re, thou dost my pity move"--"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O
Rome";--open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the
sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that
selected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no more
than these four words; yet that also seems to promise well. It was,
however, on a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr.
Berkenshaw--as the drawings that figure at the breaking up of a young
ladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to the
establishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. The
amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world
still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the
man who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he so
warmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty but more
generous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says
he, "who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for
it." And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid
piece, "Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It
is by such a zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight that
the amateur grows worthy of the artist. And it should be kept in mind
that, not only in art, but in morals, Pepys rejoiced to recognise his
betters. There was not one speck of envy in the whole human-hearted
egotist.

RESPECTABILITY

When writers inveigh against respectability, in the present degraded
meaning of the word, they are usually suspected of a taste for clay
pipes and beer-cellars; and their performances are thought to hail from
the _Owl's Nest_ of the comedy. They have something more, however, in
their eye than the dulness of a round million dinner-parties that sit
down yearly in Old England. For to do anything because others do it, and
not because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is
to resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go
post-haste to the devil with the greater number. We smile over the
ascendancy of priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what they
call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys
illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what
can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period, and
while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as
the