thousands, and that didn’t know how either to use or abuse them, to be set in high places, only to bring disgrace upon her order, and to encourage others, who might be of similar mind, in the degrading vice of avarice. There is one reason which, in my humble opinion, is far too seldom pleaded in excuse for the glaring faults (glaring because of the high places of the delinquents) of the great and powerful ones of the earth; and that reason is, that the said great and powerful ones find so few who are willing to speak to them of their faults, and reason with them on their shortcomings. If it be hard--and hard we are told it is--for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, surely one reason for that difficulty may be found in the comparative isolation of those who are clothed in purple and fine linen, and who fare sumptuously every day. The “divinity that doth hedge a king” is not only not without its thorns, but is very instrumental in shutting majesty off from the wholesome sympathies of life; and not alone from sympathy, but from counsel, from reproof, and in some measure from the inestimable benefits of example. That same “hedge,” too, is a dangerous deadener of _sound_. It is seldom that those possessed of rank and riches hear either the truths or falsehoods that are reported and spread abroad concerning themselves. As Kate once pertly remarked to her brother Horace, “Who _could_ venture to lecture Lady Millicent upon her faults?” Poor little ill-used, thoughtless, quick-witted Kate! there were the makings of a good and useful woman in her busy brain and ardent temperament; but, under her mother’s injudicious training the little head became filled with foolish fancies, the impulses of the warm young heart seemed likely to lead its owner into something very nearly approaching to scrapes; and, in short, from the rich raw material of poor Katie’s mind there sprung the plentiful growth of weeds which half civilisation invariably draws up from the soil.