Lobbs, who had never left off knocking since he first began. Now it did unfortunately happen that old Lobbs, being very hungry, was monstrous cross. Nathaniel Pipkin could hear him growling away like an old mastiff with a sore throat; and whenever the unfortunate apprentice with the thin legs came into the room, so surely did old Lobbs commence swearing at him in a most Saracenic and ferocious manner, though apparently with no other end or object than that of easing his bosom by the discharge of a few superfluous oaths. At length some supper, which had been warming up, was placed on the table, and then old Lobbs fell to in regular style; and having made clear work of it in no time, kissed his daughter, and demanded his pipe. Nature had placed Nathaniel Pipkin's knees in very close juxtaposition, but when he heard old Lobbs demand his pipe, they knocked together as if they were going to reduce each other to powder; for, depending from a couple of hooks in the very closet in which he stood, was a large brown-stemmed silver-bowled pipe, which pipe he himself had seen in the mouth of old Lobbs, regularly every afternoon and evening, for the last five years. The two girls went down-stairs for the pipe, and up-stairs for the pipe, and everywhere but where they knew the pipe was, and old Lobbs stormed away meanwhile in the most wonderful manner. At last he thought of the closet, and walked up to it. It was of no use a little man like Nathaniel Pipkin pulling the door inwards, when a great strong fellow like old Lobbs was pulling it outwards. Old Lobbą gave it one tug, and open it flew, disclosing Nathaniel Pipkin standing bolt upright inside, and shaking with apprehension from head to foot. Bless us! what an appalling look old Lobbs gave him, as he dragged him out by the collar, and held him at arm's length. "Why, you snivelling, wry-faced, puny villain!" gasped old Lobbs, paralyzed by the atrocious confession; "what do you mean by that? Say this to my face! Damme, I'll throttle you!" It is by no means improbable that old Lobbs would have carried this threat into execution in the excess of his rage, if his arm had not been stayed by a very unexpected apparition, to wit, the male cousin, who, stepping out of his closet, and walking up to old Lobbs, said "I cannot allow this harmless person, sir, who has been asked here in some girlish frolic, to take upon himself, in a very noble manner, the fault (if fault it is) which I am guilty of, and am ready to avow. I love your daughter, sir; and I am here for the purpose of meeting her." Old Lobbs opened his eyes very wide at this, but not wider than Nathaniel Pipkin. "You did?" said Lobbs, at last finding breath to speak. "I did." "And I forbade you nis nouse long ago." "You did, or I should not have been here, clandestinely, to-night." I am sorry to record it of old Lobbs, but I think he would have struck the cousin if his pretty daughter, with her bright eyes swimming in tears, had not clung to his arm. 66 Don't stop him, Maria," said the young man; "if he has the will to strike me, let him. I would not hurt a hair of his gray head for the riches of the world." The old man cast down his eyes at this reproof, and they met those of his daughter. I have hinted once or twice before that they were very bright eyes, and though they were tearful now, their influence was by no means lessened. Old Lobbs turned his head away as if to avoid being persuaded by them, when, as fortune would have it, he encountered the face of the 'Why, what the devil do you want here?" wicked little cousin, who, half afraid for her said old Lobbs, in a fearful voice. Nathaniel Pipkin could make no reply, so old Lobbs shook him backwards and forwards for two or three minutes, by way of arranging his ideas for him. "What do you want here?" roared Lobbs; "I suppose you have come after my daughter, now?" Old Lobbs merely said this as a sneer; for he did not believe that mortal presumption could have carried Nathaniel Pipkin so far. What was his indignation when that poor man replied― "Yes, I did, Mr. Lobbs. I did come after your daughter. I love her, Mr. Lobbs.' brother, and half laughing at Nathaniel Pipkin, presented as bewitching an expression of countenance, with a touch of shyness in it too, as any man, old or young, need look upon. She drew her arm coaxingly through the old man's, and whispered something in his ear; and do what he would, old Lobbs couldn't help breaking out into a smile, while a tear stole down his cheek at the same time. Five minutes after this the girls were brought down from the bedroom with a great deal of giggling and modesty; and while the young people were making themselves perfectly happy, THE CLOUD. old Lobbs got down the pipe, and smoked it; and it was a remarkable circumstance about that particular pipe of tobacco, that it was the Last soothing and delightful one he ever ked Nathaled Pipkin thought it best to keep his own cansel, and by so doing gradually rose into high favour with old Lobbs, who sign in to smoke in time; and they used tosis was in the garden on the fine evenings for many years afterwards, smoking and drinkng in grad state. He soon recovered the effects of his attachment, for we find his name in the parish register as a witness to the marmage of Maria Loobs to her cousin; and it 100 appears, by reference to other documents, that on the night of the wedding he was incarcerated in the village cage for having, in a state of extreme intoxication, committed sundry excesses in the streets, in all of which he was alded and abetted by the bony apprentice with *he rain legs. THE CLOUD. BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers From the seas and the streams; 1 bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noon day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken the sweet birds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the fail of the lashing hail, I suit the snow on the mountains below, lu a savern under is fettered the thunder- Or warth and ocean, with gentle motion, this plot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move Over the cells, and the crags, and the hills, When he dream under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, That orbed maiden with white fire laden, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer. And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-coloured bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, I am the daughter of earth and water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I raise and unbuild it again. ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS. [Sir Arthur Helps, K.C.B., born about 1817. Edu cated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the usnal degrees. Passing through various secretaryships. and other offices, he became clerk to the privy council in 1859. He was knighted in 1872 by her Majesty, -a very widely appreciated recognition of his genius and faithful service to the state. His works are: Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd; Essays written in the Intervals of Business; King Henry II., an historical drama; Catherine Douglas, a tragedy; The Claims of Labour; Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourses thereon. The friends are Milverton and Ellesmere, and their old tutor, Dunsford. Milverton wrote essays which he read to his friends, and the three discussed the various principles and topics suggested by each essay. We quote one of the essays. Besides the foregoing. Sir Arthur Helps has written: Companions of my Solitude; Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen; History of the Spanish Conquest of America; The Life of Pizarro; Casimir Maremma; Brevia, or Short Essays and Aphorisms; Conversations on War and General Culture; Life of Hernando Cortes, and the Conquest of Mexico; Thoughts upon Government; &c. Sympathetic and subtle thought, expressed in the purest English, characterize his works. Ruskin says: "A true thinker who has practical purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as Plato, or Carlyle, or Helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and must be always of infinite use to his generation."] The Iliad for war; the Odyssey for wandering; but where is the great domestic epic? Yet it is but commonplace to say that passions may rage round a tea-table which would not have misbecome men dashing at one another in war-chariots; and evolutions of patience and temper are performed at the fireside worthy to be compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar. We may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and disgusts that there are behind friendship, relationship, service, and, indeed, proximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots upon earth. The various relations of life which bring people together cannot, as we know, be perfectly fulfilled except in a state where there will, perhaps, be no occasion for any of them. It is no harm, however, to endeavour to see whether there are any methods which may make these relations in the least degree more harmonious now. In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future of the same mind. A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy. Sometimes men have a knowledge of it with regard to the world in general: they do not expect the outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they live with. Diversities distress them. They will not see that there are many forms of virtue and wisdom. Yet we might as well say, 'Why all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?" Many of the rules for people living together in peace follow from the above. For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and requestion their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact that they are not we. Another rule for living happily with others is to avoid having stock subjects of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live much together, that they come to have certain set topics, around which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified vanity, and the like, that the original subject of difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it. Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people when he said— "Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail of a domestic day." But the application should be much more general than he made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers or two politicians can go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good temper. If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticizing his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits. One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to, is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. "Had I been consulted," Had you listened to me,' But you always will," and such short scraps of sentences, may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect. Another rule is not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy. Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly, to your associates, but not less courteously,, than you do to strangers. Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and companions than it can give, and especially must not expect contrary things. It is somewhat arrogant to talk of travelling over other minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite); but still we become familiar with the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our associates. And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is familiar to him. In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we catch a glimpse into cheerful-looking rooms with light blazing in them, and we conclude, involuntarily, how happy the inmates must be. Yet there is heaven and hell in those rooms-the same heaven and hell that we have known in others. There are two great classes of promoters of social happiness-cheerful people, and people who have some reticence. The latter are more secure benefits to society even than the former. | They are non-conductors of all the heats and animosities around them. To have peace in a house, or a family, or any social circle, the members of it must beware of passing on hasty and uncharitable speeches, which, the whole of the context seldom being told, is often not conveying, but creating mischief. They must be very good people to avoid doing this; for let human nature say what it will, it likes sometimes to look on at a quarrel; and that not altogether from ill-nature, but from a love of excitement-for the same reason that Charles II. liked to attend the debates in the Lords, because they were "as good as a play." We come now to the consideration of temper, which might have been expected to be treated first. But to cut off the means and causes of bad temper is, perhaps, of as much importance as any direct dealing with the temper itself. Besides it is probable that in small social cir cles there is more suffering from unkindness than ill temper. Anger is a thing that those who live under us suffer more from than those who live with us. But all the forms of illhumour and sour-sensitiveness, which especially belong to equal intimacy (though indeed they are common to all), are best to be met by impassiveness. When two sensitive persons are shut up together, they go on vexing each other with a reproductive irritability. But sensitive and hard people get on well together. The supply of temper is not altogether out of the usual laws of supply and demand. Intimate friends and relations should be careful when they go out into the world together, or admit others to their own circle, that they do not make a bad use of the knowledge which they have gained of each other by their intimacy. Nothing is more common than this, and did it not mostly proceed from mere carelessness, it would be superlatively ungenerous. You seldom need wait for the written life of a man to hear about his weaknesses, or what are supposed to be such, if you know his intimate friends, or meet him in company with them. Lastly in conciliating those we live with, it is most surely done, not by consulting their interests, nor by giving way to their opinions, so much as by not offending their tastes. The most refined part of us lies in this region of taste, which is perhaps a result of our whole being rather than a part of our nature, and at any rate is the region of our most subtle sympathies and antipathies. It may be said that if the great principles of Christianity were attended to, all such rules, suggestions, and observations as the above would be needless. True enough! Great principles are at the bottom of all things; but to apply them to daily life, many little rules, precautions, and insights are needed. Such things hold a middle place between real life and principles, as form does between matter and spirit, moulding the one and expressing the other. KUBLA KHAN. BY S. T. COLERIDGE. In the summer of the year 1797 the author of the following fragment, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas Pilgrimage:-"Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines, if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour; and on his return to his room found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan So twice five miles of fertile ground But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething. Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, The shadow of the dome of pleasure A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, I would build that dome in air- SUMMER. BY THOMAS CAREW. Now that the Winter's gone, the earth hath lost |