"Etching Moralized" occurs the following

stanza :

"So in worldly affairs, the sharp-practising man
Is not always the one who succeeds in his plan,
Witness Shylock's judicial exposure ;

Who, as keen as his knife, yet with agony found,
That while urging his point he was losing his ground,
And incurring a fatal disclosure."]

SERMON XI.

CANDYTUFTS.'

1st Lord-What time o'day is 't, Apemantus?

Apemantus-Time to be honest.

THAT'S not a civil answer.

Timon of Athens.

It is just such an answer as you might properly give to a sus

* This title is not adopted with any botanical propriety. The genus of plants Iberis, popularly called Candytufts, in allusion, probably, to their original habitat Candia, has nothing whatever to do with the subject of our dreamsermon. The name, we presume, was capriciously chosen, since both the words Candy and tuft occur in the nomenclature of flattery, as, for example, in Shakspeare's "candied-tongue" and in the compound word "tuft-hunter," a cant term in our national Universities to describe a hanger-on to noblemen and persons of quality, and derived from the tuft in the academical cap of the latter.

picious-looking tramp who asked the time o'day with his fist clenched, and prompted you to seize the other end of your stout oaken stick, in the instinct of self-preservation. Apemantus was not civilly disposed, he was a cynical churlish Athenian-a snappish, sourtempered philosopher, who went about to mend the manners of his countrymen in a very ill-mannered way, and rather provoked than purified their ill-blood. There are, however, some transparent contemptibles in the world to whom it is not very easy to be civil, and Apemantus met with a couple in those two Athenian lords who accosted him in the hall in Timon's house-" glib and slippery creatures,"-smooth, complimentary, fawning people, who "tender down their services to Lord Timon," whose

"large fortune

Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,
Subdues and properties to his love and tendence
All sorts of hearts,"

so long as the fortune is large, and hangs upon the "good and gracious nature of its owner,' but

"When Fortune in her shifts and change of mood,
Spurns down her late belov'd, all his dependents,
Which labour'd after him to the mountain's top,
E'en on their knees and hands, let him slip down,
Not one accompanying his declining foot."

Timon was a rich man, and a very generous man too, but somewhat too accessible to the many hangers on his bounty. Only the rich and powerful enjoy the homage of flattery and fawning:

66

Why should the poor be flattered?

No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning."

Poverty has at least one advantage-it hears the truth, somewhat too bluntly, indeed, for the solace of its poor wounded sensibilities, but yet it hears the truth, and that is no small advantage. Poor people meet with a good share of the world's candour,-not very comforting, it is true, but yet it is candour,plain, out-spoken, nothing-for-you, can't-helpyou words, and that is something. They know where they are, what they are, and with whom they have to do. They live and move in the daylight, cold, cheerless it may be, but yet

it is daylight. Even that's better than living and moving in the glare of artificial light, which may go out in a moment and leave you in sudden darkness. Poverty has its compensations, and that is no mean compensation which can say, "The world is candid with me, plain, and straightforward, says No! and means it." That No! is not a tithe so cutting and disappointing as the feigned regrets and excuses with which base ingratitude or hollow friendship apologizes for and sugars over its refusal. The reminiscences of poverty are not of a confectionary world, of counterfeit men and women, of fawning compliments and flattering attentions. Poverty has, at least, been spared these chafing memories. We congratulate you, Poverty,

"Thy nature did commence in suff'rance, Time Hath made thee hard in 't. Why shouldst thou hate men?

They never flattered thee.”

Flatteries are the courtesies of sneaking selfinterest, the bon-bons of sugar, paint, and tinsel, with which people who have an object in view, endeavour to tickle the vanity of the