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was; but he would not have said so had he been aware that I knew he was the curate, not the rector. How can Brown and his wife get on?' a certain person observed to me; they cannot possibly live: they will starve. Think of people getting married with not more than eight or nine hundred a year!' How dignified the man thought he looked as he made the remark! It was a fine thing to represent that he could not understand how human beings could do what he was well aware was done by multitudes of wiser people than himself. 'It is a cheap horse that of Wiggins's,' remarked Mr. Figgins; it did not cost more than seventy or eighty pounds.'

Poor silly Figconclude that his

gins fancies that all who hear him will own broken-kneed hack (bought for £25) cost at least £150. Oh, silly folk who talk big, and then think you are adding to your importance, don't you know that you are merely making fools of yourselves? In nine cases out of ten the person to whom you are relating your exaggerated story knows what the precise fact is. He is too polite to contradict you and to tell you the truth, but rely on it he knows it. No one believes the vapouring story told by another man; no, not even the man who fancies that his own vapouring story is believed. Every one who knows anything of the world knows how, by an accompanying process of mental arithmetic, to make the deductions from the big story told, which will bring it down to something near the truth. Frequently has my friend Mr. Snooks told me of the crushing retort by which he shut up Jeffrey upon a memorable occasion. I can honestly declare that I never gave credence to a syllable of what he said. Repeatedly has my friend Mr. Longbow told me of his remarkable adventure in the Bay of Biscay, when a whale very nearly swallowed

him. Never once did I fail to listen with every mark of implicit belief to my friend's narrative, but do you think I believed it? And more than once has Mrs. O'Callaghan assured me that the hothouses on her fawther's esteet were three miles in length, and that each cluster of grapes grown on that favoured spot weighed above a hundred weight. With profound respect I gave ear to all she said; but, gentle daughter of Erin, did you think I was as soft as I seemed? You may just as well tell the truth at once, ye big talkers, for everybody will know it, at any rate.

It is a sad pity when parents, by a long course of big talking and silly pretension, bring up their children with ideas of their own importance which make them appear ridiculous, and which are rudely dissipated on their entering into life. The mother of poor Lollipop, when he went to Cambridge, told me that his genius was such that he was sure to be Senior Wrangler. And possibly he might have been if he had not been plucked.

It is peculiarly irritating to be obliged to listen to a vapouring person pouring out a string of silly exaggerated stories, all tending to show how great the vapouring person is. Politeness forbids your stating that you don't believe them. I have sometimes derived comfort under such an infliction from making a memorandum, mentally, and then, like Captain Cuttle, making a note' on the earliest opportunity. By taking this course, instead of being irritated by each successive stretch, you are rather gratified by the number and the enormity of them. I hereby give notice to all ladies and gentlemen whose conscience tells them that they are accustomed to vapour, that it is not improbable that I have in my possession a written list of remarkable statements made by them. It

is possible that they would look rather blue if they were permitted to see it.

Let me add, that it is not always vapouring to talk of one's self, even in terms which imply a compliment. It was not vapouring when Lord Tenterden, being Lord Chief Justice of England, standing by Canterbury Cathedral with his son by his side, pointed to a little barber's shop, and said to the boy, 'I never feel proud except when I remember that in that shop your grandfather shaved for a penny!' It was not vapouring when Burke wrote, 'I was not rocked, and swaddled, and dandled into a legislator: Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me!' It was not vapouring when Milton wrote that he had in himself a conviction that 'by labour and intent study, which he took to be his portion in this life, he might leave to after ages something so written as that men should not easily let it die.' Nor was it vapouring, but a pleasing touch of nature, when the King of Siam begged our ambassador to assure Queen Victoria that a letter which he sent to her, in the English language, was composed and written entirely by himself. It is not vapouring, kindly reader, when upon your return home after two or three days' absence, your little son, aged four years, climbs upon your knee, and begs you to ask his mother if he has not been a very good boy when you were away; nor when he shows you, with great pride, the medal which he has won a few years later. It is not vapouring when the gallant man who heroically jeoparded life and limb for the women's and children's sake at Lucknow, wears the Victoria Cross over his brave heart. Nor is it a piece of national vapouring, though it is, sure enough, an appeal to proud remembrances, when England preserves religiously the stout

old Victory, and points strangers to the spot where Nelson fell and died.

But a shrieking whistle yells in my ear: my musings are suddenly pulled up. The hundred miles are traversed: the train is slackening its speed. It was halfpast seven when we started: it is now about half-past eleven. We draw alongside the platform: there are faces I know. I see a black head over the palisade: that is my horse. It would be vapouring to say that my carriage awaits me; for though it has four wheels, it is drawn by no more than four legs. Drag out a portmanteau from under the seat, exchange a cap for a hat, open the door, jump out, bundle away home. And then, perhaps, I may tell some unknown friends who have the patience to read my essays, How I mused in the railway train.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCERNING THE MORAL INFLUENCES OF

W

THE DWELLING.

HEN the great Emperor Napoleon was packed off to Elba, he had, as was usual with him, a sharp eye to theatrical effect. Indeed that distinguished man, during the period of his great elevation as well as of his great downfall, was subject, in a degree almost unexampled, to the tyranny of a principle which in the case of commonplace people finds expression in the representative inquiry, 'What will Mrs. Grundy say?' Whenever Napoleon was about to do anything particular, or was actually doing anything particular, he was always thinking to himself, What will Mrs. Grundy say?' Of course his Mrs. Grundy was a much bigger and much more important individual than your Mrs. Grundy, my reader. Your Mrs. Grundy is the ill-natured, tattling old tabby who lives round the corner, and whose window you feel as much afraid to pass as if it were a battery commanding the pavement, and as if the ugly old woman's baleful eyes were so many Lancaster guns. Or perhaps your Mrs. Grundy is the goodnatured friend (as described by Mr. Sheridan) who is always ready to tell you of anything he has heard to your disadvantage, but who would not

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