dependent, or menial? And yet with your supreme modern logic, instead of enthusiastically concluding from his works "let us all be servants," one would think the notion he put in your heads was quite the other, "let us all be masters," and that you understood his ideal of heroic English character to be given in Mr. Pecksniff or Sir Mulberry Hawk! Alas! more's the pity, you cannot all be dependants and menials, even if you were wise enough to wish it. Somebody there must be to be served, else there could be no service. And for the beatitudes and virtues of Masterhood, I must appeal to a wiser man than Dickens--but it is no use entering on that part of the question to-day; in the meantime, here is another letter of his, (you have had one letter already in last Fors,) just come under my hand, which gives you a sketch of a practical landlord, and true Master, on which you may meditate with advantage: "Here, above all, we had the opportunity of seeing in what universal respect and comfort a gentleman's family may live in that country, and in far from its most favoured district; provided only they live there habitually and do their duty as the friends and guardians of those among whom Providence has appointed their proper place. Here we found neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all about. Here there was a very large school in the village, of which masters and pupils were, in nearly equal proportion, Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestant Squire himself making it a regular part of his daily business to visit the scene of their operations, and strengthen authority and enforce discipline by personal superintendence. Here, too, we pleased ourselves with recognising some of the sweetest features in Goldsmith's picture of 'Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;' and, in particular, we had 'the playful children just let loose from school' in perfection. Mr. Edgeworth's paternal heart delighted in letting them make a playground of his lawn; and every evening, after dinner, we saw leap-frog going on with the highest spirit within fifty yards of the drawing-room windows, while fathers and mothers, and their aged parents also, were grouped about among the trees watching the sport. It is a curious enough coincidence that Oliver Goldsmith and Maria Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and knowledge of Irish character and manners from the same identical district. He received part of his education at this very school of Edgeworthstown; and Pallasmore (the 'locus cui nomen est Pallas' of Johnson's epitaph), the little hamlet where the author of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' first saw the light, is still, as it was in his time, the property of the Edgeworths."