a very different thing, is severely castigated. The précieuse would have it thought "that she is made of so much the finer clay. that she hath no common earth about her. To this end she must neither move nor speak like other women, because it would be vulgar; and therefore must have a language of her own, since ordinary English is too coarse for her. . . . She cometh into a room as if her limbs were set on with ill-made screws, which maketh the company fear the pretty thing should leave some of its artificial person upon the floor." Lord Halifax evidently knows his Molière. He may have seen 'Les Précieuses

Ridicules' during the play's original run of one hundred and twenty nights in Paris in 1659. Preciosity is common in all countries and in every age, but fortunately assumes epidemic form but rarely. There is many a mute inglorious Postlethwaite among us who is now doomed to waste his sweetness on the desert air. But his time will assuredly come again, and do not the pages of 'Punch' testify to his brief but dazzling outbreak in the middle of the nineteenth century?

He concludes the chapter, "Let this picture supply the place of any other rules which might be given to prevent your resemblance to it; the deformity of it, well-considered, is instruction enough; from the same reason that the sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached upon that subject."

Pride, he says, is a different thing to Vanity, and a word of various meanings. "A woman

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is not to be proud of her fine gown; nor when she hath less wit than her neighbours, to comfort herself that she hath more lace. Some ladies put so much weight upon their ornaments that even the thought of death is made less heavy to them by the contemplation of their being laid out in state, and honourably attended to the grave." We most of us like the idea of having a fine Wake! Pride ought not to take the form of an excessive belief in Quality, or

good birth. "Some make Avoid gambling. "If you

Quality an idol, and then their reason must fall down and worship it. They would have the world think, that no amends can ever be made for the want of a great title or an ancient coat of arms."

True pride is directed against vice and folly, and "it is safer for a woman to be thought too proud than too familiar.'

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"The last thing I shall recommend to you is a wise and a safe method of using diversions. To be too eager in the pursuit of pleasure whilst you are young, is dangerous; to catch at it in riper years, is grasping a shadow." She is warned against "turning her whole life into a holiday," but he will allow that some diversion is necessary, as the mind like the body is tired by being always in one posture." Some fine ladies, he says, "are engaged in a circle of idleness, where they turn round for the whole year, without the interruption of a serious hour. They know all the players' names, and are intimately acquainted with all the booths in Bartholomew fair. No soldier is more obedient to the sound of his captain's trumpet, than they are to that which summoneth them to a puppet-play or 8 Monster. The spring, that bringeth out flies, and fools, maketh them inhabitants in Hide-Park; in the winter they are an incumbrance to the playhouse, and the ballast of the drawing

room."

pay exactly, it will be inquired from whence the money cometh." If you owe money to a man, and cannot pay him, he "will be thought no unfair creditor, if where the Estate faileth he seizeth upon the person. Besides, if a lady could see her own face upon an ill game, at a deep stake, she would certainly forswear anything that could put her looks under such a disadvantage."

Half an hour in the rooms at Monte Carlo will be quite enough to convince any one of the truth of this last statement. No passion, no other vice, so affects its victim's countenance; nothing makes a woman uglier, with more permanent ugliness, than gambling.

Kitchen Lancers he would not have liked. The end of learning to dance is to know how to move gracefully. "It is better for a woman never to dance, because she hath no skill in it, than to do it too often, because she doth it well."

He now makes an end. "Much more might be said to all these heads and many more might be added to them. But I must restrain my thoughts which are full of my dear child, and would overflow into a volume, which would not be fit for a New Year's gift. I will conclude with my warmest wishes for all that is good to you. That you may live so as to be an ornament to your family and a pattern to your

sex,

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that wit and vertue may both conspire to make you a great figure. Let me conjure you, My Dearest, to comply with this kind ambition of a father, whose thoughts are so ingaged in your behalf, that he reckoneth your Happiness to be the greatest part of his own."

The advice is obviously that of a man qui connait sa monde, -some of it suggests that he is a little afraid of it. He is not inspired by high principle or religious feeling; the world is master, and his daughter must make the best of it, and not provoke its censure, for it is 66 an angry beast" when roused, and will tear her in pieces. He was caution itself in his political career, and he wishes to make his daughter as careful in hers. No doubt in those

times it was well to walk warily, for politician or for grande dame, but one cannot help feeling that a leaning towards greater boldness on occasions would have been an improvement. To throw your friends overboard lest they compromise you, but not to do it too soon lest you may be called a false friend-this is craven counsel. It is a risky thing to defy the world, certainly; but at times the angry beast can be stilled by righteous anger or a brave demeanour, and loves to tear the hand that strokes it over- gently. But with the largest part of the essay one cannot quarrel; it is freshly, vigorously written, and one can only hope that his daughter profited by it, and became all that his heart could have desired.

MOUNT IDA.

[This poem commemorates an event of some years ago, when a young Englishman— still remembered by many of his contemporaries at Oxford—went up into Mount Ida and was never seen again.]

I.

NOT cypress, but this warm pine-plumage now
Fragrant with sap, I pluck; nor bid you weep
Ye Muses that still haunt the heavenly brow

Of Ida, though the ascent is hard and steep:
Weep not for him who left us wrapped in sleep
At dawn beneath the holy mountain's breast
And all alone from Ilion's gleaming shore
Clomb the high sea-ward glens, fain to drink deep
Of earth's old glory from your silent crest,
Take the cloud-conquering throne

Of gods, and gaze alone

Thro' heaven. Darkling we slept who saw his face no more.

II.

Ah yet, in him hath Lycidas a brother,
And Adonaïs will not say him nay,

And Thyrsis to the breast of one sweet Mother
Welcomes him, climbing by the self-same way:
Quietly as a cloud at break of day

Up the long glens of golden dew he stole
(And surely Bion called to him afar!)

The tearful hyacinths, and the green-wood spray
Clinging to keep him from the sapphire goal,
Kept of his path no trace!

Upward the yearning face

Clomb the ethereal height, calm as the morning star.

III.

For thou wast ever alien to our skies,

A wistful stray of radiance on this earth,
A changeling with deep memories in thine eyes
Mistily gazing thro' our loud-voiced mirth

To some fair land beyond the gates of birth;
Yet, as a star thro' clouds, thou still didst shed
Through our dark world thy lovelier, rarer glow;

Time, like a picture of but little worth,

Before thy young hand lifelessly out-spread,

At one light stroke from thee

Gleamed with Eternity;

Thou gav'st the master's touch, and we-we did not know.

IV.

Ah yet, incline, dear Sisters, or my song

That with the light wings of the skimming swallow
Must range the reedy slopes, will work him wrong!
And with some golden shaft do thou, Apollo,
Show the pine-shadowed path that none may follow;
For, as the blue air shuts behind a bird,

Round him closed Ida's cloudy woods and rills!
Day-long, night-long, by echoing height and hollow,
We called him, but our tumult died un-heard:
Down from the scornful sky

Our faint wing-broken cry

Fluttered and perished among the many-folded hills.

V.

Ay, though we clomb each faint-flushed peak of vision,
Nought but our own sad faces we divined:
Thy radiant way still laughed us to derision,
And still revengeful Echo proved unkind;

And oft our faithless hearts half feared to find

Thy cold corse in some dark mist-drenched ravine
Where the white foam flashed head-long to the sea:

How should we find thee, spirits deaf and blind
Even to the things which we had heard and seen?
Eyes that could see no more

The old light on sea and shore,

What should they hope or fear to find? They found not thee;

VI.

Not though we gazed from heaven o'er Ilion
Dreaming on earth below, mistily crowned
With towering memories, and beyond her shone
The wine-dark seas Achilles heard resound!
Only, and after many days, we found

Dabbled with dew, at border of a wood
Bedded in hyacinths, open and a-glow

Thy Homer's Iliad.

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Dryad tears had drowned

The rough Greek type and, as with honey or blood,
One crocus with crushed gold

Stained the great page that told

Of gods that sighed their loves on Ida, long ago.

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