Smith was in his seventy-third year he amused himself by writing out a list, which will be found in his Memoir, of eighteen important changes which had taken place in England. Those which are domestic improvements we may mention here. In the first place, when he was a middle-aged man gas was unknown, and he says he has "groped about in the all but utter darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under the protection of watchmen in their grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of degradation and insult." He was nine hours sailing from Dover to Calais, nine hours riding from Taunton to Bath; in which he says, with an exaggerative wit, "he suffered from 10,000 to 12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking MacAdam was born." He had no umbrella when it rained; and yet poor Jonas Hanway, who first introduced umbrellas here, was finely persecuted and mocked for his courage. There were no quick and excellent cabs running at the modicum of sixpence a mile: if he wanted to go beyond walking distance, he must fain get into " one of those cottages on wheels, a hackney coach "—of which, by the way, there is at present only one existing in London. But those hackney coaches were themselves a modern improvement. in the days of the youth of the witty writer we have quoted he travelled to certain parts of the kingdom, he went in a slow waggon: as he was poor, he must otherwise go in the basket of a stage-coach, where his clothes were rubbed all to pieces. In even the very best of society, he says, "one-third of the gentlemen were always drunk." There was, besides, hardly an easy-chair or a well-made sofa in the kingdom. Huge

G

If

bedsteads harboured vermin, badly made windows excluded light, and ventilation was an undiscovered science. "Positively," writes the Canon of St. Paul's, "I could not keep my small-clothes in their proper place, for braces were unknown." If a man had the gout, there was no colchicum; when smallpox was about there was no vaccination; and people who had lost their sight and their beauty from that scourge you met at every step. If any one had a bilious attack-and from over-eating and bad cooking such must have been an everyday occurrence-there was no calomel; if he had ague, there was no quinine. The doctors were ignorant; and, to make matters worse, there was no proper examination or restriction; consequently quacks abounded. There was no penny post, and no banks open to receive the savings of the poor. But we must end the long list; for, if further considered, it would grow still longer. "In spite of all these privations," wrote Sydney, "I lived on quietly, and am now utterly ashamed that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur two centuries before." While we are simply thankful for these, it behoves us to look about us, and see how we can carry on any improvement for the classes below us. In spite of all their shortcomings in comfort, the old times were often great times, producing noble and great men, who spent their lives for the good of their fellow-creatures. Yet, without question, the mass of mankind are better and happier now than they were then. We have all along tended to that wise and wide doctrine, upheld by Plato, Sir Thomas More, and Jeremy

Bentham, that in a country the greatest happiness of the greatest number is always to be looked to. The majority of modern improvements may be and are little things; but these "little things are dear to little man.” They permit him to act more freely, to think more wisely; they are so many stumbling-blocks taken out of the way of general advancement. The ascetic may think that it pleases God to see men mortify the flesh and torture the body; but the wiser student of history well knows that the aggregation of troubles in this chequered life-troubles which can be easily avoided, and which require no heroism to bear-weans and wears away the heart from a prayerful gratitude, and renders a man unthankful and morose. With this reflection, he will not be unmindful of the amount of real blessings which society has received from the improvements of modern times.

ON RESPECTABLE PEOPLE.

ROM the energetic and rather puffy assistant of a neighbouring chemist we ordered, once upon a time, a box of grey powder pills. These pills, containing a preparation of that thrice famous medicine which the great Theophrastus Bombast Paracelsus von Hohenheim discovered, were destined to stir up the liver of a little foreign friend who was staying with us, and who, in addition to a bloodless cheek, presented a complexion which, in water-colours, might have been imitated by a mixture of bistre and Roman ochre, and which was not unlike brown holland before it is washed. “About four grains of grey powder in each," we said blandly to the young chemist. "Yes, sir," was the quick answer.

Now, hardly was that answer given, when from the glass door labelled "Consulting Room," wherein the great practitioner ate, drank his grog, and talked cheerily with his friends, notwithstanding all the diseases in nosology, issued an unimposing little man in an enormous white neckerchief. He wore spectacles, and brushed the hair from a by no means capacious forehead. "Are you aware, sir," said he, in a

portentous voice, "that grey powder is mercury?" "Indeed." "Yes, sir." "A mild preparation ?" said we quietly. "Yes, sir, mild; but- -" and here the white neckerchief went into a hurried dissertation on the evils occasioned by mercury, and gave heaps of advice, which was of no consequence, and not suited to the occasion, as indeed he owned when we told him that we acted under the advice of one of the best of our physicians. Away we went, the pills were taken, the sluggish liver was put in order ("Torpid is the word, sir,” said the chemist), and the little foreigner's bistre complexion became a radiant coppery red, charming to behold. But we did not forget the white neckerchief: it set us a-thinking over the various disguises which poor humanity puts on, white neckerchiefs being amongst them. We know one most disorderly literary man who wears a white neckerchief on principle, who is called upon to say grace at public dinners, who prospers upon his neckerchief, and who charges his publishers so much more on the strength of that ornament. What is a white neckerchief, and why is it worn, save as a sign and a badge? The elaborate ornament of the Jewish priests dwindled down to the less ample lace of the Roman Catholic, and that in its turn to the lawn bands worn by our clergy, judges, barristers, blue-coat and charity boys, and these gave way to the more convenient white "chokers," as some people contemptuously call them. Of course they originally meant something, just as the buttons at the back of our coats were intended at one time to button up the long and heavy flaps to; but having, as in dress coats, done away with the flaps,