ATTENTION. AFTER the first wants of nature are supplied, and amongst these we class not only material wants, but something to love and to care for, the one universal need is a certain amount of notice from our fellow-creatures, a home in the minds of others that we can take possession of at will, a ready available interest in our ideas and opinions - what we will here call Attention. Regard, respect, even affection, though they all infer a place in the minds of our friends, do not express the peculiar homage we would designate by this somewhat cold and formal word. We may be loved, honoured, respected, and yet our admirers may take their own time to express their appreciation, and not attend to us when we are in the particular humour for their sympathy. All does not satisfy unless we have a hold, whenever we choose to assert it, over the mind and interest of others—unless we can feel that then and there we have possession of them—unless, in fact, we can command their attention, especially the atten tion of the choicest or most congenial minds within our reach. Truth is a fine thing where people can bear it, but there are truths which, in their naked austerity, human nature is not fit for; and the absolute amount of attention men gain when they are most anxious for it, and especially lay themselves out for it, is one of these. The work of a great many lives would stop if the workers realised how little their efforts are marked and regarded. The majority of men could not live happily if they did not live under a delusion in this respect. Of course, vain people are the greatest victims of the deception; but, in its degree, the craving for attention is as legitimate a longing as any other natural desire. Man, at his best, is so constituted as not to be able to separate himself from his work. He may, on the purest principles, desire the success of a great cause, but it costs an additional pang if not only the cause is slighted, but he himself is not attended to; while part of the charm of success is due, no doubt, to the sense of winning thought and sympathy in his own person. The vigorous, healthily constituted mind needs this essence of companionship, which is indeed the very sunshine of moral life. And yet we must all feel, if we reflect on our own habits of thought, that attention is a difficult effort, that it is a vastly more ambitious object of desire than to stand respectably with our neighbours, or to secure the substantial regard of our friends; that, in fact, we make a large demand upon others when we interrupt the current of their thoughts, and expect to divert them to our channel. Any favour that people can grant us is more under their own will than that prompt, earnest, exact attention which is the universal assumption on which all social intercourse is built; for we must act on the idea that attention is a much more attainable good than it can be proved to be. No doubt there are people who take for granted, in their own persons, that attention is no effort, as it never occurs to them to doubt that the amount of attention they receive from their friends is all right. But theirs is not of the quality most eagerly sought for. People instinctively look for an attention which costs something to the giver, which implies real labour, and a process of thought; only they don't always know that this is the real meaning of attention. However, this is the attention that men want, and it strikes us that very few people are philosophical enough and strong-minded enough to bear the knowledge of how little any effort can secure it as a habitual or permanent possession. For attention, with most of us, is such an unchainable thing-it is so essentially a man's own-that to pin it and fix it beyond the tampering of the owner is very much such an achievement as conjuring genii into a bottle. We mean such command over it as is implied by a man's voluntarily, for any unbroken length of time, suspending his own interests, speculations, or, more probably, vague reveries, and attaching himself to yours. In the ordinary routine business of life it is scarcely a practical question. We must constantly act as though we were being attended to, whether we are or not. Indeed, we can scarcely be certain how matters stand, and must talk, express opinions, make speeches on the chance; but it will add greatly to our independence and serenity of mind if we realise something of the actual difficulty of bestowing the attention we profess to ask for, and the wondrous volatility of that faculty which we desire to hold suspended on our words. Our language has many golden forms of speech to tempt on ambitious or eloquent lips to feats of fine talking. We read of rapt, enslaved, charmed, fascinated, spellbound attention-of hearers hanging on men's lips, catching each accent as it falls, and the like; but every phrase really betrays that unassisted nature is not equal to the strain, and that magic art alone can master the universal rebellion. Again, we have plenty of terms expressive of the effort needed to secure this coy and fleeting good. The phrases, to awake, arouse, stimulate, attract, arrest attention, all testify to the toil and difficulty of the work; while the listener is not without an expressive vocabulary to convey the sufferings of forced, unwilling, jaded, weary, distracted, exhausted attention. He avenges himself on unworthy arts by a language of contempt for "claptrap"-for the dull spirits that reckon on a man's attention so long as they can forcibly "hold him by the button "-for those who use violence, and accomplish their end by "making folks stare." The power of commanding the greatest possible share of attention, even by the most legitimate means, is perhaps not the sign of the highest intellect. Great And Syd intelligences can scarcely fail to shoot over the heads of commoner wits. A man must gain attention by assimilating himself to others, and adapting himself to their groove of thought. Thus Fenelon, who had this art to perfection, and charmed everybody that came near him, had a way of seeming to possess only just so much mind as the person he might happen to converse with-he could talk exactly like an equal. ney Smith, whose pen had the power of attracting universal attention to every cause he had at heart, did it by seizing just those points of a subject with which the majority felt most at home. This is not commanding attention, but engaging it by adapting yourself to the average tastes, perceptions, and opinions of mankind. A man is thus attended to by slipping into other people's ways of thought-only investing their own ideas in a dress flattering to their self-love. In the same spirit, Mark Anthony can afford to be modest, and humbly ask his countrymen to "lend him their ears," because he knows how to place his subject precisely on the level of their capacity. The matter that gains most ready attention in ordinary intercourse is easy, tolerably succinct, well-arranged narrative. We make no mention of wit or humour, because they are so short and flashing that they make no demand at all. The manner that secures it longest is a self-possessed, collected, determined one, unvisited by misgivings. When a man begins at the right end, and has a resolute clear grasp of his subject, he seems to have a claim on our attention; but all habits, tricks, and hesitations, |