utmost prudence, and political schemes, she fancies must appear in the eyes of some superior beings, like the pecking of a young linnet to break a wire cage, or the climbing of a squirrel in a hoop. If to this bit of morality from the greatest of lady letter-writers in England, a parallel passage may readily be cited from the greatest of lady letter-writers in France, there is a characteristic difference, in the tone of religious feeling, conspicuous generally by its absence in Lady Mary’s case, but a pervading, though underlying, force in that of Madame de Sévigné. The latter describes on one occasion the “cruel derangement” of her family plans, so nicely arranged, and so ripe for completion; then adds, if with a sigh, with a sigh of gentle resignation, “La Providence le veut ainsi. Elle est tellement maitresse de toutes nos actions, que nous n’exécutons rien que sous son bon plaisir, et je tache de ne faire de projets que le moins qu’il m’est possible, afin de n’être pas si souvent trompée; car qui compte sans elle compte deux fois.” How vain, exclaims the author of “Destiny,” are all our schemes for futurity! Human wisdom exhausts itself in devising what a higher Power shows to be vanity. We decide for to-day, and a passing moment scatters our decisions as chaff before the wind. We resolve for to-morrow, to-morrow comes but to root up our resolutions. We scheme for our works to remain monuments of our power and wisdom, and the most minute, the most trivial event is sufficient to overturn all our purposes, and cast down to the dust the thoughts and the labours of a life. Truly, “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Were the affairs of this world to be guided implicitly by human wisdom, suggests one of Scott’s sententious doctors of divinity, or were they uniformly to fall out according to the conjectures of human foresight, events would no longer be under the domination of that time and chance which happen unto all men; since we should, in the one case, work out our own purposes to a certainty, by our own skill; and, in the other, regulate our conduct according to the views of unerring prescience. “But man is, while in this vale of tears, like an uninstructed bowler, so to speak, who thinks to attain the jack by delivering the bowl straightforward upon it, being ignorant that there is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will make it, in all probability, swerve away, and lose the cast.” The future, in the words of a later fiction, is not a blank sheet of paper, for us to write any story we please upon, but a wonderful chart, mapped out by a Divine and unerring hand. Ούδέ τις ἀνθρώπων ἐργάζεται, ἐν φρεσὶν εἰδὼς Ἐς τέλος, εἴτ’ ἀγαθὸν γίγνεται εἴτε κακὸν. Πολλάκι γαρ δοκέων θήσειν κακόν, ἐσθλὸν ἔθηκε, Καί τε δοκῶν θήσειν ἐσθλόν, ἔθηκε κακόν. Ὀυδέ τῳ ἀνθρώπων παραγίγνεται ὅσσ’ ἐθέλησεν.