Wince at every touch,

You always do too little or too much;
You speak with life in hopes to entertain,
Your elevated voice goes through the brain;
You fall at once into a lower key,

That's worse- -the drone-pipe of an humble-bee.
The southern sash admits too strong a light,
You rise and drop the curtain-now 'tis night.
He shakes with cold-you stir the fire and strive
To make a blaze—that's roasting him alive.
Serve him with venison, and he chooses fish ;
With sole-that's just the sort he would not wish.
He takes what he at first professed to loathe,
And in due time feeds heartily on both;
Yet still, o'erclouded with a constant frown,
He does not swallow, but he gulps it down.
Your hope to please him vain on every plan,
Himself should work that wonder, if he can-
Alas! his efforts double his distress,

He likes yours little, and his own still less;
Thus always teasing others, always teased,
His only pleasure is—to be displeased.

This may be an ultra-pronounced specimen, happily abnormal, if not anomalous. But the spirit of contrariety is strong in the race at large, if we may accept as a true bill the finding of holy George Herbert, who thus frames one count of his indictment:

If God had laid all common, certainly

Man would have been the encloser : but since now

God hath impaled us, on the contrary

Man breaks the fence, and every ground will plough.

O what were man, might he himself misplace!

Sure to be cross he would shift feet and face.

XIII.

About Finding Dne's Decupation Gone.

A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE.

THELLO'S occupation's gone, with his trust in the pure faith of Desdemona. His wife false to him, the salt of life itself has lost its savour; and wherewith shall it be seasoned now? Desdemona lost, lost to him is all that made this earthly life worth the living; all that made this battle of life worth the fighting.

O now, for ever

Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumèd troop, and the big wars

That make ambition virtue! O farewell!

Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner; and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

*

*

Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!

*

Already had her father, Brabantio, experienced the bitterness of a like discovery, when from him too, though in an

other sense and by another way, Desdemona was gone:

It is too true an evil: gone she is :

And what's to come of my despised time,

Is nought but bitterness.

Lord Lytton remarks that it is the nature of that happiness which we derive from our affections to be calm; its immense influence upon our outward life is not known till it is troubled or withdrawn. By placing his heart at peace, man leaves vent to his energies and passions, and permits their current to flow towards the aims and objects which interest labour or arouse ambition. Thus absorbed in the occupation without, he is lulled into a certain forgetfulness of the value of that internal repose which gives health and vigour to the faculties he employs abroad. But once mar this scarce felt, almost invisible, harmony, and the discord extends to the remotest chords of our active being. "Say to the busiest man whom thou seest in mart, camp, or senate, who seems to thee all intent upon his worldly schemes, 'Thy home is reft from thee-thy household goods are shattered-that sweet noiseless content in the regular mechanism of the springs which set the large wheels of thy soul into movement is thine never more'-and straightway all exertion seems robbed of its object—all aim of its alluring charm. 'Othello's occupation is gone!' With a start, that man will awaken from the sunlit visions of noontide ambition, and exclaim in his desolate anguish, 'What are all the rewards to my labour, now thou hast robbed me of repose? How little are all the gains wrung from strife, in a world of rivals and foes, compared to the smile whose sweetness I knew not till it was lost, and the sense of security from mortal ill which I took from the trust and the sympathy of love !""

Thus writes the Baron of Knebworth, in the latest, and good judges say the best, of his historical fictions. In one

of his early essays he had expatiated by the page together on the same theme. Consequent upon unfaithfulness in those we have trusted, not wisely but too well, is this among other penalties that the occupations of the world are suddenly made stale and barren to us: ambition, toil, the great aims of life, now and abruptly cease to excite. What, in the first place, he asks, made labour grateful and smoothed the sharp pathways of ambition? Was it not the hope that their rewards would be reflected upon another self? Now there is no other self. And then again, does it not, he further asks, require a certain calmness and freedom of mind for great efforts? "Persuaded of the possession of what most we value, we can look abroad with cheerfulness and hope: the consciousness of a treasure inexhaustible by eternal failures, makes us speculative and bold. Now, all things are coloured by our despondency; our self-esteem-that necessary incentive to glory-is humbled and abased. Our pride has received a jarring and bitter shock. We no longer feel that we are equal to stern exertion." And therefore it is, concludes the essayist, that when Othello believes himself betrayed, the occupations of his whole life suddenly become burthensome and abhorred.

How pathetic the dignified self-restraint in King Arthur's reproach of Guinevere:

Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me,
That I the king should greatly care to live;
For thou hast spoilt the purpose of my life.

Halbert Macdonald, in Justice Talfourd's Highland tragedy, believing his to be a blighted life, from the declared indifference of Helen Campbell, breaks out into the wailing cry,

Must I give up all,

And yet live on? No human hope remains

For me if this be blasted. . . . I cannot taste
The sweet resources Heaven, in grace, provides
For love-born manhood; thirst of fame in me
Is quench'd; society's miscall'd delights
Would fret me into madness; and bright war,
The glorious refuge of despair, would seem
A slaughterous and a mercenary trade

To one who has no country.

When we have received our sentence, writes the author of Thalatta, when our most passionate prayers have been unheeded, when the wonderful eyes into which we have piteously gazed will not answer our appeal, when the sweet lips have told us with cruel calmness that there is no hope for us any more, how the charm is taken out of work, how bleak life becomes henceforth! Cynics tell us that such sorrows do not kill, that the sharpest pain loses its edge, and ceases even to hurt. It is false. Such misery is immortal. We may plod on; the mild happiness and the common joys of middle life may make us content; but a light has passed out of our lives that can never be restored; the mainspring has snapped; we are never again quite what we were before."

Death will achieve the like fatal issue. Lord Jeffrey, on the loss of his wife, described as indescribable the sense of lonely and hopeless misery which then came over and overcame him. One of the most touching of all Wordsworth's narrative poems is that which relates the desolate sorrow of Michael, haunting the unfinished sheepfold of which his lost son, Luke, had, at his bidding, laid the first stone:

Among the rocks

He went, and still look'd up to sun and cloud
And to that hollow dell from time to time
Did he repair, to build the Fold of which
Ilis flock had need. 'Tis not forgotten yet