reflection, stand two shepherds, struck simultaneously with the moral. What we have is nothing, what we want, everything. "All worldly things," says Baxter, "appear most vain and unsatisfactory, when we have tried them most." The prize we struggled for, which filled our imagination, when attained was not much; worthless in grasp, priceless in expectation. The one thing we want is one thing we have not--that we have not had. "I saw the little boy, In thought how oft that he Did wish of God, to scape the rod, A tall young man to be. "The young man eke that feels His bones with pain opprest, How he would be a rich old man, To live and lie at rest: "The rich old man that sees His end draw on so sore, How he would be a boy again, To live so much the more." This hunger, this hope, this longing, is our best possession at last, and fades not away, unsubstantial as it may seem. It builds for each one of us magnificent castles. "All the years of our youth and the hopes of our manhood are stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults; and we know that we shall find everything convenient, elegant, and splendid, when we come into possession." Curtis, in one of his exquisite sketches, treats this element of us as no other author has. He calls it his Spanish property. "I am the owner," he says, "of great estates; but the greater part are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. I have never been to Spain myself, but I have, naturally, conversed much with travelers to that country, although, I must allow, without deriving from them much substantial information about my property there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them you easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest and in the loveliest positions.... It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find that it is the case with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. It is always so with rich men.... It is not easy for me to say how I know so much as I certainly do about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand large and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. All the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscapes, that I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. They command a