Still we say, "O rare Ben Jonson!" A large, rude, clumsy, English force, irritable, egotistic, dogmatic, and quarrelsome, but brave, generous, and placable; with no taint of a malignant vice in his boisterous foibles; with a good deal of the bulldog in him, but nothing of the spaniel, and one whose growl was ever worse than his bite;--he, the bricklayer's apprentice, fighting his way to eminence through the roughest obstacles, capable of wrath, but incapable of falsehood, willing to boast, but scorning to creep, still sturdily keeps his hard-won position among the Elizabethan worthies as poet, playwright, scholar, man of letters, man of muscle and brawn; as friend of Beaumont and Fletcher and Chapman and Bacon and Shakespeare; and as ever ready, in all places and at all times, to assert the manhood of Ben by tongue and pen and sword. UNCHARITABLENESS. I hold society responsible for a great deal. I wondered once where all the disconsolate came from,--where all the human wrecks tossed up by the waves of misfortune received their injuries, and what became of those who sailed from port in early youth and were never heard of more. I marvelled, too, that there were so many unhappy bachelors, so many forlorn maids, so many neither wife nor maid; but at all these things I wonder no longer. I have solved the problem I set myself. Society makes them all. I am not going to analyze society to please any one. I make mine own. Hyacinth, I dare swear, makes his. Why shall I paint it? It is you, it is I, it is both of us, and many more. Can I sketch the figures in a kaleidoscope ere they change? If I could, I might say what society is or was. To-day members of circles marry, or are given in marriage. Disease comes and war decimates; foul tongues asperse, and the unity that was perfect is so no longer. The whole world is society, and I believe there was not so much confusion at the Tower of Babel after all. Men speak in different tongues, but their motives are the same in all climes. I love or I hate my Celtic friend. The sea rolls between us, but from afar the same sun warms us. If he does a good deed, I shall applaud it; or, if he is mean, shall I not smite him? The world looks on, and puts us all to the test alike. We love or we hate. Are there no Procrustean couches in these days? If my neighbor is too short, what shall I do but stretch him? if he is too long, I am the one who shall hack off his superfluous inches. Ah! believe me, sceptic, there is a mote in thine eye, but in mine there is no beam. It is I who am immaculate. "The king can do no wrong." I am a king unto myself; but, whether king or commoner, how lenient I am to my own faults,--how intensely alive to my neighbor's!