indisputably effected remains to this day. Take, as an example, the administration of justice in France at the present time. Whatever its shortcomings may still be, no innocent French woman could be treated, now, as an innocent French woman was once treated at a period so little remote from our own time as the end of the last century.

SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.-VI.

MY SPINSTERS.

[Introduced by an Innocent Old Man.]

My young bachelor friends, suspend your ordinary avocations for a few minutes and listen to me. I am a benevolent old gentleman, residing in a small country town, possessing a comfortable property, a devoted housekeeper, and some charming domestic animals. I have no wife, no children, no poor relations, no cares, and nothing to do. I am a nice, harmless, idle old man; and I want to have a word with you in confidence, my worthy young bachelor friends.

I have a mania. Is it saving money? No. Good living? No. Music? Smoking? Angling? Pottery? Pictures? No, no, no,-nothing of the selfish sort. My mania is as amiable as myself: it contemplates nothing less than the future happiness of all the single ladies of my acquaintance. I call them My Spinsters; and the one industrious object of my idle existence is to help them to a matrimonial settlement

in life. In my own youth I missed the chance of getting a wife, as I have always firmly believed, for want of meeting with a tender-hearted old gentleman like myself to help me to the necessary spinster. It is possibly this reflection which originally led to the formation of the benevolent mania that now possesses me. Perhaps sheer idleness, a gallant turn of mind, and living in a small country town, have had something to do with it also. You see I shirk nothing. I do not attempt any deception as to the motive which induces me to call you together. I appear before you in the character of an amateur matrimonial agent having a few choice spinsters to dispose of; and I can wait patiently, my brisk young bachelor friends, until I find that you are ready to make me a bid.

Shall we proceed at once to business? Shall we try some soft and sentimental Spinsters to begin with? I am anxious to avoid mistakes at the outset, and I think softness and sentiment are perhaps the safest attractions to start upon. Let us begin with the six unmarried sisters of my friend Mr. Bettifer.

I became acquainted, gentlemen, with Mr. Bettifer in our local reading-rooms, immediately after he came to settle in my neighbourhood. He was then a very young man, in delicate health, with a tendency to melancholy and a turn for metaphysics. I profited by his invitation as soon as he was kind enough to

ask me to call on him; and I'found that he lived with his six sisters, under the following agreeable circumstances.

On the morning of my visit, I was shown into a very long room, with a piano at one end of it and an easel at another. Mr. Bettifer was alone at his writing-desk when I came in. I apologised for interrupting him, but he very politely assured me that my presence acted as an inestimable relief to his mind, which had been stretched-to use his own strong language-on the metaphysical rack all the morning. He gave his forehead a violent rub as he mentioned this circumstance, and we sat down and looked seriously at one another, in silence. Though not at all a bashful old man, I began nevertheless to feel a little confused at this period of the interview.

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as

"I know no question so embarrassing," began Mr. Bettifer, by way of starting the talk pleasantly, the question on which I have been engaged this morning-I refer to the subject of our own Personality. Here am I, and there are you-let us say two Personalities. Are we a permanent, or are we a transient thing? There is the problem, my dear sir, which I have been vainly trying to solve since breakfast-time. Can you (metaphysically speaking) be one and the same person, for example, for two moments together, any more than two successive moments can be one and the same moment ?-My sister Kitty."

The door opened as my host propounded this alarming dilemma, and a tall young lady glided serenely into the room. I rose and bowed. The tall young lady sank softly into a chair opposite me. Mr. Bettifer went on:

"You may tell me that our substance is constantly changing. I grant you that; but do you get me out of the difficulty? Not the least in the world. For it is not substance, but My sister Maria.” The door opened again. A second tall young lady glided in, and sank into a chair by her sister's side. Mr. Bettifer went on:

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"As I was about to remark, it is not substance, but consciousness, which constitutes Personality. Now what is the nature of consciousness?-My sisters Emily and Jane."

The door opened for the third time, and two tall young ladies glided in, and sank into two chairs by the sides of their two sisters. Mr. Bettifer went on:

"The nature of consciousness I take to be that it cannot be the same in any two moments, nor consequently the personality constituted by it. Do you grant me that?"

Lost in metaphysical bewilderment, I granted it directly. Just as I said yes, the door opened again, a fifth tall young lady glided in, and assisted in lengthening the charming row formed by her sisters. Mr. Bettifer murmured indicatively, "My sister