friendships, or in the sphere of his commercial or professional life as formerly. His friends are cool towards, or shy of him; his credit is shaken, his clients drop off. He is conscious of no change in himself. Has fortune then, in her proverbially fickle mood, reversed her wheel? Nothing of the kind. He is cursed with some polecat intimate-some vile backbiter who has bitten him in the dark, he has been stung by a mosquito,-corroded by some aquafortis acquaintance. The wound may be as trivial as a gnat or- flea-bite, some alleged peccadillo; or it may be like the fatal grip of the weasel, some damning insinuation, through which the very life-blood of an honourable reputation is rapidly sucked out. Jealousy or envy of another's reputation or prosperity, wounded pride, or thwarted ambition, mere wantonness, caprice, or idle and reckless loquacity, may provoke or incline to the backbiting propensity, and mark some hapless victim for its prey. Alas! that men and women should be so ascetically disposed as to find pleasure in discovering and aggravating these mortifications;-that human nature should

secrete a corrosive acid to deface the bright metal of honest character,-and that it should be ever eagerly flowing over the surface of society to creep into the faintest scratch or flaw which some other backbiting enemy may have been successful in inflicting. How can poor victimized honesty

"Repel a destructive so active;

For in etching, as well as in morals, pray note
That a little raw spot, or a hole in a coat,

Your ascetics find vastly attractive."

The dragon-fly is a beautiful insect, and the variety and vividness of its tints, and the brilliant transparency of its delicate gauze-like wings, give it the appearance of an animated jewel of the most costly materials and consummate workmanship, as it darts in its rapid flight across the meadows on a bright summer's day. But every little boy and girl knows that

it is not to be trifled with, and that the bite of its formidable mandibles is a stinging wound. There are delicate and jewelled beauties of the drawing-room too, who flutter in the sunshine of fashionable life, who very much resemble the organism and habits as well as the glittering exterior of the dragon-fly. Their maxillary

development is equally formidable, the speed of their pinions as swift, and their powers of eyesight as active and penetrating. Drawingroom dragon-flies are very beautiful to look at in the brilliancy of the social sunshine, but the boys and girls who frequent the green fields of fashion know that they are not to be trifled with either. A bevy of these beauties in the retirement of the drawing-room after dinner will indulge in a rich post-prandial feast of another kind. If the hostess happen to be a dragon-fly, you may mark the punctual promptitude with which she rises from table, and you may as infallibly distinguish every other dragon-fly by the sudden loss of interest in her partner's conversation, the frequent glances of her eye at the head of the table, and the alacrity with which she rises at the first sound of a rustling movement, and her tripping eagerness to ascend the stairs. Lingering ladies who are slow to quit the dining-room are rarely dragon-flies. Meadow Malignant has no charms for them. Here the Hon. Fanny Faintpraise and Miss Susannah Sneerwell, and old Lady Stigma, and the skittish Theresa Taintall, and

pe

Mrs. Buzz Bruit, are all in their natural ele-
ment. Meadow Malignant is a breezy sun-
shiny spot to the dragon-flies of polite society.
Acquaintances are lawful prey here. Their
judgments and tastes, their weaknesses and
culiarities, their pedigrees and alliances, their
circumstances and pursuits, their morals and
reputation, their courtships and expectations,
will afford delicious entertainment. Fie upon
you, ladies! that you should degrade your
gentle natures by descending to the level of
dragon-flies; and under the thin veil of an
affected love of truth and candour, should in-
dulge the base taste for calumny and scandal.
"The dragon-fly may charm your fond eye,

And its pinions than fairy wings lighter;
But if without claws, it has terrible jaws,
And belongs to the tribe of backbiter."

[A sharp pricking sensation in the back at this moment awoke us, the cause of which was instantly divined.]

SERMON XIV.

WEATHERCOCKS.

"In this mayres yere also, but the .x. yere of the kynge, and .x. day of August, a newe wedyr-cok was sette vpon the crosse of Seynt Paulys steple of Lōdon."

FABYAN. Chronycle. Anno 1422.

OUR modern Lord Mayors of London would think their year of office somewhat barren of incident and profit, if the chroniclers of their time thought it worth while to record that a new weathercock had been put on the top of a church-steeple in their mayoralty. But in the tenth and last year of Henry V. it was a