taste of that exhilarating yet unselfish pleasure which minds open to the influence of society can alone experience through the genial contact of numbers—“ that pleasure the mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and are partakers of the same common entertainment."

SAYING DISAGREEABLE THINGS.

SOME people, not otherwise ill-natured, are apt to season their conversation with disagreeable sayings, unpleasant comments, uncomfortable insinuations. Such a person we sometimes hear, is a good sort of fellow, but he has a way of saying disagreeable things. Such a woman can be very charming when she pleases, but

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fact, these people are never spoken of for three consecutive sentences without a qualification. A disagreeable thing is distinguished from an impertinence, which it often closely resembles, by certain marks. In the first place, an impertinence we need not stand, but the other we often must, aware that it is the result of certain conditions of our friend's mind, which, as we cannot hope to alter, we must resign ourselves to. An impertinence may or may not be true—its main design, independent of truth, is, more or less, to insult. It is of the essence of a disagreeable thing that it should be true true in itself, or true as representing the speaker's state of feeling. And yet an unpalatable truth is not

technically a disagreeable thing any more than an impertinence, though, of course, the being told it is an unpleasant operation. It it necessary for us now and then to hear unpalatable and unwelcome truths; but a disagreeable thing is never a moral necessity—it is spoken to relieve the speaker's mind, not to profit the hearer. The same utterance may be an impertinence, an unpalatable truth, or a disagreeable thing, according to time and circumstance. For example, in a fit of absence, we perpetrate some solecism in dress or behaviour. It is an unwelcome truth to be told it, while there is yet opportunity for remedy, or partial remedy: it is an impertinence to be informed of it by a stranger who has no right to concern himself with our affairs: it is a disagreeable thing when-the occasion past-our friend enlightens us about it, simply as a piece of information. We all of us, no doubt, have friends, relations, and acquaintances who think it quite a sufficient reason for saying a thing that it is true. Probably we have ourselves known the state of mind in which we find a certain fact or opinion a burden, a load to be got rid of; and, under the gross mistake that all truth must be spoken, that it is uncandid and dangerous not to deliver a testimony-convinced that truth, like murder, will out, and that our friend, sooner or later, must learn the unacceptable fact-we come to the conclusion that it is best for all parties to get the thing over by being ourself the executioner. We have most of us acted the enfant terrible at some time or other. But this crude simplicity of candour, where it is the result of the mere

blind intrusive assertion of truth, is a real weight; and the primary law of politeness, never to give unnecessary pain, as soon as it is apprehended, is welcomed as a deliverer. Children and the very young have not experience enough for any but the most limited sympathy, and can only partially compare the feelings of others with their own. Indeed, the idea of the comparison does not occur to them. But there are people who, in this respect, remain children all their days, and very awkward children too-who burst with a fact as the fool with his secret, and, like the hair-dresser in Leech's caricature, are impelled to tell us that our hair is thin at the top, though nothing whatever is to come of the communication. These, as Sydney Smith says, turn friendship into a system of lawful and unpunishable impertinence, from, so far as we can see, no worse cause than incontinence of fact and opinion-feeling it to be a sufficient and triumphant defence of every perpetration of the sort, that it is true. Why did you tell Mr So-and-so that his sermon was fifty minutes long?" "Because I had looked at my watch." Why did you remind such a one that he is growing fat and old?" "Because he is." "Why repeat that unfavourable criticism?" "I had just read it." "Why disparage this man's particular friends?" "I don't like them." "Why say to that young lady that her dress was unbecoming?" "I really thought so." It is, however, noticeable in persons of this obtrusive candour that they have eyes for blemishes only. They are never impelled to tell pleasant truths-from which, no doubt, we may infer a

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certain acerbity of temper, though these strictures may be spoken in seeming blunt, honest good-humour. Still, they talk in this way from natural obtuseness and inherent defect of sympathy. These are the people who always hit upon the wrong thing to say, and instinctively ferret out sore subjects. They are not the class we have in our thoughts. Indeed, they incapacitate themselves for serious mischief, as their acquaintance give them a wide berth, and take care not to expose their more cherished interests to their tender mercies. It requires some refinement of perception to say the more pungent and penetrating disagreeable things. We must care for the opinion or the regard of a person whose sayings of this sort can keenly annoy us. A man must have made friends before he can wound them. A real expert in this art is never rude, and can convey a disregard approaching to contempt for another's opinion, hit him in his most vulnerable points, and send him off generally depressed and uncomfortable, without saying a word that can be fairly taken hold of.

Of course the people most distinguished in this way are disappointed people. In the examples that occur to us, we perceive that life has not satisfied them-they do not occupy the place in men's minds which they feel they deserve. But this is no explanation, for the tendency is just as likely to have caused the disappointment as the disappointment the tendency. People who start in life with high, though not wholly ungrounded notions of their own deserts, definite claims, and elaborate self-appreciation, are certain to be in constant col

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