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colour of its various component elements. To say that she has a strong insight into female character is almost superfluous. George Eliot does not enter more deeply into the workings of the female mind and heart than she does. Add to all these claims that our author's novels are perfectly unexceptionable from every point of view, and that they combine rational amusement with no small degree of instruction, and we have advanced tolerably sufficient grounds for the continuous favour with which they have been and are still regarded.

The critic who said that these novels added a new pleasure to existence was not wide of the mark. In Miss Austen's later books, the most exacting may discover a maturity of thought and a felicity of expression seldom attained by members of her craft; and these augured still greater achievements in the future had her life been spared. In no instance is it possible to sum up the claims and characteristics of a writer of the first rank in a single phrase; but if it were demanded that we should attempt this in the case of Jane Austen, we should aver that her writings have not become obsolete, and never will become obsolete, because they are just and faithful transcripts of human nature. It is in this all-important respect that she is able to touch the hand of Shakespeare.

G. BARNETT SMITH.

J

ON GETTING UP EARLY.

ULIUS said to me the other day, "You must have a very bad conscience if you can't lie in bed in the morning." Julius is a young man, with just enough to live on without working, and so he does nothing-nothing for his living, I mean-and nothing worth doing besides. His friends sometimes tell him that it is possible to play billiards too much; that in these days, when horses do not always win on their own merits, besides it being difficult to find those merits out, betting even in a mild way had better be avoided by a person whose income is at once fixed and moderate. In vain. Julius is of the easy-going, nerveless, flabby-minded sort. He is not exactly wicked, but prone to self-indulgence; and, perhaps for want of something better to do, he has an inveterate habit of lying in bed in the morning.

"Beaconsfield

"Many statesmen do the same," he remarks. "Stop, my friend; had you been debating in the House till three or four, you would have as good a reason for lying in bed as many statesmen; as it is, your mind and body are deteriorating because you have no outward pressure to make you use the talents you possess, and no inward motive powerful enough to enable you to resist your constitutional idleness. Julius, in fact, belongs to the lie-abed class.

Now, I am quite aware that some people--especially womenrequire a great deal of sleep; but, depend upon it, as we all habitually eat and drink too much--so say the doctors-we, most of us who can at all afford to do so, sleep too much. Sleep, like any other appetite, can be cultivated and pampered; and just as every mouthful of food more than we really want is waste, and something worse, so every wink of sleep more than we need is a dead loss, and that without the redeeming quality of over-eating and drinking, viz. pleasure. For to be asleep is not pleasure, simply dead loss. To sleep from eleven till nine the next morning is too much; from eleven till six should be, and is for one averagely healthy and normally constituted, quite enough. The point I want to fix on especially is those two precious hours before breakfast. How many people only begin their day after

breakfast, say about ten o'clock! I myself lived for nearly forty years without realising that I had thrown away about 21,900 hours of good working life. Of course the candle cannot be burned at both ends. You must get your sleep. I have known more than one professional man succumb to the habit of retiring too late and rising too early. That was the beginning of my poor friend the late Baron Amphlett's collapse. As Q.C. he never should have gone into Parliament, and when he retired from the House on a judgeship the mischief was done. He used to be up late with briefs, or down at the House till two and three, rise at six, light his own fire, and work till nine. All such over-pressure is, of course, bad. Young men may stand it for a few years-young men can stand almost anything for a few years--but it is a vicious principle. Give the body its dues, or the body will revenge itself. Still, to acquire the habit of early rising is worth an effort. I recommend it for health and pleasure as well as for profit.

I remember one glorious summer morning when I was a boy. I thought, "Instead of lolling in bed from five till eight, I will have a 'spree."" I got up soon after five, dressed, stole down stairs and out along the glistening hedgerows, full of May bloom and twittering birds. I made my way (it is thirty-five years ago, ah me !) down to those country roads, then flanked with fields and woods, now adorned with crowded smart villas, towards the great square piece of water which formed the reservoir of the old Croydon Canal. Brambles, willows, May trees, and wood roses drooped over its margin. There were rushes and water-lilies, haunted by blue dragon-flies and early bees, in abundance. A wide grassy path went all round the lake-it was about a mile round-and a forest of low fir trees and tangled copses shut it in from the adjacent meadow-lands. It was a boy's paradise. There I remained bird's-nesting till about eight o'clock. I never smelt such fresh balmy air; the sun seemed to distil health and pleasure into my veins. And I thought, and have often thought since, of the snoring thousands who might have such an experience as this, and be richer all their lives afterwards as I have been, who yet, as old Watts has it,-

Waste all their days and their hours without number,

and who, if you should attempt to rouse them, would probably only exclaim, in the words of the same well-known poet,-

You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again!

I like to hear of young men who are out on horseback for a ride before breakfast, before the family meal, instead of those witless creatures who come lolling into the deserted breakfast-room about eleven o'clock-just out of bed, and with a cigar already in their mouths.

No one knows how radiant and vigorous Nature looks who has not cared to assist at her early toilet, and seen her bathing herself in crystal dew, and decking herself with opening blossoms between four and six o'clock on a midsummer morning.

So much and how much more for the pleasure-seeker? but the early rising worker all the year round is rewarded by an increase of produce, an economy of time, and an invigoration of mind and body.

Get up at half-past six on a dark winter morning. It is cold, but you can turn on your gas stove, or pop your round wheel of resined firewood on the grate. It is dark, but you light your lamp, settle yourself, wrapped in a good rug, in your arm-chair, with a book, or if you write, take your Field & Tuer's author's pad, and write away with an ink pencil. Not a soul will come near you for two hours; you will have no temptation to be going from room to room, or to be doing anything except just what you have settled to do overnight. You may easily yield to an extemporised early breakfast, but I do not advise it. Left to itself, the vigour of your brain after sleep, which you have no opportunity of frittering in any way, will be quite enough to carry you on till about half-past eight or nine o'clock, when you can breakfast; but if you must be set going, there is your Etna close by, and you can warm yourself up a cup of tea left in the pot on the hob overnight. Apropos of this early cup of tea, if you have never tried it, your model early morning cup will be produced thus. Overnight pour out half a cup of the strongest tea, fill up with milk, and add sugar; cover with a saucer, and place on the hob first to simmer, and then as the fire goes out to cool. When you rise, warm it up in the Etna, and you will find a mixture, owing to the long and complete amalgamation of ingredients, something between tea and chocolate in taste, far more nutritive than tea, less clogging than chocolate, and more stimulating than coffee. But if you begin this you will get to depend upon it, and my advice is, except upon perfectly awful mornings, do without it. Also do without fire when you can; wrapping up is ten times better for the morale of the body, as well as for the vigour of the mind.

Morning literary work is usually characterised by freshness, continuity, grasp, and vigour; night-work by fever, excitement, and less condensation. This I believe to be the rule; and with exceptions, in speaking thus generally, it is of course impossible to deal.

Of one thing I am certain, that for all head workers, especially literary men, the following rules will be found golden:

To bed before twelve.

To work before seven.

As little liquid as possible, and no smoking before breakfast.

H. R. HAWEIS,

LE BONHOMME CORNEILLE.

THE

HE Marquis de Dangeau wrote, in his journal for the 1st of October, 1684: "Aujourd'hui est mort le bonhomme Corneille." The illustrious dramatist was an old man, or he had been born in 1606. He was a good old fellow in hisay, being always an honest and upright man, though the appellation "le bonhomme" was less frequently given to him than to La Fontane.

Had it been as much the fashion fifty years ago as now to honour great men by anniversaries, in the year 1836 a more gracious homage might have been paid to the author of Le Cid. At Christmas-time in that year this play burst upon Paris. As a bombshell carries with it destruction, the Cid gave sudden and unexpected delight to all who saw it. It is the first of French tragedies that has left a mark; no earlier tragedy is now generally remembered. Corneille woke up to find himself famous. It appears that, though he was by no means a novice, he was as much astonished as anyone at the great success of his play. The Court liked it, and the town liked it. It was at once translated into many languages. In France people learnt passages of it by heart, and for a while there was a popular saying, "Cela est beau comme le Cid." If the good folk in Paris had only bethought themselves in 1836 of celebrating the bi-centenary of the appearance of the Cid the event would have sounded happier than of now celebrating the author's death. But fashion rules much in this world. It has not yet become fashionable to recollect the date of a great man's great work-fifty years ago it had not become fashionable to have centenaries at all; so that now, all other excuses failing, we must seize upon the bi-centenary of Corneille's death as a date upon which to honour him. Let us hope that on the 6th of June, 1906, the ter-centenary of his birth, a more joyful note may be sung.

We have said that Pierre Corneille was a good old fellow in his way, but it was his misfortune that his way was not more like that of other men. He was very poor during the last ten or twelve years of his life. He walked out one day with a friend, and went into a shop to have his shoe mended. During the operation he sat down upon a plank, his friend sitting beside him. After the cobbler had finished VOL. CCLVIII. NO. 1849.

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