self ornament and guide,' and you make a motion, and are not fortunate enough to find even a seconder. You have some favourite speculation in which you put your money, and persuade other people to put their money; but, not receiving your last dividend with the customary regularity, you call at the office you find the clerks gone, the office shut up, and the whole speculation vanished into thin air. You really think yourself good-looking, well made, and with a decidedly intellectual expression it is not agreeable to find yourself popularly spoken of among your friends as the missing link between the gorilla and human nature. You really think that you have established bonds of sympathy between yourself and Julia; but you find that you have quite mistaken the nature of her feelings, and that your offer is declined. These are instances-and such instances might be indefinitely multiplied-of slaps in the face.

Some people retain very faithfully the recollection of the slap. They store it up carefully in retentive memory, intending to pay it off artistically, sooner or later, on the first opportunity that might offer. They grin and grimace at the time of infliction as if the slap were a mere trifle, a graceful unimportant trifle, and which in point of fact they would rather have than otherwise. A member of Parliament told me one day that he had lost 30,000l. in a strike. But it was a mere trifle,' he said. I did not in reality care anything about it.' But for all that he took the most effective means he could for starving down the strike. A friend of mine was good enough to explain to me his theory of the artistic treatment of a slap in the face. He was a man who told me that he greatly

admired the Satanic characteristics in Milton:

"The unconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate!' 'I take my slap,' he said, 'in the most gracious manner. I grin and bear it. But I treasure up the offence for a dozen or a score of years, and when I have the opportunity I pay him off with compound interest. I am ready to murder him or ruin him.' Perfectly shocking, was it not, my dear reader, in this uncompromising heathen? And yet I think that owing a man a grudge is after all not such an unfrequent phenomenon in the world's moral or immoral life. I am told that in some great places of business there are people who keep a Black Book. They set a mark against a man's name. They decline all business communications with him, and make it a rule to do him an ill turn whenever the chance offers. Black Books and black looks are common enough all the world over. 'O, that mine adversary had written a book!' said Job; and when the book is published, the unfriendly reviewer, who may happen to have a tingling recollection of a bygone slap in the face, is sure to vilipend the writer and his book as mere offal of the dunghill. I think we sometimes hear of critics who have this notion of artistically treating a slap in the face. And if you have shown a man a hundred kindnesses, yet if, in a moment of possibly deserved irritation, you may have lent him a slap in the face, he forgets all the kindness, and only studies how he may artistically revenge the slap. There was a very charming writer, Frank Smedley, who used to write storybooks, which are still immense favourites with the boy population of these realms. He had a cousin, to whom he bequeathed his large

property, Menella Smedley, one of the most kindly and gracious natures that I have ever known, and a genuine poetess. Smedley was a cripple, a defect compensated by great moral and intellectual endowments; but it was his especial delight to describe imaginary scenes of great athletic power and vigour. Some of his scenes are laid at Venice, which I think Smedley could never have visited, or he would not have described people as driving about in their carriages, which in the very nature of things could never have happened. But he makes his hero receive an insult from a noble lord, who tosses away his glove because the poor tutor had contaminated it by his touch. A day of reckoning. A day of reckoning comes. 'You will observe, my lord, that this is the righthand glove; and then, putting it neatly on, he administers a knockdown blow. Of course I feel a thrill of British admiration when a noble lord is knocked over by a mere commoner, only in the nature of things it is just possible that the commoner might have been knocked over by the noble lord. At school we used to think it a splendid thing that Lewis Arundel' had given a real slap in the face in exchange for a figurative one; but though agreeable to the British character for natural brutality, I am inclined to think in maturer years that such reprisals are wanting in artistic finish.

There was a man of the highest literary fame who went down to live in a suburban neighbourhood. Now in social matters a suburban neighbourhood is a very awkward one. In London your neighbours are not those who live in the same neighbourhood, but those who live in the same clique. In the country ties of neighbourhood constitute ties of friendship. But these

suburban neighbourhoods are neither the one thing nor the other. They are neither town nor country. You are not in the way of meeting old friends or making new ones. No sensible man will go into such a locality-as a rule-unless furnished with one or two good letters of introduction. The only man sure to call upon him is the parson, who probably does so with an eye to a pew-seat or a subscription, which may be legitimate objects enough in their way. Still the stranger in question who took up his abode in this locality was a very distinguished man in his way, whom it would be a distinction to know. The grandees of the country-side did not know how to treat this new importation, and on the whole concluded that it would be judicious to ignore him. He was accordingly ignored, which some people would consider a decided slap in the face. It so happened that her gracious Majesty came into these regions, and honoured the great author with a call. The fact spread like wildfire, and now every one of distinction hastened to leave their

cards on the great man. But this gentleman had resolved to take his slap in the face after an artistic fashion. He collected all the cards, and one day drove about returning them, instead of leaving his own, at the people's houses. Now I think that there was something of an artistic treatment in this method of dealing with the social slap. It was a rebuke to our inherent Philistinism. Most of the slaps deliberately dealt out all around us are social slaps. I know a great lady who has the character of being very kind and charitable, but who in reality is as fond of administering slaps and pinches as if she were a Mother Brownrigg. She will visit the poorest and most degraded, but

she will not visit those who are just upon the skirts of her own gentility. She will not visit the untitled squire, whose smaller domain infringes on her own, or even give a friendly glance to the wife of the poor curate or struggling doctor. We should be glad to hear of such slaps being artistically treated. They probably get their deserts, though we may not 'be by to see.' The best plan is to go our way quietly and take no notice, thanking Heaven that we have not ourselves such ungentle souls. When the slap misses its aim it often recoils upon the slapper, which in itself is no inartistic style of treatment. Moreover, it is just possible-if such a supposition may be deferentially hinted at-that you may have deserved this slap in the face. You may have got off very cheap with the slap, having deserved a severe blow. If you do not take heed to the slap, you may experience the sharper treatment by and by. I believe that men often come to great grief because they have neglected light visitations. I have seen one or two young fellows get slaps in the face in my time, and they have generally brought it upon themselves by their tricks and their manners.' I remember the case of a young curate, who, at a luncheon, differed rather brusquely from the late Bishop Wilberforce. 'I perceive, sir,' said the great bishop, that you have no respect for authority.' The assembled eurates shuddered at this slap administered to one of their order. A judge can often administer a slap in the face to a young barrister. If my lud' only reads a newspaper while he is speaking, or goes asleep while he is speak ing, that is a slap in the face of a negative kind. But sometimes the slap is of a very positive kind. There are some judges who are

very skilful in snubbing some barristers. The influence of the Bench over the Bar was never more paramount than at the present time. Of course the young barrister will have to take his slap as artistically as he can, although he may endure much grief of heart and grind his teeth inwardly. Yet the slap may make him a better barrister, and possibly a judge himself in good time. A slap in the face has a wholesome tendency to take the cheek out of a man, and bring him to a proper state of mind. If we outwardly condole we are secretly gratified by the administration of such slaps. I remember a fellow who imposed upon us all by giving the idea that he was going to take splendid honours, and his ultimate fate was that he was ploughed for a simple pass. If the dandy who professes himself a lady-killer gets rejected, or the man who brags of great acquaintance is openly cut, or the man who, metaphorically, is always shaking a long purse in your face discovers a frightful leakage therein, all his dearest friends keenly appreciate the inherent satire of that slap in the face. The slap will do good where any element of goodness is left in such people. If young people are taught better manners, become more civil, tolerant, thoughtful, attentive, they will have taken their slaps, in the best sense of our phrase, in a truly artistic manner.

Indeed there have been wise people who have keenly regretted that they have not had slaps in the face in the days when such slaps might have done them good. The classical reader will remember the legend of the Ring of Polycrates, told with such honest trust by Herodotus, translated so vividly by the late Lord Lytton from Schiller's version. Life passed so smoothly with the Prince of

Samos. Whatever he touched prospered. Such unvarying good fortune seemed simply monstrous in the view of his friend, Amasis of Egypt. Amasis thought that life ought to be a kind of trelliswork, a combination of light and shadow. Polycrates, holding such reasoning in superstitious reverence, thought that he would afflict his soul; that since nobody would give him a slap in the face, he must needs slap his own face. But the intended slap was destined not to come off. A costly ring was thrown into the sea for the purpose of 'vexing his soul;' but when a splendid fish was opened at dinner-time the ring was discovered. Amasis took this as a sign that something dreadful was going to happen to Polycrates, and fearing that his own feelings might be grieved by something awful happening to Polycrates (he must have had a queer idea of friendship) he solemnly renounced his acquaintance. In the event all sorts of horrid things happened to Polycrates. If you accept your punishment bravely, and set about mending your ways, the lucky slap has answered the main legitimate object of all punishment. Then, again, it may be recollected, both as compensation and consolation, that if you have received a slap in the face you have also administered a variety of slaps in your time. I once declined to have anything to do with Podgers's manuscripts when he wished for their publication. Naturally enough, when I wrote something of my own, Podgers contrived to write a review of it, and spite furnished him with a certain amount of literary vigour. Why, Macaulay was always slapping Croker's face, and Croker was always slapping, or trying to slap, Macaulay's face. Not that he minded. It amused Croker, and did not hurt

Macaulay. We see, in the recent correspondence of Macvey Napier, how Lord Brougham was constantly slapping people in the face, and how everybody was slapping Brougham in the face. 'We all go slapping-slapping, slapping, slapping,' might be a chorus for indolent irresponsible reviewers' at least as far as the bygone days of the old Edinburgh Review are concerned. Now, we find in the Macvey correspondence that the great Macaulay himself once seriously contemplated the possibility of having to go out to fight a duel. What would his father and mother have thought of it, not to mention good Hannah More, who brought him up in such an eminently judicious manner, although the old lady, before she died, got very much out of humour with 'Tom,' and spoke with much sharpness to him, which he took very quietly, like the gentleman he was. duel, owing to a literary quarrel between Macaulay and another man, would have been a greater scandal than the duel between Lord Winchelsea and the Duke of Wellington.

Α

Time was when it was thought that a slap in the face could only be artistically treated on the plan of the duello. Such an insult, it was supposed, could only be washed out by blood. It is, I am greatly afraid, a mistake to suppose that duelling is the dead-andgone custom which it is generally assumed to be. Mr. Trollope, in one of his novels, makes use of the incident as not an unlikely one to occur in modern life. remember one day dining at an hotel table-d'hôte amid the sweet scenery of North Wales, and becoming rather intimate with a gentleman who sat by me. In the course of the evening he told me that, some time before, a man had

I

behaved villanously; that he had challenged him; that they had gone over to Belgium, and that he had shot him dead. It was a hideous story, and I tried hard to believe that the man was trying -but for what reason?-to impose upon my credulity. The narrative seemed real enough, and, indeed, there were several circumstances that seemed to confirm it. It is not necessary to go into any argument on the subject, but at the same time the total irrationality of the duel entirely deprives it of being an artistic mode of receiving a slap in the face. It is quite possible that the injured person may be winged or killed. Indeed, I have a theory that the history of duelling would show that the injured person is oftener winged or killed than not. I cannot admit that the sword or pistol would furnish artistic treatment for a slap in the face.

That slightly comic idea of Polycrates, that since nobody else would slap his face he would slap his own face, is one hardly likely to take hold of the British mind. In the fourteenth century there was an Order of Flagellants, who used to slap their own faces and one another's faces with great vigour, and adopted every variety of the use of the lash. There were long processions of penitents, who would sometimes march through the streets of towns, and sometimes with torches and banners would penetrate into midnight solitudes of mountain and forest, scourging all round unmercifully. A great enthusiasm was created in their behalf on the Continent, and a band of Flagellants came over to England to find disciples. The good folk of London, however, did not seem to see it.' It is said that they did not make a single convert in the whole of England. We have a prejudice,

both nationally and individually, to a slap in the face. A friend of mine having become very Romish, I asked him why he did not carry out the entire idea, and macerate and mortify himself. 'No,' he replied; 'St. Paul was a very sensible man, and he spoke of cherishing the body and nourishing it, which is my idea.' Had my friend, however, studied the Pauline letters he would have seen that St. Paul makes use of a very curious word, which signifies bruising oneself under the eye, and so lays down the rule that a man may be so justly angry with himself that he may slap his own face.

I remember one day having a discussion with a friend on the artistic way of treating a slap in the face which is recommended in the Good Book. Our Quaker brethren take these things very literally. Of course they are human, after all. Friend, my religion forbids me to go to law with thee; but if thou dost not pay what thou owest, one of the ungodly, whom they call my solicitor, will assuredly put thee in prison.' The text-book of this worthy sect, Barclay's Apology for the Quakers, which at the present day would be called decidedly Broad Church, is a very noble work. If King Charles II. ever read Barclay's dedication of the book to him, his ears must have tingled as with very decided slaps: 'He hath often faithfully warned thee by His servants, since He restored thee to thy royal dignity, that thy heart might not wax wanton against Him, to forget His mercies and providences towards thee; whereby He might permit thee to be soothed up and lulled asleep in thy sins by the flattering of court parasites, who by their fawning are the ruin of many princes...