at her feet feels a twinge of remorse at the thought of his inhumanity,
and swears he will put down his segars and devote the proceeds to the
emigration fund. Does he ever read Keble? There is a slight struggle in
the unconverted mind, and a faint whisper that he now and then reads
Tupper; but it is too hot to be flippant, or to do more than swear
eternal allegiance to the _Christian Year_.

The evening deepens, and the sermon deepens with it. It is one of the
most disgusting points about the divine in the pulpit that he is always
boasting of himself as a man like as we are, and of the sins he
denounces as sins of his own. It is the special charm of the fair divine
above us that she is eminently a being not as we are, but one serene,
angelic, pure. It is the very vagueness of her condemnation that tells
on us--the utter ignorance of what is so familiar to us that the
vagueness betrays, the utter unskillfulness of the hits, and the purity
that makes them so unskillful. It is only when she descends to
particulars that we can turn round on the Pretty Preacher--only when a
burning and impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly softens
into the plaintive inquiry, "But, oh, Charlie, dear, what _are_ the
Cider Cellars?" So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of the
indefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the soft thunders roll
resistlessly overhead.

But then they are soft thunders. We feel almost encouraged, like Luther,
to "sin boldly" when the absolving fingers brush lightly over our
cousinly hair. Our censor, too, has faith in us, in our capacity and
will for better things, and it is amazingly pleasant to have the
assurance confirmed by a squeeze from the gentle theologian's hand. And
so night comes down, and preacher and penitent stroll pleasantly home
together, and mamma wonders where both can have been; and the Pretty
Preacher lays her head on her pillow with the sweet satisfaction that
her mission is accomplished, and that a reprobate soul--the soul, too,
of such a gentlemanly and agreeable reprobate--is won.

SPOILT WOMEN.

Like children and all soft things, women are soon spoilt if subjected to
unwholesome conditions. Sometimes the spoiling comes from
over-harshness, sometimes from over-indulgence; what we are speaking of
to-day is the latter condition--the spoiling which comes from being
petted and given way to and indulged, till they think themselves better
than everybody else, and as