But, upon cool and dispassionate reflection, it seemed to me, angry as I was with Ned Worrell, that Plato stretched the point a little too far; and certainly, in the present state of civilization, so sweeping a condemnation of the sickly would go far towards depopulating Europe. Celsus, for instance, classes amongst the delicate or sickly the greater part of the inhabitants of towns, and nearly all literary folks (_omnesque pene cupidi literarum_). And if we thus made away with the denizens of the towns, it would be attended with a great many inconveniencies as to shopping, &c., be decidedly injurious to house property, and might greatly affect the state of the funds; while, without literary folks, we should be very dull in our healthy country-seats, deprived of newspapers, novels, and "The Keepsake." Wherefore, on the whole, I think Herodicus was right; and that sickly persons should not only be permitted but encouraged to live as long as they can. That proposition granted, if in this attempt to show that your confirmed Valetudinarian is not so utterly miserable as he is held to be by those who throw physic to the dogs--and that in some points he may be a decided gainer by his physical sufferings--I have not wholly failed--then I say, with the ingenious Author who devoted twenty years to a work "On the Note of the Nightingale,"--"I have not lived in vain!" A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[24] WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ. _Continued from Page 44._ CHAPTER VI. Reader, can you go back for twenty years? You do it every day. You say, "Twenty years ago I was a boy--twenty years ago I was a youth--twenty years ago I played at peg-top and at marbles--twenty years ago I wooed--was loved--I sinned--I suffered!" What is there in twenty years that should keep us from going back over them? You go on so fast, so smoothly, so easily on the forward course--why not in retrogression? But let me tell you: it makes a very great difference whether Hope or Memory drives the coach. But let us see what we can do. Twenty years before the period at which the last chapter broke off, Philip Hastings, now a father of a girl of fifteen, was a lad standing by the side of his brother's grave. Twenty years ago Sir John Hastings was the living lord of these fine lands and broad estates. Twenty years ago he passed, from the mouth of the vault in which he had laid the clay of the first-born, into the open splendor of the day, and felt sorrow's desolation in the sunshine. Twenty years ago, he had been confronted on the church-yard path by a tall old woman, and challenged with words high and stern, to do her right in regard to a paltry rood or two of land. Twenty years ago he had given her a harsh, cold answer, and treated her menaces with impatient scorn.