comes powerfully into force in all cases where the tenant is just entering upon his house. As in the other case every fault is exaggerated, and made the subject of congratulatory disgust, so in this, every fault is extenuated. “The ceilings are a little contracted, I see, by the roof.” “Oh! a wee thought coomceyled—a very small matter; these rooms are only intended for the children. We have some capital _public_ rooms at the back, looking into the Queen Street gardens, and have a little peep of the sea in the distance.” “Upper flats,” observes your Malagrowther friend, “are very apt to smoke.” “Oh! not at all, I assure you. But I have been assured that Dr Bonnyman cured this house entirely some years ago, and since then there has never been a single puff of smoke.” “Your nursery is in the garret; don’t you think the children will feel it rather cold?” “Oh, the most comfortable nursery in the world; and see, _only see_, what a nice door there is at the top of the garret stair to prevent the bairns from tumbling down!” “I am sorry, however, to see a green-wife established so close beneath the door, at the bottom of your _common_ stair.” “Oh, Sir, but consider the convenience of the greens.” In fact, there is no peculiarity about the house, however trifling, but, in the eyes of a new tenant, it will seem a beauty, as in those of a departing one it will constitute a disgrace. And this is just the philosophy of the question, and the real cause why there is so much useless tossing and tumbling of old furniture on each 25th of May. VICTIMS. The industrious classes of the middle rank are, on the one hand, _attracted onwards_ to wealth and respectability, by contemplating men, formerly of their own order, who having, as the saying is, feathered their nests, now lie at ease, a kind of _conscripti patres_; while they are, on the other hand, _repelled_ from the regions of poverty and disgrace by the sight of a great many wretched persons, who having, under the influence of some unhappy star, permitted their good resolutions of industry and honour to give way, are sunk from their former estate, and now live—if living it can be called—in a state of misery and ignominy almost too painful to be thought of. There may be a use in this—as there is a use for beacons and buoys at sea. But oh, the desolation of such a fate! As different as the condition of a vessel which ever bends its course freely and gallantly over the seas, on some joyous expedition of profit or adventure, compared with one which has been deprived of all the means of locomotion, and chained down upon some reef of rocks, merely to tell its happier companions that it is to be avoided; so different is the condition of a man still engaged in the hopeful pursuits of life, and one who has lost all its prospects.