sang--

"A king cannot swagger
Or get drunk like a beggar,
Nor be half so happy as I"--

had the soul of a philosopher in him. The harshness of the parlour is
revenged at night in the servants' hall. The coarse rich man rates his
domestic, but there is a thought in the domestic's brain, docile and
respectful as he looks, which makes the matter equal, which would
madden the rich man if he knew it--make him wince as with a shrewdest
twinge of hereditary gout. For insult and degradation are not without
their peculiar solaces. You may spit upon Shylock's gaberdine, but the
day comes when he demands his pound of flesh; every blow, every insult,
not without a certain satisfaction, he adds to the account running up
against you in the day-book and ledger of his hate--which at the proper
time he will ask you to discharge. Every way we look we see
even-handed nature administering her laws of compensation. Grandeur
has a heavy tax to pay. The usurper rolls along like a god, surrounded
by his guards. He dazzles the crowd--all very fine; but look beneath
his splendid trappings and you see a shirt of mail, and beneath _that_
a heart cowering in terror of an air-drawn dagger. Whom did the memory
of Austerlitz most keenly sting? The beaten emperor? or the mighty
Napoleon, dying like an untended watch-fire on St. Helena?

Giddy people may think the life I lead here staid and humdrum, but they
are mistaken. It is true, I hear no concerts, save those in which the
thrushes are performers in the spring mornings. I see no pictures,
save those painted on the wide sky-canvas with the colours of sunrise
and sunset. I attend neither rout nor ball; I have no deeper
dissipation than the tea-table; I hear no more exciting scandal than
quiet village gossip. Yet I enjoy my concerts more than I would the
great London ones. I like the pictures I see, and think them better
painted, too, than those which adorn the walls of the Royal Academy;
and the village gossip is more after my turn of mind than the scandals
that convulse the clubs. It is wonderful how the whole world reflects
itself in the simple village life. The people around me are full of
their own affairs and interests; were they of imperial magnitude, they
could not be excited more strongly. Farmer Worthy is anxious about the
next market; the likelihood of a fall in the price of butter and eggs
hardly allows him to sleep o' nights. The village doctor--happily we
hav