Our text is not a very hopeful one, we candidly allow. Conrade was a very commonplace sort of moralist. "You should hear reason," he says. Well, you haven't heard reason, have you? Your reasons for marriage were not very reasonable. And you dont like to be told that there is no "present remedy," and that you must be content with "a patient sufferance." You will indignantly rejoin with Don John-What you, as you say, "born under Saturn," and yet "going about to apply a moral medicine to a mortifying mischief." Yes, we were born under Saturn, we can be both grave and gay in our turn, but we are not going to recommend any Saturnalias. You are in the fryingpan now, you would be in the fire then. No, no Saturnalia. We have got a very tough fact to deal with. You are married, you are quite sensible of that fact, and we can't ignore it. You want to be unmarried. If you look in the Church porch you will see that “ Marriages may be solemnized here," but not Divorces, there's not a word about Divorces. A divorce is an act of violence, not a solemnization, and we only do the gentle thing here. You must go to the legally constituted court if you want

any violent processes to be performed on you, we can only exhibit a moral medicine for your particular mischief. We have sedatives and stimulants, tonics and cathartics, which are at your service. We have sedatives for the irritable, and stimulants for the feebly tame, and tonics for the flat, and purgatives for the bad-humoured. Some of you want these medicines-your incompatibilities are in part owing to these moral distempers. Physic is the remedy for some among you. Take physic, not homoeopathically, but in good oldfashioned doses; and we recommend a frequent exhibition of your particular medicine. But neither physic nor carpentry will be of any use for some others. Your incompatibility is absolute,-you ought never to have attempted a junction,-the thing was naturally impossible, you will never be able to manage it,-how, in the name of all that is sensible, you could have ever attempted to manage it fills us with amazement. You were never intended to be together,-you can't be together, and yet you are together, and must remain together. You are antiscii, antithetical, and antipathetical people, and you ought to have

lived on opposite sides of the globe as antipodes. You and your best friends called it a marriage en convenance-that was a joke, for you have found no convenience in it. You are circles and squares, triangles and parallelograms, diverging lines, parallel lines, and all sorts of impossible mathematical figures, and if you are not helpless victims you are consummate blockheads to boot. 'Tis a "mortifying mischief," with a vengeance, into which you have managed to get involved. Help you out, indeed! why you were never in, and yet you are in, and can't get out. Something might possibly have been done for you, but you have gone and done something for yourselves which makes your case absolutely hopeless. What business have you with children? Only compatible

people have any right to propagate their species. You are not of the same species,-you violate a law of nature. Fie upon ye! The decencies of society and common sense demand that every incompatible birth should be visited with the cat-o'-nine-tails on both delinquents. What can come of two divergent lines but little miserable embarrassments, who don't know which way to look and in what direction

to go.

Between you both they will drop through, and yet there they always are alternating between you both, keeping up a sort of connection and common interest between you, when there is no connection and no common interest in anything else. There is nothing for you but moral medicine,-we tell you flatly that there is no "present remedy," nothing but "patient sufferance." Your marriage is "a mortifying mischief," because it is a moral and mathematical blunder. The carpentering in your case has been particularly bad, your glue has all given way, your seams have all opened wide, you are full of chinks and crannies, you are all come to pieces, and the wonder is that you dont come to the ground.

[We awoke, and were nearly on the ground ourself. The side of our bedstead had given way, and we had gradually slipped down, which we suppose had suggested the bad carpentering in our dream and fancifully led us to think of those unfortunate, helpless, and unhelpable ones, the Incompatibles.]

SERMON VI.

ACTORS ON ASSES.

Polonius-The actors are come hither, my lord.

Hamlet-Buz, buz!

Polonius-Upon my honour,

Hamlet―Then came each actor on his ass.

Hamlet.

PLAYERS are ye, masqueraders, mimics! We should not have thought it to see you now, as ye sit there, such matter-of-fact looking people -plain, straightforward men and women. Players are ye, and the world's your stage! And you are only a sample of all the rest of man and womankind! All are in greater or less degree players! To be honest with you,