Prosperity's the very bond of love.

-Winter's Tale.

WHAT a perfect chequer-board is this same game of life on which we
all hold so transient a lease. Time is the board, and the various
vicissitudes of life make up the chequered field, ourselves the
wooden "men;" each and all strive for preferment, and whether it be
gained or not, depends solely upon the shrewdness of him who plays
the game. The "king-row" may designate the pinnacle of earthly
wishes and hopes, while the various "moves" may show the struggle
for that desirable goal-happiness. Ah! how many of us get "penned"
and "cornered"--and many too, in their headlong course, are "jumped,"
and taken off the scene of action. Truly, there is a vast similitude
between this game of chequers and the bolder one of life.

Here was poor Carlton but lately struggling along the chequered
field, now moving literally towards the king-row. In a few
subsequent weeks, with a well-filled purse, he was enjoying life and
his art like a true gentleman, and was the envy of every artist in
Florence; and yet they all strove to do him honor, at least; so it
appeared, orders for his productions crowded upon him from all the
nobility, not only of Florence, but of all Tuscany. The private
palaces of the environs of the city were thought incomplete in their
collections, unless supplied with one at least of his pictures, the