habits, his former life, his want of any actual existence worth speaking of, his complete unimportance to the world. He was young, strong, not badly endowed either in body or mind, with enough to live on, and no cares or trammels of any kind; and yet the fact was certain that, if he died to-morrow it would be no loss to any one; nobody would miss him; nothing would come to a stop. How many men would find themselves in the same position did they inquire into it? He had enough to live on, enough to keep a horse and a servant, to do whatever he pleased, to travel, to surround himself with such luxuries as he cared for, to get most things that he wanted. Except in that matter of a wife, which, to tell the truth, was a thing he had never very warmly wanted, there was nothing which he had denied himself. To be sure he was generally more or less in debt, but never so much that he could not set his affairs right by an effort, if he had a strong enough motive for doing so. He had not thus the burden on his conscience that many other men have. He was a good-for-nothing, if we may use the expression, without being a scapegrace like Tom Heriot. He injured nobody. One time or other, though often considerably after date, he paid his bills. No man, or woman either, so far as he knew, was the worse for his existence, and yet---- There are a great many people who go harmlessly, pleasantly, through the world, who, if it ever occurred to them to place themselves by the side of a really useful member of society, and compare their lives with his or hers, would find themselves as much embarrassed by the contrast as Fanshawe was. But fortunately for the idlers of humanity, the contrast seldom strikes them with all the sharp distinctions of light and shadow which existed in this case. The _élégant_ smiles complacently over the comparison, and finds in his own case a host of extraordinary circumstances which he feels to be really superiorities, and which raise him to a level very much higher than that of the plodding fellow by his side, who, like Atlas, carries a world on his shoulders. The race-horse is less useful than the dray-horse, but how different! This consolation generally lays the most flattering unction to the souls of the ornamental portion of society. How is it possible that the fine lady could feel herself anything but superior to the domestic dowdy who does so much more than she, and is of such inferior importance in everybody’s estimation? The butterflies of existence have always this comfort, or at least they take it in most cases; and no doubt Fanshawe, like other men of his acquaintance, had smiled and hugged himself on his superiority to the occasional industrial of his acquaintance who had toiled himself up into reputation at the bar, or made a slave of himself in parliament, while his schoolfellow lounged at his club, or fluttered in the Row, or (which was the most serious of his occupations) hunted or shot, or went fishing in strange waters.