magnetic current, was too faint to be indicated by the machines now in use), still, constant wrong-doing, in however slight a degree, cannot be without a jar of the entire moral nature. It cannot be without putting us out of harmony with the entire economy under which we live. And thus it is that the most particular old bachelor, or the most precise old maid, who insists upon everything about the house being in perfect order, is, in so far, co-operating with the great plan of Providence; and, like every one who does so, finds an innocent pleasure result from that unintended harmony. Tidiness is a great source of cheerfulness. It is cheering, I have said, even to come into one's breakfast room, and find it spotlessly tidy; but still more certainly will this cheerfulness come if the tidiness is the result of our own exertion.

And so I counsel you, my friend, if you are ever disheartened about some example which has been pressed upon you of the evil which there is in this world; if you get vexed and worried and depressed about some evil in the government of your country, or of your county, or of your parish; if you have done all you can to think how the evil may be remedied; and if you know that further brooding over the subject would only vex and sting and do no good; if all this should ever be so, then I counsel you to have resort to the great refuge of Tidiness. Don't sit over your library fire, brooding and bothering; don't fly to sugar-plums, they will not avail. There is a corner of one of your fields that is grown up with nettles; there is a bit of wall or of palisade out of repair; there is a yard of the edging of a shrubbery walk where an overhanging laurel has killed the turf; there is a bed in the garden which is not so scrupulously tidy as it ought to be; there is a branch of a peach-tree that has

pulled out its fastenings to the wall, and that is flapping about in the wind. Or there is a drawer of papers which has for weeks been in great confusion; or a division of your bookcase where the books might be better arranged. See to these things forthwith: the out-ofdoor matters are the best. Get your man-servant - all your people, if have half-a-dozen you and forth and go see things made tidy and see that they are done thoroughly; work half done will not serve for our present purpose. Let every nettle be cut down and carried off from the neglected corner; then let the ground be dug up and levelled, and sown with grass seed. If it rains, so much the better: it will make the seed take root at once. Let the wall or fence be made better than when it was new; let a wheelbarrow-full of fresh green turf be brought; let it be laid down in place of the decayed edging; let it be cut accurately as a watch's machinery; let the gravel beside it be raked and rolled: then put your hands in your pockets and survey the effect with delight. All this will occupy you, interest you, dirty you, for a couple of hours, and you will come in again to your library fireside quite hopeful and cheerful. The worry and depression will be entirely gone; you will see your course beautifully: you have sacrificed to the good genius of Tidiness, and you are rewarded accordingly. I am simply stating phenomena, my reader. I don't pretend to explain causes; but I hesitate not to assert, that to put things right, and to know that things are put right, has a wonderful effect in enlivening and cheering. You cannot tell why it is so; but you come in a very different man from what you were when you went out. You see things in quite another way. You wonder how you could have plagued yourself so much before. We

all know that powerful effects are often produced upon our minds by causes which have no logical connection with these effects. Change of scene helps people to get over losses and disappointments, though not by any process of logic. If the fact that Anna Maria cruelly jilted you, thus consigning you to your present state of single misery, was good reason why you should be snappish and sulky in Portland-place, is it not just as good reason now, when, in the midst of a tag-rag procession you are walking into Chamouni after having climbed Mont Blanc? The state of the facts remains precisely as before. Anna Maria is married to Mr. Dunderhead, the retired ironmonger with ten thousand a year. Nor have any new arguments been suggested to you beyond those which Smith good-naturedly addressed to you in Lincoln's Inn-square, when you threatened to punch his head. But you have been up Mont Blanc; you have nearly fallen into a crevasse; your eyes are almost burnt out of your head. You have looked over that sea of mountains which no one that has seen will ever forget; here is your alpen-stock, and you shall carry it home with you as an ancient palmer his faded branch from the Holy Land. And though all this has nothing earthly to do with your disappointment, you feel that somehow all this has tided you over it. You are quite content. You don't grudge Anna Maria her ferruginous happiness. You are extremely satisfied that things have turned out as they did. The sale of nails, pots, and gridirons is a legitimate and honourable branch of commercial enterprise. And Mr. Dunderhead, with all that money, must be a worthy and able man.

I am writing, I need hardly say, for ordinary people

when I suggest Tidiness as a constant source of temperate satisfaction. Of course great and heroic men are above so prosaic a means of content. Such amiable characters as Roderick Dhu, in the Lady of the Lake, as Byron's Giaour and Lara, not to name Childe Harold, as the heroes of Locksley Hall and Maud, and Mr. Bailey's Festus, would no doubt receive my humble suggestions very much as Mynheer Van Dunk, who disposed of his two quarts of brandy daily, might be supposed to receive the advice to substitute for his favourite liquor an equal quantity of skimmed milk. And possibly Mr. Disraeli would not be content out of office, however orderly and tidy everything about his estate and his mansion might be. Yet it is upon record that a certain ancient emperor, who had ruled the greatest empire this world ever saw, found it a pleasant change to lay the sceptre and the crown aside, and, descending from the throne, to take to cultivating cabbages. And as he looked at the tidy rows and the bunchy heads, he declared that he had changed his condition for the better; that tidiness in a cabbage-garden could make a man happier than the imperial throne of the Roman Empire. It is well that it should be so, as in this world there are many more cabbage-gardens than imperial thrones; and tidiness is attainable by many by whom empire is not attainable.

A disposition towards energetic tidiness is a perennial source of quiet satisfaction. It always provides us with something to think of and to do it affords scope for a little ingenuity and contrivance: it carries us out of ourselves and prevents our leading an unhealthily subjective life. It gratifies the instinctive love of seeing things right which is in the healthy human being. And it

is founded upon the philosophical fact, that there is a peculiar satisfaction in having a thing, great or small, which was wrong, put right. You have greater pleasure in such a thing, when it has been fairly set to rights, than if it never had been wrong. Had Brummell been a philosopher instead of a conceited and empty-pated coxcomb, I should at once have understood, when he talked of his favourite leg,' that he meant a leg which had been fractured, and then restored as good as ever. Is it a suggestion too grave for this place, that this principle of the peculiar interest and pleasure which are felt in an evil remedied, a spoiled thing mended, a wrong righted, may cast some light upon the Divine dealing with this world? It is fallen indeed, and evil: but it will be set right. And then, perhaps, it may seem better to its Almighty Maker than even on the First Day of Rest. And the human being who systematically keeps right, and sets right, all things, even the smallest, within his own little dominion, enjoys a pleasure which has a dignified foundation; which is real, simple, innocent, and lasting. Never say that it is merely the fidgety particularity of an old bachelor which makes him impatient of suffering a weed or a withered leaf on his garden walk, a speck of dust on his library table, or a volume turned upside down on his shelves. He is testifying, perhaps unconsciously, to the grand, sublime, impassable difference between Right and Wrong. He is a humble combatant on the side of Right. He is maintaining a little outpost of the lines of that great army which is advancing with steady pace, conquering and to conquer. And if the quiet satisfaction he feels comes from an unexciting and simple source why, it is just from such sources that the quiet content of daily life must come.