avail, from any possible charge of branded fellowship with such as the poet of the Seasons depicts, in “The cruel wretch Who, all day long in sordid pleasure rolled, Himself a useless load, has squandered vile Upon his scoundrel train, what might have cheered A drooping family of modest worth.” Horace Walpole, on being complimented by letter on the patience with which he bore an acute attack of his chronic malady, replies: “If people of easy fortunes cannot bear illness with temper, what are the poor to do, who have none of our comforts and alleviations? The affluent, I fear, do not consider what a benefit-ticket has fallen to their lot out of millions not so fortunate; yet less do they reflect that chance, not merit, drew the prize out of the wheel.” Crabbe portrays this non-reflecting complacency in one of his metrical tales: “Month after month was passed, and all were spent In quiet comfort and in rich content: Miseries there were, and woes, the world around, But these had not her pleasant dwelling found; She knew that mothers grieved, and widows wept, And she was sorry, said her prayers, and slept. Thus passed the seasons, and to Dinah’s board Gave what the seasons to the rich afford; For she indulged,” etc. Not so serenely does Bishop Jeremy Taylor imagine a gazer from the skies to look down on the sorrows of this earth of ours, in the celebrated paragraph beginning, “But if we could from one of the battlements of heaven espy how many men and women lie fainting and dying,” etc. And, by the way, there is another of Crabbe’s Tales, in which, too late, a self-upbraiding spirit thus accuses itself for neglecting a ruined wrong-doer, whose death she has just discovered: “To have this money in my purse—to know What grief was his, and what to grief we owe; To see him often, always to conceive How he must pine and languish, groan and grieve;[4] And every day in ease and peace to dine, And rest in comfort!—what a heart is mine!”