ay that a copy of
Shakespeare lay on a drawing-room table; but the authoress of "The
Enigma," bent on edifying periphrasis, tells you that there lay on the
table, "that fund of human thought and feeling, which teaches the heart
through the little name, 'Shakespeare.'" A watchman sees a light burning
in an upper window rather longer than usual, and thinks that people are
foolish to sit up late when they have an opportunity of going to bed;
but, lest this fact should seem too low and common, it is presented to us
in the following striking and metaphysical manner: "He marvelled--as a
man _will_ think for others in a necessarily separate personality,
consequently (though disallowing it) in false mental premise--how
differently _he_ should act, how gladly _he_ should prize the rest so
lightly held of within." A footman--an ordinary Jeames, with large
calves and aspirated vowels--answers the door-bell, and the opportunity
is seized to tell you that he was a "type of the large class of pampered
menials, who follow the curse of Cain--'vagabonds' on the face of the
earth, and whose estimate of the human class varies in the graduated
scale of money and expenditure. . . . These, and such as these, O
England, be the false lights of thy morbid civilization!" We have heard
of various "false lights," from Dr. Cumming to Robert Owen, from Dr.
Pusey to the Spirit-rappers, but we never before heard of the false light
that emanates from plush and powder.

In the same way very ordinary events of civilized life are exalted into
the most awful crises, and ladies in full skirts and _manches a la
Chinoise_, conduct themselves not unlike the heroines of sanguinary
melodramas. Mrs. Percy, a shallow woman of the world, wishes her son
Horace to marry the auburn-haired Grace, she being an heiress; but he,
after the manner of sons, falls in love with the raven-haired Kate, the
heiress's portionless cousin; and, moreover, Grace herself shows every
symptom of perfect indifference to Horace. In such cases sons are often
sulky or fiery, mothers are alternately manoeuvring and waspish, and the
portionless young lady often lies awake at night and cries a good deal.
We are getting used to these things now, just as we are used to eclipses
of the moon, which no longer set us howling and beating tin kettles. We
never heard of a lady in a fashionable "front" behaving like Mrs. Percy
under these circumstances. Happening one day to see Horace talking to
G