this slavish conformity, is in the reticence it creates. People will be, what are called, intimate friends, and yet no real interchange of opinion takes place between them. A man keep his doubts, his difficulties and his peculiar opinions to himself. He is afraid of letting anybody know that he does not exactly agree with the world's theories on all points. There is no telling the hindrance that this is to truth.

MILVERTON. A great cause of this, Ellesmere, is in the little reliance you can have on any man's secrecy. A man finds that what, in the heat of discussion, and in the perfect carelessness of friendship, he has said to his friend, is quoted to people whom he would never have said it to; knowing that it would be sure to be misunderstood, or half understood, by them. And so he grows cautious; and is very loath to communicate to anybody his more cherished opinions, unless they fall in exactly with the stream. Added to which, I think there is in these times less than there ever was, of a proselytizing spirit: and people are content to keep their opinions to themselves—more, perhaps, from indifference than from fear.

ELLESMERE. Yes, I agree with you. By the way I think your taking dress as an illustration of extreme conformity is not bad. Really it is wonderful the degree of square and dull hideousness to which in the process of time and tailoring, and by severe conformity, the human creature's outward appearance has arrived. Look at a crowd of men from a height, what an ugly set of ants they appear! Myself, when I see an Eastern man, one of the people attached

to their embassies, sweeping by us in something flowing and stately, I feel inclined to take off my hat to him, (only that I think the hat might frighten him,) and say here is a great, unhatted, uncravated, bearded man, not a creature clipt and twisted and tortured into tailorhood.

DUNSFORD. Ellesmere broke in upon me just now, so that I did not say all that I meant to say. But, Milverton, what would you admit that we are to conform to? In silencing the general voice, may we not give too much opportunity to our own headstrong suggestions, and to wilful license?

MILVERTON. Yes to be somewhat deaf to the din of the world may be no gain, even loss, if then we only listen more to the worst part of ourselves: but in itself it is a good thing to silence that din. It is at least a beginning of good. If any thing good is then gained, it is not a sheepish tendency, but an independent resolve growing out of our nature. And, after all, when we talk of non-conformity, it may only be that we non-conform to the immediate sect of thought or action about us, to conform to a much wider thing in human nature.

ELLESMERE. Ah me! how one wants a moral essayist always at hand to enable one to make use of moral essays.

MILVERTON. Your rules of law are grand thingsthe proverbs of justice; yet has not each case its specialties, requiring to be argued with much circumstance, and capable of different interpretations? Words cannot be made into men.

DUNSFORD. I wonder you answer his sneers, Mil

verton.

ELLESMERE.

I must go and see whether words cannot be made into guineas: and then guineas into men is an easy thing. These trains will not wait even for critics, so, for the present, good bye.

CHAPTER III.

ELLESMERE soon wrote us word that he would be able to come down again: and I agreed to be at Worth-Ashton (Milverton's house) on the day of his arrival. I had scarcely seated myself at our usual place of meeting before the friends entered, and after greeting me, the conversation thus began:

ELLESMERE. Upon my word, you people who live in the country have a pleasant time of it. As Milverton was driving me from the station through Durley Wood, there was such a rich smell of pines, such a twittering of birds, so much joy, sunshine, and beauty, that I began to think, if there were no such place as London, it really would be very desirable to live in the country.

MILVERTON. What a climax! But I am always very suspicious, when Ellesmere appears to be carried away by any enthusiasm, that it will break off suddenly, like the gallop of a post-horse.

DUNSFORD. Well, what are we to have for our essay?

MILVERTON. Despair.

ELLESMERE. I feel equal to any thing just now, and so, if it must be read sometime or other, let us have it

now.

MILVERTON. You need not be afraid. I want to take away, not to add, gloom. Shall I read?

We assented, and he began.

DESPAIR.

DESPAIR may be serviceable when it arises from a temporary prostration of spirits; during which the mind is insensibly healing, and her scattered power silently returning. This is better than to be the sport of a teasing hope without reason. But to indulge in despair as a habit, is slothful, cowardly, short-sighted; and manifestly tends against nature. Despair is then the paralysis of the soul.

These are the principal causes of despair: remorse, the sorrows of the affections, worldly trouble, morbid views of religion, native melancholy.

REMORSE.

Remorse does but add to the evil which bred it, when it promotes, not penitence, but despair. To have erred in one branch of our duties does not unfit us for the performance of all the rest, unless we suffer the dark spot to spread over our whole nature, which may happen almost unob