ould fill a volume. I sometimes thought it would really be
worth while to leave off the struggle for existence, and gently to
subside into one of Lord Rowton's homes in order to have the pleasure
of receiving in my new quarters a first visit from Mr. Locker. How
pleasantly would he have mounted the stair, laden with who knows what
small gifts?--a box of mignonette for the window-sill, an old book or
two, as likely as not a live kitten, for indeed there was never an end
to the variety or ingenuity of his offerings! How felicitous would
have been his greeting! How cordial his compliments! How abiding the
sense of his unpatronizing friendliness! But it was not to be. One can
seldom choose one's pleasures.

In his _Patchwork_ Mr. Locker quotes Gibbon's encomium on Charles
James Fox. Anyone less like Fox than Frederick Locker it might be hard
to discover, but fine qualities are alike wherever they are found
lodged; and if Fox was as much entitled as Locker to the full benefit
of Gibbon's praise, he was indeed a good fellow.

'In his tour to Switzerland Mr. Fox gave me two days of free and
private society. He seemed to feel and even to envy the happiness of
my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are
blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child.
_Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the
taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood._'

OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS

The republication of Mr. Arnold's _Friendship's Garland_ after an
interval of twenty-seven years may well set us all a-thinking. Here it
is, in startling facsimile--the white covers, destined too soon to
become black, the gilt device, the familiar motto. As we gazed upon
it, we found ourselves exclaiming, so vividly did it recall the past:

'It is we, it is we, who have changed.'

_Friendship's Garland_ was a very good joke seven-and-twenty years
ago, and though some of its once luminous paint has been rubbed off,
and a few of its jests have ceased to effervesce, it is a good joke
still. Mr. Bottle's mind, qua mind; the rowdy Philistine Adolescens
Leo, Esq.; Dr. Russell, of the _Times_, mounting his war-horse; the
tale of how Lord Lumpington and the Rev. Esau Hittall got their
degrees at Oxford; and many another ironic thrust which made the
reader laugh 'while the hair was yet brown on his head,' may well make
him laugh still, 'though his scalp is almost hairless, and his
fi