--

You see the library was not mere shelves of books, and the books were not mere printed pages. You remember how Robinson Crusoe, in his cheerful moods, put his island home. He sat down to his lonely meal, but that was not how he put things. No. Here was my majesty, all alone by myself, attended by my servants :' his servants being the dog, parrot, and cat. I remember how a wealthy merchant, a man quite of the city as opposed to the country, once talked of emigrating to America, and buying an immense tract of land, where he and his family should lead a simple, unartificial, innocent life. He was not in the least cut out for such a life, and would have been miserable in it, but he was fascinated with the notion because he put it thus: 'I shall have great flocks and herds, and live in a tent like Abraham.' And that way of putting things brought up before the busy man of the nineteenth century I know not what sweet picture of a primevally quiet and happy life. I can remember yet how, when I crept about my father's study, a little boy of three years old, I felt the magic of the art of putting things. All children are restless. It is impossible for them to remain still, and we all know how a child in a study worries the busy scholar. All admonitions to keep quiet failed; it was really impossible to obey them. Creep, creep about; upset footstools; pull off table-covers; upset ink. But when the thing was put in a different way; when the kind voice said, 'Now, you'll be my little dog: creep into your house there under the table, and lie quite still,' there was no difficulty in obeying that command: and, except an occasional bow-wow, there was perfect stillness. The art of putting things had prevailed. It was necessary to keep still; for a dog in a study, I knew, must keep still, and I was a dog.

It must be a worrying thing for a great warrior or statesman, fighting a great battle, or introducing a great legislative measure, to remember that the estimation in which he is to be held in his own day and country, and in other countries and ages, depends not at all on what his conduct is in itself, but entirely on the way in which it shall be put before mankind-represented, or misrepresented, in newspapers, in rumours, in histories. How very unlikely it is that history will ever put the case on its real merits: the characters of history will either be praised far above their deserts, or abused far beyond their sins. 'Do not read history to me,' said Sir Robert Walpole, for that, I know, must be false.' History could be no more than the record of the way in which men had agreed to put things; and those behind the scenes, the men who pull the wires which move the puppets, must often have reason to smile at the absurd mistakes into which the history-writing outsiders fall. And even apart from ignorance, or bias, or intention to deceive, what a fearful thought it must be to a great man taking a conspicuous part in some great solemnity, such as the trial of a queen, or the impeachment of a governor-general, to reflect that this great solemnity, and his own share in it, and how he looked, and what he said, may possibly be put before mankind by the great historian Mr. Wordy! One can enter into Johnson's feeling when, on hearing that Boswell intended to write his biography, he exclaimed, in mingled terror and fury— If I thought that he contemplated writing my life, I should render that impossible by taking his!' It was something to shudder at, the idea of going down to posterity as represented by a Boswell! But the great lexicographer was mistaken: the Dutch-painter-like bi

ography showed him exactly as he was, the great, little, mighty, weak, manly, babyish mind and heart. And not great men alone, historical personages, have this reason for disquiet and apprehension. Don't you know, my reader not unversed in the ways of life, that it depends entirely on how the story is told, how the thing is represented or misrepresented, whether your conduct on any given occasion shall appear heroic or ridiculous, reasonable or absurd, natural or affected, modest or impudent: and don't you know, too, what a vast number of ill-set people are always ready to give the story the unfavourable turn, to put the matter in the bad light; and how many more, not really ill-set, not really with any malicious intention, are prompted by their love of fun, in relating any act of any acquaintance, to try to set it in a ridiculous light? Your domestic establishment is shabby or unpretending, elegant or tawdry, just as the fancy of the moment may lead your neighbour to put the thing. Your equipage is a neat little turn-out or a shabby attempt, your house is quiet or dull, yourself a genius or a blockhead, just as it may strike your friend on the instant to put the thing. And don't we all know some people not bad people in the main — who never by any chance put the thing except in the unfavourable way? I have heard the selfsame house called a snug little place and a miserable little hole; the same man called a lively talker and an absurd rattlebrain; the same person called a gentlemanlike man and a missy piece of affectation; the same income called competence and starvation; the same horse called a noble animal and an old white cow-the entire difference, of course, lay in the fashion in which the narrator chose, from inherent bonhomie or inherent verjuice, to put the thing. While

Mr. Bright probably regards it as the most ennobling occupation of humanity to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, Byron said, as implying the lowest degree of degradation

Trust not for freedom to the Franks,

They have a king who buys and sells!

And it is just the two opposite ways of putting the same admitted fact, to say that Britain is the first mercantile community of the world, and to say that we are a nation of shopkeepers. One way of putting the fact is the dignified, the other is the degrading. If a boy plays truant or falls asleep in church, it just depends on how you put it, or how the story is told, whether you are to see in all this the natural thoughtlessness of boyhood, or a first step towards the gallows. Billy Brown stole some of my apples,' says a kind-hearted man: 'well, poor fellow, I daresay he seldom gets any.' 'Billy Brown stole my apples,' says the severe man: 'ah, the vagabond, he is born to be hanged.' Sydney Smith put Catholic Emancipation as common justice and common sense: Dr. McNeile puts it as a great national sin, and the origin of the potato disease. John Foster mentions in his Diary, that he once expostulated with a great, hulking, stupid bumpkin, as to some gross transgression of which he had been guilty. Little effect was produced on the bumpkin, for dense stupidity is a great duller of the conscience. Foster persisted: Do not you think,' he said, 'that the Almighty will be angry at such conduct as yours?' Blockhead as the fellow was, he could take in the idea of my essay: he replied, 'That's just as A tak's ut!' But what struck little Paul Dombey as strange, that the same bells rung for weddings and for funerals, and that the same sound was merry or doleful, just as we put it, is true of many

things besides bells. The character of everything we hear or see is reflected upon it from our own minds. The sun sees the earth look bright because it first made it so. You go to a public meeting, my friend. You make a speech. You get on, you think, uncommonly well. When your auditor Mr. A. or Miss B. goes home, and is asked there what sort of appearance you made, don't you fancy that the reply will be affected in any appreciable degree by the actual fact! It depends entirely on the state of the relator's nerves or digestion, or the passing fancy of the moment, whether you shall be said to have done delightfully or disgustingly; whether you shall be said to have made a brilliant figure, or to have made a fool of yourself. You never can be sure, though you spoke with the tongue of angels, but that ill-nature, peevishness, prejudice, thoughtlessness, may put the case that your speech was most abominable. Do you fancy that you could ever say or do anything that Mr. Snarling could not find fault with, or Miss Limejuice could not misrepresent?

Years ago I was accustomed to frequent the courts of law, and to listen with much interest to the great advocates of that time, as Follett, Wilde, Thesiger, Kelly. Nowhere in the world, I think, is one so deeply impressed with the value of tact and skill in putting things, as in the Court of Queen's Bench at the trial of an important case by a jury. Does not all the enormous difference, as great as that between a country bumpkin and a hog, between Follett and Mr. Briefless, lie simply in their respective powers of putting things? The actual facts, the actual merits of the case, have very little indeed to do with the verdict, compared with the counsel's skill in putting them; the artful marshalling of circumstances, the