many a horrid tale. Turn over the pages of any one of them, and you find
a drama worthy the pen of Sophocles or Euripides: close the volume--all
is gilt edge and exquisite tooling. Well may they hate the confidants of
such crimes, and plot their destruction! What if the outcast should take
to rehearsing in public the tragedy that he has got by heart?

I am minded to give you, after the manner of Cebes, a life-picture of
Dependence; with this before your eyes, you may judge for yourself,
whether it is the life for you. I would gladly call in the aid of an
Apelles or a Parrhasius, an Aetion or a Euphranor, but no such perfect
painters are to be found in these days; I must sketch you the picture in
outline as best I can. I begin then with tall golden gates, not set in
the plain, but high upon a hill. Long and steep and slippery is the
ascent; and many a time when a man looks to reach the top, his foot
slips, and he is plunged headlong. Within the gates sits Wealth, a figure
all of gold (so at least she seems); most fair, most lovely. Her lover
painfully scales the height, and draws near to the door; and that golden
sight fills him with amazement. The beautiful woman in gorgeous raiment
who now takes him by the hand is Hope. As she leads him in, his spirit is
stricken with awe. Hope still shows the way; but two others, Despair and
Servitude, now take charge of him, and conduct him to Toil, who grinds
the poor wretch down with labour, and at last hands him over to Age. He
looks sickly now, and all his colour is gone. Last comes Contempt, and
laying violent hands on him drags him into the presence of Despair; it is
now time for Hope to take wing and vanish. Naked, potbellied, pale and
old, he is thrust forth, not by those golden gates by which he entered,
but by some obscure back-passage. One hand covers his nakedness; with the
other he would fain strangle himself. Now let Regret meet him without,
dropping vain tears and heaping misery on misery,--and my picture is
complete.