Mr. Disraeli maintains, in the political biography of his sometime leader, and immediate predecessor in the leadership of the Opposition, that Sir Robert Peel's real character was very different from his public reputation; that he never hesitated, but ever acted with promptitude and energy, when once he had made up his mind. "Far from being timid and wary, he was audacious and even headstrong. It was his cold and constrained demeanour that misled the public. There never was a man who did such rash things in so circumspect a manner.”

Among the characteristics of that refined critic, the late W. Caldwell Roscoe, this stands on record by his biographer, that he seldom or never committed himself till he had well considered his course; but that he would then take a very great amount of real trouble, and exercise astonishing patience, to effect his purpose.

What Polonius counsels in dealing with a foe, is applicable, discreetly applied, in dealing with a friend. Don't choose one in a hurry. But having chosen one, deliberately and after due consideration, be his friend in earnest, and make your friendship a real thing.

Then judge yourself, and prove your man
As circumspectly as you can,

And having made election,

Beware no negligence of yours,

Such as a friend but ill endures,

Enfeeble his affection.

An elder, not to say a greater, poet than Cowper,

had not long before said the same thing in blanker

verse:

First on thy friend deliberate with thyself.
Pause-ponder-sift-nor eager in the choice,
Nor jealous of the chosen-fixing, fix;

Judge before friendship-then confide till death.

But Polonius was beforehand with either poet, when he counselled his son, in the sentence immediately preceding the Beware of a Quarrel clause, to grapple to his soul with hooks of steel the tried friends he had; but not to dull his palm with entertainment of every new-hatched, unfledged comrade.

THE DINNER TEST OF GRIEF.

A Vexed Question.

REFERRING to the sensitive test which Dr. Johnson suggested as to the depth of one mortal's feeling for another, viz.: How does it affect his appetite? Multitudes in London, he said, professed themselves extremely distressed at the hanging of Dr. Dodd; but how many on the morning he was hung took a materially worse breakfast than usual?-referring to, and, as City people say, endorsing, this critical though perhaps coarse tentamen, the most popular of clerical essayists apostrophises a reader to this effect: "Solitary dreamer, fancying that your distant friends feel deep interest in your goings-on, how many of them are there who would abridge their dinner if the black-edged note arrived by post which will one day chronicle the last fact in your worldly history?"

Average human nature is supposed to be above, or below, having its appetite affected by affliction. Because I have lost a dear friend, am I also to lose my relish for fish, flesh, and fowl? Because I am

in trouble, am I also to go dinnerless? Is my tribulation to be aggravated by a defective meal? Because calamity has overtaken me, shall I, should I, can I, will I, go without my supper? In short, to apply the boisterous query of the rude fellow in Persius, Cur quis non prandeat, hoc est ?

Captain Marryat affirms, in one of his numerous fictions-perhaps the least sea-flavoured amongst them that never, in his adventurous life, had he observed that the sympathy of the most sentimental, or the grief of the most wobegone, ever induced them to neglect the summons of the dinner-bell, and the calls of the responsive appetite.

In another, the hero is introduced as a boy who has just lost father and mother, one by fire and one by water, at one and the same time, but who gluttonizes over an exceptionally good breakfast given him in a stranger's kitchen. "Grief had not taken away my appetite. I stopped occasionally to cry a little, wiped my eyes, and sat down again. It was more than two hours before I laid down my knife, and not until strong symptoms of suffocation played round the regions of my trachea, did I cry out, 'Hold, enough." One might have supposed the youthful crammer steeped in the practical philosophy of Canning's lines, arguing that

-when the mind's opprest,

Confused, elated, warm'd, distrest,
The body keeps an equal measure
In sympathy of pain or pleasure;

And, whether moved with joy or sorrow,

From food alone relief can borrow.

Sorrow's, indeed, beyond all question,
The best specific for digestion;

Which, when in moderate force it rages,
A chicken or a chop assuages.

But, to support some weightier grief,

Grant me, ye Gods, a round of beef!

Dr. Johnson's favourite illustrations, it has been. remarked, were always physical. "Would you eat less dinner if you heard your dearest friend had lost his dearest friend?" The effectiveness of such a remark, argues one of the most effective of Essaywriters, depends upon the fact that it appeared convincing to a remarkable man; but when carefully examined, its fallacy, or rather incompleteness, is apparent. Two persons-to take their critic's 'instance-dine at seven o'clock. Their children were drowned out of the same boat at 2.30. Would the relish of each person for his dinner vary as his affection for his child? Certainly not. It would depend infinitely more on the state of their digestive organs than on the state of their affections. On a nervous or excitable man such a catastrophe might inflict a shock which he might never recover, or only after a great length of time. In a composed and sturdy person it might produce hardly any physical effect, yet the second person might be the more affectionate parent of the two,-might have taken far greater pleasure in his child, and have been willing to make greater sacrifices for him.*

*"The acute internal sensation of pain or pleasure—the pang or thrill which probably does physically affect various