costly _bijouterie_. I have long made it a rule to exclude from my
visiting-list, or at least not to let up stairs, ladies who pay their
morning calls with a retinue of children: but the thing is not always
possible; and one urchin with his whip will destroy more in half an
hour, than the worth of a month's average domestic expenditure. Oh! how
I hate the little fidgeting, fingering, dislocating imps! A bull in a
china-shop is innocuous to the most orderly and amenable of them. Why
did Providence make children? and why does not some wise Draconic law
banish them for ever to the nursery?

The general merit of nick-nacks is unquestioned. Ornaments, I admit, are
ornamental; and works of art afford intellectual amusement of the
highest order. But then perfection is their only merit; and a crack or a
flaw destroys all the pleasure of a sensible beholder. Yet I have not a
statue that is not a torso, nor a Chelsea china shepherdess with her
full complement of fingers. I have not a vase with both its handles, a
snuff-box that performs its waltz correctly, nor a volume of prints that
is not dogs-eared, stained, and ink-spotted. These are serious evils;
but they are the least that flow from a neglect of the maxim which
stands at the head of my paper. Perpend it well, reader; and bear ever
in mind that, in our desires, as in our corporeal structure, it is not
given to man to add a cubit to his stature. I am very tired; so "dismiss
me--enough." _New Monthly Magazine._

* * * * *



NOTES OF A READER.