ore trial, when a daughter shall marry against her father's
approbation. A little hard-heartedness, and aversion to a reconcilement,
is almost pardonable. After all, Will Dockwray's way is, perhaps, the
wisest. His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match,--in fact,
eloped with the last man in the world that her father would have wished
her to marry. All the world said that he would never speak to her again.
For months she durst not write to him, much less come near him. But, in
a casual rencounter, he met her in the streets of Ware,--Ware, that will
long remember the mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq. What said the
parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered under her at the
sight of him? 'Ha, Sukey, is it you?' with that benevolent aspect with
which he paced the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel,--'come and
dine with us on Sunday'; then turning away, and again turning back, as
if he had forgotten something, he added,--'and, Sukey, do you hear?
bring your husband with you.' This was all the reproof she ever heard
from him. Need it be added that the match turned out better for Susan
than the world expected?"

* * * * *

"'We read the "Paradise Lost" as a task,' says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather
as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours
alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';--nor the moon rounder,
he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of
it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or
diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the
stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish her taller?"

* * * * *

"Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is
consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and
is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine which
Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We
mean those practical preachers of Optimism, or the belief that _Whatever
is best_, the cads of omnibuses, who, from their little back pulpits,
not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of 'God and His
prophet' in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at the entry or
exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone,
to exclaim, (Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,) 'ALL'S
RIGHT!'"

* * * *