our novelists and dramatists of the time, confirm it. It is barely one hundred and fifty years since a bishop, reading morning prayers to Queen Anne, was interrupted by the door being shut, so that her Majesty might change her garments. When the prelate stopped indignantly, the Queen, who wanted to scamper through the prayers, cried out that he should "go on." "Madam,” answered he proudly, "I will not whistle the word of God through a key-hole." The dignity, the learning, and the virtues of the clergy, have earned for them due respect did we get from them a little more kindness and urbanity towards the poorer classes, they would win yet

more.

But, high above all in the estimation of the world, and ever ready to flaunt its white neckerchief in the eyes of an admiring crowd, is the bar. A young or old man who may have been an attorney, or even of a lower status, is, as soon as he is called to the bar, a gentleman, generosus-not by blood, but by profession. It used scarcely to be so in Swift's time, whose pungent satires on what penny-a-liners term the "gentlemen of the long robe” should be in every one's memory. A barrister, for a given fee, will endeavour to whiten or blacken any one's character. From his very position, observing people always in conflict with each other, hearing oaths and counter-oaths, he must form a mean and low estimate of humanity; he must be acquainted with, and perhaps use, all the arts of simulation and dissimulation; he must insinuate a lie, and repress truth; on sundry occasions he must—if we look to common practice--call Heaven as a

witness to the truth of that which he suspects, perhaps knows to be a lie; he must, to be successful, browbeat, worry, and terrify his opponents. Such, indeed, are the modern methods of eliciting truth; from such professors are our judges chosen; and from such a source, the only source save one, are the ranks of our hereditary and fast-decaying peers and legislators filled up. With such a chance in life before them, a chance presented by no other profession in anything like an equal degree, no wonder that the profession holds up its head to the world.

The other grand reservoir from which we draw our peers, and which is therefore a most honourable profession, is that of the soldier. His profession is above respect; it attaches to itself honour and glory. It must at least be confessed that it is imposing. All history echoes with the perpetual noise of drums, the shrieks of fifes, the groans of dying men, and the marchings and counter-marchings up and down the highways of the world. Here, now, is a town blown to pieces, or a dozen ships sunk, or a garrison starved, or a grand pitched battle, in which on each side fifteen thousand men are slain. The soldiers really make so much noise in the world that it is impossible not to respect them, although the philosopher, in his study, may naturally wish them away. They are by far too impressive for him, and it is with but a sarcastic smile that he remembers how proud and delighted mothers are when they have an opportunity of bringing up their innocent children as soldiers or lawyers. "Yes," he says, with Charles Lamb, "even such people were children

once, I suppose." Then, remembering how curiously respectability, position, and riches, are mixed and distributed, and with how little wisdom the many succeed in life, yet that, through all, the world does progress, and a brighter dawn succeeds each night of darkness, he determines to proceed with his self-imposed task, and to look upon men as they are -not as they seem-without any regard to the common badge with which they disguise themselves.

ON OUR JUDGMENTS OF OTHERS, AND

OTHER JUDGMENTS.

HERE is a story so good that we wish it were thoroughly authenticated, which runs thus:When Milton, old, poor, and blind, was retired

to obscurity and Bunhill Fields, and the Stuarts,

whom he had so thoroughly opposed, had returned to power, inaugurating therewith a reign of licentiousness never exceeded, the scapegrace King visited the old man, and found him sitting at his door basking in the sun. The face of his Majesty lighted up with a sardonic smile as he said to Cromwell's Latin Secretary, "Do you not perceive, Mr. Milton, that your blindness is a judgment of God for taking part against my late father, King Charles?" "Nay," said Milton calmly, "if I have lost my sight through God's judgment, what can you say to your father, who lost his head ?" The rejoinder is complete: the unexpected tit for tat silenced the King, and Milton was spared, whilst others of his party were banished or slain. We can recall this story when we find people nowadays so ready "to deal damnation round the land" for every little action which they think a crime. A Mormon

writes to the papers, and threatens us with God's "judgment" because Joe Smith is termed a cunning rogue. The Americans, he says, are now suffering a judgment because they expelled the Mormons from Utah, and murdered the prophet. But then there is a black man, and a newspaper editor, who says that the Union is split up as a judgment against slavery; and many old legitimists here will certainly rejoice and say, "Now to what end has your fine Republic come to? You rebelled against a good king, a small taxation, a generous government, which had spent millions for you, and now, after eighty years, comes the judgment!" So the Plague of London was a judgment, on one side for readmitting the Stuarts, on the other for executing the King; and then the Fire was an awful judgment against everything and everybody. The sinful nation was to be destroyed: the wretches were to be swallowed up. Never were the churches so full. The Court repented, but it was Falstaff's repentance, "Marry, not in sackcloth and ashes, but with new cloth and old sack," and the career of sin was persevered in just as strongly as ever. Presuming this to be the case, there are two thoughts which must strike most of us. Firstly, that all judgments of the Most High are very merciful—as indeed they are—because by the great fire London was at once and for ever purified of her annual visitation of the plague; her streets were widened and improved, and new health and energy given to the people, and this in the cheapest and least cruel way. Had the Lord Mayor and citizens and the Government been wise enough to see this, and to adopt Wren's plan for rebuilding the city,