details may be a very concise and polite man, but he never will be fit to grasp large and wide measures: he may do for Usher of the Black Rod, but not for Prime Minister. He may tell you how a bill is to be introduced, and how the matter is debated, but he will hardly hit out a grand scheme which will affect mankind. Thackeray once wrote-and we have seen the sentence applied to trifles-that the 'great moments of life are but moments like the others. Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from the eyes, a pressure from the hand, may decide it; or of the lips, though they cannot speak.' The above is very true, but it hardly proves that those moments are trifles. It is a very good argument against the sensational school. Great matters do not always go off with a bang. It is wonderful in what a common-place way a judge will condemn a man to death, and a murderer will, with a smile on his face, say, 'Thank you, my lord,' and walk away to his doom. These are but simple actions, yet they are not trifles. They may be compared to great troubles borne lightly, not to little troubles borne gravely if we once begin to bear our little troubles gravely, we shall find that our life will be henceforward one of misery. If we choose to make a mountain of a mole-hill, we shall find plenty of mole-hills to build a perfect Alpine or Himalayan chain. Two people-if they but like to set about it in an artistic way—will be quite sufficient to make as many little troubles and : miseries as one can desire. A man and his wife, if they only determine to plague each other-if the wife will hate what the husband likes, and the husband will fret at what the wife wears, says, and does-will have such a crop of little miseries about them, that, if they reap all day, they will not be able to harvest them. But the brave and true man and woman will go through life putting aside these little troubles, just as a gliding ship does the ripple of salt and yesty bubbles at its prow. Let the cares and anxieties, the worries and little troubles of life, grow up about our seed of truth, and we know the result-the corn will be choked, and never bring forth. But if we determine to bear a calm temper, to be thankful and enjoy the good we have, to look at the wife that God has given us as the most fit for us, and our friends and children as the best (under the circumstances); to believe that a Providence wiser than ourselves has put us in our true and best position; if, moreover, we try and think humbly of ourselves, we shall find that little troubles will cease to annoy us, that trifles cannot hurt us any more than a gnat can sting a rhinoceros; nay, moreover, that our stock of annoyances will no more grow in our bosoms than weeds will spring up in a gravel walk after it has been well sprinkled with acid and sown with salt. County Families-Pride-A Warrior class-Dignity of Labour—Non-workers unhappy-The curse a blessing—The brave Man-The blessings of Work. N the country, where people think differently from those in great towns, the head of the family-an old family, whose head long years ago has been the carver at the table of a king -lives in glory as chief of one of the county families. A clever scion of the same, educated as a doctor, becomes a learned man, rescues, let us say, in the course of a useful life, a thousand or five hundred of his fellow-creatures from death, and heals and comforts thousands. Thereby he grows rich, and retires with his ample fortune to enjoy himself, and to bask within the prospect of the old house. Quite right, too, you say; honoured and |