he wants Griselda; if Semiramis, King Cophetua's beggar-maid. The dear departed, who was such a millstone in times past, becomes the emblem of all that is lovely in humanity when a shaft has to be thrown at the partner of times present; and the marriage that was notoriously ill-assorted is painted in gold and rose-colour throughout, and its discords are mended up into a full score of harmony when the new wife or the new husband has to be snubbed, for no other reason than the otherwise-mindedness which cannot agree with what it has. Children and servants come in for their share of this uncomfortable temper which reverses the old adage about the absent, and which, so far from making these in the wrong, transfers the burden of blame to those present and conveniently forgets its former litany of complaint. No one would be more surprised than those very absent if they heard themselves upheld as possessors of all possible virtues when, according to their memory, they had been little better than concretions of wickedness and folly in the days of their subjection to criticism. They need not flatter themselves. Could they return, or if they do return, to the old place, they will be sure to return to the old conditions; and the praise lavished on them when they are absent, by way of rebuke to those unlucky ones on the spot, will be changed for their benefit into the blame and the rebuke familiar to them. In fact no circumstances whatever touch the central quality of the otherwise-minded. They must have something to bite, to grumble at, to rearrange, at least in wish, if not in deed. If only they had been consulted, nothing would have gone wrong that has gone wrong; and 'I told you so' is the shibboleth of their order. It is gall and wormwood to them when they are obliged to agree, and when, for very decency's sake, they must praise what indeed offers no points to condemn. But even when they get caught in the trap of unanimity they contrive to say something quite unnecessary about evils which no one was thinking of, and which have nothing to do with the case in point. 'But' is their mystic word, their truncated form of the Tetragrammaton which rules the universe; and whatever their special private denomination, they all belong in bulk to the Sect whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies; In falling out with that or this, And finding somewhat still amiss. _LIMP PEOPLE._