“The laughter of the Christmas hearth With sighs of self-exhausted mirth They feelingly reprove.” And of such is Currer Bell too treating in a passage that tells of the writer’s fancy budding fresh and her heart basking in sunshine; only these feelings “were well kept in check by the secret but ceaseless consciousness of anxiety lying in wait on enjoyment, like a tiger crouched in a jungle. The breathing of that beast of prey was in my ear always.” Ἐξ ἡδονῆς γὰρ φύεται τὸ δυστυχεῖν. “Who knows what that low sullen murmur means, The river’s fall sends up to blast life’s fairest scenes?” The happiest, as Pope’s Homer has it, “taste not happiness sincere, but find the cordial draught is dashed with care.” What biography of successful ambition but has its parallel passage to one in Prescott’s history of the conqueror of Peru: “Amidst this burst of adulation the cup of joy commended to Pizarro’s lips had one drop of bitterness in it that gave its flavour to all the rest”! As M. Ampére’s Cleopatra owns,— “Oui, parmi les plaisirs, la joie et les festins, Je médite du sort les arrêts incertains.” How apt, at a bright banquet, is the thought of death to flash across the mind, is trite among the truisms of experience. It was at Belshazzar’s feast, while they drank wine out of the golden vessels of the temple, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone, when the revelry was at its height and the revellers at their best, that in the same hour there came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astounded. In Hawthorne’s allegory of the Maypole at Merry Mount, the lord and lady of the May are abruptly overcome with a shadow of sadness, just when the minstrelsy of pipe, cittern, and viola is pealing forth in such a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the maypole quiver to the sound; and just then too, as if a spell had loosened them, down comes a little shower of withering roseleaves from the maypole. There is sometimes, says Fielding, a little speck of black in the brightest and gayest colours of fortune, which contaminates and deadens the whole. “In every joy there lurks An impulse of decay; With silent speed it works, While all without is gay:” —with silent speed, like the worm at Jonah’s gourd. “Fleurs, vous aussi,” so Béranger apostrophizes them, ... “vous avez vos souffrances. Le ver est là; le vent peut accourir.” _Le ver_, as the worm prepared for Jonah’s gourd; _le vent_, as the vehement east wind to wither Jonah’s strength. “While blooming love assures us golden fruit, Some inborn poison taints the secret root; Soon fall the flowers of joy.” But Jonah’s gourd must have a section apart. _THE SPREADING GOURD AND THE SPEEDING WORM._