mean to say that I've as good a head as any of those that have been educated into lawyers and doctors. They're all taught; now you can't teach a man to be a wizard, he must have a natural genius for it, and that's just what I flatter myself I have."

Lorimer bowed acquiescence in what he could not possibly dispute.

"There's no knowing," continued the professor, "how you may turn out yourself. You may have a natural talent for it yourself, and if so, there's no reason why you should'nt cultivate it; but if you think, as soon as you've found out one or two of my tricks, that you are a made wizard, you'll find yourself mistaken, that's all."

Lorimer now prepared to depart.
"By-the-bye, Mr. Little-"
"Littlegood."

"Mr. Littlegood, do you happen to know all the foreign orders of knighthood, the names of them, I mean?"

"Not all," answered Lorimer; some of them I can remember."

"but

"Well, just try and be well up in them, because I'm going to belong to several of them ?"

"How so?" asked Lorimer.

"Why, you see, the Emperor of Austria conferred the Order of the Black Donkey on me when I astounded himself and all his Court at Potsdam; and the King of Siam made me a Knight of the Golden Fleece when I exhibited before him in Nova Scotia, and so on, don't you see? Only it's as well to have the names correct, and I suppose I'm a little bit out in those I just hit on,

ain't I?"

"Rather," said Lorimer, laughing.

"Ah, well, have 'em all right when you come to-morrow, and we won't make any mistakes. Come to dinner if you can, at six, and we'll talk things over."

When Lorimer left the house he began to consider the step he was going to take,secretary to this professor, who was apparently as great a humbug as could well be. But, after all, there was some fascination in the fun of the thing; he should " see life" in a new phase, and if he got disgusted with it he could but throw it up. Meantime, a hundred a-year was not to be lightly rejected.

Before finally joining the professor he determined to pay a farewell visit to his mother and sister; so he took a ticket for his native village at once.

It was school-time when he arrived, and Jessie was busy in her new duties. She had collected about a dozen pupils, and might be said to have made a most prosperous start. As a great favour, Lorimer was admitted to the school-room; but he was told that he must not stay there above a minute, as the mammas of the elder girls would no doubt consider it highly reprehensible that their daughters should be exposed to the fascinations of a penniless, good-looking, moustachioed, young gentleman.

So Lorimer had to be alone for some time with his mother, till the hour arrived for Jessie to dismiss her pupils for the day.

"Well, Jessie, dear, and how do you like teaching?" asked Lorimer.

"Very much," she answered, "because I believe I can do it pretty well, and I feel it will support us."

"Then I suppose for the same reasons I ought to like my new situation," said her brother.

"Yours? have you indeed got one? I am delighted, what is it, my dear boy?" Secretary to a professsor."

"Delightful! what is he a professor of? Chemistry astronomy? languages?" she

asked.

"Now, my dear Jessie," said Lorimer, "do you think that a professor of chemistry, astronomy, languages, or anything that was really needful and intellectual could afford to keep a secretary?"

"But what then do you mean?" she exclaimed.

"My professor," answered Lorimer, "is a professor of magic, a wizard, a mesmerizer, a great man, too, on whom I am going to confer half the orders of knighthood in Europe."

"You are joking; what can you really mean?"

Oh, you will not really go to him," said Jessie.

"Indeed, I shall. I always liked seeing life, you know," he said, with a smile at his sister, "and now I really think I shall see a new, and rather comic, phase of it."

"But is it respectable ?"

"Not a bit of it, as far from respectability as it can be, and that's the greatest charm about it. If the professor were in the least degree a respectable man, I couldn't go to

NOSES were given to us for something else than merely to be blown. Why, then, should the nose be starved,-made to keep fast and be condemned, as it is by a great many, to lenten fare the whole year round? Why should not that organ of sense be as freely gratified as any other? Are not the words nose and nous (or intellect) all but identically the same; and does not "scents" sound precisely the same as the word by which we express understanding? Ergo, those who make use of their noses only to turn them up contemptuously are not exactly Solomons; for Solomon himself-who was much too wise to be a self-denying, self-tormenting ascetic was not at all averse to fragrant spices and aromatic perfumes. Nevertheless, there are a great many over-rigid people who, even if they do relish the ambrosia of perfumes, are ashamed to confess it, unless the ambrosia-the invisible and untangible food for the nose-happen to be of that savoury kind which diffuses itself from steaming soups and ragouts, announcing through the telegraph of the olfactory nerves the propinquity of a well seasoned and most seasonably timed dinner.

Although the coarser, much less refined and etherialized taste of the palate is indulged without shame or scruple, that of the nose, it seems, must not be, except under the penalty of bearing a character for effeminacy: with his wine-merchant, a man may spend as much as he pleases, without incurring censure; but should his perfumer's bill amount to a few pounds in the course of a year, it is looked upon as shameful extravagance—“ all, too, for the vain coxcomb's own gratification."

He

Yet surely not all, for the man who liberally scatters from his handkerchief, through the ambient air, fragrance distilled from and reminiscent of the violet or the rose,-who is himself a sort of walking parterre, and whose person is freighted with all the perfumes of Arabia, is no churlish niggard, but regales other people's noses as well as his own. prepares a banquet in which he cannot hinder others from sharing, whether he will or no. And why should scents that are eagerly relished in their raw state be, in a manner, despised when duly prepared and served up in toilette bottles as "nectareous essences?" It is true they come from Bond Street, and not immediately from the native flowers. Yet, what then? You do not sneer at beef because it comes from the butcher's, nor are you so grossly carnivorous as to prefer it in its primitive, unsophisticated state to when it has undergone some artificial refinement.

Besides, supposing Nature's perfumery to be preferable to any other, it is not to be had in all places and in all seasons; it is surely, then, rather fortunate than not that the silent or still art, to wit, that of the still, preserves and treasures up those gifts which Flora, the many-scented and many-hued, offers us for the especial delectation of our noses. Were not painters and sculptors blockheads, they would represent her with a nose of the longest, thereby expressing symbolically how abundantly she provides for the gratification of that highly respectable and sensible organ. We say sensible, it being universally considered a mark of superior sense and astuteness to be able to smell a plot, let it be ever so well disguised by fair words or

plausible appearances. We mention this, however, as only one of the good offices which the nose performs; for as to the smell itself, that of a plot is no better than a stink -as unsavoury as the smell of gunpowder is to such as ourselves. And, for our part, we would rather "die of a rose in aromatic pain," than amid the smothering fumes of gunpowder and the din of cannon. A sham

we are not, for we make no pretence to physical courage; nor ought such confession to damage us; that is, myself by myself, for the "us" does not include Editor and Co.-in the opinion of the reader. We wield the steel, but only in the shape of our pen, with which we have ere now dealt some tolerably hard blows; but that is "nothing to nobody," except to those who have felt, and some of whom have been felled, by them. This, it must be owned, is sadly egotistical; let us return to our proper subject, though to do so dexterously is no easy matter.

We were saying something about largenosed Flora, she who might be described as almost tota nasus, or all nose, were it not that she shows herself to be nearly all eye in her affection for colour. However, not having anything to do with the eye, we will not look beyond our nose. If they have not chaunted its praises openly, poets—a race, by-the-bye, who are addicted to the practice of prosing in rhyme-have indirectly paid homage to the nose, by collecting tribute for it

"From mead, from grove, from flower-embroidered vale,

From mellow fruitage, or from musky turf." Pause we here for a moment to remark that your folks who write in verse* are never satisfied with Dame Nature in her own homely dress, but must, forsooth, bedizen her out with all the gawds of poetic manmillinery. Meads must be bespangled, grassy lawns become green velvet, vales be embroidered with flowers; streams and lakes converted into liquid silver, or quicksilver, and be duly furbelowed by being fringed. liberally do they help themselves from the jeweller's shop, that they can afford to bestrew the ground with orient pearls of morning dew; their very icicles are nothing less than diamonds; under their hands

So

"Turf becomes emerald, pippins burnished gold."

Note by the printer's devil.-Verse is so called because not being so good as prose, it is consequently-worse.

Vice versa, the impertinent, pragmatical fellows think to improve woman herself by dressing her up like a jackdaw in borrowed plumes or charms. Her teeth must be either pearls collected from oysters, or ivory; which is as much as to say that, if they do not exactly resemble elephants' tusks, they are manufactured out of them-a delicate compliment, truly! Then her eyes must be nothing meaner than either stars or diamonds. Should her locks be carrotty, a touch of the poet's harlequin pen instantly transforms them into golden tresses. Her complexion is made to come out of the garden, it consisting entirely of roses and lillies;

"And her lips, sir, are cut out of ruby or coral, So to kiss things like those can be hardly immoral."

go

Let us now, as they say in French, " back to our muttons," hoping that the reader will accompany us, should he not have fallen asleep, or, should he have done so, we shall be under the necessity of reminding him of the nose, by giving his own nose a hearty tweak, in order to awaken him up, even at the risk of his knocking us down, that is, throwing down this innocent article of ours in return.

Although in other respects they treat the nose rather scurvily, poets are not at all backward in providing provender for it, the proviso being that said provender be of the secundum artem sort, gleaned from fields and gardens, and not bought ready prepared, duly corked up, and labelled, at a shop. The nose itself they seldom mention, except when hard pushed for a rhyme to "rose;" or should they want one to " posies," they will not then scruple to lug in any number of "noses." When fairly driven to his wit's ends for a rhyme, a man sticks at nothing, not even at murder, for he then murders either sense or sound.*

Almost the only way he dares openly to show that he cares for his nose is by feeding it from his snuff-box, regaling himself, ever and anon, with the nasal luxury of a pinch, for he makes no scruple of pinching his nose, though he would be terribly indignant should

*Mrs. Browning makes "islands" and "silence" rhyme together; also "mihi" and "highway 1" Well, 'tis all my eye (mihi), Ma'am, such rhyming as that;

'Tis mere cheating the ear, 'tis so feeble and flat. Of ways in the world there are two-one's the highway,

And rhyme might have told you the other's the sly way.

A

any one else venture to do the same. professor of punmanship would remark that, while people pinch their stomachs by keeping them empty, they fill their noses by pinching them. As to snuff-taking itself, it may be a very bad habit, but it proves sometimes a very good cloak-it serves to cover what might else be an awkward pause; you are at a pinch for a pat word, so you pat your box, and the word presents itself just as you are presenting the pinch to your nose. Should the titillating dust happen to be more than usually pungent, it may enable you to bring forth a pun. Let folks say what they will against snuff-taking, it is a practice encouraged and honoured by royalty. When sovereigns intend to confer a compliment, the usual mode is to convey it in the shape of a gold snuff-box, set with brilliants; whereupon the elated receiver takes care that the public shall be duly informed of the important event by paragraphs in the newspapers. At all events, then, crowned heads patronize snuff-taking, or they would not give away boxes that tempt people to take snuff who were not inclined to it before.

Like a good many other good things, snuff was utterly unknown to the ancients and also to medieval times, so that it has no great antiquity to boast of. The ancients, however, had noses, and provided diligently for their gratification, for they indulged almost immoderately in the luxury of costly perfumes and precious unguents. Nor were other nations behind the Greeks and Romans in that respect, for all the Orientals, the Jewish nation included, attached no small degree of importance to perfumes and the use of them. Nor without reason, for otto of roses is sufficient to vanquish the "blue devils," and to make even a November fog appear steeped it will be well if the printer

do not turn it into "stupid"-in couleur de rose. A distinguished living writer upon matters of art has, in his "True Principles of Beauty," boldly placed perfumery among the aesthetic arts.

There are many scents, too, which, though they do not exactly rank as perfumes, nor are advertised and vended as such, are not a little grateful-more especially to those who have a particular relish for them. Foremost among them is that of odoriferous celery, so delicious and refreshing that we often come to a full stop on passing a green-grocer's shop, pretending to examine his display of culinary vegetation, but in reality for no other purpose than that of helping ourselves to some of the liberally, pro bono publico, distributed fragrance of his celery. Not undelightful to our nose is it, too, to pass by when coffee-real coffee-is being ground. As to the scent of a cow-house, it has in it something quite pastoral and bucolic-not blue cholic, Mr. Printer-let it proceed whencever it may, even from a back street in London. The steaming odours diffused abroad from the kitchens of well appointed comme il faut taverns and club-houses need no praise from us, their own savouriness recommending them sufficiently even to the most obtuse and apathetical noses, even those upon which all the sweets of Arabia, of Parisian and Bond Street magazins, would make no impression. No doubt there are many who will say that scents are all nonsense. City people, however, think differently; for, though they may not pique themselves upon their taste for perfumery, they have generally a pretty keen nose for cent.; and no scent smells to them so sweet as ten per cent., or more, for their money, With which remark here closes This most capital chapter on noses.

"If this were played upon a stage, now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."-Twelfth Night.

"Do you think I look like a madman ?"

I was falling into a train of pleasant thought when these words, uttered in a clear, steady voice by my opposite neighbour,

fell upon my ear. I started and looked him in the face. He was a small, sallow, intelligent-looking man, muffled from head to foot in a superb Spanish cloak lined with sables. His tone of voice was perfectly composed and matter-of-fact.

"Indeed, sir," I replied, with some surprise, no such idea occurred to me."

"But I am mad, though!" he retorted in the same quiet, confidential way.

It

I was in no humour for levity just then, and as this was so evidently an attempt at practical joking, I made a brief reply to that effect, and looked out of the window. was an express-train, going at the rate of fifty miles an hour-every moment bore me farther from one who was inexpressibly dear to me, and I felt that I never wished for silence and solitude more than at that moment. The worst of it was that, if this man had made up his mind to talk, I could not help hearing him, and there was no one else for him to address, since we were alone together in the carriage.

"Yes," he continued, "I really am mad. I have just escaped, just escaped-not an hour ago. Shall I tell you how I did it?"

I continued to look out at the landscape flying past, and feigned not to hear him.

"I was not always mad, oh, dear, no! I do not exactly remember now what it was that drove me to it, but I think it was something connected with Lord Palmerston and the ace of clubs. No-yes-oh, yes! the ace of clubs had certainly something to do with it. However, that is of no consequence now. I had a fine house, and gardens, and horses, and servants, and a wife-aha! such a pretty, gentle, loving, little wife! And I loved her, too-nobody knows how I loved her-only I wanted to murder her. I loved her so, that I wanted to murder her! Wasn't that a rare joke, eh?"

I began by this time to feel seriously uncomfortable. It was getting slowly dusk, and my companion's face, composed as it was, wore an odd expression that I did not quite like.

"Pray, sir," I said, with affected carelessness, "let us change the subject. If you insist on conversing with me, we may as well choose a more agreeable theme.”

66 Agreeable! Why, could anything be more agreeable? Well, I will continue. It was a long time before they found it out, I hid it so well. But I knew it well enough, for I used to see faces everywhere, in the furniture, up in the trees, in the bushes; and I knew they could not really be there, and that I was mad at last. For I had always expected it. Ay, ever since I was a boy at school! Somehow they did find it out, though, in spite of all my caution, and I was so cautious, so cautious! They found it out, and, one day two men came and

seized me in my garden-my own garden! and took me to the mad-house! Oh, it was a dreary place, that mad-house! They shut me up by myself in a bare, cold room, with never a fire to warm me, though it was bitter winter. The windows were barred across with iron, through which the daylight shone, as if through the ribs of a skeleton; and every night-would you believe it ?—every night there came a fearful shape and sat there, mocking and mowing at me in the moonbeams! That was a hell, indeed! One night, when I could bear it no longer, I rushed upon the shape and fought and struggled with it, and dashed it up against the hard walls-and then the keepers came and tore me from it and bound me down with cords upon my bed. I heard them say to one another that I had tried to destroy myself; but I knew better. It was the shape I struggled with-it was the shape I tried to kill! Only they could not see it. Yet there it still sat, mocking, mocking, mocking, all the long night through; and they watching in my room, and yet so blind that they could not perceive it! I do not know how long this fury of mine lasted, but I think it must have been a weary time. At last, one night, I woke from a troubled sleep, and lo! the shape was gone! Ah, then I wept for joy that I was free from it, and then I was proud, very proud, for it was gone, and I had conquered it at last! Well, time went on, and I resolved I would escape. How do you suppose I went to work? Why, I pretended to be cured of my madness. Every day the doctor came to see me. But not me alone; I could hear him going to every room all along the corridor, and so I knew when he was coming long before he got to my door. I must deceive him, I knew, as well as everybody else. Oh, it was a hard task, but I did it! The worst of my madness was that I could not help thinking of the oddest things, and when I talked my tongue would utter them. However, I schooled myself to talk to him. I practised speaking in a calm, low, voice-I studied what I should say-I accustomed myself to rise and bow, as if he were entering the room. I did not speak much, but what I said was reasonable-I knew it was reasonable. I used to say that I felt better; that I was tired of the confinement; that I hoped shortly to be permitted to return home, and sometimes (that was a clever thought) I asked anxiously after my wife. One day