tive situations of either party) occupy their whole tine and attention. The one are straining every nerve, and outraging common sense, to be thought genteel; the others have no other object or idea in their heads than not to be thought vulgar. This is but poor spite; a very pitiful style of ambition. To be merely not that which one heartily despises, is a very humble claim to superiority; to despise what one really is, is still worse.

"Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of vulgarity. It cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed distinction. It plumes itself up and revels in the homely pretensions of the mass of mankind. It judges of the worth of everything by name, fashion, opinion; and hence, from the conscious absence of real qualities or sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its supercilious and fantastic conceit on the wretchedness and wants of others. Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the 'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate. Those who have the fewest resources iz themselves, naturally seek the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers; scandal and satire prevail most in country-places; and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest or most palpable deviation from what we happen to approve, ceases with the progress of common sense. True worth does not exult in the faults and deficiencies of others; as true refinement turns away from grossness anl deformity instead of being tempted to indulge in an

unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would not faint away at the daubing of a sign painter, nor Homer hold his head the higher for being in the company of the poorest scribbler that ever attempted poetry. Real power, real excellence, does not seek for a foil in inferiority, nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarse and homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen and affectation. But the spirit of both these small vices is in gentility as the word stands in vulgar minds: of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain. poured out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to treat as inferiors.

"The essence of vulgarity, I imagine, consists in taking manners, actions, words, opinions on trust from others, without examining one's own feelings or weighing the merits of the case. It is coarseness or shallowness of taste arising from want of individual refinement, together with the confidence and presumption inspired by example and numbers. It may be defined to be a prostitution of the mind or body to ape the more or less obvious defects of others, because by so doing we shall secure the suffrages of those we associate with. To affect a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a large number of persons, or to hold it in abhorrence because another set of persons very little, if at all, better informed, cry it down to distinguish themselves from the former, is in either case equal vulgarity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely because it is common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to feel, to

live. Nothing is vulgar that is natural, spontaneous, unavoidable. Grossness is not vulgarity, ignorance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vulgarity; but all these become vulgar when they are affected, and shown off on the authority of others, or to fail in with the fashion or the company we keep. Caliban is coarse enough, but surely he is not vulgar. We might as well spurn the clod under our feet, and call "All slang phrases are vulgar; but vulgar in the common English idiom. Simplicity is not vulgarity; but the looking to affectation of any sort for distinction is."

it vulgar. there is nothing

To sum up, it may be said, that if you wish to possess the good opinion of your fellow men, the way to secure it is, to be actually what you pretend to be, or rather to appear always precisely what you are. Never depart from the native dignity of your character, which you can only maintain irreproachable by being careful not to imitate the vices, or adopt the follies of others. The best way in all cases you will find to be, to adhere to truth, and to abide by the talents and appliances which have been bestowed upon you by Providence.

CHAPTER XV.

LETTER WRITING.

THERE is no branch of a man's education, no portion of his intercourse with other men, and no quality which will stand him in good stead more frequently than the capability of writing a good letter upon any and every subject. In business, in his intercourse with society, in, I may say, almost every circumstance of his life, he will find his pen called into requisition. Yet, although so important, so almost indispensable an accomplishment, it is one which is but little cultivated, and a letter, perfect in every part, is a great rarity.

In the composition of a good letter there are many points to be considered, and we take first the simplest and lowest, namely, the spelling.

Many spell badly from ignorance, but more from carelessness. The latter, writing rapidly, make, very often, mistakes that would disgrace a schoolboy. If you are in doubt about a word, do not from a feeling of false shame let the spelling stand in its doubtful position hoping that, if wrong, it will pass unnoticed, but get a dictionary, and see what is the correct orthography. Besides the actual misplacing of letters in a word there is another fault of careless, rapid writing, frequently

seen.

This is to write two words in one, running them

with him written Strange, too, as

together. I have more than once seen withim, and for her stand thus, forer. it may seem, it is more frequently the short, common words that are misspelled than long ones. They flow from the pen mechanically, while over an unaccustomed word the writer unconsciously stops to consider the orthography. Chesterfield, in his advice to his son, says:

"I come now to another part of your letter, which is the orthography, if I may call bad spelling orthography. You spell induce, enduce; and grandeur, you spell grandure; two faults of which few of my housemaids would have been guilty. I must tell you that orthography, in the true sense of the word, is so absolutely necessary for a man of letters, or a gentleman, that one false spelling may fix ridicule upon him for the rest of his life; and I know a man of quality, who never recovered the ridicule of having spelled wholesome without the w.

"Reading with care will secure everybody from false spelling; for books are always well spelled, according to the orthography of the times. Some words are indeed doubtful, being spelled differently by different authors of equal authority; but those are few; and in those cases every man has his option, because he may plead his authority either way; but where there is but one right way, as in the two words above mentioned, it is unpardonable and ridiculous for a gentleman to miss it; even a woman of tolerable education would despise and laugh at a lover, who sent her an ill-spelled billet-doux. I fear, and suspect, that you have taken it into your head, in most cases, that the matter is all, and the man