It is impossible, perhaps, observed Dean Swift, for the best and wisest among us to keep so constant a guard upon our temper but that we may at some time or other lie open to the strokes of fortune. Incensed on one occasion, “it was natural for me to have immediate recourse to my pen and ink; but before I would offer to make use of them, I resolved deliberately to tell over a hundred; and when I came to the end of that sum, I found it more advisable to defer drawing up my intended remonstrance till I had slept soundly on my resentments.” We are told of the celebrated Macklin, that although so particular in drilling the performers at rehearsals, he was scrupulous in keeping his temper down, the irritability of which he knew too well; and that on one occasion he interposed an hour by his stop-watch, all retiring together from the stage to the green-room, at the end of which time all were in good humour again, and the rehearsal was resumed. “When the evil effects of hasty anger approach, the consequences of which may be irretrievable,”—thus moralizes a fellow-craftsman, John O’Keeffe,—“it would be no harm if all of us could suppress our own feelings, even for Macklin’s green-room hour.” His mighty master, Shakspeare, would have supplied him with a precedent, in the case of good Duke Humphrey, who says as he re-enters,— “Now, lords, my choler being overblown With walking once about the quadrangle, I come to talk of commonwealth affairs.” Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton’s secretary, Mr. Nixon, on his own showing, could not refrain from blurting out just what he felt at the moment, when differences arose between the two. This used to vex Sir Thomas, who however would say nothing till the next day, and then, when the secretary thought that the whole matter had passed off (having perhaps received great kindness in the meantime), the remonstrance would come out, “What a silly fellow you were, Nixon, to put yourself in such a passion yesterday! If I had spoken then, we should most probably have parted. Make it a rule never to speak when you are in a passion, but wait till the next day.” And we are assured that, if at any time he happened to transgress this rule himself, he was seriously vexed and grieved, and could not rest till he had in some way made amends for his want of self-restraint. Molière’s Arnolphe propounds the prophylactic rule with emphasis and discretion: “Un certain Grec disait à l’empereur Auguste, Comme une instruction utile autant que juste, Que lorsqu’une aventure en colére nous met, Nous devons, avant tout, dire nôtre alphabet, Afin que dans ce temps la bile se tempère, Et qu’on ne fasse rien que l’on ne doive faire.” _EVANESCENCE OF THE EARLY DEW._ HOSEA vi. 3.