Mr. Anstey Guthrie has some pleasant instances of texts misapplied. He was staying once in a Scotch country-house where, over his bed, hung an illuminated scroll with the inscription, "Occupy till I come," which, as Mr. Guthrie justly observes, is an unusually extended invitation, even for Scottish notions of hospitality. According to the same authority, the leading citizen of a seaside town erected some iron benches on the sea front, and, with the view of at once commemorating his own munificence and giving a profitable turn to the thoughts of the sitters, inscribed on the backs-- THESE SEATS WERE PRESENTED TO THIS TOWN OF SHINGLETON BY JOSEPH BUGGINS, ESQ., J.P. FOR THE BOROUGH. "THE SEA IS HIS, AND HE MADE IT." Nothing is more deeply rooted in the mind of the average man than that certain well-known aphorisms of piety are to be found in the Bible--possibly in that lost book the Second Epistle to the Ephesians, which Dickens must have had in his mind when he wrote in _Dombey and Son_ of the First Epistle to that Church. "In the midst of life we are in death" is a favourite quotation from this imaginary Scripture. "His end was peace" holds its place on many a tomb in virtue of a similar belief. "He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" is, I believe, commonly attributed to Solomon; and a charming song which was popular in my youth declared that, though the loss of friends was sad, it would have been much sadder, "Had we ne'er heard that Scripture word, 'Not lost, but gone before.'" Mrs. Gamp, with some hazy recollections of the New Testament floating in her mind, invented the admirable aphorism that "Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye." And a lady of my acquaintance, soliloquizing on the afflictions of life and the serenity of her own temper, exclaimed, "How true it is what Solomon says, 'A contented spirit is like a perpetual dropping on a rainy day'!"