The selfish club-man _par excellence_ has been depicted as earthing himself from pursuit in the sanctuary of his club, there to eat his fill unmolested, with no remonstrant at hand to remind him of the gout when enjoying his turtle, or to talk of cupping when the glass of champagne is at his lips. “There he may eat his asparagus _tout à l’huile_—there he may pepper his cream-tart,” and none to say him nay. Drawn with pitiless realism from the life is Acton Bell (Anne Brontè)’s picture of the dying master of Wildfell Hall, whose extreme dread of death, when and while it seems imminent, renders easy his wife’s task of curbing his unruly greed, but who becomes intractable as the danger to dear life seems receding. “I watch and restrain him,” she writes, “as well as I can, and often get bitterly abused for my rigid severity; and sometimes he contrives to elude my vigilance, and sometimes acts in opposition to my will.” William Collins, the painter, notes in his diary a certain “dinner at C⸺’s,” where he “sat next to H⸺, who took some highly seasoned omelet. I asked him how he could venture on such stuff; he said he could not resist it, though he knew how much he should suffer from it. He took a great deal of wine, to overcome the effects of the omelet, and assured me he should be ill for four days after such a dinner, and that he always suffered in the same way after dining with C⸺! How absurd such weakness appears, and yet how common it is!” George Herbert’s counsel is never out of date, any more than King Solomon’s, in the matter of putting a knife to one’s throat, if edacious and a diner-out:— “Look to thy mouth: diseases enter there.... ... Carve, or discourse; do not a famine fear. Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all. Look on meat, think it dirt, then eat a bit; Then say withal, Earth to earth I commit.” _HAZAEL’S ABHORRENT REPUDIATION OF HIS FUTURE SELF._ 2 KINGS viii. 13. Why wept Elisha in the presence of Hazael, when that envoy from the sick king of Syria courted the man of God, in his sovereign’s behalf, with a consignment of every good thing of Damascus, forty camels’ burden? Courteous and gentle was Benhadad’s messenger who came to inquire of the Lord of Elisha, if the royal Syrian should recover of the disease which had brought him so low. Why wept the prophet, when his prophecy had been uttered, ominously vague? “Go, say unto him [Benhadad], Thou mayest certainly recover. Howbeit the Lord hath showed me that he shall certainly die.” And he settled his countenance stedfastly, until he was ashamed. “And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel; their strongholds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children,” etc. And Hazael said, “But what! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?”