custodier. I probably should have recovered it, but, possibly also, I should not. Even the telegraph would not have helped me except I had telegraphed to every point of the compass; and then only think of telegraphing for something belonging to "John Smith, passenger." Ten to one there were a thousand packages so marked! Unhappy name! As it was, nothing came of the matter that I could find, then or since, except five minutes of exquisite panic and vexation, much such as a mischievous monkey may be supposed to delight in inflicting. Certainly, if I had believed in Puck, I should have thought he had assumed the guise of that "railway porter." Yet we never know whether there may not be more than seems in such apparently trivial things, — and my faith, though not my reason, assures me there is. One comprehensive solution of many such things a devout man will thankfully find in his ignorance of what might have occurred had it not been for such diversion. It is obvious that five minutes, nay, one, - nay, a second, may suffice for events of the last importance to us; to remain on this spot rather than to move ten paces off, may be the difference between death and life; a change of purpose for a quarter of an hour may lead us out of a great danger or into one; being prevented from going by this ship instead of that, may protect us from shipwreck, or expose us to it; a few minutes' conversation in the street with a bore we tremble to see coming may delay us till some unknown peril, which may be crossing our path, and which we should else have encountered, has passed and left the way clear in fact, the most insignificant change or obstruction or acceleration of our purposes may be connected, and cannot but be, with the most important events of life to us all; and thus they may subserve the most momentous purposes, though we are ignorant of them. The region of the "Media Scientia,” as the scholastic divines used to call it the region of the "possible" of the things that would happen if something else did not, — may suggest the key to what often seem to us the most sportive pranks of a purposeless destiny. And on reflecting, we may perhaps see there is also another solution: for may they not be designed to quicken gratitude? Where transiently vexatious events have occurred without serious results, ought we not thankfully to remember how easily they might have terminated otherwise? Shall we perversely desire a catastrophe because our fears are disappointed? - I remember, when a boy of ten years of age or so, lying, on a tempestuous autumn day, at the foot of a huge elm at the head of a noble avenue of like giant trees, and listening with solemn delight to the roar of the wind in the branches; all at once I heard a sound which sharply rose above the din of the storm; a crash a sweep and I felt that something was the matter in the upper regions of the tree. I rolled and scrambled away as fast as I could a few paces, and a moment after, down came a heavy branch on the very spot where I had been lying, and which, had I not got out of its way, would have crushed me. Could I look, boy as I was, on the escape, without a gush of gratitude? And such in every like case, spite of all the metaphysics of fatalism, is the unsophisticated feeling of humanity. - a Yet some 66 contre-temps are so exquisitely droll that one would almost suppose their chief object was to furnish us, in the retrospect, with a more than compensating amusement for our vexation. "Hæc olim meminisse juvabit" would seem to apply to not a few of our minor distresses. Did I ever tell you of a circumstance which our old friend J. M. used to relate of some friends of his? Two young ladies in Devonshire one day wished to visit some relatives a dozen miles off. Their brother, harum-scarum sort of fellow, and who rode a horse as harumscarum as himself, which he had very properly christened "Mad Tom," - offered to drive them. Albeit Mad Tom was very restive in harness, he assured them he could manage the brute. They consented; but such were the creature's flings, and kicks, and shyings, and deviations to the right and left, that he kept the sisters in a perpetual panic. However, they at last reached their destination in safety; but nothing could induce them to repeat the experiment, and even young harum-scarum did not seem to relish it. Accordingly, he agreed to return on horseback, while his sisters borrowed their host's little pony-chaise and his old gray pony, which never forgot a becoming gravity either of pace. or demeanour. They set out, on a lovely summer evening, on the journey homeward. My young master stayed for half an hour or so, to take a parting cup with his host, and then clattered off after his sisters. They, good souls! were quietly jogging, with the old gray pony, along a narrow lane, fenced by a high hedge on each side, thinking no harm in the world, and congratulating themselves that they had so happily escaped Mad Tom. All at once they heard a terrible tramp and shouting behind them, and, turning their heads, saw, horror of horrors! the ungovernable brute coming at a pace which would soon bring him upon them. He had evidently got the upper hand, and their brother's shouts were to warn them to get out of the way. They edged and edged towards the ditch Mad Tom came up, just grazed the wheel, but evidently out of malice prepense allowed them as little room as possible pushed, as he passed, against the honest gray, and, in a moment the pony and chaise and the fair sisters were tumbled into the ditch, while Mad Tom, and his equally mad rider, swept away like the whirlwind. The young ladies were, happily, uninjured; but they often used to laugh, in after days, at their momentary terror when they saw the demon of a horse apparently bent on their destruction! An old friend once told me that, having taken a long journey on horseback, he was musing, during the last stage, with grateful memory, on the immunity from danger he had enjoyed that his horse had not fallen with him, nor he fallen from his horse, and so on; when, unhappily, just in the midst of his devout ejaculations, Dobbin stumbled, threw him on his face, and almost broke his nose! Was the good man, by his ill-timed meditation, abstracted too much from the outward practical duty of attending to his horse, and was he thus to be taught that "for everything there is a season? or was he too much uplifted with the complacent thought of the special protection and favour he had enjoyed? for such is our folly that even pious gratitude is apt to express itself in forms which look much more like absurd vanity. Apart from some such views, this "contre-temps "looks as like a little piece of sportive malice, as anything one can well imagine. Well, in spite of all contre-temps, I hope to spend Christmas with you; that is, if nothing happens to prevent it, as it is certain ten millions of things may; if I am alive and well; if you are alive and well; if no other friend has met with any misfortune which shall keep me away; if, when I have started, the railway train does not meet with a mishap; if that awful. omnibus for the last five miles does not break down, no unlikely matter by the way; and if I should survive that last dreary, doleful part of the journey! As to your giving me a welcome that is a contingency I do not think it worth while to speculate about; so much more surely, after all, can we calculate on moral than on the combinations of physical causes; so much more permanent, amidst all man's proverbial fluctuations, are the relations which human character establishes, than those of the ever-shifting scene of events in which we play our part; events the nearest of which we cannot foresee, and the minutest of which we cannot control, amidst all the boasted "prevision" of science ! By way of postscript to my last, I must mention two or three other droll incidents of the class referred to in my last letter, which have since occurred to remembrance. They will, if I mistake not, illustrate the subject rather strikingly. A friend of mine, who lived a few miles from London, was going thither in his pony-chaise one rainy morning, and could not find his umbrella. law, and lost that on the way. "Well," he thought, "poor girl, she shall have a good one to make up for it." He bought for her one of the very best he could find, and lost that going back! He borrowed a silk one of his sister-in Another friend, in the old coaching days, was going, one cold winter's night, by mail from London, and debated in his mind whether he should save the difference of the inside fare at the expense of his benumbed toes and fingers. He thriftily reasoned that he wanted a new silk umbrella, which the proposed economic dodge would just pay for. But alas! having fallen into a miserable nap in the morning watch, he found, when he woke, that his umbrella had slipped out of his hand; and thus he had the satisfaction of travelling outside at inside price! A third friend, staying for a night in Manchester, debated whether he should take a cab and go to see some friend who lived in the suburbs; "But," thought he, "it is uncertain if I shall find him at home, and if not, it will be five shillings thrown away." So he thought he would just take a short walk in the town instead. Before he had been out of the hotel five minutes, he found himself minus a new silk handkerchief, for which he had just given the very sum that would have paid for the cab! To such things as these even the "Hæc olim meminisse juvabit" will hardly apply. But the most provoking and serious of all such tragi-comedies I have ever heard of occurred a short time ago. You may have seen some account of it in the newspapers. A gentleman at Liverpool, about to remove to Oswestry, had some valuable paintings which he thought he could not take too much care of. Afraid to trust them to the rough handling of the rail, he had them carefully packed in a van, and committed them to the leisurely transit of the ordinary road. The journey was safely accomplished, all but a poor mile or so ; in fact, to within sight of Oswestry. At that point the luckless wain had to cross the rail, and some obstacle occurred, just as it got half across. At this fatal moment, an approaching train was heard, the driver got flurried, and before he could get his precious charge across, the |